I have two old ThinkPad laptops - first I purchased the X220 Tablet about a year ago, and just recently I bought a T420. To give you a perspective on when these were made, there are CNET reviews of the T420 from February of 2012 - making the laptop at least 10 years old at this point. And yet, I've never really been more satisfied with a laptop than I have been with these ThinkPads. I'll go reason by reason through why ThinkPads are so attractive, but also all of the problems that I've had with them in order to help you make as informed of a decision as possible on whether or not to buy one. My ultimate verdict is that ThinkPads are an excellent choice for Linux beginners who want a cheap laptop to learn Linux on, while also still being a great choice for enthusiasts as well, with no major drawbacks.
Particularly, we will be focusing on the models between the 00-series and the 20-series, from the X200 family through to the X220 family (manufactured around 2010-2012 or so). I've heard the T60 family and such are also just fine, but those are starting to verge a little bit on being old - however I hear they're better build quality and much easier to Libreboot, so they're probably a lot of fun if you can find one for cheap.
Earlier laptops than the T60 probably aren't worth taking a look at for modern web browsing, video editing, and the like, so I wouldn't use those unless you feel like exploring a little bit. Models from the X230 onwards are completely different and are no longer the classic ThinkPad design, signaling the change the brand would take under Lenovo to being generic, crap modern laptops. That _00 to _20 series (and anything inbetween) is the sweet spot in performance, price, and design.
Let's get this out of the way up front: running Windows on a ThinkPad is kind of a sin. Especially if you're using the stock hard drives they came with still, running Windows will take so long to load anything or to open any program that you might be tempted to immediately take the computer to your nearest electronics recycler - which ironically is where I end up buying them from on Ebay.
However, every time I buy a ThinkPad I spend the money up front to buy a 500GB SATA SSD for them (I prefer the WD Blue brand, if you're wondering; Western Digital is the parent brand of SanDisk), which drastically improves the performance over the old technology of "spinning rust" hard disk drives. Combined with a decently lightweight Linux distribution such as Arch Linux or Gentoo or Debian or the like, there's never any point where I really feel the performance of my machine holding me back. In fact, I can surf around the internet using a modern web browser like (Ungoogled) Chromium and everything is responsive and fast, even really huge news websites or YouTube. The only place where these computers feel a bit slow is that they can't consistently play 1080p video without dropping frames; however, the stock screen is only 1366x768 anyways, so 720p is basically native resolution, and 720p videos play perfectly.
Linux support is one of the biggest draws of old ThinkPads, and ironically they were not designed for it at all. Really, the only reason that they have such good Linux support is because so many people use them for Linux - it's a bit of a circular argument. But the reason why it has good, stable firmware and drivers for ThinkPads doesn't really matter, what matters is that they work. With a modern laptop, unless you're buying from specific, Linux-specialized manufacturers such as System76, it's a crapshoot whether or not your machine will be perfectly supported or if it will crash and burn. Same goes for old laptops that are off-brand or niche, like certain netbooks. With a ThinkPad, you're pretty much guaranteed that everything will work with Linux out-of-the-box, and if not, a little bit of tinkering will get it working for sure.
The only caveat I have is that the WiFi card support may be a little weird under Linux. On my X220 Tablet running Artix, my wireless card kept showing up as different device numbers to my machine and the WiFi would randomly disconnect, and eventualy I had to reseat my wireless card, but after I did that it started working perfectly. (Alternatively, if you know what you're doing, you can fix this by adding to your GRUB config the option GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="net.ifnames=0" and afterwards, assuming you only have one WiFi card, it will always be labelled wlan0.) On my T420 with Gentoo, the wireless disconnects as well, but it seems to only happen occasionally after the computer's been on for an hour or more, and starting up wpa_cli (I use wpa_supplicant on both ThinkPads) and running scan fixes it immediately. Reseating didn't help in this case. (Though, using wpa_supplicant in general is pretty crap and jank, so it could just be user error.) I managed to get this working just by making a cron job to run wpa_cli scan every 2 minutes and since then it's worked perfectly fine. Neither of these would be too big a deal if the wireless card was replaceable, but it's not for reasons that will be discussed later. Worst case, you can purchase a small USB WiFi card instead and just plug that into your machine for wireless access.
ThinkPads make it really easy to get to any part on the computer and replace it. For example, the hard drive is in a caddy that's under its own cover on the side of the laptop, accessible with a single screw. On the T420, there's also a CD/DVD drive, and that's only held in place by a lock switch that can easily be unlocked and popped out while the system is running - it's fully hot-swappable. The CD/DVD drive can also be fitted with an adapter to change it into another SATA hard drive bay. On some models, all of the RAM is on the back accessible with a single screw; on others, one stick is on the back and another is under the keyboard, but the keyboard itself is easy to take out and replace as well - just remove a few screws and it pops right off, and depending on the model the keyboard is usually standard and can be replaced by a keyboard from almost any other model. There's also an mSATA slot that's accessible which can be fitted with an additional SSD for storage. The battery pack is easy to pop right out at any time - you could even carry two with you if you needed to and swap them. All around, a great experience for servicing and upgrading.
