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Some old thinkpads had an internal battery that gave you about a minute to swap out the changeable battery without having to turn off the laptop. I liked this feature a lot.

Is it just me or do these ThinkPads also look incredibly modern even after 10 years? Timeless design.

I proud own, and publicly use a T440p, which started as a no-CPU, no hard drive, original screen base model, for $60 pre-pandemic. I slowly did all of the suggested upgrades I saw in various videos, and the total cost was $145 (i7 quad core, 16gb RAM, 2 SSDs, and upgraded wifi card). I use it primarily for video recording and editing using Ubuntu Studio, which I have on the second SSD located in the DVD drive bay.

Old thinkpads are the flagship device for Linux users. Try running a really lightweight distro on it. The performance will dramatically increase 👍

An advice from me: Error messages are there to be read. You downloaded the wrong build of PCSX2 as the error states. There is one which uses AVX2 (Haswell was the first gen of Intel CPUs that supported this instruction) and one that uses SSE4.1. You need the second one to execute it on those old CPUs. Besides that great video!

About the ports, there's one port I guess you missed. There's a proprietary extension port at the bottom at the laptop, which can be connected to an external 'extension' board; which gives this laptop an ability to have 3 monitors, 4 more USB ports and an external power adapter connectivity. This one used to be my office laptop a few years ago, and it was built like a tank! Also, with an 'extended' battery, it would run for a whole 10 hours without needing to charge

Older laptops used screen backlights with CCFL bulbs which were much heavier than modern led/oled displays. Latches protected the display from opening when dropped. By 2010, led displays were coming into fashion but Lenovo did not want to give up on the safety patch. Some models like the X220 finally dropped it but it hung around until 2013. Yours is one of the last models with a latch. I like the latches myself :)

I really, really miss the thinklight being a thing. Great for referencing printed material late at night.

My dad used to have half a dozen of these floating around because he would take them home from work after the team got new laptops . That was always awesome to have an extra PC for gaming on LAN etc

Love seeing the T430 love in 2022. I just finished the last upgrades on my T430 after 4 years of ownership. I had the dual core i7 with Nvidia out of the gate. The upgrades were to a quad core, SSD drives, T420 keyboard, 1440p screen, heatsink, Slice battery (talk about a tank in thickness now) which makes for a nice angled keyboard, Ram to 16gb, plus new wireless card. I could overclock my CPU with the Bios update too. Not going to. I've seen someone put Mac speakers into these things but they require fabrication. The 1440p screen is really nice. I had the 1080p previously but the colors and angles are so much better. It shows how terrible my x260 768p screen is now. Thinking maybe I should do a video now. I would love to achieve your production values in my videos. Great video!

I'm quite fond of my Dell Latitude E6400 that I rescued out of the NYC eWaste bin in the basement of my apartment building. Whoever tossed it dropped it off with the matching power supply and a spare battery. I upgraded from 2Mb of RAM to 4Mb, installed a 120Gb SSD and chose Zorin OS Core Edition, 64Bit as my OS. With just a few minor tweaks to Zorin's GNOME desktop, the laptop is absolutely fantastic.

I used one of these for work for 5 years. Worked amazing. Every laptop my company has given me afterward has been dissapointing.

The lid latches were completely normal back then. All laptops had them. Magnetically closing lids are a relatively new invention.

3 weeks ago I got a T61 donated for free never had heard of such machines must be like 2009 still in perfect condition even the battery is still only 40 % wear including a great Docking station fell instantly in love with it will keep it to my end

I still use my nearly 12 year old Thinkpad T420 for some legacy stuff, had it from new but now running SSD with Win10 so still a few years left of life! These laptops are solidly built, they're like the old Rolls Royce you see on the roads every now and again! Was my daily runner until I got myself a Macbook Air a year ago. Still has the best keyboard, much better than my Macbook Air M1!

