- I’ll buy used, so don’t want latest and greatest. It won’t be my main laptop.
- to run linux obviously.
- good battery life, light, not too small to use, but large enough to type on (obviously can do without numeric keypad). not too fragile!
- I’ll be doing some light python work, perhaps some c/c++ but I’m not after a workhorse, just something for quickly fixing bugs, or making notes on
- sub 200 GBP / 250USD I guess
I’d be interested in hearing recommendations, and also what to avoid!
Instead of just throwing random preferences out there, I’ll help clarify the field of comments:
- Thinkpads USED to be a safe choice, but Lenovo has been tainting that model line for a few years. Search and find specific models, and don’t just buy because it has the Thinkpad brand.
- Framework is 100% ready to go. They have a Refurb store where everything is cheap, but if you find one cheaper, get it.
- Dell had a ton of Linux ready laptops under the XPS brand not long ago. Search and find out which to make sure, but they shipped with Linux installed.
- I hate to say it, but HP Probooks were solid and shipped with Linux also. Terrible company, but they make decent enterprise products. They’ll sell for cheap on eBay.
There are <250USD used frameworks?
I have had more problems with two different Frameworks than most Thinkpads. Battery died, boot/power problems on both the 13 and 16, touchpad problem on the 13.
I prefer the concept of the Frameworks but can’t say they have worked better in practice.
Thinkpad T, P, W, & X (Carbon) are generally pretty solid, though T & X probably better fit OP’s preference for portability. The T series is/was also user upgradable (memory and SSD), usually pretty easily. I think some of the carbon models were also upgradable, but can’t remember. Cruicial’s website is very helpful with this. If the laptop has “Idea” or “Yoga” in the name, it’s more than likely trash. There were some “higher end” Yoga models, but AFAIR none were upgradable.
Lookup the T38
https://www.dellrefurbished.com/
Check support but can score some great deals on business-class laptops here. They’re machines that are coming off lease from Dell Financial Services.
Great advice. Framework is the best choice if you can afford it. Seconded your opinions on Lenovo. They’re absolute trash now.
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Framework is a US company and nobody wants to pay a premium to advance fascism thank you very much.
Thinkpads are a safe choice. I have the same use case as OP and i use one. Battery last 7-8h of light use, plenty for a plugless day’s work.
People are going to say Thinkpad but I am going to say 2013 to 2017 MacBook Air. Inexpensive. Light. Good looking. A joy to use. Faster than you think. And well supported under Linux (I use EndeavourOS on them myself).
This was my immediate thought. An M1 Mac laptop is still a very useable laptop, and the battery life on them is fantastic.
M1 works decently with Linux these days but anything newer than that barely works.
I was thinking Intel era given the price-point.
intel macbook air works good for me, with debian and xfce
Used Thinkpad X or T series
What’s the main difference between the two?
X is lighter but have already soldered in RAM. T series are a little bit more bulky but pretty much anything can be customized. Be wary of the t480 and t490 though. Those have some flimsy charging ports that if broken will be impossible to fix.
X series are lighter and smaller than T series, on the other hand they are less upgradable.
A refurbished Thinkpad T480.
A refurb!
If you’re able to code from a terminal, and care about longer battery life (my main concern when working from a coffee shop or elsewhere), I’d recommend getting a used android tablet, pry something from xiaomi or oneplus. You can find a decent model used for around that price with > 8 hour battery life easily.
Get a good stand, a solid bluetooth keyboard (logitech makes some great portable ones), and put termux on it (can probably handle light python locally).
If you need it to do CPU powerful tasks, use termux to remote into a VPS or your home server, and let a plugged in linux machine do the work so you can save your device’s battery life. This is how I code at least.
So buy a shell of a device to then SSH into a computer I leave running 24/7? Got it. Forgot to say, I pay my own bills.
You mean the power cost of a computer idling at home?
I have 5 computers (beelink and nuc servers) at home rn, each idles at ~6 watts. That’s about 40 usd a year. One computer would be 8.5 usd per year.
If you’re in the US, refurbished thinkpads are probably the best option. Not so much here in Australia (but you mentioned GBP so perhaps you’re in UK). Whatever. I bought a refurb Dell Latitude 3120 for AU$229
mfg yr 2021 Intel® Pentium® Silver N6000 @ 1.10GHz 8Gb RAM Intel UHD graphics Intel Wi-Fi 5 9560 (160 MHz) Bluetooth 5.0 Display: 1366 x 768 11.6" touchscreen 2-in-1 Disc: M.2 256Gb PCIe NVME Class 35 SSD 1.35kg
Runs voidlinux like it was born to it. It’s my travel laptop.
loving my recently acquired T480. not the fastest by any means, but solid and great keyboard. plus non-soldered memory allows for upgrades. got mine off craigslist for 120, a steal.
T480s is my backup work laptop. Runs Linux fine (have had Ubuntu, currently Fedora 42). Runs windows 11 like shit, but then my primary P1 gen 4 also doesn’t run 11 much better, so…
Thanks for mentioning the actual model number.
I’m not sure how common they are outside Japan, but I have a little (about 12" I think) Panasonic “Let’s Note” that I use quite a lot as a lightweight coding (and retro/indie gaming :D) device that I can throw in even my smallest bag when there’s a chance I’ll have to kill more than a few minutes. They’re designed to be a little bit rugged. I had Ubuntu on it previously, now Mint, and the only problem I’ve had is that Linux somehow sees two screen brightness systems, and by default it connects the screen brightness keys to the wrong (i.e. nonexistent) one. Once I traced the problem it was a quick and painless fix.
They seem to be sold worldwide, so you may be able to get one cheaply second-hand. One thing to be careful about is the fact that in order to keep the physical size down, the RAM is soldered to the board. Mine is an older model (5th gen iCore), and has 4GB soldered on but also one SODIMM slot, so I was able to upgrade to 12GB total. But I’ve noticed that on most later models they got rid of the RAM slots entirely, so whatever RAM it comes with is what you’re stuck with.
Dell latitude 14 inch 5430 or similar, cheap ish. Its got all the wants and needs. Plenty of ports. Its dell so it’ll survive forever.
I got myself an old EEE PC for exactly that purpose. (Except, substitute python with lua).
8h battery life, cost me €20 and does what it’s supposed to. Just make sure you get one with an Atom N280 or better. The popular N270 is 32bit only, and more and more programs are dropping 32bit support. Some of them you can DIY compile for 32bit, some you really don’t want to.
(For example, compiling Node on an Atom N270 takes around 3 days.)
I had one with an N270 first and replaced it with one with an N450 to get 64bit.
Maxed it out with 2GB RAM, a cheapo €10 SSD that maxes out SATA and overclocked it to 2GHz.
It’s not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s totally ok for editing text files with Kate and compiling with platformio.
Used DELL 5310. Intel 10th-gen, 60Whr battery (goes 8+ working hours on a charge) often 16GB RAM and at least a 256GB SSD at that price range. Upgradeable (DDR4, NVMe) too.
Thinkpad x1 carbon gen 6, or if you’re willing to up your budget a bit, a x13 is also a great fit.
Try Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5.
