My favourite laptop

Posts Tags RSS Feed What I’m reading Codeberg GitHub Mastodon YouTube E-Mail My favourite laptop 30 Oct 2026 | programming I’m not a big owner of things, but the best laptop I’ve ever owned is a roughed-up 2015 Thinkpad X250. For the flex, here it is running a GUI shell sat on top of the microkernel I’m currently working on (blog post about this incoming… eventually). Here’s a list of things that I think make it brilliant. I don’t want to pretend that any of these things are uniquely exemplary: far from it. It is the confluence of them, and not any one in particular, that makes me love using it.

文章标签、RSS 订阅、阅读内容、Codeberg、GitHub、Mastodon、YouTube、电子邮件。我最喜欢的笔记本电脑，2026 年 10 月 30 日 | 编程。我并不是一个拥有很多东西的人，但我拥有过的最好的笔记本电脑是一台饱经风霜的 2015 款 Thinkpad X250。为了炫耀一下，它现在运行着一个图形用户界面外壳，该外壳构建在我目前正在开发的微内核之上（关于此内容的博文……最终会发布）。以下是我认为它出色的原因列表。我不想假装这些特质中的任何一个有多么独特：远非如此。正是这些特质的汇聚，而非其中任何单一因素，让我爱上了使用它。

Size

It’s pretty tiny. Its form-factor fits snuggly into the footprint of an A4 piece of paper, so it sits alongside books and folders when placed in a small rucksack without risking damage. It weighs almost nothing too: even with the extra capacity battery, it’s only about 1.45 Kg. Light enough that you almost don’t notice it when travelling.

尺寸

它非常小巧。其外形尺寸刚好能放入 A4 纸的占地面积内，因此放在小背包里时，它可以与书籍和文件夹并排存放，而不会有损坏的风险。它的重量也几乎可以忽略不计：即使装上大容量电池，也只有约 1.45 公斤。轻便到你在旅行时几乎感觉不到它的存在。

Performance

Mine has an i5-5200U: 4 logical cores, maxing out at 2.7 GHz. I upgraded it to 8 GB of RAM a while back: more than enough for some light on-the-go programming. Even at full pelt, I’ve never heard the fan kicking up much of a fuss. Now that I think about it, I’m not even certain that it works.

性能

我的电脑配备了 i5-5200U 处理器：4 个逻辑核心，最高频率为 2.7 GHz。前段时间我将其内存升级到了 8 GB：对于一些轻量级的移动编程来说绰绰有余。即使在全速运转时，我也从未听过风扇发出多大的噪音。现在回想起来，我甚至不确定它是否还在工作。

Battery

The X250 has both an internal battery and an external battery slot. I’ve opted for the largest after-market external battery I could find. When doing casual work the laptop will easily survive for north of 10 hours without a charge, stretching to 12 hours if I’m careful.

电池

X250 同时拥有内置电池和外置电池插槽。我选择了所能找到的最大的售后外置电池。在进行日常工作时，这台笔记本电脑在不充电的情况下可以轻松续航超过 10 小时，如果小心使用，甚至可以延长到 12 小时。

Repairability

The X250 was quite popular and replacement parts retail very cheaply on ebay. It’s not the easiest to disassemble Thinkpad by any means but I can tear it apart entirely with the pocket phillips I keep on my keyring. I have previously replaced: The internal battery, The lid camera, The keyboard, The motherboard. Every time you open up a laptop you run the risk of damaging something important either via a slip of the hand or simply the accumulated toll of loosening and tightening dozens of tiny screw threads. Despite that, my X250 has proved remarkably resilient and has never sustained any major damage despite more than more than a dozen tear-downs.

可维修性

X250 曾经非常受欢迎，其替换零件在 eBay 上的零售价格非常便宜。它绝不是最容易拆解的 Thinkpad，但我可以用挂在钥匙扣上的袖珍十字螺丝刀将其完全拆开。我之前更换过：内置电池、屏幕摄像头、键盘、主板。每次拆开笔记本电脑，你都有可能因为手滑，或者仅仅是因为反复拧松和拧紧几十个微小螺纹所带来的累积损耗，而损坏重要部件。尽管如此，我的 X250 表现得非常坚固，在经过十几次拆解后从未遭受过任何重大损坏。

Keyboard

As with most Thinkpads, the keyboard feels lovely to use. When you spend a lot of time writing code the reliability and sensitivity of a keyboard starts to matter a lot. Coupled with my text editor, the experience of writing code on the thing is beautifully snappy.

键盘

和大多数 Thinkpad 一样，这款键盘用起来感觉很棒。当你花大量时间编写代码时，键盘的可靠性和灵敏度就变得非常重要。配合我的文本编辑器，在这台机器上编写代码的体验非常流畅快捷。

Operating System

I opted for Endeavour OS. In the usual Arch Linux tradition, it favours native package installs over sandboxed applications. As a result my install sits at around 30 GB. A 128 GB M.2 SSD raided from another second-hand machine is more than enough to cover that and everything I’m working on. I’ve slimmed down my systemd setup as much as possible and the thing boots from cold in about 8 seconds.

操作系统

我选择了 Endeavour OS。按照 Arch Linux 的传统，它更倾向于原生软件包安装，而不是沙盒应用程序。因此，我的安装占用空间约为 30 GB。从另一台二手机器上拆下来的 128 GB M.2 SSD 足以容纳这些内容以及我正在处理的所有工作。我已经尽可能精简了 systemd 设置，这台机器冷启动大约只需要 8 秒。

Cost

Here’s where the X250 beats out most competition. I bought mine second-hand for about £100 in 2018. They’ve only got cheaper since then. I’m not afraid to take it anywhere because it’s barely worth stealing and would be cheap to replace even if that were to happen. Its value is very much not in its on-paper specs and instead in how I use it.

成本

这就是 X250 胜过大多数竞争对手的地方。我是在 2018 年以大约 100 英镑的价格买的二手货。从那以后，它们的价格只会越来越便宜。我不怕把它带到任何地方，因为它几乎不值钱，即使被偷了，更换起来也很便宜。它的价值很大程度上不在于纸面参数，而在于我如何使用它。

Conclusion

I get a certain glee in keeping older or second-hand hardware running as a daily driver. It sounds silly, but it feels like a quiet revolt against bigger-faster-costlier consumption culture. Come the end times, this is the machine I’ll be riding it out with. Enter the tarpit 🤖 If you notice accessibility issues with this site, please let me know! © Joshua Barretto 🦭

结论

让旧的或二手的硬件作为日常主力机运行，让我感到一种特别的快乐。这听起来很傻，但感觉就像是对那种“更大、更快、更昂贵”的消费文化的一种无声反抗。如果末日来临，这将是我陪伴我度过难关的机器。进入焦油坑 🤖 如果您发现本网站有无障碍访问问题，请告诉我！© Joshua Barretto 🦭