This was my daily driver at work. Traveled the world with this machine and it never let me down. Good times…they don’t make them like this anymore. (“old man yelling at clouds” mode off) Had mine decked out with a WWAN card, an additional HDD in the Ultrabay slot and a secondary battery that I could also put in the Ultrabay instead of the HDD. Runtime was pretty amazing. Plonk it down in the dock and had two additional monitors, keyboard & mouse. Always worked, never any problems. Not as sturdy as the IBM models but still doing pretty OK. Would recommend this one any day. Then some bright spark wanted to get us all to change to the X1 model. Because nice and sleek and all that. Was glad I declined. Because it turned out the “docks” you plugged into the X1 died like flies. We would have chalked the first ones up to “eh…whatever, probably just a bad batch” but it was getting ridiculous pretty quickly. According to our IT guys they swapped out at least 5 of them a week. And they were notorious for being unreliable and flaking out after software updates. And god forbid you plug them in after starting the computer…it was a complete tossup whether your mouse worked or which display you’d get. Also, no battery swaps. Thanks, but no thanks. My eventual upgrade was to a Dell XPS 15 (new company policy says “Dell only” - seems someone had seen enough defective Lenovo parts) Bit on the heavy side but a decent enough machine all things considered. Still would prefer more modular and maintenance friendly machines but alas, those days seem to be over.

After daily driving my Ubuntu 22.04 T420 (blaze it lol) for 6 months as my school laptop, I just have to say I'm a bit obsessed. These old ThinkPads are incredible devices. Here's what I've done to my T420: -Hacked bios to remove hardware whitelist (difficult and risky but necessary if you want to upgrade WiFi/WWAN beyond the OEM WiFi/WWAN cards that shipped with the device and also if you want to run 2 8GB sticks of RAM) -16gb RAM (it has two DDR3 RAM slots) -WiFi 6 card with Bluetooth (originally N WiFi adapter with no Bluetooth) -240GB SSD -replaced optical drive with 1TB HDD -upgraded LCD with 1080p panel (the original LCD is so bad it's almost a deal breaker) -swapped the palm rest for one with fingerprint scanner, which surprisingly required no additional software in Ubuntu -added USB 3.0 ExpressCard (doesn't ship with USB 3.0) again, no software needed -9 cell battery (new battery life is 6+ hours) A few accessories I would recommend: -USB-C PD adapter and -100w compact GaN charger (way more portable and way more compatible than the original charger) -100w USB-C car charger (keep in mind, these can be used with other devices as well) -the dock, which I have hooked up to Ethernet and a dual monitor setup so at this point, I'm using my T420 instead of my desktop for most day-to-day tasks. There's also a half length mSATA slot that can be used for an SSD for a total of 3 potential internal drives but it uses the USB protocol so I installed an mSATA to USB adapter and now my mouse dongle lives inside my computer. This is the same slot used by WWAN adapters and the SIM slot is under the battery. I tried to get an LTE card working since the 3g shutdown just made every factory compatible WWAN card useless but I was unsuccessful so I decided to just keep the silly internal USB dongle lol. Another upgrade that I reverted was the quad core i7 swap (you can find the 2nd gen quad core i7 chips on eBay for like $30-$40). With the i5, I could use the laptop on AC power with the battery out (to reduce battery wear). With the i7, it would crash while booting if it was only on AC power. A 100w PD charger instead of a 65w charger did make it mostly usable but it would still sometimes pass out if the power usage was too high. Even with the battery, it was wildly unstable and would spike all 8 threads to 100% while watching KZfaq videos, which has never happened with the i5. That same i7 has had zero issues in an old Dell Latitude. The cooler also struggled to keep up with the heat from the i7 quad but I decided to just switch back instead of upgrading the cooler since it was plagued by other stability issues unrelated to heat. As you can tell, there are way more positive things about the T420 than negatives. Linux support for ThinkPads is incredible and Ubuntu makes it feel snappy and new. I highly recommend this laptop and other ThinkPads of this era. If you're wanting a gaming laptop, it would be a terrible choice but it runs graphically simple games like Factorio and Civ just fine. There's also the cool factor. People will undoubtedly notice that you're using ancient technology but TBH, the keyboard alone justifies using it and the aesthetic simply does not exist in consumer laptops anymore and the only tool you need to work on it and upgrade it is a screwdriver. I hesitate to say it because I'm very picky with technology but this is my favorite laptop of all time.

