Lenovo ThinkPad T40

6owners with an opinion

100%of verdicts positive

2/0positive/negative since 2024

6 yrslongest happy owner

2happy after 3+ years

Praised for durability and reliability; criticized for performance.

What people wrote

Likes itOwned 6 yearsStill going

You cannot go wrong with a Thinkpad, but you can do better, IMHO. I enjoyed my last Thinkpad (t40) a lot. Still have and use it after 6 years. But especially with linux, battery life wasn't very good (now the battery is completely dead of course). The fan never stopped. To answer the question of the OP: yes, it is totally worth to learn Mac OS. First, the effort is small. Second, you will save a lot of admin time. Third, backup is easy, reliable and bootable. This alone recommends Macs as developer notebooks.

Likes itOwned 4 years

yet another example of Lindy effect. I've been using Thinkpad T40s since 2019.

Likes it

Your lips to God's ears. I loved my old T40. Seiko could make Grand Seiko...

Neutral

I've been using Thinkpads exclusively from 2005 or so. My first was a T40 I got from work. Then I got a T42 of my own. I used it heavily till the fan gave out. After that, I got an X200 which I used for a long time. The keyboard got damaged because of a spill. I replaced it but somehow, the motherboard got shorted out and it died. I then bought a second hand X240 (roughly 2013) and used it as my primary machines. Replaced the battery (twice), fan, hand rest. And it's still running. My kids use it to play some simple games. My main machine right now is an X1 carbon (which I'm not really happy with compared to the others but it's okay for now). I used a Macbook for about 2.5 years in between. Didn't like it (hardware was decent. Software was terrible). I also bought a Dell latitude (which was okay and is being used now as headless machine at my workplace for tinkering). But my primary machine is a Thinkpad and I don't expect to see that changing in the near future.

Likes it

I recently installed Debian 12 running XFCE desktop environment on a ThinkPad T40 for fun. The T40 was released 21 years ago, so not quite 25 but close enough. I could load my blog with it on a modern version of Firefox. It was not fast, but I could still do it!

Likes it

Unfortunately after a lifetime of being a Thinkpad fanboy to the point of absurdity, the T410s is the laptop that made me move to Apple and not look back since. The battery life on that thing was something to behold. Couldn't even last for regular "office work" during a 3hr flight. The T40 and T60 lineup has a very special place in my heart, and I have a few of those laying around still operating as "headless" servers. The integrated crash cart is great!