@@Charky_Creations yeah, £600 lenovo laptop gives you a small 8GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and only a dual core i5, it came with Windows 10 as well. I suspect it came with version 1607 or 1709 (something like that). Plus the laptop doesn't even come with a graphics card, though it is fine with Intel HD Graphics as I can use Dolphin emulator smoothly.
I've loved every Thinkpad I've had, and I've had several over the years. They've not always been the best, but even when I had issues they were always easy to repair and get going again. I use something different now (Razer Blade), but I still have my last Thinkpad (T420s) and plan to get it working again. Still have a W700 around too (the only one I ever regretted buying. It was an awesome machine, but it was a pain to travel with).
@@Charky_Creations They were good up until the keyboard change a couple years ago. Why they changed the trademark keyboard, who knows, but none of them have been quite the same since. I'd still gladly take one over many other laptops, though.
Product key stickers usually didnt match the key on the PC because the hard drives were clones of eachother. Untill they started putting it in the bios.
@@ulrichfinch Yeah. I'm from Argentina, and I wouldn't be able to get that laptop for 100 bucks even if it was broken and sent without charger and such. Everything you can get will be of far lower quality, but charged twice or more as much..
Not too long ago I was picking up another SSD at Microcenter. A middle aged guy with a sales associate walked up next to me. The middle age guy asked "are SSDs really THAT much faster to be worth it...". Both me and the sales associate were stunned for a moment at a loss for words. After a shocked moment I just said "Sir, we cannot describe how much faster they are. You will literally be angry you didn't upgrade sooner. It is night and day." I should have got the commission.
I had a friend who was asking for help with his laptop. I told him to get a SSD and fresh install of Windows 10. Yep, he was mad add how much better things were.
I upgraded my wife's Dell Convertible recently. It's ~5 years old so it's on the cusp of the storage transition and it still had a mechanical drive. I'd duplicated the HDD over and swapped the SSD in when I called her over to sign in. I hadn't powered it up, but she saw me press the button and turned to walk away. I asked where she was going and she said she'd come back over when it was done booting. Then the magic moment: in the time of that exchange it had finished booting to login and I got to utter those magic words: it's already done!
My wife once complained that something was wrong with our HDD booting computer after using an SSD laptop. I had to tell her that nothing was wrong, she just got used to SSD.
@jdpruente not sure if you did or not, but in windows 10 when you switch between an hdd and ssd (in either direction) using a full clone rather than a reinstall, make sure to rerun the internal speed test tool so windows correctly handles the new drive. It’s more important if you need to temporarily downgrade to an hdd for some reason as if you run windows with the ssd settings on an hdd it will be veeeery slow, but in the other direction (to an ssd) it will speed things up if windows correctly identifies it. Here’s the command I used, it’s called “winsat”. The exact command is in this comment on the first answer (this directly links to that comment): superuser.com/questions/1006877/windows-10-optimize-drives-shows-ssd-as-hard-disk-drive#comment1946361_1006924
I got my T420 used at a thrift store for $20 (untested, of course), and it ended up working perfectly. I upgraded the RAM and installed an SSD, and it runs Windows 10 quite well. The keyboard easily beats anything found on modern laptops, and the trackpoint is my favorite pointing device yet.
i got two T420 Thinkpads for free, and i'm typing this comment on the T420 that I resurrected. I swapped in a Samsung 860 EVO SSD, installed Windows 10, then locked the CPU speed to 3.0 GHz with ThrottleStop. Runs really quick for a 11-year old laptop. The other one would be restored next, it has more damage than this T420 that I'm using right now
we had an old t420 that i refurbished by adding 6 gigs of ram for a total of 10 gigs, along with a 240g ssd. i fixed it up and gave it to my sister and shes been using it for a while now. only problem id say is the batter life, but thats kinda expected
@Praveen Sriram I've been working on improving my battery life. I use a tool called Powertop (which is for Linux, but I'm pretty sure Windows has similar tools) to determine what things are draining my battery life. I've found a few things that really help. 1) Dim your backlit display brightness and 2) watch videos at lower resolution. The second one saves battery life in two ways, CPU and network card power usage, both of which are significant. By default I watch RUclips videos at 144p. I very rarely have to increase this, but it's easy enough to switch back and forth when needed.
@@praveensriram3239 Oh also, I read that for your laptop to get accurate readings on a new battery you've got to drain it all the way down to 0 and then recharge it. I did this and found it bumped up the maximum amount of battery life the laptop recognizes. I'd only recommend doing it once as it is hard on batteries.
@@kirishima638 Flawless driver support under Linux, the computer itself is a no-bullshit black box with excellent build quality, replacement parts are cheap and plentiful, modifications to add fHD or even qHD IPS panels are available. Also the trackpoint is loved by many, and the keyboard isn't chiclet trash
The Lenovo Thinkpad X140e is the AMD equivalent, as they usually go for $60 - $100 depending on condition, and the surplus seller, plus they are fairly rugged being edu series machines, and a bonus the battery is easy to replace for about $40. I use one with a red lid running Manjaro Mate Linux for my daily driver laptop.
The X220 is an awesome laptop, I gave mine to my daughter yesterday. You could have kept the 1tb drive, there's an mSATA port under the palm rest on these!
The machines aren't too bad with a regular hard drive either. They're not for gaming, most people use them for surfing the internet, youtube, email, and office documents, so the workload is quite light on them, so a regular hard drive serves pretty well, but if you wanna play the too much money in my pocket card the SSD is a great way to go as well as maxing out the RAM.
Depends... Though so when putting an sd in a samsup laptop from 2009... This thing was faster but the rest couldnt follow. Was unbearable slow when surfing or working on pictures
@@Nordlicht05 perhaps with the lowest power of core 2s. For old desktops or old laptops with a socket a chip swap or xeon mod gets you either high ghz core 2 or quad.
I've seen your store featured several times on "This Does Not Compute" and have severe thrift store envy that you don't have a location closer to my neck of the woods!
Totally. I'm using a Toshiba "ThinkPad", it's really nice. I've dropped it more than a few times, put my full weight on it, and have had many people trip over the power cable (I don't know how it happens either.) I've been lucky enough not to spill liquid on it though. The machine still works perfectly, in fact I just frankensteined a couple of cosmetic parts (hinges broke off, screws) from a different non-functional model, and it's still super solid. The only thing I would want is the actual ThinkPad keyboard instead of scissor switches.
Totally agree! I've been using my X230 Thinkpad running Linux Mint for several years now and it has been great. When purchased used from Ebay it still had a couple of years original warranty valid for it, and it came with the Ultrabase Series 3 unit with the extra ports and DVD drive. The vendor had also upgraded the HD with a decent SSD which means it boots up and shuts down and performs very quickly. The only problem with mine has been the power button breaking which meant I had to replace the whole keyboard twice with a 3rd party product which was not expensive and worked great including the backlighting. This is definitely the way to go to have decent performance for a budget price.
still using a 2012 ThinkPad X1 Carbon, my mom handed down to me in 2014 when I was 7 years old i7 and 8gb ram, and a snappy SSD runs windows 10 perfectly fine, upgraded from win 7 when it came out nothing is aftermarket, and it still runs fine handling intense AI machine learning stuff, even though its running on the CPU cuz it doesn't have a dedicated GPU Most Mac users have changed 3 to 4 computers in that time, and my ThinkPad right now feels snappier than most 2017 MacBooks
RUclips recommendations are reading my mind again: in the process of scoping out a machine solely for word processing/assignments in university while pivoting my current laptop towards only music/video production - I’m currently using that machine for all of those things, and it’s a hassle to manage/keep everything organized. Thanks for this awesome video, Colin! :)
One feature of ThinkPads of this vintage I'll never tire to mention is, of course, the keyboard. In this regard, they're better than pretty much every current laptop. :-)
Very true. The Thinkpad starting with the T430 went downhill in terms of the keyboard that island style keyboard is garbage. Yes you can swap them out, but I'd rather buy a T420 or even a T410, you aren't gaining much by getting the T430 actually gaining nothing and losing a great keyboard in the process.
I have a close relative of that in my T420. Last year, I upgraded it to 8 GB of ram, a 1 TB SSD, and added a USB 3.0 part. Works pretty well. I even use it for my video editing (720p).
There are three port USB3 Express cards for the X200, X201 and X220's. Magically three full USB3 ports get added (no dongles either) at less than $20 delivered (USA). :)
@@radiolabworks I've tried one of these cheap USB 3 expresscards and it didn't prove very reliable. Maybe power issues, since Expresscard only provides 3.3V power.
@Dana /: That can be said for all computers really, just make sure you install a good anti-virus and are always careful with which websites you visit, are cautious and more careful with stuff you download. If something seems off or too good to be true, it most likely will give you a virus :D
Great video! I bought an x230 a few years ago. Slapped an SSD and a new 9 cell battery in it. It has been one of the best machines I have ever owned. I always recommend friends older used Thinkpads for basic use. They are pretty much unmatched in price to performance.
