X220: Budget Perfection
The Thinkpad x220 is an absolutely fantastic machine that is completely perfect in every relevant way for general purpose portable computing. Everyone should own one. Or sixteen.
Price
I’ve bought fully functional x220s for as cheap as $56 each (sold as a box of 11 of them) but even without hunting for bargains they are readily and regularly available for under $200. Replacement parts are readily available online for cheap, including extended capacity batteries.
Processing Power
The most commonly found configuration uses an Intel i5-3520m which is both old and slow by modern standards and yet it has no issue handling routine everyday tasks like having 75 firefox tabs spread across 12 windows or editing a spreadsheet that classifies dogs from best to also best but a little better.
Durability
You can find videos of people dumping actual buckets of water on these machines while they continue to run without issue. It probably won’t stop a bullet and you can definitely do dumb things to break it, but it was designed to hold up.
The Keyboard
Typing on this machine feels good in a way that is difficult to relate without using foofy words. The travel is long enough to allow you to make confident keystrokes while not hitting the hard limit at full velocity. Macbook keyboards are like hitting your head on the headboard as you lay down to rest. The x220 keyboard is like a pillow top mattress with a firm but compliant memory foam layer below. As the primary interface between your brain and the internet, the way a keyboard feels is important. Unlike a desktop machine, choosing a laptop means choosing a default keyboard. Choose the one that doesn’t feel like trying to tiptoe on type 2 gravel.
Modifications
To make a good x220 even better, a few things can be done that are mostly easy and cheap.
Essential
16GB ram (the maximum)
Quality SSD
USE LINUX - anyone can use Ubuntu, it will be fast and fantastic because it isn’t busy downloading automatic updates all day every day. I switched my mom to Ubuntu by telling her to just use it like her previous (windows) computer and call me if something doesn’t work. I haven’t had a support call in a year. You can use even better flavors of Linux if you are inclined, but with Ubuntu being as friendly as it is these days there are very few reasons to not run an open source OS of some kind.
Cool but more effort
Nitrocaster FHD mod board - solder a tiny meme-adorned circuit board to the motherboard to allow installing a 1920x1080 display that looks great and has more room for activities.
Disable IME - plenty of discussion online, neuter the intel backdoor on the processor. This is the newest Thinkpad you can do this modification on. Extensive discussion on doing this can be found online.
Coreboot - Run a lightweight open source BIOS to replace the proprietary BIOS/UEFI the machine shipped with.
