I bought a "new" ThinkPad!
Lacking anything sparking much joy in my life, I bought myself a new ThinkPad.
While dicking around with a RISC32 board that I got for free from AliExpress (a story for another time), I stopped myself from downloading yet another questionable chinese toolchain. I realized that it's irresponsible to do so on the same computer I use for banking.
So I looked on EBay, and went down (or up) -- a rabbit('s) hole. All those ThinkPads I can buy!
In case you are not indoctrinated, ThinkPads are the most incredible machines you can buy today. Screw Framework -- you can pick up a magnesium-cased machine with a relatively recent processor for a couple of hundred dollars. And you can get cheap parts, open it up and repair it. Or replace the LCD for a higher resolution one.
Also (from experience) you can spill a liter of water directly onto the keyboard without any bad consequences. Turn it off, dry it out, and be more careful next time. Although I do not recommend it, true story.
The first ThinkPad I got was during Covid -- a $75 T470 with an 6th-gen I5 with 16GB RAM. I did have to get a power supply, a couple of batteries, a caddy and a drive, so by the time I was done it was over $200, but still! It quickly became my main travel machine -- with most memory.
So Many ThinkPads To Choose From
So the first purchase was pretty random -- I just poked at a reasonable-priced machine. I was also considering getting an older box, from the time before Intel backdoored its CPUs with a hidden CPU that watches your every move. But in the end I just bought a more modern box.
This time I was looking at things that looked like deals -- a P43 with 48GB RAM (and a GPU), a T15 with a larger screen and lots of RAM. I made a couple of offers, watched a couple of machines bid up too high, and missed a couple of deals.
In the end I lowballed a T14 10th-gen I7 offer, which went through for $150.
I was a little sorry because I figured out that an 11th-gen I5 is actually faster than a 10th-gen I7... And there are plenty of those to choose from, because people think (like I did) that I7 is always better!
But it is by far my fastest and bestest device. And in practice it is good enough -- the only time I may notice anything is compiling Verilog (my projects build in almost a minute on my current machines -- should cut that in half).
Will it be broken?
EBay is always a gamble. The computer was set to arrive Jan-3 to Jan-4. Next time I looked it was Jan 7-Jan 9. Last time I looked it was Jan 11, but this time with actual tracking, item in posession of UPS.
It looked OK in photos, the BIOS is not locked, and the seller has decent reviews. I am hopeful.
I am looking forward to 20GB of RAM, USB-C charging, and much faster compile times. If I ever get around to compiling anything locally -- lately I've been building Gemini stuff on the VPS...