Second-Hand ThinkPad X61

Last Updated: December 19, 2024

A couple days ago I purchased another laptop, ThinkPad X61. Here is the neofetch.

Remarks
OS Void Linux Is not a fork and many utilities are written from scratch. Therefore fun to use
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo Slow but tolerable for text-based contents. 720P video streaming is not bad either
RAM 8 GB The maximum that the CPU supports. 8 GB used to be plenty 10 years ago, and it still is for civilized computing
Desktop Env Xfce GNOME (newer versions) or KDE can break this machine at any point
Window Manager i3 A tiling window manager to fully utilize the arguably not-desktop-friendly screen
Screen 1024x768 TN Panel Since I almost exclusively work on stuff that are either texts or PDFs, it’s fine
Table. 1: Specifications

Since it has Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 64-bit instruction set, it can run most of the existing operating systems, even Windows 11 but some tweaks are required. I struggled choosing the GNU/Linux distro, specifically Debian/MX Linux and Void Linux. As explained in Table 1, I chose Void Linux because it has good support for older hardware and because of its uniqueness.

This is basically my dream computer. It does not have the IBM branding but it’s basically the same design as previous IBM ThinkPads, it does not have a touchpad and it features a 4:3 aspect ratio display. If you ask me what’s so good about them, well actually I can’t give you a convincing answer. I just love the interactions and the aesthetics. Many people say iPhones (4) are the most revolutionary electronic devices in the world, but I think differently. The right answer can be none other than ThinkPads.

More photos

  1. A side
  2. B and C sides

I chose not to display all the photos at once because they can be very large as I don’t bother to manually tune their widths.