The trackpoint is actually amazing though, literally my favorite thing about these.

I have an x220 that's been used and abused for various purposes. It's missing various screws and the Wi-Fi antennae (I ran it headless for a while and was too lazy to reroute the antenna wires) and still feels sturdy even with missing parts. I was pleasantly surprised when I installed Win10 for an airgapped kiosk type application and it booted faster than my brand new Lenovo yoga. With its 2nd gen i7, 8gb of ddr3, and a cheap DRAMless SSD it still feels snappy for everyday tasks. I learned a lesson about how optimization is the most important part of advancing the user experience and computing in general. No matter how much horsepower you throw at the problem, a well-optimized system is always going to win in terms of price-performance ratio and efficiency.

I have a refurb T440, and love it so much I recommended one for my Mom when she needed a new laptop. A little heavy and bulky, but built like a tank. I used a new one for work many years ago and am happy to have this one.

Make sure you play a good thermal compound when reattaching the heat sink assembly. As for my earlier, comment about CPU upgrades, that motherboard will take a quad core. You have to swap out the motherboard for the one with the GPU, because the GP was soldered onto the board sticking a quad core of that machine would actually spit up quite a bit so we’re doubling the ram, and having one of these laptops with the actual dedicated GPU.

I have two of them still in use. One of them was my primary working machine in the last 7 years, I just recently bought a new machine, but as secondary machine they are still in use. The t430 can be expanded with 3 ssd drive (disk, optical bay tray, msata), 2x8GB ram, 4 core 8 thread cpu. I have i7-3720qm and i7-3612qm. Over displayport (and with active dp-hdmi2.0 dongle) it can drive an external 4k display at 30Hz. Sometimes I connected to the machine 3 fhd display with help of a docking station. I have no problem with wifi, it can do around 200Mbps. For the two machine I have still two original ~100% battery. But also have an other one that degraded to 30%. I used an egpu adapter with it: gdp exp expresscard with gtx1050. It has official support for win10 and still got bios updates in 2019.

Congratulations and good luck! I used to have one of those at work and mine along with everyone else's in the office broke in various ways under daily use in at least 4 years. Under light use rather than 8-12hr work days I'm sure it should last a little longer.

My dad works for IBM, and always had a Thinkpad for as long as could remember, I used to do some light gaming on them whenever I visited him at work. This video is a huge throwback for me because he had this same one. Time really flies

I always loved these thinkpads with the trackballs, they are just so utilitarian. I was a PC tech during those years and this was always my fav with the Macbook pros of the time.

This is my work laptop and i swear, it's a freaking beast. I love these and had no idea just how much better they were than almost any other i've encountered.

i found your channel by mistake while just browsing, gotta say that your videos are really professional and I'm honestly impressed, cant wait till u become famous and well known

Something to keep in mind, even on older ThinkPads than what you have there, the track point has multitouch gestures usually only for two fingers, so if yours doesn’t work, the appropriate driver is not installed. That is an Ivybridge classed laptop, you can upgrade the CPU in it. I would also Max and it’s ram to 16 GB. These laptops are totally serviceable. If you’re having performance issues, consider taking the bottom shell off and clean the heating compound from both the CPU and GPU and also the fins on the heat sink.

I have one of these since 2019. I've upgraded preatty much every thing you can imagine on it ! Even the sketchy wood box egpu ! The last thing which still remains are wifi, fingerprint scanner and liquid metal for cooling (my i7 quad was dirty cheap, but it's a 45w, so even with a t420 cooling assembly, it peak a 100°c). It's a pleasure to use it !

I have the S model of this generation, an i7 equipped T430s which is thinner and lighter than the base T430. It was the last S model with an optical drive. It also has the thinklight AND backlit keyboard. It gains thunderbolt 1 as well. Pretty sweet for a $75 find.

I ran my t430 from 2016 to just this August. I paid $175 for it and upgraded it pretty well since then.Incredibly solid piece of hardware!!

What I loved about the T410, T420 and L440s is that they have an optical drive bay, into which I put a spinning disk for large cheap extra storage (often these machines would come from eBay with a 500GB HDD as the system drive, so I'd pop an SSD into them and move the original HDD to the optical drive bay as extra storage.)

