I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

ThinkPads are durable but every day they get older, slower and more difficult to source parts for as collectors entrench themselves and the requirements of operating systems (and the "modern web") worsen

Framework laptops are wonderful, modern and (arguably?) cheaper to own in the long-term thanks to being able to replace components, particularly the entire mainboard as time progresses.

*But* they're a tiny boutique manufacturer. Their barrier to entry is that of a pretty hefty modern laptop, versus buying a T420 for practically pennies and performing all kinds of aftermarket "mods" to it. 51nb's "FrankenPads" especially breathe incredible new life into old IBM and Lenovo stock.

Combine this with the fact that being the "defacto business laptop" for nearly three decades (along with perhaps Dell) means there's enough Thinkpads on Earth to probably stretch end-to-end around the moon and back

* USB3

* Up to 32 GB of RAM (vs max 8 GB for T400)

* M.2 slot (for SSD), 6 Gb/s SATA (vs 1.5 Gb/s on T400)

* x86-64-v3 (AVX2 etc) and OpenGL 4.6

* Dual-band AC wifi and BT4.0 (optional 4G LTE WWAN)

* DisplayPort with 4k@60Hz output

* Slightly larger screen estate (1600x900 vs 1440x900), with FHD 1080p display option

* Dramatically better battery life

* Backlit keyboard

Many of these are not merely nice to have but also ensure longevity by being compatible with lot of other modern stuff. On the other hand I do believe that T450 generation device might remain viable daily driver for a long while still. From the specs the biggest obvious shortcoming to me is the lack of USB-C, especially USB-C charging. But besides that, it seems pretty usable system.

For reference, I have old X240 that I still occasionally use.

The user being able to swap parts easily is _neat_ but it's just not an required feature, any more than the user of a car being able to easily hot-swap the engine. The right level of integration provides a tradeoff the maximizes reliability, cost, performance, and repair. A professional can still replace almost any component of a modern laptop, with a few thousand $ of specialized tools, and the battery, the only component with a fixed lifetime, can be easily replaced at home.

I really hope Framework can continue to develop hardware with documented repairability, without falling for the myth that tight integration and quality are mutually exclusive.

Can't speak to every model, but it's not always like this. I just swapped the battery on my 2020 M1 Macbook Air, and it's much easier now. The battery is glued to a metal tray that unscrews and lifts out of the laptop. It is discarded with the old battery. The tray is also held down with pull-tab adhesive strips, but they are trivial to remove - similar to what "command hooks" have.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+B...

I've also done a battery swap on a 2015 Macbook Pro 15" - much harder. Each individual battery cell is glued directly to the chassis, and removing each one involves a lot of prying and praying it doesn't puncture or decide to detonate.

Back to the macbook air, I've also replaced the screen and USB-C ports. It's not that bad.

Recently I decided to do a service on it for the first time, and I was absolutely stunned by how little dust had built up in the CPU fan and the interior in general, after 7 years of usage, often sitting on top of a couch or bed, near my long-haired Norwegian forest cat Rufus. All it needed was a litle puff of computer duster and it was good as new. That's very good design of the air intakes and is a huge factor in the machine's longevity.

I did computer repair professionally for a while, and one of the most common causes of irreparable death I saw in laptops was massive dust buildup in cpu fans and consequent heat damage to surrounding components. I'd sometimes see this in 2-3 year old laptops even.

Funny to think that something as simple as the shape of an air intake opening can have such a profound impact on the lifetime of a device.

The other thing that Thinkpads are unrivaled at is protection for the display. People like to say macbooks are sturdy, but they are quite prone to cracked displays because of Apple's obsession with smaller bezels. The thinkpad ofc has t34 style angled armor for its display. Can't remember ever seeing a Thinkpad with a cracked display. And I carry my Thinkpad around in just a backpack with no sleeve, often the Thinkpad is the only thing in there, and it regularly impacts the floor when the(thin-bottomed) backpack is put down while sitting down on the bus or getting home.