You’re absolutely right sir, there’s always someone somewhere who could use even an old outdated machine. I only had my first personal computer in my last 2 years of high school so I can relate.
You are right,I love using the old laptops because of durability and performance and they are doing pretty well.My T420 is still working perfectly till now.I use it for online games via miggster and the performance is unbelievable.It can be onn for months without getting hot.The keyboard is superb.I am totally in love with Lenovo because of my experience with my T420 and will like to buy more of it.I have used many laptops but the old Lenovo laptops gave me what I was looking for.
X series ThinkPads are pretty impressive. I bought an X260 recently, and it's not only a good machine with great speed and boot-up time, but light enough for me to take anywhere and get things done.
Latitudes suck compared to old Thinkpads, but they're not bad laptops. My workplace uses Dell laptops, with most being varying models of the Latitudes. The old ones are extremely easy to take apart and maintain, but the newer ones are more of a hassle.
@@comicsans1689 >but the newer ones are more of a hassle Same goes for Thinkpads. My old T540p is really upgradable and easy to service compared to my t480s
@@TerribleToaster Yea, it seems like the T540p is from the last year of easily maintainable Thinkpads. However, your T480s is probably more of a hassle to service than a regular T480 because all of the slim T series Thinkpads seem to be more difficult to work on. I really want to get a T480 once the price comes down to around $300. Until then, I'll be content with my T420, X220t, and W520.
@@comicsans1689 Same goes for new Thinkpads. They are trash. I never really liked Lenovo laptops ever, as feeling cheap and problematic to me. But I always owned Dell Laptops as I do now and they are way better. My gf has a Latitude E7440 that is an absolute monster. Every time I heard nerds praising Thinkpads for what they are not and trashing other people for what they use, Latitude or Elitebook for example, it made me want to tear my hair out. Thinkpads are nothing special and they never were. They were the same old business laptop
@@ChrisCanadianHusky I'll give Dell credit for making some of the easiest enterprise laptops to maintain (except for the shitty XPS). My workplace exclusively uses Dell laptops and desktops, and I've had to work on anything from old Latitudes from 2012-2014 to the latest Precisions. My current work laptop is a Precision 3550 and it's pretty nice with its specs and battery life. My only complaint with it and the new Latitudes is that the backplate feels very fragile when prying it up, but it's not too bad. I will take a Dell any day of the week over something like a shitty HP Probook, which I've had to work on before. Taking a hard drive out of one of those Probookes is needlessly complicated.
I love everything about this video. I love the market analysis, I love the computer you went with, I love that you went around it and showed the good and the bad, I love that you went over operating system choice and let people know that they may just find a windows key there if they go looking for it, I love that you bring up freegeek and the amazing work that they do, I love that you encourage people to check them out, to contribute, to volunteer, to shop there, and help out a place doing great work for the community (particularly the youth computer enthusiasts who don't have any money like I was.). I really wish there was a place like freegeek in my home town when I was growing up (not that I'm sad that I spent quite a bit of time volunteering for the library system who helped me in my early learning process). - not only do I love this video a whole lot, but I made many of the same choices myself. I bought a used x230 on ebay, I put a 250gb ssd that i had laying around in it, but instead of running windows on it, I chose to install ubuntu myself because it has much better resource management (cpu, memory, etc.) than windows (but windows is also a great choice... in fact before I got mine, I helped my wife get an even better x230, installed a bunch of ram and a big ssd in it and she's using it as her primary machine (where i use mine mostly as a netbook and also to remote into my extremely powerful desktop machine when i need more resources). I will be sharing this video around! Thanks, Colin!
Honestly I really liked the end where you encourage people to donate! I am quite lucky to be able to buy the latest and greatest crap every year and with that I refurbish and give away my old stuff myself... Its honestly the best thing and I have fun doing it lol
Given that most of the people buying these things are buying them for work/school oriented reasons rather then gaming, I would say showing how fast it opens text, net, and general productivity applications made logical sense. Doubly so with how many schools and places of business have been closed until further notice due to virus and riot related reasons. Sometimes people need something that will just work and get the job done, not something pretty or RGB puke filled.
@@Henry5623 Wow, i honestly don't care if the thing i'm using was not for gaming, i'll still gonna play games, can't ask for much since laptop or even a PC is not very affordable, even if i have a PC it wouldn't gonna fit my, room ? Could i even say this place is a house ? Probably not
Bought a X220 with the i7 cpu for cheap a couple of years ago, upgraded it with 16gb of ram, 256gb Samsung SSD and a IPS panel. Awesome little computer that i use everyday. Actually watched this video on it :D . Keep up with the good videos. love watching them
Another factor to consider, which wasn't mentioned in this video, is that Lenovo Thinkpads of this period had amazing keyboards. If you're going to spend significant time writing or coding, then it's really a no brainer. My Thinkpad L430 - which I'm typing on now - has been one of the best laptops I've ever had. The only downside I can think of is that I'd prefer a 1080p display.
Great video and great advice - would have an older x270 7th gen i7 that was $400 and it runs better than most modern thin and lights . Lenovo rock higher ghz chips so you get the speed ..... I swapped up to 16gb ram and got the extended battery and now this thing is a spaceship 🚀
Get yourself a docking station for your home and give that Docking station a Ultrabay Blu-ray drive. This subnotebook is still stronger and more capable than the crap they sell as ultrabooks. You'll also get more IO ports :)
Watching on a Dell XPS 15 L501X I got in 2011. Still going strong on a gen 1 i5, 6gigs of ram, and an hdd. (I've ordered a 4 gig stick to boost it to 8, and will get an ssd when I have money coming in again. Aside from the stuff that actually requires a modern cpu/gpu, etc. there's nothing it can't do just as well as something brand new.
I should say, watching on XPS15, while working on a Latitude D630...which is even older, but performs just as well on linux mint for stuff like browsing.
I still use as my main computer 12 year old Lenovo T410, i5-520M, 8 GB RAM, SSD SATA-2 (Bitlocker encrypted), W10 Pro. The only practical problem is RUclips 720p60, quite noticeably burdening the processor (40-50%).
For $100 in 2022, I picked up a 2015 HP ZBook 14 G2 mobile workstation with an Intel Core i7 5500u dual core processor with 8 GB of RAM and 1 TB Toshiba HD. It was in mint condition and it stacks up quite well against today’s consumer grade laptops. Everything is repairable and upgradeable apart from the cpu snd the TPM module. I was able to upgrade the BIOS to the latest version available in 2020. Its s good value on a budget!
I've bought two Months ago a Lenovo T420. Made in 2011 its impressive how good you can still work on it. I'm thinking about to upgrade with an SSD and more Ram.
A SSD always help the speed perception of old machines, more than RAM. And once you go SSD on your daily machine, there is no going back. I even installed a cheap used SSD on a Atom netbook I have.
i bought an x230 in 2017 as a second comp to my desktop. I took it to work and did a few light tasks with it. Finally got around to upgrading ram and other things last year. It is still a very capable machine. It is by far my favorite computer to date. I don't really know why, just absolutely love the little thing.
Moore's Law has been perverted to mean "computer speed doubles every 2 years", while the original axiom was that transistor density would double every 2 years. The problem is that this has neither held true, nor has it been true for a while. This is why almost 10yo computers still fight above their weight. What you will find in subsequent generations is that power usage has gone down, partially due to new processes and partially due to improvements in existing processes. So a 6yo laptop with a big battery will get 3 or 4 hours of battery life, while a "airbook" today will get 8 hours, be 3 times thinner, and 5 times lighter. With that "added lightness" you also get a reduction in useful ports and a reliance on dongles to perform everyday tasks.
The annoyance to me is the expandability of modern laptops. I presently have a Latitude E5430 that allows you to upgrade almost any component easily (even the CPU!), but at this point I want a laptop with a FHD display, plus my E5430 has some overheating issues (a common problem). Thankfully I've found that some machines are relatively easy to upgrade....but apparently laptop maintenance hatches are not a thing anymore, so you have to use a spudger so you don't destroy the plastics/metals of your new laptop. 😕
@@ipeters61 My 2014 MSI GT60 2OD is pretty upgradable, the CPU, memory, disks, GPU are all socketed. The display is the only thing that can't easily be upgraded, that's why I searched for a laptop with the best display I could find.
i´m using a Thinkpad X230 since 2015. It´s fantastic. The display backside and the bottom cover are made from magnesium. And you can use a MSATA SSD in it if you don´t wanna lose the space of the HDD in there. For 80$, it´s a steal. The sandy bridge(x220) or ivy bridge(x230) CPUs are fast enough for everyday tasks.
