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Comment by NGRhodes | Hacker News Reader

I like to buy ex-corporate ~5 year old Thinkpads, get from a seller who gives atleast 6 months warranty, put new batteries in and they are usually far better in every way than anything new for the same price. Am currently very happy with my T460S, runs Linux or Win10 great. My previous machines that the kids use for school work and Roblox are x250 and x220, and previous to that I have an X200 and a T61, that all lasted atleast 5 years in my ownership, over 10 years old before they were sold on. I have noticed since my X200 a slow and steady decline in toughness (I presume in exchange for compactness). You do have to pick carefully, some models have terrible trackpads, often the base LCD screens are terrible for brightness and viewing angle, so you need to ensure you get the upgraded ones (eg IPS and/or higher resolution).

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I always go for refurbished laptops when I can. My reseller gives me two year warranty and I can buy extra three years warranty if want to. So I can get 2y warranty in price, and I can buy 3 more years. I live in Europe and at the moment I could get T460s with new 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM and 5 year warranty for some 900 € (price with VAT).

My biggest disappointment was the trackpad on T440s. I hated is so much that I was thinkin about replacing it with a new one. Besides that I really like all of the ThinkPad laptops that I've used so far.

> I like to buy ex-corporate ~5 year old Thinkpads, get from a seller who gives atleast 6 months warranty

I am curious if this a US thing only. I mean, I've heard of company vehicles in second hand market but never company laptops. In my experience all these company laptops get decommisioned by IT never to remove any data, but I never really considered what happens at End-of-life for those.

A few questions:

1. Where do you find these retailers?

2. Where do you find suppliers selling new batteries for old devices?

(all of my previous attempts at finding replacement batteries for laptops and e-readers always resulted in very poor performance or even faulty battery packs)

edit: formating paragraphs for questions

I live in Finland, and simply by Googling in Finnish I can find several companies reselling used company laptops, and there's at least one local one that I can physically go to (I've bought a used monitor from there, and they always have stacks of ThinkPads in the store when I go in).

same here in Czechia, pretty much all refurb Thinkpad are from companies, my current T520 is from Singapore of all places, if you choose A grade is basically brand new condition just without brand new smell, they should use some spray :-)

my next laptop will be again refurb Thinkpad, for wife I would choose something like X240 A grade 8GB RAM, that cost like 250EUR

It's 100% a UK thing as well.

Most of mine came from Morgan Computers, but I also check Tier 1 Online and Bargain Hardware too.

I emigrated, and I have yet to find a good such vendor in the EU. Recommendations welcome!

I buy my refurnished laptops from Techsavers (https://www.techsavers.com/). They have local outlets in few EU countries.

I worked for a company that bought their servers from Bargain Hardware. Good service, and fast. No problems with hardware, of course.

I am in the UK. I buy from eBay, there are a number of big sellers to choose from. I tend to get my batteries from Amazon, I've probably bought 6 generic unbranded for my thinpads over the years, generally they seem to be about 90% capacity of genuine, but low prices mean great value. One I bought in 2020 was faulty on arrival, rest have all been good.

I would vouch for this approach too. Ex lease laptops are really cheap, I've got a gen4 x1 carbon for easy carry daily use, a t460s at home, and so many of my customers love their ex lease Lenovos.

Where do you get new (X220) batteries?

For my X220 I went for a cheap generic Chinese import (either Amazon or Ebay), its about 90% capacity of a genuine, but the price is so low its not a worry.

GreenCell is very popular here where I live. Dozens of computer shops have them on stock (https://greencell.global/en/standard-batteries/2012-green-ce...)

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