While most of my computer time is spent at my desk, I do also have a laptop for doing things on the go. When you’re choosing a laptop (or desktop, or phone, etc) it is important to consider what you will be using it for.
I got my laptop mainly to be a writing machine. Something small and portable I could take with me to the library or a cafe or a park. This is nice because I don’t need anything close to the latest and greatest.
I did some research and found that Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads were highly regarded for being rugged, cheap, and widely available from past lives as business laptops. So I bought an X230 off of ebay, wiped the hard drive, and installed Linux1. Buying technology new is so overrated.
That was eight years ago now, and it’s still running fine. It’s underpowered, the battery life poor, and the screen is dim. But that’s all fine because I don’t need more out of it. All it does is run firefox and emacs.
I’ve written many words on that machine. A decent amount of code too. Interestingly, I haven’t written any of my blog posts on it. I just can’t be bothered to worry about keeping those in sync between different machines.
I don’t know how much longer it will last, but I hope it’s a long time. I like the little fellow.
-
Arch, btw. ↩︎