Thats what i have been preaching. Buy used enterprise grade stuff. Upgrade for a few extra bucks. You end up with something way more performant, sturdy and high quality for less money while also reducing e-waste and doing something great for the environment. If you were to spend 300 bucks on a new entry level machine, get a used enterprise class dell or lenovo for 2xx - you will get something in a very good condition (ex leasing machines from big companies remarketed), invest another 20-80 for a nice ssd and there you go.
100% agree. Bought a used Thinkpad Yoga with a 12 inch screen. Thing comes with a pretty good stylus, the keyboard is fantastic (as you'd expect, really). Has scratches on the chassis and a fan grille is slightly broken (but really nothing major). Thing was 270 bucks, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, 5th gen i5. For that same money you could buy a chromebook R11 or something. With a celeron and 4GB RAM. Would be 30 bucks more actually. Oh, and since I bought from a retailer (and live in the EU) I even get one year of full warranty. I'm not sure I'll ever buy new again.
Applies to so many other things too; switches, routers and access points for instance... Most of the domestic grade stuff is crap, even if it's not cheap. I needed a 48Port switch...POE would have been a nice to have. Picked up an HP Procurve for £80 delivered, has 360W of POE built in, can do over 700W with an external PSU upgrade. Sure it's fibre ports arent 10G, but that's no deal breaker for my needs...especially when a new switch with SFP+ would have cost me best part of £900...and not for a particularly good one.
It's so satisfying reviving old hardware, throw in something like sata ssd in, upgrade ram and other stuff and you have a device that functions and that can do plenty of tasks.
I love old laptops, especially when you pair an old laptop with a Linux distro. People always get rid of laptops because they're 'slow' when in reality it's just Windows that's slow.
I liked the video, it had useful information. Like turned to love when you put in the plug for donating to non-profits that help people get computers, and that's when I subscribed.
I have the very same ThinkPad X220 right next to me as an “extra driver”. It’s fantastic, with all the I/O you could ever need, though I’ll be taking your lead and replacing the 320GB spinning-rust with an SSD. Great video!
I picked up a x230 recently, and I found you can go out a mSATA ssd in the palm rest area. The mSATA slot is only sata 2 speeds but with Ubuntu it still is snappy
I've recently fixed up 8 of the x230. Also ThinkMods is releasing an Expresscard to NVME m.2 adaptor. They will run up to 16GB of 2133mhz ram, if you can find any. Ripjaws is the best, but you can find some HyperX still, is pricey, I only did it because I stumbled into an i7 for cheap. It is faster than my t440s i7, stands to reason because the t440 is a U processor, 15w vs 35w. But still. I'm rocking the x220 keyboard
Watching this on a 2010 MacBook Pro 13" that I'm fairly certain could be had for under $100. It's still fast enough for remote access to my work computer, basic web browsing and spotify streaming. The point you make in the video about SSD is an important one. That's how I've gotten 10 years out of mine. Thanks for another great video!
Thinkpads were the best in windows 7, T420, T420s (my favorite) especially and with their docking stations. They were reliable, drivers were stable, very good support and warranty, troubleshooting was always smooth and easy.
So this. I preach this to all my friends looking for cheap laptops - never ever buy a new consumer class P.O.S. designed to go belly up after 2 years, always go for a 2nd hand business laptop. They are so much more durable, it's not even funny. And they will last another 10 years easily.
@this does not compute - @7:39 - I have to respectfully disagree. I would recommend the elitebooks over probooks. the elitebooks for a few years back have great expandability and are reasily repaired. Don't forget to tell people to (if possible) replace the CMOS battery when getting one used.
I agree with you. I have used a ProBook 4525s in the past. It really sucked and broke after falling down the stairs of my school. Later, I built an awesome gaming PC for gaming and bought a T430 for coding and general use which still works and is in mint condition. Only problem is that the N key is a bit squishy.
I agree. Last year I bought a refurbished 2014 Elitebook 820-G1 (i7-4600U) w/ 8GB of RAM and a Samsung 830 SSD. Got rid of Win 10 and installed Linux. Runs smoothly, even the fingerprint scanner. It's been my daily beater machine since.
6:45 - those fingerprint sensors are _desirable_ as they actually work when swiped, don't have the ambiguity of not knowing if it really sensed the touch or not. I now run a Dell Latitude 5580 as my daily driver, and made the transition from a swipe-sensor on my ThinkPad W530 to the touch-sensor on the 5580... HATE it. 4 out of 5 detection fails, no matter how it's set up - never had so many fails on a swipe. Switched to PIN instead. Replaced the palmrest/touch sensor after plastics cracked, got a different type of sensor (FIPS), still problematic as it takes forever to detect. So yeah, no, the swipe sensors are super desirable. Wish I could get one on my Dell. Touch sensors tend to suck if they're not part of a phone.
I have them on almost ALL of my Thinkpad and NEVER used them because i HATE biometric "security" and think it's more intrusive than actually useful. Especially fingerprints. Replacing the BIOS with a free and non-corporate one makes more sense but it's still a pain in the ass to accomplish :/
I've been tinkering a bit with old laptops from the 90's and just about the start of the 2000's, and the build quality on these are just way beyond any budget laptop of today. Yes, there are more premium laptops available these days, but these early ones just has that extra quality about them, especially with the keyboard. Even todays ThinkPads have mediocre keyboard compared to their older brothers. I have a ThinkPad T60 from the mid-2000's and the keyboard just blows me away everytime I use it. Too bad it is only usable for light web browsing and typing these days.
Exactly, I have a few 60 and 61, both from the T and the X series. Besides tinkering with alternative operating systems (like Plan 9), my main use case for them is writing.
Sir, do you work on your own? I find that your videos are excellent. the editing is nice, the script or wording is clear. here you tackled the main theme of the video plus you plugged in a non-profit. you're hitting home run after home run. I'm glad I subbed.
I have an X220i I use as a lightweight machine running Mint Linux, upgraded it with some more ram and an SSD instead of the stock HDD and it runs like a dream.
Some things were wrong in this review. There actually were, in 2020 new laptops that could compete and even smash the x220, such as some offered by ACER, which even come with 1080p IPS screens. Also, you say at 6:54 that the machine has usb 3.0, when it doesn't. x230 and later got usb 3.0 ports but the 220x is limited to usb 2.0, which is significantly slower, very very much so, and could even pose problems for those who can't wait an hour for large data transfer.
Man, this reminds me when I used to bring my old thinkpad T420 with me everywhere in high school with ubuntu 16.04 installed. I loved that machine, without windows it was much much faster (before I upgraded to an SSD), and it was just maintenance free for the longest of time and was a awesome machine to use throughout high school. I always was ‘that guy’, since laptops weren’t allowed in class but I had a special exception both because my thinkpad matched all the other schools thinkpad, and because I had come from another school that used primarily laptops.
well, i use a 2011 thinkpad as my daily laptop, i didn't know how old it is until now. time flies dude! i dont need much computing power and it's great for simple programming, love mine.
Install void or any other minimal distro on it and install wm. I have 668 packages on my thinkpad t540p but it has some bloated apps like steam and wine so you could probably get away with sub 600 packages with this setup depending of course on your needs.
Never had an X60, but I used an X40 as my main laptop for several years, eventually giving it to a friend who it's still serving well. I guess its main limitations are the 1.5GB RAM ceiling and the nonstandard & slow 1.8" PATA HD... when that drive finally dies we'll probably swap in a Compact Flash card w/ passive adapter.
I have a Thinkpad T60 sitting on my desk across the room. Has one of the best keyboards I've ever used on a laptop and while yeah it's old and seen better days, it's not in a waste recycling center because with Linux on it, it'll still do anything I've wanted it to do. Plus sad to say that even with a lowly core 2 duo in it, it's still faster then some of the cheaper laptops out there. As long as your expectations are realistic people can get a LOT of use out of older machines still. It's kind of a shame they are being forgotten about by people pursuing thin and lights that have half the performance for literally 10+ times the cost and zero user serviceability.
I carried an x220 with a 500GB SSD loaded with DRAM on worldwide business travel until January 2020. It was rock solid and used peripherals were cheap! I loved having matching docking stations at home and at the office. While my main office desktop was a purpose-built video encoding beast, the x220 was the daily productivity machine that traveled everywhere with me for 5+ years.
I got an Asus used at Goodwill. It had 4gb built in ram and I added 8gbs. Full 1080p screen and a i5-4200u for 120$ because I picked up a 256gb ssd they had. On top of that it has USB 3.0!
Couldn't agree more. I have a Dell Latitude E6230 which is now ten years old. It's an i5-3320 with 8gb of RAM and a 128gb SSD that I bought as a refurb in 2016 for £220 (UK) and, having spent an extra £50 or so to replace the battery and power brick and replacing the pre-installed Windows 7 with Windows 10, it's still working just fine in 2021. It wouldn't be able to cope with video editing or anything like that, but it's perfectly happy to do image and audio editing, and it's find for every day use. I keep think it must be due to expire, but the damn thing just keeps going.
