Jedediah Smith
Jul 28, 2017 · 1 min read

Most of my programming is done on a desktop so I only need the Laptop for occasional vacations.

I decided to go with the absolute least expensive option I could get. So I actually went with a refurbished business class laptop. (It was a toss up between the ThinkPad and the HP EliteBook). I spent around $250, after adding some new hardware, see below. It was one that was around $1500 new, but that was 5–7 years ago.

Even though it was crazy old it was top of the line at the time and CPU performance hasn’t really improved much since then. Also because it was a business laptop it wasn’t used as much as a personal laptop and was solidly built.

It had a solid i5 processor even if a bit old. I upgraded the RAM with some DDR3 laptop RAM I had laying around and I replaced the HD with a 120gb SSD, it was less than the 256gb recommended in the article but as I find it to be plenty for the occasional trip or presentation.

The biggest limitations are that it doesn’t have a 1080p monitor and only about 2 hours of battery life. For the monitor, I take a portable USB monitor so I can actually do something :)