If you're only running programs that you have full control of, and can compile/fix locally, or where receiving security fixes &etc. don't matter, then you're good. But things are a bit more interconnected, these days.

I do still enjoy running my hardware into the ground rather than tossing out perfectly good components every few years though (:

[1] In my case, the boot loader stopped working for my hardware on FreeBSD 11.4

If Lenovo were to release a modern T420-like, with identical chassis, battery system and similar IO port variety, but a modern display, modern internals (replaceable SSD! soldered RAM at least has a case for performance) and a modern camera, cash would evaporate out of my wallet.

I remember there was a person [1] modding T60/T61s into "T700"s with 11th gen Intel chips. Unfortunately it looks like the project's been quiet since 2022. Hopefully there'll be more who try.

[1] https://www.xyte.ch/t700-crowdfunding/

- Love the dual batteries (one swappable) unavailable on Apple-design infested T490

- Retrofitted with magnesium top case and bezel mod

- 5 extended 72 Whr batteries with a third-party external charger from some dude in the UK

- Upgraded to fastest processor and discrete GPU (slow on its own but I use a Razer Core X eGPU with an Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti, and can run basically any game on Steam.)

- 32 GiB of RAM

- WiFi 6e Intel AX210 (looking at WiFi 7 using the AMD-compatible Broadcom FastConnect 7800 / QCNCM865 that I run on my AMD 7900 Asrock DeskMini X600 electronic lab Windows-only things box that I'm typing on right now).

- Bought OE replacement most likely to fail: keyboards, pointing stick (and tips), trackpad assembly, and fans (I think I bought 6). Any loose USB, etc. connectors I can resolder myself.

- I might have a slight mainboard problem because I'm constantly running ThrottleStop to get higher, sustained Tdp with SpeedFan sending fans manually to full blast or otherwise the max freq randomly drops to painfully-slow 900 MHz max non-deterministically.

The older they are, the better they are, but even the modern ones are still pretty good. Like the OP mentions, the market for parts is strong and it's easy to get what you need. Then when you go to sell them, they sell for a good amount. That W510 is worth at least $100 in its current condition.

I wish the graphic driver could be better as playing Youtube videos constantly crashes Firefox on Ubuntu. Other than that I have nothing to complain. I have been using it for 3+ years with zero maintenance (I didn't even bother to clean the fan) and it never failed me.

I have a second "new" Dell workstation laptop standing by just in case it breaks down. But it is a Windows machine with 32GB of memory, so I'll probably use WSL2 instead.

It is in a mint condition, not a single scratch, and I don't want to throw it out for sure. I have an old OpenBSD on it, it is perfect for some light C coding using mg. :)

I spent $100 on what I thought was a legit and reputable local middleman for laptop batteries (of course they just buy from China), but even then first battery was half dead on arrival, and second free replacement was dead in around just under a year with rapid capacity decline after 6 months.

i guess i am a hoarder? Hate to throw away useful working things..

It's difficult to know exactly when a server might fail. It might be within 1 month of its build, it might be 50 years. But what's clear is that failure isn't less likely as the machine gets older, it's more likely. There are outliers, but they;re rare. The failure modes for these things are well recorded, and the whole thing is designed to fail within a certain number of hours (if it's not the hard drive, it's the fan, the cpu, the memory, the capacitors, the solder joints, etc). It doesn't get better as it ages.

But environmental stress is often a predictor of how long it lives. If the machine is cooled properly, in a low-humidity environment, is jostled less, run at low-capacity (fans not running as hard, temperature not as high, disks not written to as much, etc), then it lives longer. So you can decrease the probability of failure, and it may live longer. But it also might drop dead tomorrow, because again there may be manufacturing flaws.

If given the choice, I wouldn't buy an old machine, because I don't know what kind of stress it's had, and the math is stacked against it.

Unlike the 4 or so Dell (and Asus) laptops (that came with Linux preinstalled) that preceded this one, it can simultaneously support:

* Bluetooth. Yay!

* Wifi. Yay!

* Sleeps when the lid closes. Yay!

