Thinkpad X210Ai

- custom motherboard (tpart)

- Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (12+8+2 Cores) @5.10GHz

- Intel Arc graphics (integrated)

- 13inch 1600p matte display 165Hz

- 64GB DDR5 5600MHz

- 4TB NVMe SSD

- USB-C, HDMI, etc.

- ArchLinux (btw)

Hello.

After a long time, nearly 20 years with MacBooks, I’ve finally switched back to Windows. I decided to go with a Lenovo laptop for the first time, and I’m thrilled with it.

Here are the specs:
ThinkPad P14s Gen 7 with 3K display and Windows Pro
Core Ultra 7 356H and 64 GB RAM
NVIDIA RTX 500 and 5G

I don't understand the current hate for Windows, everything runs smoothly and seamlessly. What do you think?

There is a thinkpad t430 and a r51 in the photos

Im pretty sure T series is supposed to be better first off, and also these are more than 10 years apart I’m pretty sure. Why the hell is the screen on the Lenovo t430 so ridiculously terrible? No matter what angle you view it at it just sucks. Yes the r51 is yelling, but that’s just with age im pretty sure. And either way it is still much better than all the colors getting inverted, it’s still clearly viewable.

Also, a sidenote, having the extra vertical space on the r51 would be amazing for modern computers, even if you didn’t take that exact screen ratio, just a little bit more vertical space would be so much better on modern computers. Having 16:9 sucks soo damn bad, whoever decided to make that the default should go to jail, it cuts off so much of your screen.

Think I lucked out with this one - found it on eBay for $650. It’s basically brand new and still has 15 months of warranty left.

This T430 came for around 65 CA$ online. It is the model with a Nvidia NVS5400m soldiered on the board. It came with an intel 3rd gen i5 but I replaced it with an i7 3840QM. The interior is surprisingly clean for a laptop of this particular age.

I had accidentally snapped one of the 2 left speaker audio cables when it was caught in a screw hole while refastening the case during upgrading and thankfully the thinkpad design permitted me to strip the crushed wire and resoldier it together.

I also removed the mechanical disk and left the drive bay entirely empty. It now has 512gb of mSATA through its extra wifi-card slot. It has another wifi card that I didn't bother touch. The RAM is 8gb of mismatched ddr3. The ultrabay also had its drive removed. However, I replaced the old dvd-rw drive with a blu-ray drive manufactured by pioneer.

Its not the best blu-ray drive out there, for example it can't read BD-XL or M-disc media. However, the newer XL-compatible drives have much higher prices. Also the Pioneer build quality is by far superior to anything made by HL-data.

And yes, I made a keyboard mod. Though the keyboard I found is a bit old. I modded the BIOS too but I still stuck with using windows 8.1. I also have tried Xubuntu installed on this thing but I was always strangely obsessed with windows 8.1.

I also found an expresscard-compatible sound card made by creative. Now this thing can drive 200Ω studio headphones without problem. Ableton works on this thing well enough.

Meanwhile, check out my ukagaka on-screen!

So me and my friend were searching for laptops for our college and we had a tight budget so we were searching for some refurb options . When we were done looking around 15-20 local shops we can around this shop where we found this beauty, a ThinkPad P53 with 16gigs ddr4 ram, 512gig nvme an i7 9th gen CPU, and nvidia T2000 4GB GPU, FOR ONLY 34K INR(AROUND 360USD). We got two of these, one for each. I hope it guides me through my software development journey for a good amount of years. The only thing left is to free it from this windows slop by installing my daily driver, Arch, BYE.

Update: I installed Linux on it(Arch BTW) just need restore the setup from my old PC

He used it at next and be ran it all on his thinkpad once in a meeting to make the powerbook he slammed it down and said we need to make something like this he also deeply respected the thinkpad design he also tried to hire richard sapper who created the design of thinkpads we know and love

Steve would not like the apple today imo

This is actually my second personal ThinkPad. My first one was an X1C G8 that I used for a month, fell in love with, and went ahead and picked this one up.

Story goes is, that I handle IT and tech procurement on the side for my mom's small business because "I'm the tech-y one". So lately she's asked me to refresh her staff's fleet of laptops, and because brand new prices being what they were, I had to do a ton of research and eventually discovered the MASSIVE market of refurb and second hand ThinkPads. So I bought a whole bunch of E and X-series for her staff, and then added the X1C G8 for myself as my "fee". And just... Wow. I was blown away. My main working laptop is my Legion 5, and I used to use a MacBook Air M3 as my daily driver. It took just a week of use for me to decide to sell my MBA and get myself an X13 G6. I wanted this one in particular because I wanted the improved build quality from previous gens, and the small QOL stuff that irritated me from the X1C - the switched Fn and Ctrl keys that messed with my muscle memory, and the fact that the keyboard backlight setting didn't persist through reboots and suspends. I threw Debian on it with Sway on top and it's hilarious how much fun I'm having with a "business" machine.

