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by benbenolson 2895 days ago
Buy a T-series Thinkpad. They're sturdy, have really good Linux support, and even the older ones are extremely robust. Look for an older one, such as a T420; or, if you want a newer one, the T480. Those are going to have easily-replaceable memory, battery, and storage.
1 comments
yoz-y 2895 days ago
T series Thinkpads only come with U class processors. This is fine for many usages but depending on what you want you might need to go for the P-series.
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noir_lord 2895 days ago
T470P didn't, I'm typing this on a Core-i7-7700HQ w/32GB RAM and the 2560x1440@14" screen.

Cracking little machine for massively less than an Apple machine with a faster processor and until recently twice the max RAM the 'Pro' could have.

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yoz-y 2895 days ago
It looks like Lenovo did not make the T480P models. Hopefully they will still get to it. I am in a similar situation to the OP. Currently it looks like the only option is the Lenovo P51, however it has a numeric keypad on the keyboard.
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noir_lord 2895 days ago
The i7's available for the T480 are quite different to the ones in the T470 so perhaps they don't need to.

The i7-8550U benches about equal to my i7-7700HQ in real world use at half the TDP (so better battery life) though I'd be curious to see how it holds up under load for my workloads so perhaps they won't bother with a T480P, I've not seen any rumours so far.

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mediaserf 2895 days ago
I have a P50 running Arch Linux. I upgraded from a W520 and thought the keyboard would be a problem, but the keyboard is actually nice once you get used to it. Everything else works except for the fingerprint sensor and there's a project for that (https://github.com/nmikhailov/Validity90)
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dfox 2895 days ago
Truth to be told, T470p is weird beast because of it's incredible thicknes compared to non -p models. I think that most people who really need the power are better served by P series anyway.
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noir_lord 2895 days ago
Yes and no, it is much thicker than the regular T470's but it's still not thick by any measure I'd care about.

My criteria for too thick/heavy is "can I use it on my knee for a few hours without it feeling like someone parked a deathstar on my legs?" in that realm the T470P is just fine.

Aesthetically they are marmite though especially when put next to my GF's Asus Zenbook (One looks like it came from an advanced society, the other like it's used by the engineers of that advanced society).

The really strange one for me was that the T470P lacks a Thunderbolt 3 port despite the 470's having it.

Not a big issue for me because I drive a 4K display with DP just fine, I'd also have liked to have not gotten the 940MX, nothing wrong with it I just don't use it, the onboard intel graphics are absolutely fine for 99.9% of what I do.

Honestly I love the thing, it's been the least hassle, nicest laptop I've had since (ironically) my last Thinkpad around ~2003.

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