* Stays asleep when in my bag. Yay!

It's also reasonably fast and decently capable, but the not-trying-to-commit-heat-death-suicide-in-my-bag and supporting BOTH Wifi AND Bluetooth at the same time are really the biggest features.

It weighs less than 2kg and is perfect for light duties.

the X230 didn't last as long, the efficiencies of the M1 macbooks were too good to ignore. Gave it to my mother since because she wanted "an old laptop that just works"

Eventually, it had a Core i7-3820QM with 16GB RAM, 1080p screen (with an adapter), SSDs (plural, I put one in the UltraBay)... I installed Coreboot with Tianocore, upgraded the WiFi card... I even modded in the keyboard from a T420.

In June of 2022, 10 years later, I bought an X270 off eBay. I could still use the T430, it was just starting to feel sluggish... I just felt like I needed a new laptop. I'm very happy with the X270 and I hope to use it as long as possible.

It was also fun to start covering it with stickers all over again!

I still have the T430, it's just not being used and it's sitting in a storage locker (with my vintage computer collection).

Looking after electronics, repairing stuff and treating it with respect is just part of my way. That one has an old Puppy Linux on it. Works fine.

The original sense of the word "materialism" is a respect for material things - it's a very positive word. But it changed in the 80s (probably after Madonna's "Material Girl" :) to mean something negative and shallow.)

Using Ghidra and the source that Apple released. Final set up will be, NeXTSTEP3.3, DOS6.22 (AutoCAD R12, Matlab), WinXP (For Encarta 95 and Mindmaze) and NetBSD.

Issue happens in Windows and Linux. I tried disabling the sleep enhancement feature in the BIOS (can’t remember what it’s called).

So it’s just sitting on my bookshelf. Sad because it works great, but you just can’t close the lid.

The shame of it was that a PC of that era had a super short useful life. Now we think nothing of keeping computers for 5 years or more; they're just so powerful that for most regular human tasks, there's no need for the kind of upgrade treadmill that dominated computing 25 years ago. After 3 years, though, the 560Z was almost unusable -- it had a TINY hard drive, and limited RAM. Windows was getting fatter and slower. But the physical computer itself was in GREAT shape -- even after years of heavy travel, it bore none of the crappy wear and tear I'd associate with colleagues' Dells (e.g.) later. I kept it on a shelf for a long time because it was so solid and pleasing that I couldn't bear to part with it despite its basic uselessness.

I didn't realize it at the time, but the 560Z was also my last Windows laptop. Because my job back then was mostly Office docs, and because Win98 was so awful, I shifted to a Mac when the 560 was done, and I've been there ever since.

I've only ever personally owned second hand Thinkpads and they're so great. But you should get the newest, reasonably priced one you can. There are so many affordable T480s/T470s out there or even the newer T14 models. They're still very serviceable and many still allow expansion with unsoldered RAM.

Of course, had to replace the hard drive once or twice, replaced the whole motherboard once[0], and even though it's 64-bit, the CPU arch (Westmere) lacks some instructions that make some things non-functional (MongoDB, some Steam games don't start), and I had to limit the CPU frequency so it doesn't go into thermal shutdown. Nonetheless it's a joy to use still, and I boot it up with pleasure every time...

Thinking when will I pull the trigger on a Framework, though at least I don't feel the pressure too much just yet. :)

[0]: https://gergely.imreh.net/blog/2022/07/an-open-heart-motherb...

I'm ok with this... maybe I'm odd? I view my laptops like I view my cars: I expect them to be replaced after a period of time. I'm NOT trying to maintain my old 2002 Honda Civic, and I'm NOT trying to maintain my older Macbooks. Once they leave Apple Care, I expect maybe another 12 to 18 months out of them, and then I move on.