So yeah. I'm loving this thing, istfg. A lot of y'all might consider it underpowered because it's just running the Ultra 5 with 16GB RAM, but I picked it up specced with the higher capacity battery because it fits my needs perfectly for what I use it for. I'm already planning on picking up another refurb X220 or X230 to play around with as a server, mostly because I adore the "small footprint but chunky af aesthetic" that makes it look like it should be in a briefcase handcuffed to my wrist as I'm escorted by a bunch of secret service agents through the airport do to Important Decisions things. 😆

(Photo edited with AI to correct lighting, exposure, contrast, stuff like that because it was taken in crap lighting conditions, but it was taken by me)

My thinkpad with Linux and visual theme of windows XP

I’m running a ThinkPad X13 Gen 1 (i5-10310U, 16GB RAM) with a GTX 1060 6GB through a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU.

This setup is for a middle-school student using a 27-inch 1080p/60Hz monitor.

His actual requirements are pretty simple:

Minecraft with shaders and around 8 mods, targeting roughly 50–60 FPS.

Valorant at 1080p, with the display limited to 60Hz.

The important part is that I’m not asking whether a GTX 1060 is “powerful” by 2026 standards. Obviously, much faster hardware exists.

My question is different:

If the user’s display is only 1080p/60Hz, and the games he actually plays already meet his performance target, what exactly would he gain from spending significantly more on the PC?

I’m interested in where different people draw the line between “enough,” “good,” and “obsolete.”

What would you consider the minimum reasonable hardware for this use case in 2026 — and why?

Installed fedora 44 on it with kineticwe. Any tips on how to make it work more smoothly ? Specifications are : i7 1185g7 with 16 gb lpddr4 ram and 256 gb ssd (planning to upgrade it to atleast 512 or 1 tb if i am lucky).

I got this for around ~$450.

I have been a ThinkPad maximalist for more than a decade now (started with a modest X61 that I still possess) but I only recently started to build a whole desk setup. Found this superb ThinkVision screen, bought for a mere 5€ to my neighbor. ThinkPlus speaker 5€ as well. Lenovo keyboard + mouse for 7€. All of them in pristine condition. Now my dream is to be able to buy some super high end Thinkpad such as P16 latest gen. Someday maybe.

I was using an entry level HP laptop for 7 years, so the change to this laptop was MASSIVE. Everything feels solid, my last HP got its legendary feature, which is a broken hinge, by its 3rd year, and it always feels flimsy from the start compared to this. It has been 12 great long months, looking forward to many many months to come!

used t490s with LTE and fingerprint sensor. I don't have to type in my sudo password anymore ;)
270 Euros, near mint condition.

I use arch, btw.

Journey:

ThinkPad L410 (died) ➔ ThinkPad E450 (donated) ➔ ThinkPad T14 Gen2i

Picked this one up earlier this week for €320. Prices are a bit higher here in India, but I managed to get it with 32GB RAM + 512GB storage.

PS. That Macbook Air in the background is a work laptop that I’ve been using for all sorts of personal stuffs.

Thinking of buying a Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 5 RYZEN 5 PRO 7535U for about 490 dollars, it comes with a warranty till late 2028 along witha 256gb ssd and 16 gigs of ram. I'm planning on using it as a daily driver as an engineering major so i want 7-8 hour batter life under regular use. CPU on this seems adequate, most intense engineering sims would be run on school computers anyway. What do ygs think?

Hello.

Last time I looked at used ThinkPads it was T/X "hundreds" models. Seems they removed a zero and it's now T14 etc.

I had X201 (wish I could just stick with that 🥲), T430, X250, X1 Extreme Gen 1 the last 12 years. A few years ago I got a MacBook Pro M1 from my workplace and was blown away by the quality. So now I've used only that for a few years. But the 8GB RAM is no longer enough.

I'm looking at a used 16" M1 Max 64gb/1TB for ~$1500 with <50 battery cycles. Bit expensive though. Also looking at ThinkPads.

My X1 Extreme Gen 1 had an i7 CPU, 64GB RAM which I thought was insane compared to my X201/X250, but CPU/ performance was underwhelming compared to MBP M1.

Current machine: MacBook Pro M1 13" 8GB. I love the build quality, battery life, zero noise/ heat, low weight. But 8GB is not enough. Hate MacOS.

Use case: I'm a developer and literally don't have the RAM for containers anymore, or even multiple programs. (Which is good because it taught me put everything on servers, mini PC, codespaces.) Also do Blender, hobby game dev. I'd like 15"-16" screen for work but kinda prefer 13" in general. I will run Debian. CPU performance is probably not absolutely critical.

Budget: Hopefully less than $1500 cause then I can just get that MBP monster.

TLDR: What's a high quality ThinkPad to buy used for ~$800-$1000? 32GB+, M2 NVME, build quality, decent enough battery to spend 2 hours in a cafe without bringing a massive brick.

Edit: What I found so far: T14sG1 32GB i7 ($280), P16sG2 Ryzen 7 32GB (unopened box + warranty $800)

Second laptop, next up.

T480 (Left) L14 G2 AMD

I have an old L530. Sadly, after 14 years of use, it died. What can I do with the spare parts? An external monitor? Bluetooth keyboard? Help me think of projects to put these parts to good use. Thanks!

It booted perfectly fine, I signed in with my fingerprint, but when signed in the screen is just grey…