The reason why you should not even consider to buy a shiny new laptop with your budet is like kangal said.
You could afford a recent "low/mid spec" device with i5 and 8gb memory for your money but will pay 50 to 60% more than taking a 4 year old high end device of that time, having same performance as said new modells and money left to equipe goodies.
Why you should go for a lenovo if buying used is availabillity and price of spare parts imho. Changing/upgrading even display is easy and detailed maintanance manuals are available for DL.
So, no custumor service needed imho.

Oh, yes. i forgot to mention lenovos killer feature if you have kids

As long as you're talking Thinkpad. I made a conscious decision to buy a cheap Ideapad N581. It's cheap by any measure (i3, HDD, 4GB, ar8161, bcm4313, glossy crappy screen).

But I thought, hey, it's Lenovo so at least it'll last. The "legendary" lenovo keyboard would be OK if some keys didn't just jump out of their socket when pressed at the slightest angle (my F5 is really jumpy).

Plus apparently they thought they could save perhaps a fraction of a cent by using a crappy breaky screw for holding the hinge mechanism, meaning that 4 months after buying it (and having never used it outside home) one side of the hinge just broke and now I cannot tilt the screen without making the whole situation worse.

But hey, I've decided to use it as a stationary on-desk laptop with external keyboard, mouse and screen. Despite crappy specs the thing flies and does what I want.

Point being: if you need to be on the move, get a small and solid and matte laptop. If at home, buy whatever looks good. And i3/4GB is plenty. And nobody needs an SSD..
(my craptop -- with debian -- with slow HDD boots and reacts faster than my office computer with SSD and i5 and 8GB -- with Windows... --)

So like they say: YMMV..

I would consider 8 GB to be the absolute minimum nowadays, at lest for laptop meant for any serious work. Especially if you want to run VMs 8 GB is the bare minimum. And I would strongly recommend a laptop that can be later upgraded to 16 GB.

You can change RAM on most ThinkPads without any special tools (using standard small Philips screw driver) and the battery is also usually easily replaceable and extended batteries can be used. And quite a few models can even accept multiple batteries, up to 3 (normal battery, ultradock battery + battery attached to the underside of the laptop via the docking station connector), even though these "special" batteries are kinda pricey.

Unfortunately there are a few ThinkPads, mostly from the 2014, that indeed use some weird battery format that is not easily replaceable and even some with soldered on RAM for no apparent reason. Thankfully most <2013 ThinkPads are safe from this, as are many 2015+ ones (most probably due to customer backslash from their 2014 model "experiments").


Yeah, I really don't like how they are milking the ThinkPad brand for crap like the IdeaPads. As already said, unless it has the T,W or X designation (and maybe the Carbon range), it is not a real ThinkPad.


Also unless you can regularly use the edge of the display as carrying handle, it is not a real ThinkPad.

Regarding Dell, I've a different opinion than Kangal, because I've been working with this brand for many years now.

Buying a Lenovo or a Dell is the insurance to easily find any spare parts on the web, espacially if you plan to buy a pre-owned computer. I'm not sure this is the case for other brands.

ExpressCache helps in very limited situations e.g. hibernation and very fast restore, it size should equal or be greater than RAM size. Look at SHDD specifications to know SSD part size. You should have enough for installing OS on it (10-12GB for Linux and 30-40GB for Windows). But of course it's better if you have two sata places on board, then you can have both SSD and HDD. For example you can remove CD drive and install HDD here.

In general If running Linux be sure the GFX is Intel especially if not playing games. Nvidia and ATI is pain in the ... atleast what I know of.

I would recommend Lenovo but latelly they have been less good , as already pointed out by MartinK above, so be carefully when choose exact machine if choose new Lenovo.

I Have a X230 at home and love it. It's weight is low with 13.5" and I choosed it with IPS display. The resolution is little to low this days 1366x768.

Then there came X240 do not buy X240. No physical left/right buttons and the touchpad is horrible). But now they have released X250 it's seems better I would probadly go for that myself if I needed new laptop.

On my work I have a very heavy http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops.../#tab-features And I don't like it. touchpad is same as X240.. Also the GFX is kinda PITA if using dual screen. The internal display resoution is to high IMHO but with IPS(good) If I remember correct display is 2400x something...

I also got it with dual GFX Nvidia+Intel but the closed Nvidia driver is crap when using it with dualscreen. It's some tweaking with GFX drivers working if using linux.

In general I recommend:

* do not choose to big screen it just hurt your eyes.

* dualscreen seems half broken in linux latelly but probadly a bit offtopic because I guess this is problematic whatever laptop you choose. And maybe you don't use ext display anyway so..

* If not gaming, cadding: Choose Intel GFX to avoid as much as possible problems with GFX.

* Personally I choose open GFX to make sure it works with nextgen display servers (means wayland)

* Do not choose less than 256 SSD or buy hybrid as some says in the thread.

* Choose a big battery so you can use it all day without recharge,

I can the closed driver is horrible.

TBH, the old ThinkPads seem interesting. But I can't find a reliable source for refurbished in Poland. The sellers are said to avoid the word as they can.

nvidia graphics are ok in linux, ati not yet released something usable afaik, but you can always use noveau

I'm glad you've touched on that. This is my pet peeve. Mobile phones had backlit keyboards (back in the day when they had keyboards) since day one, but finding a laptop with a backlit keyboard even now is a challenge.