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Comment by tuesday20 | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for responding. Is there any particular model that is better off than others, used? My usecase is programming - I don’t game, but I edit videos

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I think the main thing you're looking for is 1) RAM - as much as you can get for your buck (might be worth lurking for a week to find out how much that is) 2) SSD.

If you get a high number on 1 and a checkmark on 2, it's almost guaranteed to be good for programming - realistically, for allowing you to run your browsers and something like GIMP and/or video editing.

I have a ThinkPad with 32 GB RAM and it takes a really heavy workload to pause my computer.

I frequently have several browsers & several browser windows open (say 6 windows total, mix of Chrome Brave and Firefox), and GIMP. No slowdowns noticeable (EDIT: some things do take a few seconds, like filters & exporting images from GIMP). Most importantly, using my window manager, I can switch from a full-screen browser to Emacs to GIMP instantaneously - not even a millisecond of noticeable delay.

Even many new computers purchased today can't beat that.

Stick to the T-Series, avoid the budget E-Series.

Also check for the screen. For quite a long time there was an Option for an abysmal 1366x768 screen. The same notebooks can be had with a proper HD screen, so get one with those.

You want to check whether the BIOS has a password on it. Most corporates use one but don't reset it at end of life and after the T420 you can't reset it without replacing the main board.

That's a really important point. To amplify on it, every ThinkPad has as many as three BIOS passwords: the hard drive password, the power on password, and the supervisor password. (Maybe even more than three, as individual hard drives/SSDs could have different passwords.)

The supervisor password is the one you care the most about.

You may get a seller who says "no BIOS password, boots up without a password." But the machine may still have a supervisor password, and if you don't have that you can't change the BIOS settings.

Always make sure there is no supervisor password, or the seller gives you the supervisor password.

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