thinkpads are interesting because they are heavy-duty machines that can be had for cheap on the used market. they are cheap because businesses buy them by the truckload and then offload them after three+ years and switch to Newest & Best. flooded market plus a buncha older models still around from earlier floods plus civilians selling their shit -> low price, otherwise nobody would buy them.

if you haven't got access to such a market, either by being around where they're being dumped directly or by having local businesses importing them in bulk and reselling them locally, then you should look elsewhere for value, as they're only interesting if they can be had for cheap.

e.g. you have similar options from hp (elitebook) and dell (latitude), they are also business-class laptops with durability and serviceability in mind, perhaps you can find those locally.

as an aside, you should skip all AMD platforms up until 5000 series; many issues (power management, GPU performance, etc.) especially if you're going to run linux.

wish they would say what the "old intel CPU" refers to and which ate the modern ones that don't need the hack.

coupla blogs and lemmy subscribed ordered by top day; once I'm done with it, that's it, no doomscrolling no more. all news and sports are filtered out, along with memes and similar stupid shit.

if im really craving something, read a book (thanks Anna!), reinstall one of the cheap laptops I got, go for a run/walk/bike ride etc. works most of the time.

weeell you kinda misrepresented the stated point, creating what's commonly referred to as a strawman.

the subject isn't a random sandwich that might or might not have contaminates in it; the subject is a shit sandwich. therefore it's pointless to argue exactly how much shit is in a shit sandwich, as its essence and genesis preclude it from being considered nourishment.

now there's copious propaganda out there convincing you it isn't that bad, lotsa people do it, memba the sandwich from decades ago you loved... but we're in the wrong community for that.

does it matter how bad it is? does it matter how much shit is in a shit sandwich?

I'm not having it however little there is.

I do without.

no way am I bothering with installing windows, in a VM or elsewhere.

thank you for the elaborate write-up. all them models listed are either way out of my budget, don't support pmOS or are shitty (4 GB RAM, etc). searching GSMArena for 'displayport' nets also 50ish models, all cream of the crop type of deal; I was hoping I'd score a cheap ex-flagship and get myself a nice workstation for experimentation.

in the meantime I've gotten myself a Poco F1 for cheap, I'm now awaiting the week-long bootloader unlock timer to expire and I'll try to use it as a phone only.

you're not mentioning which Pixel you're getting for $200 and also that's only twice the stated budget. anyhow, the cheapest Pixel 7 I have locally available is $310 ("lighty used"), which I think is the lowest rung; sixes are like three years old and that's a no bueno for phones with fixed batteries. as an aside, if I'm buying something someone rubbed their face on, spat on, and rubbed all over, I'm paying half price max, not 15% less than NiB ($355 here).

last week I bought a Poco F1 (SDM845/6GB) in not great condition for $60; excellent LineageOS and PostmarketOS support though and easily replaceable batteries. a month or so prior, a Mi 9T Pro (SDM855/6GB) for $80. those are on the high side, there's a ton of LineageOS supported Xiaomi devices for $50 or less if you go down to SDM6xx/4GB, which is plenty for everyday use. they can be had on the cheap because their MIUI operating system is bloated and hella slow so people just upgrade, whereas unlocking the boot loader and flashing an alternative nets you a super useable device.

I'm not saying any of those is as good as a modern Pixel device, but for my use cases they are more than enough.

although just a cursory look at the drama surrounding it is reason enough, my real reason is pretty simple: the hardware costs just way too much.

a phone should cost like $100, max. that's an easily breakable thief magnet and you should put in as much effort as possible to treat it as a fungible device. you break or lose one - no big deal, it's encrypted, restore from backup and keep on truckin'.

I can lose/break/gift like 6 or 7 competent devices (SDM680/845/etc, 6 GB RAM) before I even get close to the price of one used Pixel. hard, hard pass.

that sucks... those two are the most powerful of all listed models and are available with 8 GB RAM. was hoping to get one of these used and make the jump.

do you happen to know how to determine which phones do support it? is it chipset dependent, and if so, which do support it?

btrfs with subvolumes. I have fedora gnome, fedora kde, debian 12 kde, arch mate as subvolumes on the same disk and of course a home subvolume that they all mount on boot, so all my data is always available.

yeah, I wanted a board from a busted laptop and then transplant it along with the battery - plenty room inside.

then, all you'd need is a display controller that attaches to the motherboard's HDMI and drives the display, those are like $20 on aliexpress. everything else is USB and can easily be soldered to USB connectors; the later unibodies would be way more difficult in that regard.

all there's left is to incorporate some USB hub inside and that's it.

there were some restomods, like the X62.

