Best budget laptop in 2022? Comparing a new Dell Inspiron vs 2013 ThinkPad T530

I'm passionate about right to repair, and I'm also passionate about saving people money. The average consumer doesn't realize that a brand new budget laptop from 6 months ago that cost $300, is not as good as a $300 used laptop that cost $2600 a few years ago. So I made this video! I put a lot of effort into this one, so I hope you enjoy and help spread the word to your family and friends!
Used business class laptops will always be a better purchase than brand new consumer laptops. Help everyone you know save some money.

[kinghelp]

"I grew up poor as fuck, and I know the struggle of having to always buy the cheapest shit and the cheap shit never lasts"

I know this pain. Iearned hardware upgrading simply because of being poor and not being able to afford to learn anything beyond. Soldering was too expensive a hobby to learn despite how useful it may have been and thus I give advice to anyone I see that needs help or advise them to simply buy the cheapest model in terms of memory or ram and simply upgrade it by themselves or for a small fee instead of giving it to the manufacturer for a marked up high price.

[GingerZero]

Funny how my Uni made me buy a T530 back in 2012. It's still working and has now been put in service as my media PC plugged into my TV. It has served me super well. Great device! I really can't argue against your advice it legitimately is great!

Louis Rossmann brought me here.

[stevedullum]

Bought a T530 for $280 in 2019. Sat on it for a while, but then my HP desktop bit the dust so decided to try the Thinkpad as my primary home computer. Bought a 1TB SSD hard drive from Crucial, and added some RAM lying around at work for 14GB total. Also picked up a brand new dock for about $40 on eBay. All told probably spent about $400. Been using it every day for just over 3 years and it's been nearly flawless. It's fast. Boots up in about 15 seconds. I rip and burn DVDs with no issue, do light photo editing with no issue, play tunes, have bluetooth devices connected, and also a 27" Dell Ultrasharp monitor. Yep it's heavy, but I like that. Feels like a tank. The keyboard on the laptop is the best keyboard I've ever typed on. It's that good. If you've never typed on a Thinkpad keyboard, at least the older ones, you're missing out. Compared to the keyboard on my brand new Dell Latitude work laptop, it's no contest. I hope to get at least another 2-3 years with it. Then I'd probably look to get another used Thinkpad. I've used HP and Dell professional grade laptops at my jobs over the years (IT guy) and they feel like toys compared to the Thinkpads I've used. It's 10 years old and still kicking ass. Okay, so maybe can't handle newer games, but I'm not a big gamer. I currently am running Half-Life 2 and it's flawless.

[danandrei]

I still use my T430 as my daily driver laptop. I've done a lot of upgrades (and I'm still doing them lol) so it's definitely a passion project at this point and my opinion may be biased, but there's just something so nice and sturdy about it. It's been incredibly reliable all these years and shows no signs of slowing down. I've re-celled the battery pack recently so I get plenty of hours away from the wall when needed, even with the power-hungry i7. Also being able to use my laptop anywhere from the kitchen to outside in a light rain, knowing that it won't just randomly break (and if it does break I can repair it or get cheap replacement parts) makes it so great. New laptops have their advantages, sure, but as someone who used to work in a major electronics retailer, it used to drive me crazy how many people came in to buy the cheapest piece of junk laptop that would already qualify as ewaste, but they would never consider buying something used. Great video!

[trollerbladdering]

As somebody who has been working in the tech repair industry for nearly 20 years, I back EVERYTHING you said 100%. I usually tell people to think of every $100 you spend on a laptop to be one year of usage. I typically recommend they spend $500-$600 on a used Thinkpad over the same amount on a new Dell or HP. Lately I have been recommending the T14 and T15 models to a lot of people. What you get is just exponentially better for your money.

[bellavega]

I came here looking for tech advice and stayed for the low key humorous remarks and editing.

Subscribed

[DanileSawn]

In 2013 I bought a laptop (I think it was a Dell funnily enough) for like $400, it was literally like $100 less than the paycheck I just got for working 80 hours. I was so excited, but the thing slowed down in like a month, and I could never figure out how to fix it, or afford to get it fixed

I'm starting to learn a lot more about computers, and I wish someone like you was around in 2013 to help poor people like me who just wanted to learn about a world that always seemed closed off to them. Your vids are funny, informative, and based af, super glad I found your channel!

