Hacker News Reader

For a number of years I used to buy BIOS locked thinkpads off ebay for pittance, do this and sell them again as working. Made a small fortune. Most of them were from ex corps who just pulled the disks out and the disposal company didn't know how to do it.

Eventually my wife got fed up of boxes of bits of laptops everywhere.

View on HN

So you unlocked your wife too ? :p

I'm still wondering if it would be profitable today.

Triggered yes. Unlocked no.

Probably not. Post covid, the laptop glut is huge and prices have declined to negligible.

What model was easiest for you?

It would be nice to have a cheap Linux laptop to play around in a Linux desktop environment.

Anything T470 and before was good IMHO. That excludes the T440 where they screwed up the touchpad arrangement.

I use exclusively apple M1 kit now and keep Linux in the cloud. I honestly can’t go back now to a thinkpad.

I was thinking of using it as a way to force focus, and not care if anything happens to it. Lugging around a mbp 16-inch is a bit heavy sometimes.

MacBook Air plus insurance :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com