Kira Herdman

I’m back in the ThinkPad club after my first one (a ThinkPad T440 with a Core i5 4th Gen) developed a display issue the same day I got it. When you turned it off, the backlight on the display was permanently on, meaning it drained the battery. After doing some research online, I found out that the display would eventually fail, meaning it would need to be replaced. While it was easy to replace, I just took it back to the shop and got a full refund for it the next day.

This was about a month ago. Since then, I have been keeping an eye out for another one, and this time I got a newer model that works perfectly.

What did I get?

I got an Lenovo ThinkPad T480s. Here are the specs of the ThinkPad T480s I have when I bought it –

• Intel Core i7 8550u CPU (4 Core 8 Thread)
• 8Gb DDR4 2400Mhz Ram
• 256Gb NVMe SSD
• Fingerprint Reader
• SD Card Reader
• 1 Gbe Ethernet Port
• Wifi AC
• Bluetooth 4.1
• Smartcard Reader
• 1080p LED backlit display
• 720p Webcam with privacy shutter
• Windows 11 Pro

So how much did this cost? £129 from my local second hand shop.

Why a ThinkPad?

ThinkPads, especially the older ones, are known to be reliable, built like a tank, and easily repairable. Parts are easily available online and are very compatible with Linux thanks to a lot of developers using them. As primarily business machines, they are suited for office work, development, and general use but are no good for gaming unless it is very casual games.

Upgrades

There are a few things I will be upgrading eventually.

• RAM. There is a spare RAM slot for another 8Gb Ram, to make it 16Gb total. This will be the first upgrade I will make. I have already done this upgrade to a total of 16Gb Ram, cost me £15 for the 8Gb stick of RAM.
• Battery. I might replace the battery, as it currently holds 48.85Wh when the total capacity of the battery when new was 57Wh, so it is currently at 85% capacity. However I have just typed all this blog post out, while installing some other software and the battery has dropped by 18% in 2 hours, so I might not do this upgrade yet.
• Keyboard. I might replace the keyboard with a back-lit keyboard as I do like them, though the current keyboard is very comfortable to type on.

All these parts are very easy to get for the ThinkPad T480s. I have already replaced the thermal paste on it, and all I had to do to get inside the laptop was take six screws out of the back. After monitoring the temperature, the CPU stays at around 40°C while I do my normal tasks, and the fan doesn’t even come on.

Why this model in particular?

So why did I get the T480s? While most people recommend the T480, not the T480s model due to it being more upgradeable, I prefer the T480s as it is slimmer and lighter to carry around. The trade-off is the battery life is not as long and also not hot swappable, and you only get one slot to upgrade the RAM as you get RAM soldered onto the motherboard.

I am lucky that the model I have is one of the better T480s. It has the second-best CPU you can get in the system, the most amount of RAM you can get that is soldered to the motherboard, and an NVMe SSD instead of a SATA one. Also, not all ThinkPads have an SD card reader or a fingerprint reader, both of which are present on my Thinkpad and are very important to me. Especially the SD card reader as an amateur photographer.

Why did I get it?

I have always wanted a ThinkPad. As someone who likes to use Linux most of the time and doesn’t like to waste technology, ThinkPad’s are one of the best laptops there is, thanks to the availability of parts, cost, and the excellent compatibility with Linux. They are the perfect laptop for someone who doesn’t need to game, just wants a laptop for typing blog posts out, editing images for blog posts, email, internet browsing, and taking notes/journaling on it.

While at the moment the ThinkPad is running Windows, I will eventually put Linux on it once Proton releases the Proton Drive client for Linux.

I wanted a sturdy laptop to carry around and write my blog posts on, and that will last at least ten years. This ThinkPad will do just that, as I can replace just about anything in the laptop if it breaks.

There is a reason why ThinkPad’s are so popular with developers.

Conclusion

The Lenovo ThinkPad T480s, along with my 7th Gen Core i7 desktop Linux machine, will be the main two computers I do work on from now on.

The Mac mini M4 and MBA M1 I have are now retired. I will send them back to the company I rent them from once the contract is up, which is in a few months.

All of my main computers will eventually run Linux Mint. My main desktop already does and works perfectly for my needs.

I don’t like to chuck out perfectly good tech just to line the pockets of trillion-dollar companies and produce e-waste that harms the environment.

Yes, both of my office machines (the desktop and this ThinkPad) are old in terms of computing hardware, but both still get the job done and are not straining at all to do the things that I want them to do.

For a total of £144 I now have a very good, repairable laptop for what I wanted it for, writing and a general purpose machine.