Lenovo ThinkPad T42p

My 2005 vintage T42p wants to have a word with you. In all its years it has seen the following parts replaced: the (PATA) 2.5" hard drive, now using an SSD through a PATA-SATA adapter. That's it. I still regularly use this machine even though it not longer is my main portable device. The only thing keeping me from doing so is its 32-bit CPU which now that 32-bit support has mostly gone the way of the dodo. I much prefer its 4:3 form factor 1600x1200 screen, keyboard and construction over the P50 I'm using in its stead.

Hm, odd that, the newest laptop I have here is from 2016 and with that just past your threshold. It works just fine, performance is no problem, the battery holds for around 5-6 hours. Maybe it helps to say I a) don't buy Apple products and b) only use Linux? Nearly all my laptops are Thinkpads, all of them run Debian in some form or other. From the ancient (T23) through the old (T42p) to the relatively modern (P50), all of them work for their intended purposes. They are built to last, if something breaks it is easy to fix but things rarely break. The batteries are easily replaceable, the same goes for the keyboards. In other words it is more than possible to use laptops beyond those 8 years as long as you buy the right ones. Performance is fine as long as you run the right software, i.e. not software made by a hardware vendor who depends on a regular replacement cycle.

I used a T42p (not just a measly T42, that's for the proles) as a daily machine until forced to move away from 32 bit machines around 2021. Were it not for that I'd still be using it daily - I got three of them in nearly new condition for free about a decade earlier, all of them still work, one of them with a new translucent trackpad cover (made from an old mobile phone screen protector) because the old one was totally worn through - since the combination of the 1600x1200 4:3 (more or less) screen and the keyboard are hard to beat. I'm now using a P50 which, while offering far better lacks the 4:3 screen and 'suffers' from the modern Lenovo keyboard.

> ...a 10 year old Dell laptop running latest Windows Not Dell but Lenovo and not Windows but Linux but for the rest the comparison is just fine to me. If it were not for the switch to 64 bits I'd still be using a 19 year old IBM Thinkpad T42p - I have three of them - daily. I still use them but the things are hampered by their 32 bits Pentium M CPUs. The keyboard and screen still beats whatever other notebook I've tried though... Is anyone here still running a 2005 Apple laptop? That'd be a PowerBook G4? > ...or a Samsung Galaxy S3 running the latest android. I'm using one of those, a Galaxy SIIIneo running Android 11 - not the latest but not out of date either. It actually works quite well for a 10 year old phone, the battery easily lasts for a week with occasional use (and it is user-replaceable when the need arrives). Of course it is not running a Samsung Android distribution, those stopped somewhere around Android 4.4 on this model if I'm not mistaken. No, it runs LineageOS 18.1 with OTA updates, the last update was about a month ago. So yes, Apple does offer longer support for its hardware than many other vendors. They are outclassed though by the longevity of AOSP-derived distributions like LineageOS on mobile and by Linux distributions on PC-type hardware - which includes Apple hardware, I'm typing this on a "late 2009 27" iMac" running Debian. The thing has been out of support by Apple for quite a while with MacOS 10.13 'High Sierra' being the last supported version.…

Pfah, showoff. My 2005 Thinkpad T42p crawls circles around that thing - slowly. Maxed out to 2GB, Intel 120GB SSD with a PATA->SATA adapter (just fits if you remove some useless bits from the lid) and - what keeps this machine around - a glorious keyboard and 1600x1200 display. It even gets several hours on the battery so what more could you want?

Disagree! I've been using Thinkpads since 2004 and was a bit obsessed with them around 2010 and almost had a museum with old machines I bought on eBay. I had two 701cs's butterfly models etc. Every model I've had was much better than the one before in almost every way. There's a lot of nostalgia with the older models, but man, compared to what we have today they were unusable and you would not carry something like that around! Super heavy, easily scratched rubber paint, bad plastic. Now a lot of things I miss a lot. The modularity, latches, ThinkLight, the upside down Thinkpad logo on the outside shell (oriented correctly towards the user, not the other people in the room), 7 row keyboard, good Fn keys functionality like media keys. The T400 that I regularly stood on to impress people how sturdy it was. But all of these things cost a lot in terms of weight and size (except the logo which was just copying the change that Apple made). Just so you know the context: these are the machines I used a lot. T42p, R60, T400, T440s, T470s, T495s, T14s Gen2 (current). If you respect the sturdiness vs. form factor trade-off, I believe build quality has gone up with every machine I bought.

