On Thu, 12 Sep 2019 at 19:26, Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
I can't really vouch for it being worth it, I'm unlikely to have any other laptop than a Thinkpad simply because I use the Trackpoint exclusively which really limits my choice, to me a laptop with just a trackpad is worthless.
Fair enough! I never managed to get used to them myself (probably because I'm mostly a desktop user - if they'd caught on there it might be a different story).
I would still say that Thinkpads are fairly straight forward to upgrade and repair though, they provide hardware maintenance manuals and they work well with Linux. My W530 is now 5 years old and given no problems (apart from it now does a random reboot once every 2 weeks or so) and is still very capable, a P50 would be 3 generations newer than a W530 so certainly a good choice.
Also, I've never found a Thinkpad with a keyboard that wasn't trivial to upgrade.
That's all good to know. It sounds like I would have no problems upgrading to SSD if I bought one that came without, which is the other thing that bugs me about modern laptops. Including modern Lenovos if you pick the wrong range (and good luck finding that as a bullet point in a feature list at Currys!)