alt Hacker NewsI maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
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Want a real solution to electronic waste?
The EU should mandate 10-year warranties for higher-end consumer electronics and durable goods.
This could work on a sliding scale: less expensive items get shorter warranties (but never below the current 2-year minimum), while pricier products require longer coverage periods.
Such legislation would:
1. End the exploitation of workers in sweatshops producing deliberately short-lived products
2. Discourage planned obsolescence and reduce manufacturing waste
3. Significantly decrease the climate impact of consumer electronics
4. Create genuine incentives for a Circular Economy where durable products like quality ThinkPads become standard rather than exceptions
By requiring products to last, we'd not only protect consumers and the Environment, but also the vulnerable workers currently trapped and exploited in sweatshops designed to produce disposable goods.
I have a x220 with an adjustable screen. I broke the screen and the battery can't hold a charge. The power button cover is messed up. No hard drive cover. Last I looked up the screen install was complicated and expensive. Probably take over $200 I paid on eBay for it. It has an unlocked bios though which I've read is rare.
Still have a T420 I keep in my toolbox in the garage. Use it to watch videos when I'm working on my bike or car. It's covered in grease and oil. Sits out there through summer/winter, high humidity, etc yet always boots up when I plug it in.
Lindy effect, as the author said, is for non-perishable items. ThinkPad as a brand could be included in this categoty, but an individual ThinkPad is not.
Good article, though.
I can't match that, but I regularly use a 2012 11" MacBook Air, as a Zoom terminal.
Works great. Stuck on Catalina, but can handle the software I need.
My daily driver is an x200 upgraded to 4gb of RAM. It runs as well as it ever did except the web has become slower and slower in that everything became an app. Things like GMail and YouTube are slow but honestly still fine, and in the worst case scenario I can jump onto my phone.
My main use these days is recording and mixing music through an interface from 2014. With Reaper the experience is even better than when I picked the laptop up back around 2010.
> One of the main reasons that old Thinkpads stand out is their design philosophy. They are made with swappable components with the intention of user upgradeability.
On a fixed PC everything is swappable by definition. I don't quite understand why people love laptops so much. If you're using your PC in only one place a tower PC is cheaper and can be upgraded indefinitely with only a screwdriver (if that).
ThinkPads back when were certainly good, sturdy machines, though I could never get along with the nipple. Another great older machine for me was the purple Sony Vaio - magnesium alloy, came with Win2K installed. I bought one, and then immediately bought another - the first I repurposed as a Linux server and I carried them both (easily) around for demoing this and that.
My latest, which I think is going to be in the ThinkPad and Vaio class is my new Asus Zenbook - brilliant light chassis and great performance.
From what I know the entire purpose of the Macbook "Pro" line is literally that they're made to be modular. They were at least. I maintain a 2011 Pro. The build quality is noticeably nicer than the cheaper chassis they produce today. The experience itself is actually much nicer too, smoother, feels better. Added, modern displays have great resolution. But the aged units carry an interesting and rich in depth projection ability you don't find today.
I have bought laptop in 2013 asus rog gaming one i suppose before it as well. Still rocking with i7. But it can still work with windows 11 but tpm makes it useless. So I have tried windows 11 but it hangs a bit linux runs smoothly.
I used my T420 up till 2021.
I upgraded the screen to a 1920x1080 IPS panel.
SSD.
I have a full-fledged workstation for anything that needs heavy lifting and I primarily used the laptop as a device to remote into my workstation.
It was perfectly fine for standard web browsing and youtube.
Pretty much the same trajectory. I started at my T420 around 2010 and that time I just main laptop, computer. Then, as I have a more powerful desktop, this T420 becomes my secondary computer and I started to experience Linux with it. After almost 15 years I end up converted it into a PVE host and run just one or two virtual machines on it and it's quite durable I can still do functional work on it, quite remarkable how a computer can last so long.
T42, T60, T62, T420, T520 (multiples of some around the house) here, ending at the point they changed the keyboard. All running linux, the T420 and T520 (with SSD's) are fine with modern browsers while the older ones can be slow on bloated sites. I imagine the RAM might be an issue with multiple electron apps though.
Only real maintenance is to use quality battery replacements (T420 lasts particularly well on batteries).
If you run an X220 or X230 and do embedded development, build in an ARM debugger (a thing I made some years ago)! [1]
I love old Thinkpads for single purpose computers. Install Debian, boot it once a day, or once a week, or once a month. One for all the flacs I had the energy to rip in my 20s, one for wine and dosbox, one for messing around with programming languages, one for household stuff. It prevents distractions.
I’ve never been a fan on ThinkPad looks, until I get a second hand one, in 2014. It had 4GB or RAM and starts to have hard time with browsing, so few month ago, I bought 16GB for 20€. I’m almost sure It could live for 5 or 10 years.
My only complain is Ctrl cap sensor having some inconsistencies, I have to push strong on it.
For the rest I consider ThinkPad as the way to go for second hand.
I would love to get a ThinkPad as my next computer. My 2018 MacBook Pro is still working amazingly well, but I think I won't get a new one.
I'm really bummed to see how newer ThinkPads have given up that modularity. Some components are necessarily more integrated, and I was never going to be too sad if it was easier to buy a new laptop than to replace the CPU. But the fact that you could, for instance, trivially replace the hard drive made it ludicrously easy to get a lot of extra mileage out of old ThinkPads.
As an E15 Gen 2 owner, I'm in awe of you wizards keeping these ancient ThinkPads alive - my modern entry-level machine suddenly feels inadequate despite having 4x the processing power!