Get one. it's worth it. Especially if you install a Linux Distry on it like Mint with Cinnamon desktop. A lot of the hardware runs out of the box without any extra drivers. Only the WLAN chipset sometimes can be a problem, depending on what was built into. But that can be easily swapped.
Great video! As I write I'm using a Dell e6320 that I picked up used for around $100. It was surplus property from our local state university. It was very dusty, the hinge screws were loose, but it was hardly used! That was , a couple of years ago and I have no regrets. After proofing it and using it for awhile, I invested in it some more and upgraded to an SSD drive and went from 8 to 16gb. Now it flies with its I7 and bridge CPU its Ubuntu 20.04. Who needs Windoze?
I have the exact same model except it came with an i7 processor. I added a 256GB MSATA and kept the stock 500GB HDD. After a while, I added the dock for dual monitor support. Pretty good as a daily work machine. 1080P videos will stutter a little but overall still worth it. Only annoying part is the limited whitelist WiFi card support.
These old laptops are definitely good if you don’t require too much horsepower for games etc. I had a T420 about 5 years ago, and used it for music production (Cubase etc) and it was pretty decent. Like he says in the video, it’s surprising how many modern laptops it will beat in the sub £3-400 mark (or $). Also, the build quality tends to be much better on these, as they were high end business machines when they came out. The only bummer is that the batteries are nearly always shot, so you’ll need a new one for unplugged use.
It’s amazing what an ssd can do for many many older systems these days. I’m still rocking a Dell Vostro 360 that boots up in under 12 seconds. I plopped a Sandisk 512 in a 2014 Mac mini and it’s like a new machine. Great video, my family and I always donate our older stuff as well, I can’t stand seeing perfectly good hardware get thrown away either.
I bought a T420s secondhand in 2014, and am still using it for my daily computing. 1600*900 resolution display panel, which is identical to my work HP Probook 470 G4, made in 2017. Upgraded the RAM to 16GB, installed a Samsung 840 Pro SSD and upgraded to a BD-RW drive. The battery has seen better days, but overall I still love this machine.
I was of the same mine as you when I set out to purchase a new laptop. I repurposed the same model the X220, but I ran into a few big problems: batty life and internet speed. Battery life was fairly awful even with a 9 cell battery, and I was surprised to see how much better connectivity my wife's n4000 HP laptop had when moving a few rooms away from the router. I ended up recycling the machine and purchased a Ryzen 3 powered gateway laptop on Black Friday for $250. The machine is proving really decent. I'm especially pleased with the gaming capabilities of it, but battery life is by far the feature that puts it over the x220; I think that is where you can make an argument for lower end laptops you can find on store shelves today.
I still use two of them. Sata plus mSata plus USB3 is great. Display could have higher resolution and battery time is also a con. Anyways price for used units is cheap.
I custom ordered a Lenovo x220 with an i5 2540M, IPS display and extended battery back in 2011. While my current daily driver is a Lenovo x280 Ultrabook, I still own the x220. It sits as a spare machine for when guests come over to visit. I have since refurbished it and it now has a custom bios, 16GB or ram, wireless AC card, SSD and windows 10. The keyboard is a dream to type on and there is absolutely no give in the hinges. Honestly it's amazing how well it works for general web browsing and office applications. Hopefully I can get another 5 years of use out of it before it is retired... Got to love a ThinkPad!
I've been using my X230 Thinkpad running Linux Mint for several years now and it has been great. When purchased used from Ebay it still had a couple of years original warranty valid for it, and it came with the Ultrabase Series 3 unit with the extra ports and DVD drive. The vendor had also upgraded the HD with a decent SSD which means it boots up and shuts down and performs very quickly. The only problem with mine has been the power button breaking which meant I had to replace the whole keyboard twice with a 3rd party product which was not expensive and worked great including the backlighting. This is definitely the way to go to have decent performance for a budget price.
I had a x230 and I liked it. But the screens on these older, cheaper ThinkPads are usually really weak. 720p and a TN Screen isn't great. I would highly recommend buying like a 1080p 24 inch monitor used. They are relativly cheap, you can get done work better at home and don't have to look at the screen, that isn't great, all the time. But if you're totally budget limitated, they are still great machines for the price and can easily compete with new cheap notebooks. And to be honest, I wouldn't buy a used SSD as you can get a new one for like 5$ more.
"This computer is better than you think" **Sees a thinkpad** Yeah, those things were always ahead of their time.
well, up until when this one ca,e out it might be true. The ones they sell these days are just as likely to be rubbish as anything else...
@@Charky_Creations yeah, £600 lenovo laptop gives you a small 8GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and only a dual core i5, it came with Windows 10 as well. I suspect it came with version 1607 or 1709 (something like that). Plus the laptop doesn't even come with a graphics card, though it is fine with Intel HD Graphics as I can use Dolphin emulator smoothly.
I've loved every Thinkpad I've had, and I've had several over the years. They've not always been the best, but even when I had issues they were always easy to repair and get going again. I use something different now (Razer Blade), but I still have my last Thinkpad (T420s) and plan to get it working again. Still have a W700 around too (the only one I ever regretted buying. It was an awesome machine, but it was a pain to travel with).
@@Charky_Creations They were good up until the keyboard change a couple years ago. Why they changed the trademark keyboard, who knows, but none of them have been quite the same since. I'd still gladly take one over many other laptops, though.
Product key stickers usually didnt match the key on the PC because the hard drives were clones of eachother. Untill they started putting it in the bios.
The fact anyone can buy a decent computer for such a good price and learn practically anything online shows how far we've come
This!!!!! I can't help but proud at how far we've come most the tech we have now we used to dream of !
I just bought an x270 for that reason. I want a small netbook that Can do regular tasks well and when the rear battery gets old I just buy a new one.
But also how much computers have slowed in improvements. Unfortunately many apps have also got much more bloated, and much slower.
only in first world countries :/
@@ulrichfinch Yeah. I'm from Argentina, and I wouldn't be able to get that laptop for 100 bucks even if it was broken and sent without charger and such. Everything you can get will be of far lower quality, but charged twice or more as much..
Not too long ago I was picking up another SSD at Microcenter. A middle aged guy with a sales associate walked up next to me. The middle age guy asked "are SSDs really THAT much faster to be worth it...". Both me and the sales associate were stunned for a moment at a loss for words. After a shocked moment I just said "Sir, we cannot describe how much faster they are. You will literally be angry you didn't upgrade sooner. It is night and day."
I should have got the commission.
I had a friend who was asking for help with his laptop. I told him to get a SSD and fresh install of Windows 10. Yep, he was mad add how much better things were.
I upgraded my wife's Dell Convertible recently. It's ~5 years old so it's on the cusp of the storage transition and it still had a mechanical drive. I'd duplicated the HDD over and swapped the SSD in when I called her over to sign in. I hadn't powered it up, but she saw me press the button and turned to walk away. I asked where she was going and she said she'd come back over when it was done booting. Then the magic moment: in the time of that exchange it had finished booting to login and I got to utter those magic words: it's already done!
Funny how people don't believe it. Windows 10, in particular, runs infinitely better on SSD.
My wife once complained that something was wrong with our HDD booting computer after using an SSD laptop. I had to tell her that nothing was wrong, she just got used to SSD.
@jdpruente not sure if you did or not, but in windows 10 when you switch between an hdd and ssd (in either direction) using a full clone rather than a reinstall, make sure to rerun the internal speed test tool so windows correctly handles the new drive. It’s more important if you need to temporarily downgrade to an hdd for some reason as if you run windows with the ssd settings on an hdd it will be veeeery slow, but in the other direction (to an ssd) it will speed things up if windows correctly identifies it.
Here’s the command I used, it’s called “winsat”. The exact command is in this comment on the first answer (this directly links to that comment): superuser.com/questions/1006877/windows-10-optimize-drives-shows-ssd-as-hard-disk-drive#comment1946361_1006924
I got my T420 used at a thrift store for $20 (untested, of course), and it ended up working perfectly. I upgraded the RAM and installed an SSD, and it runs Windows 10 quite well. The keyboard easily beats anything found on modern laptops, and the trackpoint is my favorite pointing device yet.
i got two T420 Thinkpads for free, and i'm typing this comment on the T420 that I resurrected. I swapped in a Samsung 860 EVO SSD, installed Windows 10, then locked the CPU speed to 3.0 GHz with ThrottleStop. Runs really quick for a 11-year old laptop.
