My use case: I’m an engineering student, I need something with a lot of storage, hopefully SSD (right not I have MatLab, Anaconda and KiCAD taking up most of my 128 GB HD, and I had to uninstall the STM32 cube IDE from lack of storage), and reasonable processing performance so I can actually run these things at a reasonable rate. I need to stay within the windows/ms office world to simplify collaborating and file sharing etc. I’m not using it for gaming. Don’t need a massive screen, or touchscreen or anything fancy. HDMI port would be reasonably important.
I want it to last me at least the next 4-5 years, and I’m hoping to not spend more than about £300.
I know a lot of people reccomend ThinkPads, what’s a good model to get cheap at the moment? Or any other suggestions?
Is Windows 11 so bad that I should only be looking at ones that come with Windows 10 installed?
Thanks for any helpful advice!
Edit: Thanks to everyone for taking the time to advise me, I’ve ordered a refurbished T480 with 1TB ssd, plenty of ram, and a 1 year warranty for £340.
Usually I would be one of the indistinguishable voices saying thinkpad or dell.
But:
You might actually be able to get an m1 macbook air at that price and have better experience.
It would be faster than anything in the price range and I don’t think you listed any software that is a problem for macos.
Problems:
they all have ssds and all ssds fuck up over time. You gotta read each block into memory and rewrite it to solve the problem. There’s a piece of software called spinrite that will do this on x86 but the m series aren’t x86. The solution is to boot asahi or some such Linux and use either badblocks or dd (lol!) to do the same thing. Often rather than fix the ssd people will just replace it, but the m1 macbooks have their storage soldered in. This problem is why I suggested the m1 series because you can get them insanely cheap when they inexplicably get slow and the owner can’t figure it out.
They all have ssds and ssds fuck up over time. For your large storage workloads you will want to use an external drive and have backups. This is true for all laptops with ssds. This is true for all computers.
You can’t upgrade the ram. Is this a problem? You decide. Buy with the amount of ram you believe you will need. 8gb should be fine for cad and other similar workloads (source: I used a mac with 8gb for kicad last year and it didn’t have any problems. Used one with 4gb for the same but mfs aren’t ready to have that conversation). If you’re worried about the future, pick one with 16.
Apple fucked up and made a really good computer. You can call this a problem because it’s not clear if they’re gonna go the 2012 12” mbp route and support that thing for a decade or the 2011 15” route and drop it after the minimum support window. You could also say it doesn’t matter because they’re still being sold new in Walmart even though they’re technically discontinued earlier this year and that would make the minimum support window at least the time period you’re looking to have it for. It truly doesn’t matter because no software balks at last years (or often several years old) macos and they’re gonna be on the hook for security updates for a while now.
Thanks for your comprehensive reply. It made me realise I’ve never even slightly considered a mac as an option. I was brought up on ‘PCs’, and in later years have only ever thought of moving over to Linux. Instinctively, the idea of moving to MacOS makes me want to throw up a little, but maybe that’s my prejudice based on the people I know who use their phones. I also suspect it would make things difficult for working on shared documents for reports etc at uni, but maybe I’m wrong.
Um I would think you want one that can run windows 11. Support for windows 10 is ending.
You can install LTSC that’ll extend to 2032 iirc
I haven’t switched to Windows 11, but I also haven’t been using Windows 10, either. I’ve seen plenty of people say that Windows 11 is fine, but you should probably check with other students at your school who use the same software you do. Make sure your machine can be upgraded to 11, at least, since support for 10 is ending soon and that could result in software or services that you need being unavailable as well.
Thinkpads are a solid choice, and since all the software you listed runs on Linux as well, it’s a good option if you change operating systems to extend the lifetime of your laptop down the road.
If you get one, try to buy one without the RAM soldered on (i think most of the s models). When jt breaks, you basically brick the device - i had to throw out a Samsung notebook because of that.
Yeah I’m planning to install Linux on my old laptop for just home use so I can get familiar and learn a bit of command line stuff, and hopefully make the switch fully at some point. But for now I don’t feel confident that the Linux learning curve wouldn’t slow me down to much, so I’m about to face the horrors of Win 11 Pro (-_-)
I have a Thinkpad T480 and I’m very happy with it. I paid about $250 (~£190) for mine. It came with 16 GB RAM, but is upgradable to 32 GB. The one I bought came with a 128 GB SSD, but I swapped it out for a 1 TB drive which added another $100 (~£76) to my initial investment. This model originally came with Windows 10 and most on the market will come with it, but can be updated to 11 if desired.
I personally have not used Win11 since they made some changes I don’t like, so I can’t really give you advice on that aspect.
ThinkPad T480 gang represent! I’m definitely happy with mine.
The T480 can take 64gb of ram, but it’s probably overkill
Thank you for the correction. I try to be as accurate as possible when providing information, but I misremembered the specs.
Well, if you are in the market for a smaller laptop, don’t buy the x280, as it isn’t upgradable, buy a Latitude 5290 (same specs as t480, but with a horrendous display and no trackpoint). You could find it used under 200$ easily.
You can run Office programs in the browser, so if possible I would install Linux. Windows is so heavy and the T480 is quite old hardware by now. I have Pop OS on a T480s and it’s reasonably fast for coding and web browsing.
How is a t480 old? It’s around 7 years old.
They run 8. gen Intel processors. The difference to latest models is substantial.
Well, the quad-core i5 still works decently on my latitude, but it has ~30000 geekbench score.
I love old machines but 7 years old is a lifetime in computing and especially laptops. Most normal laptops last like 3-5 before they fall apart. One thing that is cool about Thinkpads is that they are often obsolete before the fall apart.
The browser versions of Office are straight ass though. Google Docs is better for a web option, but if you don’t want all your data farmed by Google, I think it’s easier to just install something local and lightweight like LibreOffice. Just convert to .docx (or whatever other Office app you’re working with) and share through OneDrive or Teams if collaboration is needed.
t480s, x390 yoga, older x1 carbon, maybe an x13
A refurbished Thinkpad T480 could do
That’s what I’ve gone for in the end, so thanks for the advice!
Generally you’re going to find that a laptop works better when you use both hands on one and not one laptop for each hand.
Ooooh! Good one, Grandpa!
(No offence, its likely I’m older than you, but your pun heavy reminded me of my dad’s, and that’s what my girls always say to him when he lets one off)
😆 glad it brought a smile to someone else!