I wanted to do something similar with a 2007 17" macbook pro. they have LOTS of space inside and the keyboard, touchpad, camera, etc are all USB, so reusing them would be easy.

jellyfin's android app has the cast functionality built-in, it connects to jellyfin-mpv-shim. you select the video from the app and press play and that's it - it plays on the remote device. you can then pause, ff/rewind, change subs, etc., from the android app.

as to youtube videos, select video in newpipe, share to allcast, allcast connects to macast, which uses yt-dl to play the video via mpv. you can then control the playback (stop, skip, etc) from allcast.

this all works on a full-featured desktop without problems; I'd like to strip everything but the bare necessities needed to run mpv.

it's a fun hobby; I got rid of my T420s a couple months back. yeah, the keyboard is otherworldly, compared with what's standard these days. and the expandability and serviceability (you can fit FOUR drives inside) - insane! there are custom BIOS available for them, enabling you to whitelist unsupported PCI cards, overclocking, 1866 DDR3, etc. cross-model compatibility is exceptional - I replaced my defunct soaked keyboard with one from a X220!

but then the novelty wears off and you can see them for what they are - really old tech.

like, the screens are dogshit, even if you get the "premium" 1600x900 ones. even with heavy tweaking you're still in double-digits W/hr territory and you're depending on shitty aftermarket batteries. the phenomenal keyboard isn't backlit and is accompanied by a tiny (and shitty) touchpad. the device is thick and bulky and its power brick is that - a brick (at least on my i7 + Nvidia model).

by the time you upgrade everything (1080p IPS screen + adapter, 16 GB DDR3, fast SATA SSD, high-quality battery - none of those come cheap) you've already surpassed the price of a T480/490 that runs circles around it.

so, if you stumble upon one for free (or close to it), it's a fun project, but absolutely not a wise purchase, especially not if you're tight on funds.

not really, T490 are basically the same hardware with a modest CPU refresh, otherwise almost everything is interchangeable (also with earlier T470 models). similar with T14 Gen1.

what's troublesome are the S-suffix models and the Carbons and similar, they are slimmer and have one or both memory banks soldered and are single battery models. you can stll swap SSD, batteries, etc. and the serviceability is somewhat OK (way better than the mentioned e-waste but worse than non-S models).

sure, take it slow. they're only gonna get cheaper and if you're not compiling/building large code bases daily, they're still gonna be viable a year or two from now; same way you can today use something like a T420 without too much trouble (obv don't buy something like that, but if you stumble upon one for free, have at it).

do not compare thinkpads to ideapads (or thinkbooks or thinkpad V-series). the former are heavy-duty devices that cost thousands of $ new (and you can feel that the moment you grab one). they're built for road warriors and are meant to be used and abused for years. everything is so much better, from the build quality, easy repair and upgradeability (several generations share the same chassis, so replacing keyboards, screens, hinges, plastic covers, etc. is trivial and easily sourced) to way better keyboards, hinges, screens, etc.

the latter are cheap, drastic-plastic, deal-of-the-week future e-waste compatible only with themselves, maybe, with way worse build quality and very limited serviceability and cross-generational part compatibility.

same goes for hp elitebook vs probook, dell latitude vs vostro, and so on; there's a huge difference between enterprise-class devices vs consumer-grade.

as to CPU performance, you'll have to be the judge of what's most important to you.

you should aim at $200 max, that's way too expensive for 8th gen tech. ram and storage aren't important as those can be upgraded stupid cheap; it's not a bad idea to buy the laptop without those,

what's infinitely more important are good batteries, you didn't mention what condition the ones you get are in. if you need to replace those, good batteries aren't cheap.

thanks. I'm trying to find a cheap 2nd hand device that can run pmOS and has 8 GB RAM and supports USB to DP/HDMI, was hoping this one was on the list.