The other one would be restored next, it has more damage than this T420 that I'm using right now
The keyboard and ability to swap out parts easily is why the T420 will be my laptop of choice for years to come.
we had an old t420 that i refurbished by adding 6 gigs of ram for a total of 10 gigs, along with a 240g ssd. i fixed it up and gave it to my sister and shes been using it for a while now. only problem id say is the batter life, but thats kinda expected
@Praveen Sriram I've been working on improving my battery life. I use a tool called Powertop (which is for Linux, but I'm pretty sure Windows has similar tools) to determine what things are draining my battery life. I've found a few things that really help. 1) Dim your backlit display brightness and 2) watch videos at lower resolution. The second one saves battery life in two ways, CPU and network card power usage, both of which are significant. By default I watch RUclips videos at 144p. I very rarely have to increase this, but it's easy enough to switch back and forth when needed.
@@praveensriram3239 Oh also, I read that for your laptop to get accurate readings on a new battery you've got to drain it all the way down to 0 and then recharge it. I did this and found it bumped up the maximum amount of battery life the laptop recognizes. I'd only recommend doing it once as it is hard on batteries.
The X220 and T-420 are absolutely revered in the Linux community. Great choice for a machine on a budget
why is that?
@@kirishima638 Flawless driver support under Linux, the computer itself is a no-bullshit black box with excellent build quality, replacement parts are cheap and plentiful, modifications to add fHD or even qHD IPS panels are available. Also the trackpoint is loved by many, and the keyboard isn't chiclet trash
My t420 lags when I click a button
but he installed windows on that machine, makes me sad.
The Lenovo Thinkpad X140e is the AMD equivalent, as they usually go for $60 - $100 depending on condition, and the surplus seller, plus they are fairly rugged being edu series machines, and a bonus the battery is easy to replace for about $40. I use one with a red lid running Manjaro Mate Linux for my daily driver laptop.
The X220 is an awesome laptop, I gave mine to my daughter yesterday. You could have kept the 1tb drive, there's an mSATA port under the palm rest on these!
SSD's really are what can turn an old clunker into a new beast
The machines aren't too bad with a regular hard drive either. They're not for gaming, most people use them for surfing the internet, youtube, email, and office documents, so the workload is quite light on them, so a regular hard drive serves pretty well, but if you wanna play the too much money in my pocket card the SSD is a great way to go as well as maxing out the RAM.
@@wildbill23c you can game on it if you're willing to buy an express card dock, i hooked up a gtx960, and it's great.
Depends... Though so when putting an sd in a samsup laptop from 2009... This thing was faster but the rest couldnt follow. Was unbearable slow when surfing or working on pictures
@@Nordlicht05 perhaps with the lowest power of core 2s. For old desktops or old laptops with a socket a chip swap or xeon mod gets you either high ghz core 2 or quad.
@@wildbill23c The hard driver is a clunker in itself
Hey, I work in the retro team at Free Geek, you should stop in and say hi sometime when it reopens :)
I've seen your store featured several times on "This Does Not Compute" and have severe thrift store envy that you don't have a location closer to my neck of the woods!
I'll come in sometime, at least if you have any thinkpads like this
These machines are absolutely the best. I bought a X230 new in 2013 and I still have no reason to upgrade.
Totally. I'm using a Toshiba "ThinkPad", it's really nice. I've dropped it more than a few times, put my full weight on it, and have had many people trip over the power cable (I don't know how it happens either.) I've been lucky enough not to spill liquid on it though. The machine still works perfectly, in fact I just frankensteined a couple of cosmetic parts (hinges broke off, screws) from a different non-functional model, and it's still super solid. The only thing I would want is the actual ThinkPad keyboard instead of scissor switches.
Totally agree!
I've been using my X230 Thinkpad running Linux Mint for several years now and it has been great.
When purchased used from Ebay it still had a couple of years original warranty valid for it, and it came with the Ultrabase Series 3 unit with the extra ports and DVD drive.
The vendor had also upgraded the HD with a decent SSD which means it boots up and shuts down and performs very quickly.
The only problem with mine has been the power button breaking which meant I had to replace the whole keyboard twice with a 3rd party product which was not expensive and worked great including the backlighting.
This is definitely the way to go to have decent performance for a budget price.
@@barrywebber100 Same.
still using a 2012 ThinkPad X1 Carbon, my mom handed down to me in 2014 when I was 7 years old
i7 and 8gb ram, and a snappy SSD
runs windows 10 perfectly fine, upgraded from win 7 when it came out
nothing is aftermarket, and it still runs fine handling intense AI machine learning stuff, even though its running on the CPU cuz it doesn't have a dedicated GPU
Most Mac users have changed 3 to 4 computers in that time, and my ThinkPad right now feels snappier than most 2017 MacBooks
i just bought an x230 lol
RUclips recommendations are reading my mind again: in the process of scoping out a machine solely for word processing/assignments in university while pivoting my current laptop towards only music/video production - I’m currently using that machine for all of those things, and it’s a hassle to manage/keep everything organized. Thanks for this awesome video, Colin! :)
One feature of ThinkPads of this vintage I'll never tire to mention is, of course, the keyboard. In this regard, they're better than pretty much every current laptop. :-)
I WILL NEVER GIVE UP MY X201
don't forget about the trackpoint. Hands down the best pointing device on a laptop.
*$2500 MBP sweats profusely*
Very true. The Thinkpad starting with the T430 went downhill in terms of the keyboard that island style keyboard is garbage. Yes you can swap them out, but I'd rather buy a T420 or even a T410, you aren't gaining much by getting the T430 actually gaining nothing and losing a great keyboard in the process.
For that and modern specs, google Thinkpad X2100.
And expect your wallet to cry.
I have a close relative of that in my T420. Last year, I upgraded it to 8 GB of ram, a 1 TB SSD, and added a USB 3.0 part. Works pretty well. I even use it for my video editing (720p).
What is the USB 3.0 part? Looking to add one in mine. Is it a card to add in the express port?
@@maskednil Yes, that's how I added it.
for how much did you get it? i might get mine soon with 70$ i dont know if thats a good deal or not
X220 with i5 has no USB 3.0. This was exclusive to i7 model that had additional controller. They became standard in x230.
There are three port USB3 Express cards for the X200, X201 and X220's. Magically three full USB3 ports get added (no dongles either) at less than $20 delivered (USA). :)
My i5 X220 has a single USB3 port via an external controller? Doesn't work with all USB3 devices though...
@@radiolabworks Don't you need extra power for full speed though? I got an express card with 2 ports and a tiny round power connector between them...
@@radiolabworks I've tried one of these cheap USB 3 expresscards and it didn't prove very reliable. Maybe power issues, since Expresscard only provides 3.3V power.
@@MiniRockerz4ever Most of the time it's okay with USB keys but with external hard drives, extra power is required .
Your narration is so pleasant to the ears. I would love to watch more about Thinkpad.
Loved this video! These Thinkpads just have to be one of my favourite laptops ever made, you can almost do anything with them!
@Dana /: That can be said for all computers really, just make sure you install a good anti-virus and are always careful with which websites you visit, are cautious and more careful with stuff you download. If something seems off or too good to be true, it most likely will give you a virus :D
@Nirvana Fan install bitdefender, bitdefender is very good for slow computers with excellent protection.
@@xXMetalforever1994Xx its a romanian based antivirus :) nice
@Nirvana Fan put linux on then no worries.. :)
Just install Linux, and I don't think some models are more encline to viruses than others
Great video! I bought an x230 a few years ago. Slapped an SSD and a new 9 cell battery in it. It has been one of the best machines I have ever owned. I always recommend friends older used Thinkpads for basic use. They are pretty much unmatched in price to performance.
I miss my X220 which was setup as a Hackintosh, sold it a few years ago to get a 2016 Macbook, keyboards not nearly as good
How has the keyboard held up on the MacBook
@@jscipione true
yeah those 2015 mbps had the worst generation of those butterfly keyboards
WHY YOU SWITCH, STOP UPGRADING AND START BEING A SURGEON TO YOUR LAPTOP/DESKTOP!
@@FireFoxDestroyer what
I remember those units from my childhood. Dad was in IT for a regional hospital.
Thanks, Colin! Hope your community will begin healing and rebuilding soon.
You’re absolutely right sir, there’s always someone somewhere who could use even an old outdated machine. I only had my first personal computer in my last 2 years of high school so I can relate.
You are right,I love using the old laptops because of durability and performance and they are doing pretty well.My T420 is still working perfectly till now.I use it for online games via miggster and the performance is unbelievable.It can be onn for months without getting hot.The keyboard is superb.I am totally in love with Lenovo because of my experience with my T420 and will like to buy more of it.I have used many laptops but the old Lenovo laptops gave me what I was looking for.
Fantastic stuff, as always Colin. Thanks for sharing. I hope you're staying safe out there in the Twin Cities during this important and historic time.
X series ThinkPads are pretty impressive. I bought an X260 recently, and it's not only a good machine with great speed and boot-up time, but light enough for me to take anywhere and get things done.
I didn't know you were in Minneapolis! That's awesome! I appreciate the shout out at the end for donations.
