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lizby
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Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United States
Posts: 3481

Posted: 08:23pm 12 Feb 2023

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I wanted a separate laptop for recording guitar tunes I'm working on. 5 years ago I bought second-hand a couple of Dell Latitude E6430s, i5 and i7 for around $500-600 each after upgrading with 16GB memory and 500GB SSDs (I like to have a duplicate or near-duplicate of my main PC). I have no complaint about their performance, but they're heavy--5.4 pounds.

I had seen an Aliexpress ad for Lenovo Thinkpad T440s laptops, so I looked on ebay and gave one a try for $110USD--i5-4300U Win10, 240GB SSD - 12GB Ram, 14". It's super-light (by my standards), so I asked my wife if she wanted a replacement for her 11.6" HP which is now very slow. I got one for her for $116: i7-4600U 8GB 250GB SSD Win10P 14".

I decided to see if I could run everything I normally do on the E6430 with 16GB on the T440s with 12GB. I don't do the most intensive computing, but I think I'd qualify as a "heavy" user: I typically have 3-4 browsers open with several dozen windows, Adobe Acrobat Reader with 4 Micro/PicoMite Manuals plus additional PDFs, 5 text editors with several dozen documents open, multiple Windows Explorers, multiple DOS sessions, Paint, Teraterm, various other programs. All run just fine on the i-5 T440s. There's not room on the 240GB SSD for all my photos and music, but I have them on a network drive, so they're accessible. Right now, with all that running, CPU is 20% and memory 66%. I've used 54GB and have 183GB free.

Since I wanted a duplicate, I got a third one for $129: i7-4600U 16GB 250GB SSD Win10P 14". The i7 is faster, so it's now my main PC. And I still wanted one for recording, so for $76 I got: i5-4300U 1.9GHz 4GB RAM 500GB HDD Win 10 14". I wanted the maximum RAM, so I've ordered 8GB for $40, which will bring it up to 12GB.

So for $471, less than one of the used laptops I bought 5 years ago, I got 4 Thinkpad T440s's. They're all in excellent shape--they look unused.

The only thing I have not been able to get set up is a free version of EagleCad. I've installed from the same setup file as I have working on my old laptop, but it won't open a file without logging in. Maybe time to move to Kicad.

So if anyone is looking for a light and snappy laptop for an incredible price, I'd recommend these.

PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed

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