I'm looking to get a Thinkpad laptop, with Linux as my OS, as my next personal development environment.<p>I do mostly JavaScript, PHP, some Haskell. Web apps mostly.<p>What Thinkpad laptops do you suggest? Was looking at the T-series and possibly X1 Extreme (but that might be too much power?)
I recently bought the E480 (20KNS0LE00) and would definitely vouch for it.<p>(converted INR to USD)
The initial specs were ($730)
- 4GB RAM
- i5-8250U (8) @ 3.400GHz
- 1 TB HDD<p>I decided to upgrade to 480GB SSD and 12GB RAM as it has two memory slots. The upgrade cost me $120<p>I am running arch linux on it and it's pretty smooth.<p>The only downsides are: Display is not FHD and the Keyboard is not backlit. (The models here in India do not seem to have them, but I really needed one as my current laptop was almost unusable.)
I select a Thinkpad with large RAM, large disk storage, high resolution, smallish physical screen, and as close as possible to selecting all-Intel peripheral chips for USB, video, sound, etc. This gives a laptop with huge longevity for minimal upgrade. Also get the largest battery option you can, but that can impact adversely on weight considerations.<p>Currently still using my ThinkPad T410S which has only had an upgrade to the HDD from 500gig to 2000gig in its nine-year lifetime. And one repair: a keyboard replacement when two arrow-keys stopped working. Though its screen resolution is now starting to feel a bit 'tight'.
A ThinkPad P1 has the most upgrade capacity, from my experience. I have max specs. Including a hexacore Xeon CPU, 4K screen, 64GB of RAM, and 4TB of storage.
i would go for the specs which cannot be upgraded (easily ) down the road: screen ( size and resolution ) and max RAM slots. After those, the fastest CPU available for the configuration.
The upcoming X1 Extreme Gen 2 is what I'd get. If you do Haskell, and venture into FRP land (reflex), then having 32GB of RAM is recommended.<p>(I own the P71)