Now, I can understand why my dad bought me a pre-owned dell latitude
Latitudes suck compared to old Thinkpads, but they're not bad laptops. My workplace uses Dell laptops, with most being varying models of the Latitudes. The old ones are extremely easy to take apart and maintain, but the newer ones are more of a hassle.
@@comicsans1689 >but the newer ones are more of a hassle
Same goes for Thinkpads. My old T540p is really upgradable and easy to service compared to my t480s
@@TerribleToaster Yea, it seems like the T540p is from the last year of easily maintainable Thinkpads. However, your T480s is probably more of a hassle to service than a regular T480 because all of the slim T series Thinkpads seem to be more difficult to work on. I really want to get a T480 once the price comes down to around $300. Until then, I'll be content with my T420, X220t, and W520.
@@comicsans1689 Same goes for new Thinkpads. They are trash. I never really liked Lenovo laptops ever, as feeling cheap and problematic to me. But I always owned Dell Laptops as I do now and they are way better. My gf has a Latitude E7440 that is an absolute monster. Every time I heard nerds praising Thinkpads for what they are not and trashing other people for what they use, Latitude or Elitebook for example, it made me want to tear my hair out. Thinkpads are nothing special and they never were. They were the same old business laptop
@@ChrisCanadianHusky I'll give Dell credit for making some of the easiest enterprise laptops to maintain (except for the shitty XPS). My workplace exclusively uses Dell laptops and desktops, and I've had to work on anything from old Latitudes from 2012-2014 to the latest Precisions. My current work laptop is a Precision 3550 and it's pretty nice with its specs and battery life. My only complaint with it and the new Latitudes is that the backplate feels very fragile when prying it up, but it's not too bad. I will take a Dell any day of the week over something like a shitty HP Probook, which I've had to work on before. Taking a hard drive out of one of those Probookes is needlessly complicated.
I have a T420, still my main computer after all these years. It's crazy how much you can upgrade these things.
I recently put a MSATA drive in my T420 so that I could use Linux alongside my old Windows 7 drive.
I love everything about this video. I love the market analysis, I love the computer you went with, I love that you went around it and showed the good and the bad, I love that you went over operating system choice and let people know that they may just find a windows key there if they go looking for it, I love that you bring up freegeek and the amazing work that they do, I love that you encourage people to check them out, to contribute, to volunteer, to shop there, and help out a place doing great work for the community (particularly the youth computer enthusiasts who don't have any money like I was.). I really wish there was a place like freegeek in my home town when I was growing up (not that I'm sad that I spent quite a bit of time volunteering for the library system who helped me in my early learning process). - not only do I love this video a whole lot, but I made many of the same choices myself. I bought a used x230 on ebay, I put a 250gb ssd that i had laying around in it, but instead of running windows on it, I chose to install ubuntu myself because it has much better resource management (cpu, memory, etc.) than windows (but windows is also a great choice... in fact before I got mine, I helped my wife get an even better x230, installed a bunch of ram and a big ssd in it and she's using it as her primary machine (where i use mine mostly as a netbook and also to remote into my extremely powerful desktop machine when i need more resources). I will be sharing this video around! Thanks, Colin!
You got to appreciate the fact that Collin recorded footage on both think pads to prove a point. Epic to say the least.
Honestly I really liked the end where you encourage people to donate! I am quite lucky to be able to buy the latest and greatest crap every year and with that I refurbish and give away my old stuff myself... Its honestly the best thing and I have fun doing it lol
I still use my Thinkpad today t420, I keep it plugged in running day and night. I work in automotive.
Ive just discovered this channel, your content is amazing and you certainly have a smooth voice.
“Apps launch quickly.” *Opens Notepad* lol 🤣
They do though. On my T430 with an Intel SSD, even games launch in less than a second.
Technically...accurate?
Given that most of the people buying these things are buying them for work/school oriented reasons rather then gaming, I would say showing how fast it opens text, net, and general productivity applications made logical sense. Doubly so with how many schools and places of business have been closed until further notice due to virus and riot related reasons. Sometimes people need something that will just work and get the job done, not something pretty or RGB puke filled.
@@Henry5623 Wow, i honestly don't care if the thing i'm using was not for gaming, i'll still gonna play games, can't ask for much since laptop or even a PC is not very affordable, even if i have a PC it wouldn't gonna fit my, room ? Could i even say this place is a house ? Probably not
@@lord_khufu They can run CS Source or Postal 2 at 1080p
Newer games, no.
Bought a X220 with the i7 cpu for cheap a couple of years ago, upgraded it with 16gb of ram, 256gb Samsung SSD and a IPS panel. Awesome little computer that i use everyday. Actually watched this video on it :D . Keep up with the good videos. love watching them
Another factor to consider, which wasn't mentioned in this video, is that Lenovo Thinkpads of this period had amazing keyboards. If you're going to spend significant time writing or coding, then it's really a no brainer.
My Thinkpad L430 - which I'm typing on now - has been one of the best laptops I've ever had. The only downside I can think of is that I'd prefer a 1080p display.
Great video and great advice - would have an older x270 7th gen i7 that was $400 and it runs better than most modern thin and lights . Lenovo rock higher ghz chips so you get the speed ..... I swapped up to 16gb ram and got the extended battery and now this thing is a spaceship 🚀
i bought it's brother the x230. we've been together for 3 years and probably going to graduate uni with it.
Get yourself a docking station for your home and give that Docking station a Ultrabay Blu-ray drive. This subnotebook is still stronger and more capable than the crap they sell as ultrabooks. You'll also get more IO ports :)
Good job david bowie
Nice to see free geek getting some more mentions, I’ll definitely be excited to go back to the Portland location that I used to frequent.
Watching on a Dell XPS 15 L501X I got in 2011. Still going strong on a gen 1 i5, 6gigs of ram, and an hdd. (I've ordered a 4 gig stick to boost it to 8, and will get an ssd when I have money coming in again. Aside from the stuff that actually requires a modern cpu/gpu, etc. there's nothing it can't do just as well as something brand new.
I should say, watching on XPS15, while working on a Latitude D630...which is even older, but performs just as well on linux mint for stuff like browsing.
I still use as my main computer 12 year old Lenovo T410, i5-520M, 8 GB RAM, SSD SATA-2 (Bitlocker encrypted), W10 Pro. The only practical problem is RUclips 720p60, quite noticeably burdening the processor (40-50%).
@@telemasz1086 Yeah...that laptop died, lol. The graphics chip took a crap, so I actually ended up finally taking the initiative to build a pc, lol.
For $100 in 2022, I picked up a 2015 HP ZBook 14 G2 mobile workstation with an Intel Core i7 5500u dual core processor with 8 GB of RAM and 1 TB Toshiba HD. It was in mint condition and it stacks up quite well against today’s consumer grade laptops. Everything is repairable and upgradeable apart from the cpu snd the TPM module. I was able to upgrade the BIOS to the latest version available in 2020. Its s good value on a budget!
I've bought two Months ago a Lenovo T420. Made in 2011 its impressive how good you can still work on it. I'm thinking about to upgrade with an SSD and more Ram.
Do it. It's 100% worth it! Love my T420.
@@MrFreddy123 yes
A SSD always help the speed perception of old machines, more than RAM. And once you go SSD on your daily machine, there is no going back. I even installed a cheap used SSD on a Atom netbook I have.
@@magoid Yes I have installed an SSD on my Main Computer (Desktop) a week ago and will definitely newer go back to a regular HDD as Maindrive.
@@DengekiGamer Especially if using Windows 10. SSDs are a must for boot drives.
i bought an x230 in 2017 as a second comp to my desktop. I took it to work and did a few light tasks with it. Finally got around to upgrading ram and other things last year. It is still a very capable machine. It is by far my favorite computer to date. I don't really know why, just absolutely love the little thing.
Moore's Law has been perverted to mean "computer speed doubles every 2 years", while the original axiom was that transistor density would double every 2 years. The problem is that this has neither held true, nor has it been true for a while. This is why almost 10yo computers still fight above their weight. What you will find in subsequent generations is that power usage has gone down, partially due to new processes and partially due to improvements in existing processes. So a 6yo laptop with a big battery will get 3 or 4 hours of battery life, while a "airbook" today will get 8 hours, be 3 times thinner, and 5 times lighter. With that "added lightness" you also get a reduction in useful ports and a reliance on dongles to perform everyday tasks.
The annoyance to me is the expandability of modern laptops. I presently have a Latitude E5430 that allows you to upgrade almost any component easily (even the CPU!), but at this point I want a laptop with a FHD display, plus my E5430 has some overheating issues (a common problem). Thankfully I've found that some machines are relatively easy to upgrade....but apparently laptop maintenance hatches are not a thing anymore, so you have to use a spudger so you don't destroy the plastics/metals of your new laptop. 😕
@@ipeters61 My 2014 MSI GT60 2OD is pretty upgradable, the CPU, memory, disks, GPU are all socketed. The display is the only thing that can't easily be upgraded, that's why I searched for a laptop with the best display I could find.
