Working on the assumption that Win10 being EOL is going to cause an influx of old hardware becoming available, I was thinking it might be a good time to start looking for a good deal on a laptop for travel. It doesn’t HAVE to be an old unsupported laptop, but saving something from e-waste is a bonus. Here’s the kind of thing I’m looking for.
- Something small-ish, around a 13" screen.
- Can install Linux. Generally a given, I know. But I think not always an option with Chromebooks? I’m OK with a Chromebook as long as I can replace ChromeOS with Linux.
- X86_64 preferred. For games, though obviously not a great platform for that. Not opposed to ARM, but the PineBook Pro is compelling as a small low-cost ARM laptop, it’d have to be a better deal than that.
- Somewhat serviceable. I’d like to have the option to replace the batteries, storage, and memory. Being able to replace the wireless card would be nice.
- Durable would be a bonus. It probably won’t see a lot of use, but it’ll get tossed around in a backpack or in luggage.
- Specs aren’t too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it’ll run.
All of that might be too much of a unicorn, but if I can find a good deal that mostly fits, I’ll be happy.
If you are super cheap like me, but enjoy well made machines try out an ancient macbook pro. I have a 2011 macbook pro 13" with the first gen (I think?) I5 CPU and 4gb ram. Got it from eBay, it used to belong to a school and someone ground the engraving off the lid, but there is a vinyl skin covering the damage.
It only cost me $40 Canadian, the battery lasts like new, and it came with a new charger. I installed arch Linux, on a new sata ssd, and its been great! WiFi was harder to get setup, but I figured it out. Can’t get Bluetooth working…
I love that it has a DVD drive, many ports including Ethernet, SD card, enough USB.
Its slow, but keeps up with everything I do… Mainly use it for watching YouTube, watching my jellyfin library, listening to music, using telegram, light python projects, some web site development with Hugo, and I ssh into my main PC with it.
Thinkpads were basically made for Linux, depending on your Budget you can get a Thinkpad X220, X230, T420 or T430 for small money - perfectly usesble machines and Linux (my experience is CachyOS & Arch) work out of the box.
For a bigger budget i could recomment the T480, it’s still upgradeable.
And for a bigger budget i’d recommend a T14 GEN2
Are the T14’s easily upgraded too?
unfortunately not, power wise it only lets you upgrade the RAM.
but those CPU´s are vastly superior to those 2nd and 3rd Gen i7´s you can put into a t420/t430
the german website https://thinkwiki.de/ has detailed information about possible upgrades of every model :)
I never came across that site before. Thank you for the useful info.
glad i could help :)
I got two laptops from local electronics recycling this past month. One of them is 2020 spec and just needed a charger and some dents smoothed out. Can’t beat rescuing something that’s going in the trash, sustainability wise. If you’re going on the actual used market, Thinkpad like everyone else said.
How does one actually get laptops from local electronics recycling? I keep reading about getting EOL equipment but details on how to actually get one’s hands on such equipment are scant.
Not sure I was following the rules, tbph. Box of laptops and I grabbed some promising looking ones.
Look for dell latitudes with 7th and maybe 8th gen Intel CPUs. Those are solid machines that aren’t considered upgradable to win11. They also have removable RAM (DDR4 IIRC) so many can be upgraded to 32GB max.
For under $200 you can either get a used thinkpad t series or a dell business notebook. You can also get an Intel mac for around that price. The difference in serviceability is often what can be done by you with a screwdriver set and guitar pick versus needing a hair dryer and plastic putty knife.
Any used Thinkpad will work well for you, just search eBay with your price cap and screen size.
Check thrift shops.
I’ve seen plenty of Chromebooks and older Windows laptops for $10-25.
MX is my preferred distro to put on them, though there are plenty of good, small distros.
Here is a good resource for whether you can install another OS on a particular Chromebook
I love the Panasonic toughbooks. Most of them have a handle so they’re great to carry around like a briefcase. Had mine in the boot during driver safety training, it got knocked around voilently, not a single scratch. Also put a SSD in, running it with pop OS since many years.
Try locally. Facebook marketplace is huge in the USA. It’s a royal pain to sell tech offline, so you get good deals. Selection is worse so just broaden your search or be patient.
Business laptops are more rugged and serviceable. 4chan’s /g/ has a thread for “thinkpad general” which is all the business laptops. (Mind the 4chan racism and transphobia.) I’ve found that Dells are far more common (and thus cheap) than comparable HPs or Thinkpads.
For some price comparison, I sold a 6th gen Intel Dell laptop with a 1080p screen for about $60. On ebay they run $40-$100.
I like my Panasonic CF-RZ6 a lot, it has i5-7y57 with 8GB ram and mSATA 512GB SSD. 10" size and 1920x1200 display about ~700g, also has many USB3, RJ45, 3.5mm jack, HDMI and DSUB(!). Sadly the battery life is mediocre, parts are impossible to find. And it’s generally hard as hell to find outside japan. I’m not in Japan but was very lucky to find one for about 150$USD in second hand market.
Specs aren’t too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it’ll run.
web browsers are pretty fucking heavy these days, I think the minimum spec for an “ok” experience is a 3rd gen quad core “mobile” chip like the 3612qm or an 8th gen quad core “ultrabook” chip like the 8650u
I’ve had good luck with a couple Latitude 7280 laptops. Replaceable parts, with support for an NVMe drive. There’s only one RAM slot, compared to the 7390 (I think), but a 16gb DDR4 SODIMM stick shouldn’t be hard to find.
I love thinkpad L480. Also, if you get a good deal then try getting Macbook 2017 Intel version. You could install Linux on that and it’s quite light weight.
You could try to get a dell xps 13”. I currently have fedora installed on my xps 15 that’s about 11 years old and it’s been working pretty well. I’ve replaced the battery and changed storage on mine so they’re fairly serviceable. Built pretty sturdy and have great keyboards and trackpads. Good screens too.