Weird, I've been using Linux since 1993 in one way or another, first together with OS/2, from 1996 exclusively and have not had any stability problems in the last decade or 2. I use somewhat older hardware - Thinkpad P50 and T42p, "late 2009" 27" iMac, DL380G7 under the stairs, a bunch of Core2Duo HP laptops plus a ragtag assembly of Raspberry Pi's - which may help but still... on the P50 I can switch between nVidia and the built-in Intel GPU without problems, on the iMac the Radeon driver works just fine, it works on the T42p as well but that thing is just too slow to make it worth the effort but it just has such a good screen and keyboard that I prefer to use it over more modern machines. Linux-related maintenance time on all these machines is measured in minutes: sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade, wait a few seconds (gigabit fibre helps here), look through the list of updates, check that it doesn't want to remove something important on those machines which run Sid ("Debian unstable" - this problem does not occur on stable distributions) and let it rip. That's it. Maybe try a different distribution? I'm using mostly Debian, there are a few machines running Mint, the Raspberries run whatever I happen to experiment with. On the server I'm running Proxmox with a flock of containers running Debian and a few VMs for things-not-Linux. Here, too, I have none of the problems you describe. Try Debian?

Several Thinkpads ranging from a P50 with 32MB, a T540P (under restoration, broken screen - which is why I got it cheap...), A T42p (single-core Pentium M, 2GB but the 1600x1200 screen and keyboard make it one of my favourite machines), some T23s are in use as terminals. I can use these older machines because I offload heavier jobs to the server-under-the-stairs (DL380g7, 128GB RAM) which is reached through a VPN (Wireguard running on a virtual router on that same machine). All machines run Debian Sid except for the server which, through Proxmox, offers a variety of operating systems through containers and VMs. While Debian Sid is supposed to be "unstable" it is quite stable in practice, probably also because I shun the more fancy bits given that I run Xmonad on X11 instead of some glitzy/glitchy desktop environment on Wayland...

The T42p is one of the best laptops ever made (in my opinion). I saved for months and bought one using a friend's IBM employee discount. I remember thinking that I wouldn't need to ever buy another laptop again. I still have it and it works fine. I wrote this on it. Edit: and there is another java update!!

> I wish more linux laptops had the build quality and support of macbooks I'm glad my "Linux laptops" are very much not like those macbooks with their glue and solder and "no user-serviceable parts inside (and we really mean it)" > This isn't a rant from an Apple fan, this is a rant from a laptop fan. ThinkPad's aren't good laptops despite what the guy with the pocket protector says. They are flimsy and feel cheap. They still have 20th century tech (eraser mouse, c'mon!). They are my grandfather's laptop. The good thing with those machines is that you'll be able to keep on using your grandfather's laptop while those whose grandfathers opted for macbooks are left wanting. I'm using a T42p from 2005, apart from putting in an SSD I have not changed the thing. It was, and still is, a perfectly useable tool.

> with power to spare ...but without money to spare. If the desktop fits his needs there is nothing gained in replacing it with a proprietary and form-factor limited device like an Apple laptop unless he's hog-tied to the Apple world - which does not seem to be the case here. I use a bunch of devices, some portable, some not. When I need something portable I take, let's say, a T42p running Linux. I'm typing this from a resurrected iMac 27" running Linux which sits next to a Compaq 6910p in a docking station connected to a 24" monitor. The iMac is the newest device at 12 years, that T42p is 17 years old yet it still works fine for most things as long as I can reach the server-under-the-stairs. Sure, that M1 makes for faster media consumption but... that is not what I use these things for. I also foresee a not-so-distant future where that M1 lies in a cupboard due to some malfunction - bad battery being the most likely - which is deemed too expensive to repair while most of those old devices around here still continue to work.

I'm using a (Thinkpad) T42p from a dumpster, works fine. 1600x1200 screen, good keyboard, trackpoint and touchpad, up to 6.5 hrs on a single charge. I put an SSD in the thing (using a $2 PATA-SATA converter) which makes a world of difference. Since most development happens on servers anyway the relatively underwhelming performance (1.8GHz Pentium M, max 2GB) is not much of a problem. Especially if you plan on developing web apps I can only recommend to use an older-generation machine. While this might sound counter-intuitive, it is an easy way to make sure your programs work well on both older as well as newer hardware.

Absolutely! I think laptops of that series are still running at International Space Station!