I run this as a desktop plugged into speakers and 7 buck monitor. I upgraded the ram. I love the keyboard. CPU upgrade is pretty hardcore.

I have a T420 and I upgraded the ram, HDD to SSD, CD drive to HDD adapter and upgraded the wifi module. I use it for linux for various things. Never have an issue doing anything. I have a buddy of mine that has one as well running win 7, he uses it for research documents and such. No issues.

Watching this on my modified T420. This series of laptop is awesome!!

I have bought a few T440s laptops over the years for various people and they always like them.

I have the t430 mod all the way, new screen with adapter, 16gb the fastest ram I can get, white list removed, and the best 4 core cpu I can put in it. Now it's a beast !! Love my thinkpad, t430

This laptop cost me $160-$200 back in 2017 with 4 gigs of ram. I had to get another one after it got stolen but got one with 8 gigs, also had found a neglected t450(needed a new fan)that I was allowed to keep & reset, & now I have a Clementine Yoga 3 i5 I bought a few days ago for $190 it's practicality in music DAW's is high with it's touch screen & flipping ability. The Yoga 3 i5 was seriously underrated & expensive.

I've had a T430 for about 5 years now as a "college notes laptop" really solid machine for that purpose. Ended up swapping screen and motherboard to get one with the nvidia GPU and a 900p monitor. Swapped in a 3630qm and it's been doing alright. Once kitted out completely it's really a lot of laptop for how little you end up paying

Good video. See you are under 10k subs. Keep up the good work. I'm sure you'll be at 100k in no time my dude!

I've bought a few used and broken laptops recently. In my spare time I like to fix electronics like consoles and stuff. It seems like the ThinkPad are the most common broken laptops lmao. Cool vid

I'm writing this from my T430 and I agree with everything you've said. I rarely take it off power because that battery is terrible (and I'm just too lazy to buy another for this one). Plus it generates a ton of heat so I just use it on the table or a lapdesk. I run Fedora Silverblue on it and it runs like a champ. I've played SC2 through Lutris and it's pretty good. I've thought about getting rid of it but the keyboard is too good to part with. None of the new Lenovos come close to its feel.

This is the 4th time I've watched this video. Enjoyed touching base on these affordable and like mildly obsolete techs getting a semblance of another life

I remember being 16 wanting a t430. While it was only 3 years ago, it was my dream laptop but I’ve now got a t460 as a throw around and am getting a t480s as a main driver!

The X series is badass. There are 1080p versions, has the little tracking nub, screen flips around to turn into a tablet. I've had a couple now, planning on another.

A few years back when I needed a laptop I had a small budget but I realized very quickly that if you get a used business laptop, you can literally get a machine that is 5-10x faster than what you’d buy on sale at best buy or Amazon. For $350 I was able to get a laptop that only just now started showing it’s age. It was an i7 4800mq which was pretty much just as fast as any i7 chip until the i9 came out.

I used a T430 and then T530 for years, only replacing them in the last year with a W530 because I wanted access to the added RAM (and the stock quad-core CPU) for some of the software that I'm running. They've all been modded with almost all of the features in that modding list, though I elected to learn to tolerate the chicklet keyboard instead of EC-flashing and replacing it. I had missed the better WiFi adapter though, and it's now on order!

The lid latch is to keep it closed when walking around with it say under your arm or something. If I remember right there’s only one side latched, which give you the extra play. It’s there for the safety of the screen.

The T series Thinkpads are built like tanks. My laptop has been dropped a few times. My T 530 started out with 2 GB RAM, a 128 GB HDD , and the standard I5 3230M CPU. I have since upgraded to 16 GB RAM , a 128 GB SSD boot drive , a 128 GB SD card just for my GTA 5 install and a 1TB storage drive. Did I mention the total cost was about 35 dollars.

