I would like to buy myself a second hand and install Linux on it. I was looking into ThinkPad T14 gen1 or gen2 devices because of their maintainability and repairability. I found one where I live with a Ryzen processor but it has the wrong keyboard. How easy and expensive would it be to swap this with US English? Are there any good alternatives to the ThinkPads? I fancy the X1 but don’t like the fact that I cannot change or swap anything on it. The T14 looks very bulky and unattractive but at least can have the RAM upgraded and the battery changed.
I fancy the Framework laptops, but don’t want to spend so much on a laptop. Especially the latest 16 inch with Ryzen AI CPUs.
The T14 G1 is at least cheap, like 350€ with the 400 nits low power display and the battery is at 99%. I guess with tlp installed and autocpugfreq I can get 5-6 hours out of it.
For personal use, I will use it just when traveling, as I have a more powerful desktop. Nothing too fancy, a bit of programming, tinkering. Will run probably Hyprland. What’s important is to have 5-6 hours of battery life. I will probably run some containers, YouTube watching, browsing, should be portable and support charging over USB-C.
About the last bit: There are these now. Available for all usual laptop plugs and voltages. Much easier to carry with you than a separate AC brick.
Yes, that’s why I want to have a USB-C charging. I have a 60W GAN charger.
Yeah, but if your dream second hand laptop has everything but USB-C charging, you can easily get such adapter and basically make it USB-C charging capable. 😉
I tend to lose adapters to be honest. And right now I am trying to get everything possible to support USB-C as it is super convenient and the chargers are also really small.
Install the adapter and epoxy it to the laptop :D