Advice on an affordable but modern 15 inch Thinkpad

[devinfriday]

Hi, i want to buy a new laptop for my dad. He need something to browse the web and listen to music. He has a 15 inch HP DV6 based on Pentium (C2D version) which is limited to 4Gb of Ram.
The laptop must have at least DDR3 ram, SATA3 for an SSD and 15 inch display. I would like to remain in the Thinkpad space, the most important is price, don't want to spend more than 90€-100€. I was thinking of the E or L series, but i don't know them much.
Thanks in advance.
Gabs.

[axur-delmeria]

A quick look at ebay.it shows this T540p https://www.ebay.it/itm/256482864764

Good enough? Or still too old?

[MisterB]

I'm pretty happy with an i5 T580. There are higher spec models but this one is fast enough for what I'm doing with it. Prices on eBay rarely go above $300 and that's usually for the 4k or touch screen models. I paid around $100 with shipping and taxes for one without an OS. Refurbished ones with Windows 10 or 11 are usually in the $200 to $300 range.

[kfzhu1229]

Hi, i want to buy a new laptop for my dad. He need something to browse the web and listen to music. He has a 15 inch HP DV6 based on Pentium (C2D version) which is limited to 4Gb of Ram.
The laptop must have at least DDR3 ram, SATA3 for an SSD and 15 inch display. I would like to remain in the Thinkpad space, the most important is price, don't want to spend more than 90€-100€. I was thinking of the E or L series, but i don't know them much.
Thanks in advance.
Gabs.

The Pavilion dv6-1000 series (with glossy finish everywhere) are Core 2 duo 16.0" laptops and support up to 8GB of RAM - if you can afford the 4GB DDR2 sticks. They are actually built much better than both the dv6000 brittle mess that came before and the hollow ones that came after in the dv6-4000 and later refresh
How modern is modern going to be for you though? AFAIK with Italy prices and high tariffs it'll be very difficult for you to find even an ivy bridge thinkpad for 100 euros

[ZaZ]

I was thinking of the E or L series

That would be my choice, but older E series don't offer backlit keyboards if you want that feature. Most of the notebooks released when Kaby Lake hit the store shelves and for a few more years after will come with similar performance, but if you can find a notebook with an AMD Ryzen Zen2 CPU that will give a significant boost in processing power, though I don't if €100 gets you there unless you get lucky. The E or the L offers you the best value. I guess it depends on whether you care about the backlight.

[devinfriday]

Hi, i want to buy a new laptop for my dad. He need something to browse the web and listen to music. He has a 15 inch HP DV6 based on Pentium (C2D version) which is limited to 4Gb of Ram.
The laptop must have at least DDR3 ram, SATA3 for an SSD and 15 inch display. I would like to remain in the Thinkpad space, the most important is price, don't want to spend more than 90€-100€. I was thinking of the E or L series, but i don't know them much.
Thanks in advance.
Gabs.

The Pavilion dv6-1000 series (with glossy finish everywhere) are Core 2 duo 16.0" laptops and support up to 8GB of RAM - if you can afford the 4GB DDR2 sticks. They are actually built much better than both the dv6000 brittle mess that came before and the hollow ones that came after in the dv6-4000 and later refresh
How modern is modern going to be for you though? AFAIK with Italy prices and high tariffs it'll be very difficult for you to find even an ivy bridge thinkpad for 100 euros

I have sold an 8gb DDR2 kit because I thought the laptop itself it was too old to spend in upgrades. I was thinking more about an Haswell to start with, then i am able to upgrade it with some spares i have.

[devinfriday]

I was thinking of the E or L series

That would be my choice, but older E series don't offer backlit keyboards if you want that feature. Most of the notebooks released when Kaby Lake hit the store shelves and for a few more years after will come with similar performance, but if you can find a notebook with an AMD Ryzen Zen2 CPU that will give a significant boost in processing power, though I don't if €100 gets you there unless you get lucky. The E or the L offers you the best value. I guess it depends on whether you care about the backlight.

Backlight isn't required. Do you think an Haswell at least could be in the range with E/L models?

[TPFanatic]

Haswell will be massive speed upgrade over Core 2. My father who watches facebook too much went from core 2 to Ivy Bridge (generation before Haswell) and he is satisfied. Even Sandy Bridge would have met expectations. My opinion is 8GB RAM is still sufficient but ddr3 is so cheap maximizing the capacity is fine.

Only problem with the Haswell thinkpads is they don’t have buttons for trackpoint or touchpad. If your father is a mouse user this is irrelevant.

[ZaZ]

Upgrading to a dual core Haswell, which is what you'll find in a E or L series ThinkPad, will not offer much of a boost in performance over an older dual core CPU. For that I'd suggest moving up a to a quad core. Here in the US you can probably find a decent E580 or L580 for $100 with some patience, but I don't know how it works in Italy.

[TPFanatic]

They’re still a good bit faster than Core 2, graphics and SATA throughput are better as well for a comprehensively faster experience. Even arrandale felt a good but snappier than my T500 back when that was my primary machine (and going further back, T500 left T42p in the dust).

https://technical.city/fr/cpu/Core-2-Du ... e-i5-4300M

[ZaZ]

True, but I don't know that upgrading from a CPU that's 15 years old to one that's 10 years old is a significant boost, particularly for someone who is unlikely to upgrade often. If the budget is tight, it may be worth considering. If you'd consider more notebook it'll allow to cast wide net, which generally leads to paying less.

[TPFanatic]

the core 2s are a lot slower at web browsing, and the machine to be replaced is not even a core 2 but a slowed down pentium. the graphics are assuredly bad.

i would look at dual core sandy bridge as the oldest generation still pleasant for web browsing. i did very well with i5 2520m T420 which i used between end of 2019 through summer 22 when i replaced it with x330. I did a lot of microsoft office work, powerpoint, h264 video rendering, and google docs on t420 with no perceivable disadvantages. i was only let down by bad graphics acceleration by the hd3000 for browser games like Town Of Salem. Conversely my side laptop i5 3320m t430 with hd4000 had no issue with town of salem, hd4000 is a massive upgrade.

i would still happily use t420 as my travel pc if I didn’t have the x330, which is just better, altho i miss having a dvd drive. My friends do a lot of music organizing with CDs and the T420 could chip in, the x330 is lame. and for home use i favor p71 or unironically t60 because of the bigger screen.

[axur-delmeria]

True, but I don't know that upgrading from a CPU that's 15 years old to one that's 10 years old is a significant boost, particularly for someone who is unlikely to upgrade often.

The Core i series was a significant speedup from the Core 2 that preceded it. For example: a Core 2 Quad Q9100 (from 2008) can barely keep up with a dual-core i5 3520M (from 2012), and gets slaughtered by a quad-core i7 3840QM (also 2012).