I used a thinkpad X200 back in 2014 or so and it got completely destroyed due to a spill. I replaced the memory, keyboard etc. but was unable to get it to work again. Also, the monitor had developed a few dead scanlines so I decided to buy another one. This was my primary work machine so I needed something quickly. I got another x230 off ebay. It was a piece used for demos at shows so it was refurbished. Threw Debian onto it and started work 2014. I used it straight till 2022 or so. It was my primary machine. I replaced the battery, added RAM. Then the fan got damaged and the front plastic plating got cracked so it was no longer presentable. I bought an X1 carbon but gave the laptop to my son. We bought a fan, thermal paste and some plastic parts for the casing, a new battery etc., watched a few youtube videos and fixed it up. It's still running and they play casual games on it. It's now atleast 10 years old and still going strong.

It's a very strong machine with great longevity. Though I feel that the newer ones are not as good as the old and the X1 is definitely less repairable than its older cousins.

My current workstation setup includes 22cores/44threads decade old xeon plus four decade old Titan X GPUs with a total of 48GB VRAM, which is enough to run a decent local AI model, but I’m finally wanting more capacity. I haven’t been this interested to upgrade in a decade. NVIDIA’s new DGX-class offerings might convince me, depending on pricing and supply, although waiting a few more years to let things stabilize could be what I do. Still, it’s an exciting time for hardware, especially now that there’s a tangible reason to invest in more power for local AI.

They are both fantastic laptops but have clearly different use cases.

My Macook is my browsing/YouTube/music/research/photo editing machine. It's fantastic at those things. It also integrates into FaceTime and iMessage which means I don't have to pull out my phone all the time.

My P16s is my work laptop. I can disappear into it for 5 hours straight writing code. I'm either in Cursor or the terminal most of that time with a little browser use. And hyprland is freaking gorgeous, fast, and incredibly stable. I don't get nearly as good a development experience on my Macbook, mostly because so much of its navigation is based upon the trackpad vs. the keyboard in Hyprland.

So, I enjoy both and each has their place. I think my only complaint about the P16s is while it has an extremely high res OLED display, it's not as bright as I'd prefer.

That said, I maintain a G4 Cube running an outdated OS to play Sim City and Sim Tower. And it's "upgraded" as much as possible.

****JavaScript not included

Now in a modern laptop it’s the top case or bottom case or board; the robot-made factory parts are bigger integrated components of the system. All you care about is your data anyway, the repairability of the system as a whole by swapping out components at home (admittedly a large culture in the PC world, as silly as it is these days when all you’re doing is connecting a robot factory gpu to a robot factory cpu and choosing a PSU and RAM (also made in robot factories)) isn’t that important.

I hope one day that computing gets so small and light and dense and integrated that I can’t replace any single components without a robot factory and/or microscope. I want a solid microscopically integrated slab (which is what my iPad Pro is basically approaching).

Instead, refurbished Thinkpads are still coming off leases. Available for a 250-700 refurbished. Bench repairable. I keep good backups. If something incredible happens and I can’t fix it I can get a new one same day and be back on my feet.

And I like the aesthetic. They’re built to be durable. The chassis has fluid channels. The parts are replaceable. They’re black, unassuming, and utilitarian.

It is getting harder to keep the latest versions of some distros running on them. Software continues to expand like a gas and developers don’t seem to run their stuff on anything but the latest spec hardware. But there are distros out there where folks take care to keep things minimal and fast.

These are still powerful machines. Not editing 4K video on them. But they’re dang useful for coding, writing, and day to day things I do.

I'm hanging on to my X201. I bought it after I left my workplace where I had an X230; and I choose an earlier model because I wanted to upgrade rather than downgrade my computer. I am _much_ more satisfied with the X201 - because of the keyboard of course. IIANM, X220 is the best one of the X series.

I replaced the HDD with an SSD about 8 years ago and expanded the RAM to 8 GB, and performance is tolerable. At the moment I'm running Lubuntu on it, but I'm thinking of switching to Q4OS.

Now, sure, it's old; and yes, it's a bit rickety plastics-wise after having survived a fall from 3m at some point; and yes, the battery life is limited even after replacing it.

But - I would take it over a modern piece-of-@#$%-keyboard machine any day of the week.

By contrast, my son is 9 this year. Still, the kids are good to one another.

