I would avoid Dell Precision, they're usually higher spec but they also seem to have problems much more frequently than Latitudes despite being "better".

My favorite for personal general use laptops has always been Thinkpad, but I am probably a little biased because of nostalgia and Linux friendliness.

I just go to e-bay and search for "refurbished lenovo thinkpad (model I want)" and look for sellers that have good ratings with the buy it now filter on because I don't have patience for bidding. If they have a warranty it should be fairly prominently featured on the page. Last time I got a 3rd gen touchscreen L14 for like $300 and it came with a 2 year warranty, runs Mint like a champ!

You just have to look for business class laptops: Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Elitebook, and such.

I cant stop buying them either. Have a cluster of self hosted machines and that's 11th Gen cpu and 32gb ram - some serious compute. You put it on nixos with auto backups and you can easily extend your swarm and replace any duds. Put claude code at the helm to orchestrate it and it's really fun. You can vibe code something and it'll deploy itself and keep it going. Crazy times.

I got my T14 for less than $100

It works great for what I need it to with Mint

The computer store didn't have it for sale. I went and asked if they had any really cheap laptops out back, that still could do browsing and streaming

They had a whole stack of maybe 15 laptops that they were going to either ditch or strip

So I think the answer is, that they'd rather sell you a really expensive computer when they know that you're afraid to buy a really cheap one

I bought a used T480 on refurbed.de for 430€ a while back and installed Debian Forky. I only realised it had a touchscreen when I touched the screen. I am very happy with it. I firmly believe the Wikipedia and FSF stickers make it run faster.

That rootkit didn't affect Linux installations at all, and was never loaded on ThinkPads.

Still a shitty move to protect their bloatware at BIOS level.

You either get them refurbished on ebay or brand new. They don't sell for less than $2k new. Newish refurb thinkpads can be as high as $800

The specs.

They come in all shapes and sizes

Reminder: Lenovo got caught putting a rootkit in their BIOS so...you should probably not buy one at any price.

I'm a simple man. I see a LTT video, I downvote.

Go on eBay or whatever marketplace and search for any halfway recent X or T models. Specs obciously depend on what you need. I only use my laptop once or twice a week when I don't feel like writing/coding on my desk and would rather sit on the couch or go somwhere else so a Gen 1 X13 with an i5 10310U and 8GB RAM for 120€ was perfect for me.

Im not sure yet, will be choosing a few canfidates on Saturday, I'll see them when my chores are thru—I dont know how long ill be-eee

Is the think pad arm?

What keywords are relevant and help filter the sheer fuckton of machines floating around on internets?

Thats such a relief I'll have this guidance, its definitely on my bucket list

Yeah no worries

Refurbed business machines FTW, you can find them easily on e-bay and they usually come with extended warranties too.

Thanks, very generous of you to offer your time and attention like that to silly ol' me.

Could I be a pain and ask give me till Saturday, is that cool? I just need to wrap up some life-enhancing changes and housework I need to put to bed before I can devote my attention fully to this :) Ive been procrastinating on them leading to many of my posts lol

I will reply with my selects on Saturday, deal?

You could just run Linux on a macbook air..

That said, I have used macbooks and thinkpads and the aluminium might feel sturdier it is not. Drop a macbook and your looking at an expensive repair especially if it is case related, basically easier to buy a new one. Thinkpad parts are very plentiful and easy to repair yourself. And the cases may scratch but are not easely damaged.

Edit: I'm talking about the mid to high end thinkpads, comparable in price with macbook. The cheap ones are absolute shit.

If you post two examples I can probably break down the differences, but as other people said new carries a premium over used/refurbished and for old ones they’ve been around for decades so the specs could vary wildly.

I would prefer aluminum or magnesium

Basically a Linux Macbook Air but hopefully cheaper

They have the cheapo plastictastic ones they sell to consumers, the generally decent mid range ones that corpos buy in bulk for their office drones and the fancy ones for executives. Then of course there's the secondhand market where the corpo machines get flogged off for cheap after a few years of use.

Im not sure the distinction between new/used/refurbished altho thats a hell of a price drop if the 500 ones are basically reasonably souped up altbeit used/refurbished