yeah, i’ve only just recently gotten involved in older thinkpads, and they certainly live up the reputation. A lot of them even have some pretty unusual features, which is highly welcome. The t480 battery swapping for instance.
Personally im not too big on spending lots of money, i just hate spending obscene amounts of money on things where something cheaper and more interesting will do what i want. Though i dont mind spending money on things when the investment is clearly there either.
If i had the money to spend, and i was going to run the ever living hell out of one, i would definitely be buying a framework. Otherwise i’d probably buy an old thinkpad, they’re cheap due to the volumes of them that were sold to businesses.
Though it is also worth noting, a few OEMs now are doing similar things to framework, i know HP is, i want to say dell is? Dont quote me on it. But there are more things appearing in the market, that are bringing repair-ability back, which is good. Though im sure framework is still going to have a better community around it, especially if you like linux. That’s the other reason thinkpads are particularly popular, they’re out there, and lots of people have them, and lots of people use them. There’s tons of information on them, from thinkwiki, to the thinkpad community forum, and reddit of course.
I wish you luck in your adventures, and perhaps some fun as well. (maybe pick up an older thinkpad just for the hell of it, give you something to work on as a side project) oh and if you do get into thinkpads, and you want some knowledge on the t/w 520 and possibly 420 series, as well as some of the later models, feel free to hit me up, i have some pretty good resources under my belt.