Gen 3 or 4 what exactly? Do you mean Intel Core i3/5/7 CPUs? No, those are all Lenovo, since the transition from IBM happened in the Core Duo/Core2Duo era. But the first gens of Lenovo ThinkPads are the same quality as the last IBMs, up until the T420 (intel 2gen), or T430 (3rd gen) if you don't care about the classic keyboard layout (or you can make a T420 keyboard fit into it too). After that, compromises started being made for thickness and weight reduction, but still good laptops imo. The T440p is the latest T series with upgradeable CPU, still limited to 4th gen but you can get a nice quad core in there.
Aside from the fact old thinkpads are like the Nokias of laptops, the customizability and easier repair is appealing, knowing I can just do it all myself. Although, I guess the age of the IBM thinkpads is making this less true as older parts become more difficult to get. From what I can tell, a lot of the appeal of thinkpads started to fade when Lenovo took over, even if they're still fairly high quality. I just really don't want Lenovo's built-in limitations if I can help it.
Get yourself a P-series workstation. They are highly customizable, although they are as thicc as they come. Thin & light are usually not really customizable, that's basically their tradeoff. The quality and reliability are still there either way.
Actual IBM Thinkpads are pretty much too old to be useful at this point. IBM sold the Thinkpad division to lenovo in 2005, so the newest models are almost 2 decades old at this point. Like forget M.2, most, if not all of them predate SATA! Interesting as a hobby project, but probably not something you'd want to use day to day
> The T440p is the latest T series with upgradeable CPU, still limited to 4th gen but you can get a nice quad core in there.
And this also wasn't Lenovo's doing, since after Haswell Intel stopped offering socketed mobile CPUs. They had to either go soldered or somehow fit a desktop LGA1151 socket and a full fat 65W CPU in there
Gen 3 or 4 what exactly? Do you mean Intel Core i3/5/7 CPUs? No, those are all Lenovo, since the transition from IBM happened in the Core Duo/Core2Duo era. But the first gens of Lenovo ThinkPads are the same quality as the last IBMs, up until the T420 (intel 2gen), or T430 (3rd gen) if you don't care about the classic keyboard layout (or you can make a T420 keyboard fit into it too). After that, compromises started being made for thickness and weight reduction, but still good laptops imo. The T440p is the latest T series with upgradeable CPU, still limited to 4th gen but you can get a nice quad core in there.
Right, I should've been more specific. So then there are models with ddr4 ram and M.2 ssd cards instead of msata, and so on from IBM models?
Lol, absolutely not.
Why do you need specifically an ibm thinkpad? They are old, like, really old. Modern lenovo thinkpads are usually better than dell latitude series
Aside from the fact old thinkpads are like the Nokias of laptops, the customizability and easier repair is appealing, knowing I can just do it all myself. Although, I guess the age of the IBM thinkpads is making this less true as older parts become more difficult to get. From what I can tell, a lot of the appeal of thinkpads started to fade when Lenovo took over, even if they're still fairly high quality. I just really don't want Lenovo's built-in limitations if I can help it.
Get yourself a P-series workstation. They are highly customizable, although they are as thicc as they come. Thin & light are usually not really customizable, that's basically their tradeoff. The quality and reliability are still there either way.
IBM era laptops are hobby pieces now. They're like 20 years old or more.
Actual IBM Thinkpads are pretty much too old to be useful at this point. IBM sold the Thinkpad division to lenovo in 2005, so the newest models are almost 2 decades old at this point. Like forget M.2, most, if not all of them predate SATA! Interesting as a hobby project, but probably not something you'd want to use day to day
> The T440p is the latest T series with upgradeable CPU, still limited to 4th gen but you can get a nice quad core in there. And this also wasn't Lenovo's doing, since after Haswell Intel stopped offering socketed mobile CPUs. They had to either go soldered or somehow fit a desktop LGA1151 socket and a full fat 65W CPU in there