On the Old Laptop That Refuses to Die

Bought this ThinkPad in 2018

My ThinkPad X280, purchased in 2018, still runs. Seven years. The battery retains maybe 43% of its original capacity -- can't last 2 hours without the charger -- but plugged in, it's fine. The F5 key is a little stiff, but that's about it. (Occupational hazard of a job that involves a lot of refreshing.)

I use a MacBook at work. The ThinkPad is for personal stuff at home. Weekend blog posts, light side projects.

Every reason to buy a new one keeps evaporating

Every year I think "I'll get a new one this holiday season." Every year it ends with "but this one still works..."

Last Black Friday, I seriously considered the MacBook Air M3. Put it in the cart. 1,390,000 KRW (about $1,030). Right before clicking checkout, I turned on the ThinkPad. It worked fine. So I didn't buy it.

Whether that's rational or just stingy, I honestly can't tell.

It is slow though

I'll be honest: it's slow. VS Code takes 14 seconds to open. New MacBooks allegedly do it in 3. Open more than 15 Chrome tabs and the fan kicks in. Run Docker and the laptop becomes a hairdryer.

Strangely, I've adapted to the slowness. During the 14-second VS Code launch, I sip coffee. During builds, I stretch. Forced rest breaks, I tell myself. Self-rationalization at its finest.

Repair history

Three repairs in seven years. Swapped the SSD once -- upgraded from 256GB to 512GB. 43,000 KRW (about $32). Upgraded RAM from 8GB to 16GB. That cost more: 71,000 KRW ($53). And the charging port got loose, so I took it to Yongsan (Seoul's electronics district, kind of like a Korean Akihabara) for repair. 25,000 KRW ($19).

Total repair cost: 139,000 KRW. Less than a tenth of a new laptop. Every time I do this math, the conclusion is "it's still fine."

But isn't this hurting productivity

This one's hard to deny. npm install is probably 3x slower than on a new MacBook. Build times too. If time is money, I could calculate the cost of the slow laptop.

Roughly 8 minutes of build waiting per day, that's 160 minutes per month. Hourly rate conversion: about 53,000 KRW. That's 636,000 KRW per year. But would I actually have been working during those 8 minutes? Honestly, I'd probably have been zoning out or scrolling Twitter.

And so I fall deeper into the self-justification pit.

It's called attachment

After seven years, I'm attached. My hands fit the keyboard naturally. I'm so used to the TrackPoint (ThinkPad's signature red nub) that I can work without a mouse. A new laptop means rebuilding that muscle memory from scratch.

Plus, this is the laptop I built my first side project on. Wrote my first tech blog post on. Sentimental value is real. (Or maybe it's just an excuse for not wanting to spend money.)

Someday I'll have to let go

Can't use it forever. Windows 11 doesn't officially support this model, so security updates could cut off anytime. Installing Linux would extend its life, but that has limits too.

I'll probably buy a new laptop this year. Or maybe it'll be another "but it still works..." The fact that I'm writing this post on a 7-year-old ThinkPad kind of says it all.