The WiFi card is also easily accessible for replacement underneath the keyboard, however Lenovo did not really understand their own product at all and there's a WiFi whitelist that's implanted into the BIOS which makes the system refuse to boot unless the WiFi card is a specific model from a list (I believe only certain Intel cards are allowed). This is a complete tragedy and I have no idea in what universe they thought this was a good idea, especially for this particular product that's so forward-thinking and repair friendly. I hope Lenovo got a good payout from Intel for this and they didn't just do this of their own accord. There's also other limitations built into the BIOS, such as artificially restricting the maximum clock speed of the system's RAM - on one model, the non-tablet X220, the clock speed was actually reduced arbitrarily after a BIOS update with no reasoning given for why. Thankfully if you get a non-tablet X220 (which is one of the most desirable ThinkPad models anyways), there's a custom BIOS that can be flashed which removes the WiFi whitelist and uncaps the RAM, which can be found here. There's also Libreboot and Coreboot, which we'll get into later.
While they're not Toughbooks, ThinkPad laptops are very reliable for non-ruggedized laptops. They have a metal frame internally, parts are replaceable as mentioned before, spills onto the keyboard are redirected through special holes on the bottom which drains out the liquid safely, and they can take a bit of a beating. I've seen videos of ThinkPads being zapped with Tesla coils and having whole glasses of water poured directly on them while operating with no negative effects to the machine. I've also heard of them being slammed into pavement and surviving.
The tablet models can be a little less stable than the non-tablet models because the tablets necessarily only have a single screen hinge so that the screen can flip around and flatten out, so unless you really need tablet capabilities (i.e. you're a math major or in another STEM field that requires hand-writing equations) I would personally steer clear of the tablets in terms of overall reliability. My X220 Tablet was a little bit wobbly and that's the primary reason that I ended up purchasing the T420, alongside wanting a second laptop to mess around with Gentoo on.
Most people absolutely love the keyboard, and while I like typing on it in terms of feel, there's a problem with rollover such that if you're a very fast typer like I am, occasionally you'll lose a letter or two and have to go back and correct it. It's not the biggest deal in the world (I've so far hand typed everything on this website on my T420), but it's enough that you'll notice it and occasionally be annoyed by it. If you're not a very fast typer, you probably won't even notice, but if you're a fast typer that's used to mechanical keyboards, it could end up being a real problem. It just depends, really.
Another one of the biggest selling points: these things are cheap! My X220 Tablet in full working order (even including the digitizer pen) I purchased for $130 with shipping and tax from Ebay, and that was also during the price inflation of all computers and electronics in the pandemic. My T420 I bought about a month ago, and it cost only $65 with shipping and tax, however it was missing a hard drive, hard drive cover, hard drive caddy, and charger. The caddy and cover only cost around $10 for a set including both (it was a Chinese reproduction which was alright, the cover didn't quite fit perfectly though), and the charger also cost around $15, so that totals to $90. Really reasonable considering that that's cheaper than the cheapest new netbook laptops, and will most likely outperform them as well. These prices were also with Buy Now offerings on Ebay; if you're willing to put in the effort to snipe, you could certainly get them for cheaper. For all these laptops, I always purchase the same 500GB WD Blue SATA SSD which comes out to around $60, topping out at $70. So, to have a great, functional ThinkPad should only cost you at most $200 with shipping, which again is cheaper than a netbook. You can't really go wrong for this price.
Looking at how the market has turned out for old computers manufactured in the 80s and earlier, it looks like since ThinkPads are already kind of a collector's item as it stands now, in the future they're probably going to go up in value when these computers become vintage. So, there's a possibility that they could turn out to be good investments in the future as well if you want to keep them around for awhile. For the moment though they're in that perfect spot where they're cheap, still modern enough to do everything you want to do, and still old enough to not have all the crap anti-features of modern laptops (soldered ram, impossible to open, non-replaceable batteries, etc.).
These models are also some of the prime laptops for use with Libreboot/Coreboot, which are open source replacements for the system's BIOS (which necessarily also remove those annoying restrictions from earlier on RAM speed and WiFi cards and the like). I've never personally installed either of them, but the T60 style ThinkPads up to the X200 style ThinkPads can be Librebooted which removes all proprietary BIOS including the Intel Management Engine but excluding the embedded controller firmware, and the X220 styles can be Corebooted, which as far as I know is the same thing but it doesn't completely remove the Management Engine as it still hasn't been discovered how to do that on Core i processors yet.
For the T60 style ThinkPads, the BIOS can be flashed entirely in software, making Librebooting your system extremely easy. For the later ThinkPads, flashing the BIOS has to be done with a clip and a Raspberry Pi, which is a bit more involved. You can buy laptops that are already flashed with either one on Ebay, but expect to pay a premium for this service.
I think that for $200 (with an SSD upgrade and all the accessories), if you're looking for a second computer to mess around with Linux on but you don't want to shell out for a System76 laptop, the ThinkPad really is the perfect choice. If you're an experienced Linux user, and you need a more powerful Linux computer than a Thinkpad (for some kind of scientific software, video editing, or streaming), then it looks like System76 is the way to go, though I personally have never owned one.
The only thing to realize is the ThinkPad is not a brand new laptop - in fact it's considerably old. So, the day is slowly approaching that these ThinkPad will no longer be usable for web browsing or basic Linux functionality anymore, at which time there'll have to be some kind of replacement. For right now though, they function perfectly great, and for the price I highly recommend them.
May 21, 2022