Refurbished Lenovos in general (and LinuxPusher.dk, in particular)

first off, "lenovo" is not the thing to get, it's just a subset of those - thinkpads. and even then, not all of those - just the T and P series. those are the "pro" lines, durable, dependable, expandable, serviceable, and widely used. so when corporations swap out their fleet for new models, they flood the market and hence can be had for cheap. multiple generations of the same model are cross-generation compatible, so they share the same peripherals, like docks, have interchangeable parts, like keyboards, displays, etc.

don't get used ideapads, thinkbooks, thinkpad E/L series, etc. those are either consumer-class models, have substandard features, are incompatible with each other, etc. don't get the yogas and S-suffix models, as you'll have a removed time servicing and/or upgrading those.

the whole point of getting something used, i.e. something that was touched and rubbed and spat all over, is if it's a) in good enough shape and b) you get it for cheap. you took care of of item A when going for thinkpad T-series and you're compromising on item B if you're going through an intermediary.

them dudes you mention are skinning you alive - 500 EUR for a T14 G1 is insane, it should be less than half of that. I also like how they're including none of the tech specs which just ups the ick factor.

what about the X line? particularly the x250 and x260? been thinking on getting one of those for a while because of their compact size
- I'm referring to semi-modern laptops you're most likely to get out of some corporation's dump of obsolete tech, but that's still usable - let's say T480 and onward. you can retrofit those with tons of RAM, cheap storage, they have capable quad-cores, etc. you can get something like a T14 Ryzen 6-core with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD in the $200 region, if you do everything yourself.
  everything before that is proper old tech, with predominantly anemic dual-cores (the ones you mention have single-channel RAM) and as such are a fun tinkering project, similar to the cyber deck projects - costs a lot of money, doesn't do much. on the other side of that fence are power-hungry haswells and friends that can't be wrangled into single-digit Watt/Hour territory however hard you tried.
  so if you get one of those for free, or close to it, and you have parts laying around, by all means - this is as close you can get to the bespoke PC build in the laptop world. but ixnay on bying a decade old laptop for work and/or education.
  edit:
  X260 vs T14, negligible size difference
you're absolutely right about that last point. my fully-spec'd t440p (4910mq, 16GB, 1080p IPS, t450p trackpad, backlit, quectel eg25-g for WWAN, the whole 9 yards) cost me less than $300 to build -- a similar machine from minifree would've cost nearly double that for worse specs. though, it should be noted, that that price gets you more than silicon -- they offer support over IRC, some sort of warranty, and i think other shit too.
That's super helpful - I didn't realize how big a difference there is between models. Thanks for clarifying. And yeah, by now I get the sense that LinuxPusher.dk is not for me. :)
E and L series ThinkPads tend to have upgradable ram. The build isn't as good but the upgradability is something to keep in mind.
As for the specs and the lack of mentioning them, I agree.

For our office we bought multiple ThinkPads from this shop luxnote-hannover.de/ It is from Hanover, Germany.

I like the prices! And europaweit lieferung - that works for me. :)

I checked LinuxPusher and I wouldn't say they're affordable. Their laptops are 2-3x the price of the same laptop running no OS on sites like eBay.de. For example, their cheapest T470 is 3000 krone, while the equivalent laptop on ebay is like 150 euro or 1120 krone.

I looked at a Thinkpad L14 G1, an elitebook 840 G5, and the dell 3060 Micro and it's the same. Consistently 2x and higher markup.

Is that markup worth a 2 year warranty?

You could literally buy a second device if the first one kicks the bucket and still be out ahead monetarily.

If you want to slowly start using linux and already have a pc, make a portable install on any flash drive (I like external ssds for this exact reason) you want, and boot it. (ideally set the RealTimeIsUniversal registry entry in windows so Linux and windows don't fuck up the bios time).

I have nothing to add here. I just want to change express how happy I am to be in a platform where we talk about Euros/Krona/whatever by default, and not USD.
The Earth is healing.
- Why would I talk about US prices/currency for a danish tech site?
  If someone is looking for tech in Europe, it doesn't make sense for me to use a US reference.
That's helpful, thanks. I'm guessing they charge a premium because they provide a service. I'm not afraid to tinker a bit, but my interest in Linux is not tinkering - it's to switch to a freer, more sustainable OS. So I'm curious about services that offer support.
For that reason I've also looked at Tuxedo computers, but I'm worried that I'm locking myself into another company's OS again (from Microsoft/Apple to Tuxedo) rather than having the freedom to choose my own distro. But I guess with support comes a price: less freedom.
Right now I'm deeply locked into the Apple ecosystem. Apple makes wonderful hardware and apps, but it's still a straitjacket, even if it's a designer straitjacket. 😀
- Checked out asahi? https://asahilinux.org/
- Tuxedo OS as far as i know is an optional distro they give preinstalled. You can buy them with no OS and install one yourself via usb it takes like 15 mins. This is true of any laptop with an unlocked bootloader (something like a mac can be done but its harder.)
I don't think it's necessarily worth it for anyone currently on Linux, but if they provide support and a warranty, it might be helpful for some folks who aren't that computer savvy, but still sick of Windows.

