My T430s is still going strong.
The good thing is that with Linux you don’t need the latest hardware to have a snappy system.
The bad thing is that not having the latest hardware is required if you don’t want to tinker.
The good thing is that with Linux you don’t need the latest hardware to have a snappy system.
The bad thing is that not having the latest hardware is required if you don’t want to tinker.
To anyone considering going back this far in hardware gen, my T420s (i7, 16GB memory, LUKS-encrypted SSD needed for work) on Mint + MATE DE could flat-out _not_ handle work video calls unless it was the _only_ thing that was running with everything else closed down. Even then, it was watching slideshows.
It was the sole reason I needed to buy a new (as in a secondhand T480s on eBay last year) machine.
I had to tweak something to make Zoom and Youtube see the GPU better (for Youtube, something in the Firefox about:config), and it lowered CPU load on my i5 CPU quite a bit, down to things becoming pretty fluid (T470, currently at 6.0.12 but it worked with 5.x, too).
While I fondly remember my T420 from 2011, its CPU was sort of... underpowered by today's standards.
Ubuntu, Xfce, can't recall the specs right now but definitely not top of the line.
As soon as I unplug the wireless headset from its USB charging cable, smooths right out.
I’m not saying you hit the same bug I’m saying software is hard.
If you work with compiled languages, having good hardware is a real quality of life improvement.
I haven't tried C++.
I have a 2021 M1 and a Linux laptop with a i7-11700 desktop CPU.
And compiling takes shorter on my computers than a lot of other computers.
Mine too! I would say it all depends on use case. If OP has certain tasks in mind they should maybe invest in something more powerful/newer. Having said that the t430s is a solid machine.