Lenovo X250: what are the advantages of upgrading to a new laptop?

[EagleOfLight]

Hi,

i am facing a dilemma: my Lenovo X250 has served me really well over the past 5 years and it still works flawlessly. I run it with Ubuntu and I'm overall satisfied with the machine. It suffered from thermal issues but replacing the thermal paste did wonders. I still use it on the road and the battery still holds a reasonable couple of hours of office use. These are its specs:

https://www.insight.com/en_US/shop/product/20CM002XUS/LENOVO/20CM002XUS/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X250-20CM---12.5"---Core-i5-5200U---8-GB-RAM---500-GB-HDD/

 

questions:

- is the hardware so outdated as friends persuading me to buy a Mac make me believe?

- what would i notice if i switch to a newer laptop? I became disciplined closing browser tabs for instance, so even having 32GB of ram in my view is a bit pointless.

- does it make sense to oversize the cpu (think i9 for example) with the objective to delay the upgrade to a new machine by at least 10 years?

- are there good reasons to switch back to Windows or MacOS?

 

Very curious about your opinions. So far I always chose what I could afford with the "keep it till it blows up mentality", however turning a professional might allow me different choices or behaviors.

 

Last but not least, which device would you suggest?

 

---Edit

I only have 128GB ssd. No other hard drive.

[panzersharkcat]

It depends on what your workload is. You can get a better display, I suppose. A lot of old ThinkPads had not-so-great displays. Newer ones are also going to be lighter, though I didn't mind the chunkiness of my X230. If I wanted to get something in the same size category and didn't care about budget, I would go for a ThinkPad X13 with a Ryzen 7 4750U. 8 cores and 16 threads would be enough to last me a very long time, though I don't have the option of upgrading RAM down the line.

[ahuckphin]

with a newer laptop, you can expect a

• chassis made out of a different material
• a lighter laptop due to more power efficient chips, battery technology and chassis material used
• longer battery life
• better screen 
• newer i/o ports  

[EagleOfLight]

On 10/10/2020 at 6:01 PM, panzersharkcat said:

It depends on what your workload is. You can get a better display, I suppose. A lot of old ThinkPads had not-so-great displays. Newer ones are also going to be lighter, though I didn't mind the chunkiness of my X230. If I wanted to get something in the same size category and didn't care about budget, I would go for a ThinkPad X13 with a Ryzen 7 4750U. 8 cores and 16 threads would be enough to last me a very long time, though I don't have the option of upgrading RAM down the line.

Do you mind quantifying the "very long time"? I'm curious about the thinking behind it! I also very much dislike soldered RAM!

9 hours ago, bindydad123 said:

with a newer laptop, you can expect a

• chassis made out of a different material
• a lighter laptop due to more power efficient chips, battery technology and chassis material used
• longer battery life
• better screen 
• newer i/o ports  

Better screen might be one of the factor pushing me towards the new machine, yet are newer i/o ports necessarily a good thing?

[panzersharkcat]

23 minutes ago, EagleOfLight said:

Do you mind quantifying the "very long time"? I'm curious about the thinking behind it! I also very much dislike soldered RAM!

Better screen might be one of the factor pushing me towards the new machine, yet are newer i/o ports necessarily a good thing?

If I wanted to keep it for five+ years, I probably could and do just fine. Again, it depends on your workload. I was able to use a dual-core X230 just fine for work since it was just basic office stuff. As far as newer I/I ports, can save you from having to buy adapters if you have newer things. Again, with my X230 example, I had to use an Mini-DisplayPort to HDMI adapter to connect it to an external monitor. I did not with my X1 Extreme or P53. USB-C and ThunderBolt is also really useful.