The laptop I’ve used for years is a Gen 6 Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I bought it for the express purpose (at the time) of doing heavy duty data analysis and computational mathematics in my late undergraduate time. It was a beast; I frequently used it for Bayesian inference, a notoriously compute-heavy task.

It also aged pretty well; I’ve put several Linux distributions on it and used it for a variety of projects and tasks as my life has changed. Many memories were made with that machine. But alas, its age is starting to show. It has terrible battery life and a tendency to overheat, even when running a very lightweight Linux distribution. It’s almost bricked its filesystem a couple times. After several urgings of my wife, I finally decided to get a new machine.

But instead of buying new from the box store, I wanted to revive an old Thinkpad T410 that used to be my brother in law’s, and see if I could make it my daily driver. Why did I do this?

Fit

An aspect of beauty, according to Sir Roger Scruton, is the fitting of part to part. A man’s life should be beautiful; the different aspects of it should “fit” each other.

Simply put, that overpowered laptop doesn’t fit me anymore. When I was a math student up at 2am doing machine learning with my hair on fire, it worked for me. But now I’m a dad who checks email, does the household budget, writes a little code, and occasionally blogs. The only tasks I use my machine for now are editing text, storing simple files, and connecting to the internet. This little T410 does those things all perfectly well. It fits my life.

Most people get too caught up in trying to get the fastest machine their money can buy. Unless you do a lot of compute-intensive stuff like video rendering or gaming (lol get a life), you don’t need a high performance computer, especially if it’s just going to break in a few years. A humble old Thinkpad will serve you just fine.

Planning For Planned Obsolescence

Sadly, the design of modern electronics makes them nearly impossible to repair and maintain from a hardware standpoint. They are also designed to break after they exceed a certain lifetime. Swapping a drive or a battery on that X1 Carbon is an involved and risky task for an amateur, and it’s a task that’s going to need to be done eventually.

The same tasks on the T410 are easy to do; old Thinkpads were designed for long-term corporate use where they could easily be repaired by an IT department. The hard drive can be removed by taking out a single screw. The battery can be unlocked and removed with a simple click. Other things, like the screen and keyboard, can also be easily replaced.

When your T410 breaks or wears out, you can usually fix it. If you can’t fix it, no biggie; you might be able to just pop the drive into a “new” one and keep going. If that doesn’t work, you can get one on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. This one was a hand-me-down, so it was free.

When your X1 Carbon breaks or wears out, your only option is basically to get a new one at the box store. Beyond extra cost, that increasingly introduces a new set of problems.

Usability

The trend of modern electronics is towards reducing physical ports and sending signals through the air instead. My work laptop only has USB-C ports for everything. Maybe from a security perspective that’s a good thing, and it certainly makes the machine amenable to modern physical connection standards like USB-C Lightning, but it doesn’t make it very backwards-compatible with “older” forms of data transfer. Want to get some data off a hard drive over USB? Tough luck, buy an adapter. Need to use a mouse? You’ll need another adapter. Want to hook up an extra monitor? You’ll need a dock for that. Need to hardline into your router because your WiFi card fizzled out? Better use your phone to order that dock from Amazon! How convenient is it for Chinese electronics manufacturers that fancy new laptops need all these extra adapters and docks just to be usable! What’s the point of a laptop if it can’t do what you need it to do right where you are?

I like peripherals that can plug in without a dock, and I like storing my data on physical devices that I own, like flash drives. This T410 is perfect for that. It also has numerous ports for peripherals; plenty of USB-A ports, an RJ45 port for Ethernet, DisplayPort and VGA, SATA for hard drives, an audio jack, and a CD/DVD player. This thing was build for the days when your data was lived on physical objects in your home or workplace.

It has other features I like too. The power supply connects with a very durable feeling circular 12V DC jack, not a flimsy USB-C port that always feels like it will snap off if you accidentally put weight on it. It even has a physical switch to turn the WiFi card off, which is a nice option if you ever need to go dark.

The user experience is also surprisingly comfortable. The keyboard is great. The buttons for volume and power are responsive and clicky. The lid closes with a nice little click too. The screen is a comfortable size. The speakers still work well. Everything feels built to last, because it was.

It’s Breakable

One of the most stressful times of my life was when I leased a new car. What a terrible decision finacially and spiritually. I lived in a city, and was constantly worried about the car getting scratched up, damaged, or stolen. Driving a used car is so much nicer; it’s cheaper, and if you get a scratch or a dent in it, who cares?

That’s how I feel about this computer. As long as my data is backed up (which I do regularly), it’s just cheap hardware with no emotional attachment. If it gets a scratch or a ding, who cares? It’s an old machine anyway. If it gets ruined, no big deal, I’ll just get another one.

This is how material objects are supposed to be used. Obviously, we should steward the good things that God gives us, but only insofar as they are subservient to greater goods. Don’t make an idol out of your electronics.

Some Complaints

All that said, buying an old computer, like buying a used car, has drawbacks. For one, this computer is a bit sluggish, but I anticipated that. I don’t do anything that needs a lot of speed, and my operating system is pretty light, so I still have a lot of compute capacity to work with.

The battery life isn’t great. Maybe I’ll rig it up to run off a Milwaukee battery or something.

The WiFi card is pretty limited in bandwidth, since I only get a fraction of the network speed my other devices get. This can make streaming video pretty choppy, but I think using ethernet will fix that. It’s kind of nice; maybe if we all had less WiFi bandwidth, we would have better control over our content addictions.

Yea, it’s not the Best Thinkpad Ever™, but I don’t need that. Maybe a bit more limited machine is exactly what I need right now. Unlimited things and capabilities aren’t good for the human soul; sometimes it’s good to have less and slow down.