[sharktastica]

Louis Rossmann brought me here! I honestly still use a W530 (ie, T530 with a Quadro) for a lot of my work and it does the job fine. When I need to do anything more intensive, I'm usually in one place so I can just use a desktop anyway. From my work, I also have gaming laptop as my work laptop, but its terrific thermal throttling and heat, uncomfortable fan noise and bad keyboard are such a turn off, that I'd rather keep using the less powerful W530 for convenience and experience. I got the W530 £300-ish used in early 2019 IIRC, which is of course a lot more than $250 when converted to USD but it already came with a quad-core i7, Quadro K2000M, an SSD, 16GB RAM and 1920x1080 display so couldn't complain much. At least back in 2019, this was still a lot better than buying new (and I can imagine it still is). Over time, I also maxed the RAM and added in a hard drive and caddy into the optical drive bay as well. The Quadro is definitely showing its age now, but it's good enough that I can still play BF4 on it (if I really wanted to) and it does most of my graphical needs competently. At most, I only plan to upgrade in a few years when second-hand P70/P17 series machines are more also affordable. Anywho, I'm very happy with this machine still!

[wirthiwirth]

As someone who bought and custom upgraded a used T440p for the exact same reason a few years back, I totally agree with this video. Ever since I always recommend older used ThinkPads. They just don't make them like they used to

[letitrest]

You are absolutely correct my friend ! My son who's been a "techy" with an engineering degree from Georgia Tech, and who does computer based technology work for Amazon recommended to me when I was looking for a laptop to take with me wherever I go, that I buy the T530 Think Pad. That was in 2013, and I haven't regretted it one bit. I did install a solid state drive, and loaded it with as much ram as I could, several years ago. I'm typing on it right now This machine has been a tank. I'm a retired aircraft mechanic, and I spend a lot of free time traveling on my motorcycle. You can imagine the atmosphere of my T530 being in my cycles top box storage compartment enduring literally thousands of miles of travel. It's not riding in a Cadillac limo okay ? It's being shaken, and bounced, and has endured that for at least 30, 000 miles. That's my estimate, roughly, and it may be more. My motorcycle, which is a 2013 Yamaha FJR1300a now has over 73, 000 miles on it, and often I leave my T530 in the top box, even when I'm not traveling. However when I long distance travel on my cycle, the laptop is always with me. I carry two extra batteries for the nights I camp, and want to have power available.
The bottom line is, this T530 is the M1 Abrams tank of laptops, and I'm going to be seriously sad when this one gives up it's ghost and I have to look for a replacement.
I'm actually questioning the wisdom of this post, as I'm afraid you folks reading this will buy up the remaining used stock of T530's.

[renegade]

Watching this on my T520 which also still kicks ass! I love the old keyboard design... Thanks for your video!

[SteelRatVT]

7:57 this hits so close home: "I know the struggle of having to always buy the cheapest shit and the cheap shit never lasts"

[pepo]

I did buy an T470S thinkpad for 250€ a couple of weeks ago.
I know you said that newer thinkpads are not as goog as the old ones, but I just love it.

Something like this, would cost 700€ easily if it happened to be brand new.

Your video had some effect.

[suki_shii]

ThinkPad T520 user here. it's 2024 and i'm using this 13 yr old laptop every day. it's no gaming machine, but for schoolwork and entertainment it's great. super upgradable, great keyboard, and has some pretty cool features that i wish were still on newer laptops

gonna be getting a W520 soon, for that extra GPU juice and more RAM capacity (T520 is 16GB max RAM, W520 is twice that)

[uncreative]

I got the Thinkpad for my 15th birthday f*cking awesome

[TonksTech]

This is very true out of all the lappys an old ThinkPad normally beats any new budget ones. So much so my kids will only be getting them and I'll also be showing them how to replace parts also

[davidbraun]

Because of this video I just bought one for 90 Euros, which included a docking station.

And great specs:

- Intel Core i5-3320M (3.3GHz)
- 1600x900 LCD
- 180GB SSD
- 16GB RAM

[davidruzzo]

I purchased a Lenovo T530 laptop several months ago for 75. dollars from ebay. It did not come with a hard drive or OS so I put in a 128gb mSATA card and a 128gb SSD. I loaded Linux Peppermint on the mSATA and use the SSD as storage. The condition of this refurbished laptop was just immaculate, almost like new. This business laptop is more robust and sturdy than any other consumer laptop I could find on the market today. These older laptops, even though they can run Windows, work exceptionally well with Linux. I'm so glad I didn't waste my money on the junk they sell at Best Buy, Walmart or Target!

[cjstout]

You're a tech hero. I appreciate your heart, humor, and contribution to the repair community.

[bruh-a-nator]

truly the greatest technician to ever live but seriously completely agree with you that newer budget stuff is just doomed to fail and that's just not right. thank you for opening my views to the world of used thinkpads. I actually have a t480s that I love it, I know its a filthy slim model but it still its like a little brother almost there but not quite IVE STILL GOT A SD SLOT THOUGH