I bought a T5xx-Thinkpad from nbwn.de (=notebookswieneu.eu) many years ago. It was an extremely good purchase. They ship to the entire EU for free if your order is above 200€. They specialize in selling demonstration laptops, i.e. devices that companies tried out and then returned, so they are essentially new.

However, I highly recommend to wait for the Windows 10 EOL to really hit around winter time, because then thousands if not millions of used and unused laptops that are sorted out for not supporting Windows 11 will flood the market. (Even if you're aiming to buy a laptop so new that it will probably also support Windows 11, the flood of older devices could well bring down the prices for such newer devices also.)

Thanks for the link - and good tip about the timing!

The hardest part about getting Linux installed on a Lenovo was getting rid of Windows and its death-grip on the bootloader and the TPM.

Also, a few things, like drivers for keyboard backlight and fingerprint scanner never got working. If you just want to experiment and play, could always try Linux under VMWare Workstation (free for personal use) or boot off a thumbdrive.

Interesting - and yet I read about many folks installing Linux on thinkpads, and those laptops even being recommended for Linux. Is it just cause so many have worked on making Lenovo be able to handle Linux?
- Thinkpads have long had first tier linux support, in fact many models have shipped with linux for at least a decade (?), checking that is a really good way to be sure, but you're going to be fine with W, P, T, X lines, many enthusiasts make light work. They were deployed (might still be) to Red Hat kernel devs for a long time, which helps things along. Fingerprint drivers tend to be proprietary and hit or miss, but passwords work.
  Honestly learning to install linux yourself, and configure it to your liking, is actually, imo, a really important path to learning and you're likely doing yourself a disservice avoiding it. It's part of the avoidance of vendor lock in you want. Installation is surprisingly easy now, start with something simple, Mint is often recommended these days, find a decent, recent, youtube and you'll probably be up and running in an hour. Find the apps you need for your workflow (which will take considerably longer). Get familiar with the terminal. Best thing you can do after that is burn it down and install a new distro, leaving any mistakes behind, keeping your list of apps. Arch if you want to get really deep into it, or Fedora / Bazzite are good choices and very stable. Best of luck.
- Yeah from the little research I’ve done ThinkPads are it

I've had good luck with an X201, W520, and T480 - all thinkpads. Haven't tried any of the lower end lenovo models. I got my W520 new and my other ones off craigslist.

If you're looking to get a preinstalled OS and from a refurb vendor, an interesting option would be buying from libreboot. Debian/KDE by default or you can choose your own distro. Libreboot is a good cause, and sales funds the project. You'll have the most secure bios on the block.

I'd be very careful with setups that promise libre everything.
I don't know this particular brand, but it is quite common for projects like this to not include security and stability updates with the sole justification that "it's proprietary".
Your laptop's motherboard came with a fatal security issue, or is a time bomb waiting to implode on itself? Too bad, can't receive updates from HP, Lenovo, Dell or whatever because they are proprietary...
Just something to keep in mind.
- they only offer the one laptop, a T480. Not an HP, Dell, etc. Ongoing fixes to the UEFI and BIOS code are irrelevant as this has libreboot instead. That's like saying you're missing out on windows updates if you run linux.
  And anyway the T480 is at end of life:
  This product is no longer being actively supported by development (End of Development Support) and no further software updates will be provided.

Good deal if you can get them reshipped from Sweden or Finland is inrego.se .

I don't know about Lenovo in general, but the two things I like about Thinkpads in particular and why I generally stick to them are their keyboards and the mouse nub / joystick thingy (trackpoint).

~~Their keyboards~~ The keys on their keyboards are still curved to give you proper tactile feedback of where your fingers are relative to the keys (unlike the abominable flat square keyboards on many/most other manufacturers), and the trackpoint is a great way to use a mouse-like pointer without moving your hands from home position on the keyboard. It looks like some current models are doing away with the trackpoint, which I think is a terrible mistake.

I'm not sure if any manufacturers still have either of these features or both on their current laptops, but they're absolutely must have features for me.

Also, I usually buy used/refurbished Thinkpads cheap from ebay.