- fully mechanical

- mechanical shutter with light meter

- electronic control of shutter, mechanical advance

- fully electronic shutter and advance

Broadly, what I'm finding after digging in to restoring some cameras is that most of the cameras from the first stage can still be fixed and made to perform close to when they were new. The second still work, but the light meter can die (simpler light meters may be repairable, later ones not so much). The third and fourth stages - once they die, there's no repairing them. And when you look at digital cameras, there'll be very, very few of these that last long into the future.

This bears out the 'Lindy Effect' mentioned in the article.

EDIT: I just turned it over to check and its a T420i Type 4177-X07 pretty much solid as a rock. I also discovered it would run with 16GB of RAM so there's that.

I wouldn't be surprised if its DVD drive is also okay and if you gave me a disc I could read the stuff off of it for you. Now there's something not everyone can do these days.

Perhaps my usage is too light, no IDEs, no electron anything, no streaming, and few tabs because I shutdown the laptop instead of suspend it -- but I don't see what all the fuss is about needing to upgrade anything. 16gb of ram and an i5 is fine, even for the modern web, disable JavaScript and/or run ublock origin.

The new fangled ARM stuff ;) strikes me as essentially similar in character to smartphones: future e-waste with no possibility of repair. Choose wisely, choose x86 and modularity

Of course I can't do anything with it because you can't update the OS and without having a new OS you can't actually download or run anything from the shop.

What do you mean a Thinkpad is repairable? If a chip dies, you have to go out and buy a new chip!

Whatever happened to the days where you could just wire in a new transistor yourself?

(/Joke)

Jokes aside, my point is that this article is splitting hairs about where repairability and integration lies. It's not worth opening up a failing RAM module to find the microscopic broken transistor. For many of us, it's not worth repairing an old laptop, but instead we'd rather have the advantages of everything soldered to the mainboard.

(Although I will admit to repairing an old Mac laptop. The fans started to squeak, so I changed them.)

My PC is ten years old now. It's always run GNU/Linux and feels noticeably snappier than more recent machines with their bloated software. I've maxed out the CPU and RAM on it, overclocked it, added a nice AMD workstation GPU so I could run two 4k screens. I guess the thing is it really feels like I own it. I don't feel the same about phones and tablets.

It's running Win7 and I only use it for RDP onto work. The battery is screwed, perhaps lasts 10 seconds so just enough to cover quickly moving it.

[1] 1920 x 1200 and very matt. It's just stunningly clear and easy on the eyes with great colour rendition.

I need to do some automotive tuning/testing and guess what, the T420 is where its at for that, too. It's no longer good as a daily driver, but it'll do everything else just fine.

My latest, which I think is going to be in the ThinkPad and Vaio class is my new Asus Zenbook - brilliant light chassis and great performance.

This helped me realize why I don't like MacBooks. They aren't really computers. They are big folding smartphones with keyboards.

I'm forever gratefull for the ancient 100€ T400 thinkpad that carried me through my CS degree when I had no money but spending 700+ on something that feels inprecise and jiggery when using is painfull.

My main use these days is recording and mixing music through an interface from 2014. With Reaper the experience is even better than when I picked the laptop up back around 2010.

My Vaio notebooks always lasted quite a bit longer. Eventually got a macbook and haven't gone back, but yeah, the one Thinkpad I owned was the least reliable computing device I've bought in the ~40 years of my lifetime.

Good article, though.

Details here:

- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/freebsd-13-1-on-th...

Article is about FreeBSD 13.1 - but as time passed I followed all new versions and its at 14.2 now.

Config did not changed - still running strong.

On a fixed PC everything is swappable by definition. I don't quite understand why people love laptops so much. If you're using your PC in only one place a tower PC is cheaper and can be upgraded indefinitely with only a screwdriver (if that).

Only real maintenance is to use quality battery replacements (T420 lasts particularly well on batteries).

Works great. Stuck on Catalina, but can handle the software I need.

My only complain is Ctrl cap sensor having some inconsistencies, I have to push strong on it.