I have a T530, I upgraded the CPU to the quad core i7, 16gb RAM, two 1tb SSD and a 4gb mechanical HDD (replacing the DVD drive). Apart from being gigantic, only the trackpad lets it down. It was my daily driver until I got a Dell XPS 15 this year (started to do video editing so needed the extra power). It's interesting how little machines have developed in the last 10 years compared to the previous decade. In 2012, you would barely be able to use a machine from 2002, but a 2012 laptop is perfectly usable for most computing tasks in 2022 (as long as you have at least 8gb RAM and an SSD)

I've had my T430 for years. I learned years ago to turn off the pad in the bios and use a wifi mouse. It has an Intel 7 and 16gb ram, but I use Win 7 (offline only) and have no problem running 3D modeling and video editing because I'm using versions built for Win 7.

thank you for the magic eraser tip. my 8 year old used thinkpad now looks like new.

Trackpads were long standard by the time I got my first ThinkPad, but I quickly joined the TrackPoint cult when I discovered a 1996 ThinkPad in the trash and became enamored with it. To this day, I use the TrackPoint 95% of the time on my ThinkPad X1 (work laptop) and my ThinkPad Anniversary Edition.

I got my T430 for £100. Since I bought it I've installed a quad core i7 processor, 1TB SSD 16gb mem and a 1080p screen. It's lightning fast. I love it. The total cost was a little over £300.

This brings me back. This was my 1st laptop

I have two laptop one where I do my work, backup storage,games, and another laptop (T440p) where I mainly use programs to modify/hack consoles, handheld, phones and use as a Blu-ray player. Love the quality of the T440p the only things left to do is upgrade the touchpad and cpu.

Lenovo generally makes really good laptops. Their cases, especially on the ThinkPads may as well be like an OtterGuard phone case. I would take a Lenovo over a Dell or HP any day. Glad to see these getting the praise they deserve.

8:20 I am sorry but it literally says that you should download the SSE4 build bc your CPU doesn't support AVE2. The instruction set are the assembly commands available for programmers and in this case they are the vector commands which are often used to parallelize things. So probably the AVE build will run a little bit faster bc it was better optimized than the SSE build but it should be possible to run PCSX2 EDIT: But appart from that nice video I am also in love with thinkpads and recently bought a new E14 Gen 4 and I love it.

Nostalgia, had these for highschool laptops. Classic

I daily a $95 T420, and it's amazing. (With the classic keyboard to boot!) The lid latch allows the lid to stay closed, but still opened with one hand. Without the latch, stronger springs are required, along with a two handed open.

This is my daily driver for school in 2022 🤘🤘

T430 is really the best Thinkpad ever. I sold one a few years ago and the owner broke the display cover and didn't wanted anymore so he gave it to me. So I got a brand new top cover, New Mouse Sticker, Palmrest Sticker, New MSata and a used 9 cell battery and looks brand new again.

Loved the video post! I love the thought of finding and repurposing an old laptop. Lately I have been intrigued with the Batocera Linux build that you can put on old hardware and turn it into a Retro gaming unit. I found a T440P with i5 8250u, 1.8GZ speed. 256GB HD. 12GB Ram for $99. Is this essentially the same laptop as the one you have in your video?

The T430 series is incredible I have a few of them I use in my homelab as test servers. The magic part is the metal frame, meant to be easily upgraded so access to everything. Like the hard drive that is under the USB ports on a pull tab and one screw.... LOVE IT! The reason for the lid latch was to keep it as durable as possible. The internal metal frame meant that if everything was clammed up it was going to last 90% of abuses. It helps with the stability of the case when closed. Also they need to keep the screen latched a few mm higher with that red mouse button thing in the middle. Earlier models had those break screens. The coolest part is if you look at the bottom you will see these random slit holes. Those are for if you spill something on the keyboard. The keyboard section is sealed and if water gets on the keyboard it drains out the bottom of the laptop. This is why my kids have used them when they were doing the entire Schooling From Home. No back lit keyboard but a keyboard light which is an absolutely brilliant addition. Now one thing to remember is these were built for businesses and industrial uses. These were not cheap laptops back in the day, however we see a lot of them in the reused market since they were decommissioned. This was not meant as your every day laptop you would go to best buy to get, these were special ordered direct from Lenovo for businesses and schools. Price of a Raspberry Pi and 1000% more powerful and if you get a new battery for it even better. The Lenovo T430 holds a special place in my tech heart.

