Which laptop and distro would you recommend for a Linux newb (someone who has never used Linux)? Preferably hardware with decent battery life and isn’t horribly slow.
Update: Walked away with this Dell Inspiron i5 3520 with Best Buy’s black friday deal: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sku/6553026.p
What’s the best recent “old” thinkpad you can recommend?
Typically go for the model coming off business leases, with the slim T model or 13" X model being very popular and well built. The X1 series tends to have cooling issues, so I’d avoid them without a lot of research into the specific model. The P series tends to get run harder, so I’d be a bit hesitant there as well. It seems a lot of companies extended to a 4 or even 5 year lifecycle, so normally I’d be saying to start looking for the T14s g1, of which the AMD models started being very good. But you’d probably be looking more towards the T480s and T490s, still, and I think you’ll probably want to stick with Intel for those. But if you find a good deal on a T14s, particular the AMD model, I’d say jump on it.
In recent models, target the 400nit low power IPS screens. Avoid the 500nit privacy guard screen, which basically behaves like a TN panel as far as viewing angles. The 300nit screen has color reproduction and uniformity issues, but I do have one on my work T14s g3, and it’s not horrible. I have the 400nit on my P14s g4, and it is substantially better.
Thinkpads aren’t as upgradable as they used to be, so be mindful of the RAM in particular.