For the rest I consider ThinkPad as the way to go for second hand.

The EU should mandate 10-year warranties for higher-end consumer electronics and durable goods.

This could work on a sliding scale: less expensive items get shorter warranties (but never below the current 2-year minimum), while pricier products require longer coverage periods.

Such legislation would:

1. End the exploitation of workers in sweatshops producing deliberately short-lived products

2. Discourage planned obsolescence and reduce manufacturing waste

3. Significantly decrease the climate impact of consumer electronics

4. Create genuine incentives for a Circular Economy where durable products like quality ThinkPads become standard rather than exceptions

By requiring products to last, we'd not only protect consumers and the Environment, but also the vulnerable workers currently trapped and exploited in sweatshops designed to produce disposable goods.

Honestly was never that impressed by it and have had to replace the fans on it multiple times but it’s still kicking while other laptops are not.

Sure I can get parts, but I don't think it actually shows what they are trying to say.

To keep them running for decades Linux or other open source operating systems are pretty much the only choice. Not only for performance (which is better) but also because Windows will phase old hardware support out, it's just what they've always done, and will always continue doing.

Frankly, that’s why I quite enjoy desktop PCs. Most of the hardware works as you’d expect and is both repairable (though to be honest I’ve just thrown away mobos in the past when they start misbehaving, possibly due to OC or daily use) and upgradable (I’ve gone from a Ryzen 3 1200 to Ryzen 7 5800X, even had an Intel CPU ages back; as well as from an RX 570 to B580, with a few more CPUs and GPUs in the middle). Different RAM, more drives etc., honestly it’s really pleasant, even if there’s this big box in my room that makes some noise.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1hakly7/the_think...

[1] https://hackaday.io/project/27272-tp-bmp

In the world of Javascript frameworks where you download and execute 100 MB for a web application?

In the world of desktop applications written in Javascript?

I'm overdue to upgrade, but know I won't love its replacement anywhere near as much.

I upgraded the screen to a 1920x1080 IPS panel.

SSD.

I have a full-fledged workstation for anything that needs heavy lifting and I primarily used the laptop as a device to remote into my workstation.

It was perfectly fine for standard web browsing and youtube.

I can not fault them. I wish GM still sold the S10 pickup.

Is this like saying you still boot Windows occasionally to use the Start menu?

It couldn't be more fine. It does everything I need it to do.

It still works fine but the processor was slowing me down. New one's i3 12gen cost me $300

One is vertically integrated and designed for thermal performance, lightness, thinness and attractiveness.

One is modular, and sacrifices thermal performance, lightness, thinness and attractiveness in order that the user can replace their own battery / RAM / etc

IMO the latter is a false economy. Yes, you can upgrade your RAM, but what about the bus speed, and limitations of the motherboard and CPU? You end up with a Frankenstein's monster of new and old parts, which are constrained by the lowest common denominator, and only useful for basic tasks.

Apple devices have high resale value. Far better, IMO, to sell your laptop after a few years, as a cohesive, intact package that retains some residual value, and then buy a new one with wholly modern parts that make sense together.

Do you remember the old thinkpad bios? Where the pointer was a flying duck? Do you remember opening a thinkpad and everything was labelled with colors and had small handles to change components quickly? Do remember changing ram on a powerbook? And do you remember how hard it was to find a new scsi disc drive for them?

Recently, I got an nearly mint T420 at work as I needed something for a mobile job and I just felt my love for the black boxes again. Damn, I miss those days but I also would miss my retina (apple) or 4k screen (Lenovo) if I had to decide between either an old machine or a new one. Luckily, I can keep a few

People go on about thinkpad reliability, but I've had two straight up die on me...

To be frank, I don't get the hype for the older models. They're slow and clunky. The newer chiclet keyboards are fine once you get used to them.

Recently pulled out a fairly modern Dell XPS that had a great OLED screen to read this thread and it was having some type of software or hardware issue.