I got myself a T420 just after the lockdowns. I put in an SSD and it runs Ubuntu Server like a dream. An incredible machine.

The older quad core i7s still stand up really well. Especially the third generation.

I got a T530 for myself a couple weeks ago. I'm planning on some upgrades and when a friend heard about my plans, he got an E540. He loves it & wants to get one for his son. I picked up an E550 which will be upgraded (RAM & SSD) and sent to my mom. I used a little goo gone on the lid and it cleaned up nicely. I'll try the magic eraser next time.

I have a 470 at work that I like. I recently bought a 480 off of eBay that I love even more than my work computer, dual batteries and repairability are awesome..

I got the W530 for $200 several years back. It's an absolute beast: FHD IPS panel, quad core i7, 32GB DDR3, and a 480 GB SSD have kept it capable even in 2022. Best of all I have the USB 3.0 ThinkDock, so I can have up to 10 USB ports running natively which comes in handy (I can just dock the machine and have all my instruments, controllers, and drives detected). I sorta got lucky getting one of the K2000 graphics models as the previous owner didn't mention it. And it came with the backlit keyboard option (in addition to the ThinkLight), so it's my studio/live show machine, whereas the $140 i7 T460 is my daily. Believe it or not, it all began with a T60 purchased from a Goodwill. I was booked to play a set at a Tallahassee club (back around 2010), and during sound-check my 2008 MacBook Pro suffered GPU failure, and I had everything backed up on my freshly rebuilt T60 (2006), so I did the set on a thrift store laptop that cost me $20 instead of my $2,500 Aluminum paperweight, and despite the mid-tier Core 2 Duo CPU not being too happy with the high demands, it got through the entire thing well enough. My ThinkPad saved the show. I ended up replacing my MacBook Pro soon after with a T61P (manufactured 3 weeks into the revised Nvidia GPU soldering method), and I've stuck with ThinkPads ever since. I've yet to have one fail on me.

"definitely doesn't impress my girlfriend when I pull it out to get some work done before bed"......Lolzzz 😂😂😂 ☠️💀

I also have a T14. Very sleek Thinkpad and extremely travel friendly.

The good old BrickPad. I had a 400 series as my first machine and it was genuinely indestructible (albeit very slow and heavy.) I still miss it, the keyboard was so satisfying for a cheap laptop membrane and the touch nipple was super handy.

I used this thing the last 4 years for university. I love its swappable battery, the card slots, the tank like build and the nice keyboard. With Manjaro it was actually very usable. Windows on the other hand slowed down a lot over time. And my back hurts from lugging around this behemoth with the extended battery (which is very nice as a grip while not having a table). The best thing, it was only 230€ used + a new battery for 75€. But now comes the time to get a little lighter with a very affordable T480s (which does also have a lot of ports)

I still use my W520 from this generation. It's awesome.

i have the e430 basically almost the same laptop, installed linux on it and it works pretty good!

Love to see more videos about the 2010s onward cheap laptops.

Old Thinkpads were definately built to last. I have a Yoga 12 (i5 8gb) Thinkpad that I got 4 months ago for just over £100. It looks a little rough around the edges but it still runs great for it's age.

Yeah, these old school business class laptops are built like tanks. I am watching this video with a 2012 Dell Inspiron i5 laptop feeding a 27" monitor. Excellent daily driver still. Quiet and reliable.

Had this laptop since 2015, still runs like a champ. Minus battery holding my charge but I've replaced it.

Reminds me a lot of my Latitude. It's old, but it works. It's starting to show its age (~15 years old). I have been using that little guy for 3 years. That keyboard is very comfortable to use.

