Russell Coker via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
I recently gave away for free a Thinkpad that had better specs than 2013 Macbook pro systems because no-one wanted to buy it. She would be better off spending some money on a Thinkpad. The sales sites have Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen5 laptops (the first one with USB-C) going for less than $300. The Gen4 (which still has better specs than those old Macbooks) goes for as little as $150.
A side question: at some point I'll need a successor to my current ThinkPad P51 machine (it's the version with the Intel Xeon E3-1505M v6 processor, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, ECC memory modules, 2017-era technology). It's still running well, but it's probably one of the earliest models with USB-C, and the USB-C port has compatibility issues with a specialized braille device that I've tried to connect, producing low-level errors enumerating device descriptors in the kernel logs. I've been told that some older USB-C ports don't meet the power requirements to connect to this device (internally, it's essentially an Android tablet). Also, this ThinkPad isn't very portable, and I'm sure there are more portable options now that would exceed its performance, e.g., when compiling packages from source. I'm also considering whether buying a new machine and using it for 8-10 years would be the best over-all option, or whether the secondary market (e.g., reputable refurbished hardware suppliers) with more frequent upgrades would offer a better strategy. The purpose is to minimize total cost of ownership over time, rather than to optimize for up-front purchase price. I'm sure there are reputable analyses applicable to my situation. To be clear, I'm not in a hurry for this upgrade, but I'm also aware that I'll need it, whether due to hardware failure or for other practical reasons such as those I've outlined. The current machine runs Arch Linux (with a secondary Microsoft Windows 11 partition due to unfortunate software compatibility needs that I'll avoid elaborating here and which I hope will be eliminated at some point). I'm not necessarily committed to Arch on the next machine, and I've had experience across distributions.