Man, I knew it was going to be a T-series machine. I used to own T400s and T430. Just hardcore pieces of hardware. I fine-tuned my T430 so that it boots Archlinux in about 3-4 seconds. Loved tinkering with Linux, Xfce and coding on that machine. As I grew older I switched to a MacBook, like many others but I miss that machine.
My T480 just doesn't want to die. I dropped it a lot, in my staircase, on concrete floor, accidentally emptied my whole mug of coffee on it (had to change the keyboard that time some keys were stuck). At some point I felt so confident I tried stepping on it when it was closed. So yeah this thing is pretty tough.
I have an X201 (15 years old) and X220 (14 years) that I regularly use, running different flavors of linux. they've both been repaired and upgraded a few times. I'm spoiled by having an M2 Macbook as a daily driver - they can't match it for speed - but I love the ruggedness and resilience and I always will.
I still use my t420 all the time for one reason and that's the keyboard. I can't stand chiclet keys and that's all there is now
Mine's about 13. I just upgraded from Ubuntu 22 to 24 and I'm regretting it a bit. on 22 I could watch downloaded films on an external monitor but not stream video. I could live with that. But now it seems 24 uses just a little more memory and watching a downloaded video on the monitor makes it shudder... :(
I currently have an M1 MacBook that I needed for some development (iOS) but now use it for notes and presentations and back up any data on my Nextcloud and homelab. Before that, I had a 210 EUR Polish laptop (I think whitelabel Chinese stuff) that would run Linux distros but would struggle with Wi-Fi.
Frankly, that’s why I quite enjoy desktop PCs. Most of the hardware works as you’d expect and is both repairable (though to be honest I’ve just thrown away mobos in the past when they start misbehaving, possibly due to OC or daily use) and upgradable (I’ve gone from a Ryzen 3 1200 to Ryzen 7 5800X, even had an Intel CPU ages back; as well as from an RX 570 to B580, with a few more CPUs and GPUs in the middle). Different RAM, more drives etc., honestly it’s really pleasant, even if there’s this big box in my room that makes some noise.
I have a PowerBook titanium G4 from 2003 that I can boot but never bother because it's not worth the power consumption.
These are very well built machines.
To keep them running for decades Linux or other open source operating systems are pretty much the only choice. Not only for performance (which is better) but also because Windows will phase old hardware support out, it's just what they've always done, and will always continue doing.
Off-topic about the Nassim Nicholas Taleb opening: Does anybody else feel like he just restates obvious things in a more formalized and somewhat pompous way? I do not mind formalization but I feel like I am supposed to swoon over it as if some profound truth, that was not already implied in our every day thinking, was being revealed.
> I continue to use my MacBook because I like using proprietary software like ... Alfred
Is this like saying you still boot Windows occasionally to use the Start menu?
I still use my t440s all the time to this day. it is durable, versatile, does exactly what it does and does it well. not tied down to its firmware, software - i can't think of the analogy off the bat but its like several other things that "just work" (maybe indoor plumbing or something) so well you forget about them
My R60 which I got around in c. 2005 still works with Linux mint. I replaced the HDD and battery, but rest of the stuff including the orange light (to be used as night light) on top of screen frame still works! The hinges are a bit loose, so they need some support at times.
I have a 14 year old T420, I upgraded the processor, ram, hard drive, battery, and wifi chip several years ago which really sped it up and gave it more usable life. Still runs great for most things.
I have a stack of T40 and T60 series in my shed. All 32bit processors, but man what beautiful machines. I kinda feel like the guy with the classic Thunderbird in his garage.
X220 owner here. You will have to pry it from my dead cold hands. I don't use anything that can't run on it well, my workflow is mostly shell based. Even Firefox don't do that bad when JS is disabled.
I still drive a Dell Precision M6600 from 2011, and liken the build quality, robustness and modularity of that era of the product line to the Thinkpads being discussed here.
I'm overdue to upgrade, but know I won't love its replacement anywhere near as much.
Respect! I still run x230 with Linux for fun and so my kids can smash the keys on the keyboard (btw imho the keyboard feeling is better than in any laptop I used since then) and they feel good about themselves that they do the same thing as dad
My W530 is 13-ish years old and it's still my daily driver. It doesn't travel anymore (now wired into my desk) but still works great running Win 10. I code on this thing all day and so far have only had to replace a fan and give it an SSD upgrade.
My primary computer, the one I'm typing on right now, is a 13-year old 2012 Mac Mini.
It couldn't be more fine. It does everything I need it to do.
This is a fantastic breakdown, and it nails something I think a lot of people feel but don’t always articulate: modern hardware is often objectively better, but not necessarily more resilient
Same but with my desktop computer. Its going on 16 years and still runs like new.
I always have a Carbon x1 lying around (old one) just because it's a great design to me being slim and nice keyboard
My X201t still works fine, only replaced it because I found newer desktops in a dumpster. Still no laptops in dumpsters though.
I have an ASUS laptop that is borderline unusable in three years, the only saving grace is the RTX 3060 which I use for gaming and occasionally ollama.
My last laptop, dell 14r i3 2nd gen, retired after 12 years.
It still works fine but the processor was slowing me down. New one's i3 12gen cost me $300
I can still run my X60 from 2006. Still, I am not sure about the premise here. My Macbook Air from 2013 also runs very solidly.
On a T480 secondhand with a wonky keyboard. Where are you guys sourcing keyboards from?
Meanwhile an old pentium processor still operates nuclear plant in india ..
I just replaced the seat back on my 2005 Aeron chair as well. Feels good to take an old thing and make it feel new. These kinds of opportunities need to be designed into products, but maybe even more importantly, people need to value those design choices so much that they'll pay more for these types of things.