Another reason for me to like the older tech best.
I always like to say that sandy bridge really broke moores law. I use sandy bridge still in my desktop and my laptop.
And you gain the ability to overheat as hell because they make these newer laptops thinner than they should.
i´m using a Thinkpad X230 since 2015. It´s fantastic. The display backside and the bottom cover are made from magnesium. And you can use a MSATA SSD in it if you don´t wanna lose the space of the HDD in there. For 80$, it´s a steal. The sandy bridge(x220) or ivy bridge(x230) CPUs are fast enough for everyday tasks.
Have one, love it. Standard keyboard. Great to watch movies on a bus or on a plane.
I love this channel because it features so many vintage ThinkPad laptops. Awesome content.
Thats what i have been preaching. Buy used enterprise grade stuff. Upgrade for a few extra bucks. You end up with something way more performant, sturdy and high quality for less money while also reducing e-waste and doing something great for the environment.
If you were to spend 300 bucks on a new entry level machine, get a used enterprise class dell or lenovo for 2xx - you will get something in a very good condition (ex leasing machines from big companies remarketed), invest another 20-80 for a nice ssd and there you go.
100% agree. Bought a used Thinkpad Yoga with a 12 inch screen. Thing comes with a pretty good stylus, the keyboard is fantastic (as you'd expect, really). Has scratches on the chassis and a fan grille is slightly broken (but really nothing major). Thing was 270 bucks, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, 5th gen i5.
For that same money you could buy a chromebook R11 or something. With a celeron and 4GB RAM. Would be 30 bucks more actually.
Oh, and since I bought from a retailer (and live in the EU) I even get one year of full warranty. I'm not sure I'll ever buy new again.
Applies to so many other things too; switches, routers and access points for instance... Most of the domestic grade stuff is crap, even if it's not cheap. I needed a 48Port switch...POE would have been a nice to have. Picked up an HP Procurve for £80 delivered, has 360W of POE built in, can do over 700W with an external PSU upgrade. Sure it's fibre ports arent 10G, but that's no deal breaker for my needs...especially when a new switch with SFP+ would have cost me best part of £900...and not for a particularly good one.
Reduce - Re-use :)
Seems to work with elitebooks as well
It's so satisfying reviving old hardware, throw in something like sata ssd in, upgrade ram and other stuff and you have a device that functions and that can do plenty of tasks.
I love old laptops, especially when you pair an old laptop with a Linux distro. People always get rid of laptops because they're 'slow' when in reality it's just Windows that's slow.
+ They shouldn't ship Ubuntu with Gnome if they aim for the best performance/Hardware but with a lightweight Desktop environment
One thing I have found with these older laptops is that they still struggle with watching RUclips videos even at lower resolution.
I have the Lenovo T440 with Linux Mint 19.3. Absolutely love it!!!
I liked the video, it had useful information. Like turned to love when you put in the plug for donating to non-profits that help people get computers, and that's when I subscribed.
I knew a Post Doc student what used the hell out one of these, couldn’t kill it.
I remember 5 years back we had a post turtle for president
I have the very same ThinkPad X220 right next to me as an “extra driver”. It’s fantastic, with all the I/O you could ever need, though I’ll be taking your lead and replacing the 320GB spinning-rust with an SSD. Great video!
I picked up a x230 recently, and I found you can go out a mSATA ssd in the palm rest area. The mSATA slot is only sata 2 speeds but with Ubuntu it still is snappy
I've recently fixed up 8 of the x230. Also ThinkMods is releasing an Expresscard to NVME m.2 adaptor. They will run up to 16GB of 2133mhz ram, if you can find any. Ripjaws is the best, but you can find some HyperX still, is pricey, I only did it because I stumbled into an i7 for cheap. It is faster than my t440s i7, stands to reason because the t440 is a U processor, 15w vs 35w. But still. I'm rocking the x220 keyboard
The sata controller/port on my X220 apparently broke, and I put in a mSATA and it runs well again...
Watching this on a 2010 MacBook Pro 13" that I'm fairly certain could be had for under $100. It's still fast enough for remote access to my work computer, basic web browsing and spotify streaming. The point you make in the video about SSD is an important one. That's how I've gotten 10 years out of mine. Thanks for another great video!
Really solid laptop. I am glad I built my first gaming pc early this year and only spent about 700 on it.
Thinkpads were the best in windows 7, T420, T420s (my favorite) especially and with their docking stations. They were reliable, drivers were stable, very good support and warranty, troubleshooting was always smooth and easy.
So this. I preach this to all my friends looking for cheap laptops - never ever buy a new consumer class P.O.S. designed to go belly up after 2 years, always go for a 2nd hand business laptop. They are so much more durable, it's not even funny. And they will last another 10 years easily.
That end segment was awesome. You rock, sir. :)
@this does not compute - @7:39 - I have to respectfully disagree. I would recommend the elitebooks over probooks. the elitebooks for a few years back have great expandability and are reasily repaired.
Don't forget to tell people to (if possible) replace the CMOS battery when getting one used.
Agreed, I've recently bought an elitebook, they're so easy to upgrade as well.
Literally so easy to work with, very little screws.
I replaced the sub par screen with the HD to full HD. So easy to do
I agree with you. I have used a ProBook 4525s in the past. It really sucked and broke after falling down the stairs of my school. Later, I built an awesome gaming PC for gaming and bought a T430 for coding and general use which still works and is in mint condition. Only problem is that the N key is a bit squishy.
I agree. Last year I bought a refurbished 2014 Elitebook 820-G1 (i7-4600U) w/ 8GB of RAM and a Samsung 830 SSD. Got rid of Win 10 and installed Linux. Runs smoothly, even the fingerprint scanner. It's been my daily beater machine since.
Its amazing the difference an SSD can make to an old laptop and reuse is always better than recycle!
Well, I'm still using a HP G42 from 2010. It came with an Intel i5 450M, just upgrade in HDD and ram.
6:45 - those fingerprint sensors are _desirable_ as they actually work when swiped, don't have the ambiguity of not knowing if it really sensed the touch or not. I now run a Dell Latitude 5580 as my daily driver, and made the transition from a swipe-sensor on my ThinkPad W530 to the touch-sensor on the 5580... HATE it. 4 out of 5 detection fails, no matter how it's set up - never had so many fails on a swipe. Switched to PIN instead. Replaced the palmrest/touch sensor after plastics cracked, got a different type of sensor (FIPS), still problematic as it takes forever to detect.
So yeah, no, the swipe sensors are super desirable. Wish I could get one on my Dell. Touch sensors tend to suck if they're not part of a phone.
I have them on almost ALL of my Thinkpad and NEVER used them because i HATE biometric "security" and think it's more intrusive than actually useful. Especially fingerprints. Replacing the BIOS with a free and non-corporate one makes more sense but it's still a pain in the ass to accomplish :/
I've been tinkering a bit with old laptops from the 90's and just about the start of the 2000's, and the build quality on these are just way beyond any budget laptop of today. Yes, there are more premium laptops available these days, but these early ones just has that extra quality about them, especially with the keyboard. Even todays ThinkPads have mediocre keyboard compared to their older brothers. I have a ThinkPad T60 from the mid-2000's and the keyboard just blows me away everytime I use it. Too bad it is only usable for light web browsing and typing these days.
Exactly, I have a few 60 and 61, both from the T and the X series. Besides tinkering with alternative operating systems (like Plan 9), my main use case for them is writing.
Sir, do you work on your own? I find that your videos are excellent. the editing is nice, the script or wording is clear. here you tackled the main theme of the video plus you plugged in a non-profit. you're hitting home run after home run. I'm glad I subbed.
I've been holding off on getting an X220 since my SSD driven X201 still keeps up with basic modern computing demands :)
I have an X220i I use as a lightweight machine running Mint Linux, upgraded it with some more ram and an SSD instead of the stock HDD and it runs like a dream.
interconnection.org Is available for those in the Seattle area.
Some things were wrong in this review.
There actually were, in 2020 new laptops that could compete and even smash the x220, such as some offered by ACER, which even come with 1080p IPS screens.
Also, you say at 6:54 that the machine has usb 3.0, when it doesn't. x230 and later got usb 3.0 ports but the 220x is limited to usb 2.0, which is significantly slower, very very much so, and could even pose problems for those who can't wait an hour for large data transfer.
i7 x220 has usb 3.0 and you can swap the tn panel with an ips panel
@@elegantpower you can swap any x220 with an ips
Man, this reminds me when I used to bring my old thinkpad T420 with me everywhere in high school with ubuntu 16.04 installed.
I loved that machine, without windows it was much much faster (before I upgraded to an SSD), and it was just maintenance free for the longest of time and was a awesome machine to use throughout high school. I always was ‘that guy’, since laptops weren’t allowed in class but I had a special exception both because my thinkpad matched all the other schools thinkpad, and because I had come from another school that used primarily laptops.
