| From: William Park via talk <[email protected]>

| Following the current thread on "cheap small computers", I've been browsing
| again.  I have 11.5" chromebook and am looking for similarly small but decent
| laptop to run Linux on.  I looked at 15", 16", 17" laptops, but decided that
| even T450, that I already have, is too big.

It all depends on what you value.  Each of us is different.

You've been clear that you want small.

Do you care about:

- price?  (Probably not as much as I do.)

- battery run time?

- CPU power

- disk capacity, speed and upgradeability

- RAM size and upgradeability

- format: eg. 360 degree hinged clamshell, tablet with keyboard and 
  kickstand, conventional clamshell

| I've been eying ThinkPad 11e laptop, partly because Lenovo has been spamming
| me.  Is there any alternatives you know of or recommend?

Which "Gen"?  There are several different models.  Lenovo blew out ones 
with pre-Zen AMD processors which were terrible.

The one I see at lenovo.com seems overpriced to me.

https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad11e/thinkpad-yoga-11e-(5th-gen)/len101t0045

- $333.66.  Never pay attention to Lenovo's list prices!

- Pentium Silver N5030 processor (Atom micro-architecture)
  Probably OK if you value battery run-time; not if you want crunch.

- 8G DDR4 RAM (good for this price point); soldered (no upgrading)

- display:
  + 11.6" (good)
  + 1366 x 768 (unacceptable to me)
  + IPS (good)
  + 250 nits (not so great)
  + touch (I kind of like touch but it isn't very important in a notebook)

- disk: 128GB SSD m.2 2242

  + much better than eMMC

  + can be upgraded later but the physical size is not common

  + if you want to dual-boot Windows and Linux, 128 GB is large enough for 
    the OSes but only leaves you about 50GB for your data

- format: 360 degree clamshell ("Yoga").  I like the good old clamshell 
  form factor.  I don't find that a 360 degree hinge is a big advantage to 
  me.  It usually makes the device heavier.

- I often like ThinkPad brand stuff.  But this one is aimed at the 
  education market (k-12 students).  That may have affected some design 
  trade-off.

===================================

This looks like an excellent deal if you can replace ChromeOS with Linux.  
You can with some Chromebooks but not all.  Is 14" too large?

<https://forums.redflagdeals.com/lenovo-canada-thinkpad-c14-chromebook-14-c-intel-laptop-price-error-440-70-i5-1245u-8-gb-lpddr4x-4266mhz-256-gb-ssd-2615275/>

It is worth reading more than the first message in the thread if you are 
interested in buying one.  There is an option for a better display, for 
example.
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