Russell Coker via luv-main <[email protected]> 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.
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