I bought a laptop that replaces three devices with a single one.
The best part: it’s not even a new laptop. It’s a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 9) from 2021 that I bought from Reboot-IT :)
Product photos showing the front-on and angled views of a black, thin, and light laptop.
The three devices this replaces are my:
Travel device: an underpowered and now end-of-life travel Windows tablet/laptop that, as of this month, no longer receives operating system updates;
Portable device: a high-performance, but heavy and bulky gaming laptop with an almost-dead battery that I have since installed Linux on;
Back-up windows device: a gaming desktop that developed a hardware fault a few months ago but is still my back-up Windows computer.
I have both Windows 11 and Linux Mint installed on my new (to me) laptop, with Linux Mint as the primary operating system.
(Windows I have on there just in case I need to use the full Microsoft Office suite for something or if my current gaming desktop dies and I urgently need to use Windows for something. Both scenarios are unlikely, but not completely out of the question.)
This isn’t even my first ThinkPad
This laptop is actually the third ThinkPad in my life. My current work laptop is also a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, though that is a sixth generation (Gen 6) model from 2018.
My first ThinkPad was a ThinkPad X210 Tablet PC that I bought in 2010. I saved up for three years to be able to afford that, and it was the most I’d ever spent on any electronic device in my life (equivalent to $4,800 in today’s money!).
Photo of a brand new, chunky, black ThinkPad tablet PC lying on a brown dining table. Lying on the left of the laptop are some users guides and warranty documentation. Lying on the right is a black, ThinkPad-branded wireless mouse.
I loved that laptop and used it for four years before replacing it with my first gaming laptop in 2014.
What’s even cooler is that it still works just fine! Here are my two ThinkPads side-by-side, with the chonky, twisty boy on the left running Ubuntu and the thin-and-light one on the right running Linux Mint.
Collage of two photos showing black ThinkPad laptops face-on. The photo on the left shows a small, chunky tablet PC and is labeled ‘Lenovo ThinkPad X201 Tablet PC (2010)’. The photo of the right shows a sleek, thin laptop and is labeled ‘Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 (2021)’.
The joy of underpowered devices
There are three reasons I went with a refurbished laptop instead of buying a new one (like I have every few years since 2006):
My primary operating system on this laptop is Linux. And, unlike Windows, Linux doesn’t need fancy new hardware to run perfectly well for years on end. So there was no need for me to buy a brand new device.
Refurbished laptops are a whole lot cheaper than new ones. You can buy 7-10 year old ThinkPads for $400-600 and 3-7 year old ThinkPads for $700-900. In comparison, a current-generation ThinkPad (Gen12) with the same specs as the one I just bought will set you back $3,400. Buying used or refurbished tech isn’t for everyone, of course. But I’m enough of a tech geek to be comfortable rolling with whatever I get.
I didn’t need a high-performance device. I wanted something thin and light and capable, not something screamingly fast. This is the same reason why, earlier in the year, I bought a Lenovo Tab M8 eight-inch tablet ($170 on sale) instead of an iPad Mini ($830 for the lowest-spec model). I just wanted something to read books and email on, and that tablet lets me do everything I need. Same with this laptop. I already have a powerful gaming PC for all my gaming and multimedia editing needs so I don’t need my portable device to be top-of-the-line or even from this year’s product line.
Linux as my daily driver
What I’m looking most forward to, I think, is using Linux a lot more than I have in the past.
I’ve used Linux on and off since 1996, but I’ve never had it as my primary operating system. And, in some ways, it’s still not that. My gaming desktop is supremely capable and, in most cases, that’s what I’ll use first.
But now that I have a laptop that is actually usable (unlike my old Windows tablet/laptop) and portable (unlike my old gaming laptop), I expect I’ll have Linux in front of my a lot more often. That should be fun, so onward and upward I go :)