Yeah i noticed that too. Not only boot time but overall software speed was drastically faster under Linux than windows. Even with a HDD.
well, i use a 2011 thinkpad as my daily laptop, i didn't know how old it is until now. time flies dude!
i dont need much computing power and it's great for simple programming, love mine.
Peppermint OS, MX Linux, or KDE Neon would really give that old machine wings.
+1 for KDE Neon. I'm a notorious distro-hopper but I fell in love with KDE Neon a few months ago, and I don't see myself hopping again any time soon.
Install void or any other minimal distro on it and install wm. I have 668 packages on my thinkpad t540p but it has some bloated apps like steam and wine so you could probably get away with sub 600 packages with this setup depending of course on your needs.
@@luimu Manjaro i3 is my favourite
I tend to go with Debian and LXQt. You have much more control over what is installed by default, and you also still have native i686 support
I have an old ThinkPad e530. I put an SSD in it and installed Linux Mint Cinnamon. Linux saved me from throwing old laptop away.
I'm still rocking my Thinkpad R500... I upgraded everything. Processor, ram and SSD of course, great content keep me it coming.
the X220 is great, but I'll always be nostalgic for the X60...
i have an X61 side by side an X220. This video viewed by X60. Great machines!
@@iamlaci76 X62 ;)
@@tytusromek9267 R61
Never had an X60, but I used an X40 as my main laptop for several years, eventually giving it to a friend who it's still serving well. I guess its main limitations are the 1.5GB RAM ceiling and the nonstandard & slow 1.8" PATA HD... when that drive finally dies we'll probably swap in a Compact Flash card w/ passive adapter.
I have a Thinkpad T60 sitting on my desk across the room. Has one of the best keyboards I've ever used on a laptop and while yeah it's old and seen better days, it's not in a waste recycling center because with Linux on it, it'll still do anything I've wanted it to do. Plus sad to say that even with a lowly core 2 duo in it, it's still faster then some of the cheaper laptops out there. As long as your expectations are realistic people can get a LOT of use out of older machines still. It's kind of a shame they are being forgotten about by people pursuing thin and lights that have half the performance for literally 10+ times the cost and zero user serviceability.
I carried an x220 with a 500GB SSD loaded with DRAM on worldwide business travel until January 2020. It was rock solid and used peripherals were cheap! I loved having matching docking stations at home and at the office.
While my main office desktop was a purpose-built video encoding beast, the x220 was the daily productivity machine that traveled everywhere with me for 5+ years.
I got an Asus used at Goodwill. It had 4gb built in ram and I added 8gbs. Full 1080p screen and a i5-4200u for 120$ because I picked up a 256gb ssd they had. On top of that it has USB 3.0!
That’s a good deal!
Couldn't agree more. I have a Dell Latitude E6230 which is now ten years old. It's an i5-3320 with 8gb of RAM and a 128gb SSD that I bought as a refurb in 2016 for £220 (UK) and, having spent an extra £50 or so to replace the battery and power brick and replacing the pre-installed Windows 7 with Windows 10, it's still working just fine in 2021. It wouldn't be able to cope with video editing or anything like that, but it's perfectly happy to do image and audio editing, and it's find for every day use. I keep think it must be due to expire, but the damn thing just keeps going.
Me: Watches on MacBook Pro
Also Me: I want this
SAME MAN! Just got a MacBook Pro, but the inner tech geek inside me wants this! This thing is awesome!
Get one. it's worth it. Especially if you install a Linux Distry on it like Mint with Cinnamon desktop. A lot of the hardware runs out of the box without any extra drivers. Only the WLAN chipset sometimes can be a problem, depending on what was built into. But that can be easily swapped.
Nice tasteful promo for Free Geek at the end!
This video is exceptional, authentic, accurate and caring. Absolutely 10/10.
Great video! As I write I'm using a Dell e6320 that I picked up used for around $100. It was surplus property from our local state university. It was very dusty, the hinge screws were loose, but it was hardly used! That was , a couple of years ago and I have no regrets. After proofing it and using it for awhile, I invested in it some more and upgraded to an SSD drive and went from 8 to 16gb. Now it flies with its I7 and bridge CPU its Ubuntu 20.04. Who needs Windoze?
Love old think pads! Real workhorses.
But damn, that laptop needs a compressed air enema and toothbrush detail.
I have the exact same model except it came with an i7 processor. I added a 256GB MSATA and kept the stock 500GB HDD. After a while, I added the dock for dual monitor support. Pretty good as a daily work machine. 1080P videos will stutter a little but overall still worth it. Only annoying part is the limited whitelist WiFi card support.
These old laptops are definitely good if you don’t require too much horsepower for games etc. I had a T420 about 5 years ago, and used it for music production (Cubase etc) and it was pretty decent. Like he says in the video, it’s surprising how many modern laptops it will beat in the sub £3-400 mark (or $). Also, the build quality tends to be much better on these, as they were high end business machines when they came out. The only bummer is that the batteries are nearly always shot, so you’ll need a new one for unplugged use.
Thanks for the post love old laptops 😊😊
The X220 runs amazing on Lubunto, with an external GPU it can be great
It’s amazing what an ssd can do for many many older systems these days. I’m still rocking a Dell Vostro 360 that boots up in under 12 seconds. I plopped a Sandisk 512 in a 2014 Mac mini and it’s like a new machine.
Great video, my family and I always donate our older stuff as well, I can’t stand seeing perfectly good hardware get thrown away either.
I recently bought an X230 Tablet Thinkpad for $85, just needed a new battery. I'm in love with it!
Still use this Laptop for Work with Arch Linux. Running Smooth and fast. Keyboard are great.
Most people: "Thats soo nice and affordable! Il look into it!" *buys a new macbook*
smh
I bought a T420s secondhand in 2014, and am still using it for my daily computing. 1600*900 resolution display panel, which is identical to my work HP Probook 470 G4, made in 2017. Upgraded the RAM to 16GB, installed a Samsung 840 Pro SSD and upgraded to a BD-RW drive. The battery has seen better days, but overall I still love this machine.
I was of the same mine as you when I set out to purchase a new laptop. I repurposed the same model the X220, but I ran into a few big problems: batty life and internet speed. Battery life was fairly awful even with a 9 cell battery, and I was surprised to see how much better connectivity my wife's n4000 HP laptop had when moving a few rooms away from the router. I ended up recycling the machine and purchased a Ryzen 3 powered gateway laptop on Black Friday for $250. The machine is proving really decent. I'm especially pleased with the gaming capabilities of it, but battery life is by far the feature that puts it over the x220; I think that is where you can make an argument for lower end laptops you can find on store shelves today.
6:59
The coolest USB Drive I've ever seen. 🔥🔥🔥
yeah it's like a car key so cool
Better than those budget Celeron laptops and Chromebooks
I still use two of them. Sata plus mSata plus USB3 is great. Display could have higher resolution and battery time is also a con. Anyways price for used units is cheap.
ThinkPad X220 was the laptop I used during my university studies. I wrote countless papers and other assignments on that awesome non-chiclet keyboard.
6:19 The audio quality of the X220 + the video quality of the Carbon X1 🤩
I custom ordered a Lenovo x220 with an i5 2540M, IPS display and extended battery back in 2011. While my current daily driver is a Lenovo x280 Ultrabook, I still own the x220.
It sits as a spare machine for when guests come over to visit. I have since refurbished it and it now has a custom bios, 16GB or ram, wireless AC card, SSD and windows 10. The keyboard is a dream to type on and there is absolutely no give in the hinges. Honestly it's amazing how well it works for general web browsing and office applications.
Hopefully I can get another 5 years of use out of it before it is retired... Got to love a ThinkPad!
I've been using my X230 Thinkpad running Linux Mint for several years now and it has been great.
When purchased used from Ebay it still had a couple of years original warranty valid for it, and it came with the Ultrabase Series 3 unit with the extra ports and DVD drive.
The vendor had also upgraded the HD with a decent SSD which means it boots up and shuts down and performs very quickly.
The only problem with mine has been the power button breaking which meant I had to replace the whole keyboard twice with a 3rd party product which was not expensive and worked great including the backlighting.
This is definitely the way to go to have decent performance for a budget price.
6:41 Going over the laptop's keyboard, crevices, and decals with a dry toothbrush will make it look a lot cleaner.
I had a x230 and I liked it. But the screens on these older, cheaper ThinkPads are usually really weak. 720p and a TN Screen isn't great.
I would highly recommend buying like a 1080p 24 inch monitor used. They are relativly cheap, you can get done work better at home and don't have to look at the screen, that isn't great, all the time.
But if you're totally budget limitated, they are still great machines for the price and can easily compete with new cheap notebooks.
And to be honest, I wouldn't buy a used SSD as you can get a new one for like 5$ more.