Gotta say i resisted a lot when i saw the T430 came with the new chiclet keys (or Island keys) because i always preferred the other Thinkpad keyboards and their layouts. However the T430 really is the ONLY laptop who's chiclet keys are actually really amazing to type on. I have one that is not backlit so the key track is a lot better than the keys who are backlit. Originally when i got mine i felt like doing that Keyboard modification where you swap in a slightly modified T420 keyboard into the T430 as well as adding a slightly modified BIOS but i decided to just leave it as it is. Even though i often miss the delete key and don't have it at the same spot anymore so the muscle memory is now a little confused. But general typing on that keyboard is actually pretty good. I'll also probably swap the DVD drive for a Blu-ray Drive. I have a feeling the whole laptop itself is even slightly lighter than the T420. What i REALLY like the most is the 2 USB 3.0 Slots as well as having the Ethernet port on the backside. Where it always should be but usually never is. I really love the T420 & T430 and i just wish they were available with 16:10 screen instead of only 16:9 LCDs. These laptops show how much of a scam modern Laptops are and how little progress there is in Computer Tech. Modern day laptops are just glorified Tablets with keyboards.

T440p is arguably much better in every way except the infamous touchpad. A T440p with 4th gen i7 4600m FHD 16GB RAM and 99wh battery only cost $70. A charger and SSD will cost another $30. A great working laptop under $100.

I agree, I have a 530, it is an awesome computer that run very well win11 and still have an express card slot.

I'm watching this in my 2012 Compaq Presario CQ57! I bought It for 360 euros and It was a mid range machine already when new. I maxed out the ram to 8 GB which is the same amount today's mid range laptop have, although with faster data bus. then I mounted a 1TB SSD and installed Linux Lite 6.6 and It's now usable again! Of course I use It ust for video lessons, writing docs, general browsing and I still have to figure out other stuff to do with It, but still, I love how It's still going!

I do miss this era of laptops that were so easy to fix/ upgrade, as opposed to newer machines with their lack of repair-ability. I have an HP Elitebook 8570p. It is an all metal chassis and feels like a piece of body armor. The back cover slides off with a single latch(no screws). Once that cover is off, you have access to literally everything, even the CPU and heatsink/ fan which come out in two minutes. I've since upgraded it to an i7- 3740QM(4c/8t), 16GB of RAM, SSD and the wifi card to a more modern standard. It still holds up well today with most general computing tasks, not so much for gaming, of course. Alas, it suffers a similar to issue to your Lenovo, in that the display is not great with the viewing angles and the battery life is not much, perhaps 45 minutes..but hey...it is 10 years old. Even though I now have a nice MSI laptop with an rtx 3060... I will not get rid of the HP, I love it too much and had fun souping it up.

I have a T430, it was decent. I paid $200 for it like 5 years ago. The one thing I liked about was you could manually set the CPU to boost and crank up the fan speed, that was a feature all laptops should have. I have an i7 Dell now. Bought my daughter a MacBook and inherited her old laptop.

I had a thinkpad from about 2018 to 2022. Managed to have the top half completely come off the bottom half. Shame, really. I loved that thing.

Wow, upgradeable CPU. Didn't expect that when I started watching. I only ever upgrade the drive to SSD and max out the RAM. Well done.

i am really not sure which is better x230 or t430

I had one of those and it was great especially with Linux Mint. Now I have the t560.

I loved that model, I bought them for the primary school that I was working at and they are incredibly durable

I swear after learning about Thinkpads, I want them so badly, saying this now, hope to be getting a T480 by next year. Lenovo just don't make it like they used to sadly.

I love the t430. I use it everyday for school and some gaming on the side. My model has the nvidia nvs 5400m and it performs much better than the intel hd 4000 graphics. I can play all kinds of old games and play games like gta 5 normal settings at a stable 40fps. This is without a doubt the best price to performance laptop out there.

Swapping from Windows to Arch Linux on my old T430 made such a huge performance boost!

I'm using a T430 as my desktop replacement - FHD panel, 16GB, Quad core with GTX1060 egpu. I just kept upgrading parts over the years until now where it's fully maxed out. Well not fully because I can replace the DVD carriage with more storage but I don't think that's necessary yet.

I used a t430 2 years for work. I was beating on the Laptop (heavy cpu tasks) with a lot of heavy scripts. The laptop never skipped a beat.

Great laptops. Sacrifice a bit with the resolution, but even stock processing is very solid. I upgraded mine to a i7 & it has been an awesome companion.

Have had one for years and love it

I own a T430 and I've been using it for years. It's an amazing computer, especially when using a Linux operating system. Used to play games like minecraft, counter strike source and garrys mod on it.