Booted up my old reliable Thinkpad T420 (bought it from a Russian kid in SF years ago who upgraded it with an SSD and 12gb of ram when it was close-ish to new - it even has Cyrillic on the keyboard since he bought it in Russia originally!!). Besides a few windows updates and requiring a new battery (25$ aftermarket) the thing works great.

Forgot how damn nice those old Thinkpad scissor switch (I think that's the term) keyboards were - it truly feels almost mechanical keyboard like with a lot of travel. Did anyone ever sell a thin compact desktop keyboard with these style switches ? I could actually see it being very popular with people who like very low profile keyboards (like Apple desktops come with) but want something with more feedback.

I considered briefly upgrading the mainboard and internals to something more modern (there's an aftermarket Chinese company that sells replacements) as I think the T420 is the last Thinkpad to have the nice keyboards and key layout. Then again it was handling everything I threw at it without issues (even plays 4K YouTube fine!) probably because it has a decent i5 CPU from when they still had hyper threading and dedicated Nvidia graphics (the old semi "Quadro" NVS line 4200m). So many little features on these that are unique - instead of a complicated backlit keyboard for example it has a little downward facing LED light on the screen that can be activated by a hot key and illuminates the keyboard nicely at night. It's not as pretty or fancy but I love the simplicity and the fact you can also use it to illuminate a paper notebook or anything else.

One thing that does worry me is that Nvidia hasn't released updated drivers for this ancient chip since 2021 and I suspect eventually compatability will be an issue. I did have to disable hardware acceleration in the latest version of Libre Office (on Windows 10) to get it to work at all. I noticed in the BIOS it has options for Nvidia Optimus (meaning it also technically has an integrated intel GPU - currently disabled) so maybe worst case I will have to one day rely on that.

Thing is a real brick and battery life sucks but I also forgot how nice it is to have so many ports - it has dedicated eSATA (still super useful with an external SNES cartridge like enclosure to quickly read internal 2.5" and 3.5" drives) and a slim card slot where I had added two USB 3 ports. CD player wont see much use these days but a dedicated full size Ethernet port is great and an empty (I think they called it Ultrabay?) slot means I could theoretically throw in another battery or some random accessory. Also has full size display port for modern TVs and displays and oldschool VGA for legacy stuff. There's a fingerprint read I've never used (wonder if this even works with modern Windows?). Forgot I had even upgraded the WiFi chip in this thing (no soldering!) so it was getting great internet speeds as well.

I will say the cooling and fan situation though really suck - I forgot how damn loud the thing is with the fan even at 2/3 speed. I remember re-pasting the heat sink years ago thinking it might improve the situation and it didn't do much. Laptop was hitting 95C under load at first but after a little tweaking in the BIOS and the 99% trick to disable Turbo Boost it idles around 45-50C and hits about 85C briefly for high loads.

Would love a modern version of the T420 with a nice 16:10 OLED, the exceptional keyboard, tons of ports and expansion and repair-ability, a modern cooling solution, and less power hungry CPU. I really don't care if my laptop is thicker or a little heavier - the screen size is what restricts what bags I can put it in and the 14" diagonal format is pretty ideal. 13" I find too small and 16"-17" is getting way too big. I kind of even have grown to like the thicker bezels in a world that seems obsessed with minimising them - they really don't add too much overall size and I suspect it must contribute to the durability of the laptop and screen in general.

And of course gotta love a good track point mouse! With the mousepad disabled and my thumbs on the track point buttons you can transition from typing to moving the cursor around without ever needing to remove your hands from then keyboard - always loved the efficiency. I've had Dell and HP business class laptops with track points that also worked well but Thinkpad always had the best feeling thumb buttons.

Seriously though - why are there no slim scissor switch external keyboards out there ?! A compact 87 key format one would be the perfect travel keyboard (bonus if it had a track point and thumb buttons)!

but why?

I get special hardware needs to live for a long time, like, an arcade machine, specialized equipment or something. but some random laptop?

what can it do, that a modern computer cant, apart from being repaired easily (lets ignore framework laptops for the sake of argument)

if his point is he just wants a framework laptop, it already exists.