[someoneelse9]

A 2009 thinkpad is rather capable of being a daily driver for most people. Saying otherwise, you're only contributing to the growing problem of ewaste.

Even the T60 offers a decent performance if your usecase is browsing the web, mail and other simple tasks.

The FSF might be wrong in some aspects but there's no real alternative to Libreboot. The Framework laptop is not free software friendly. Even if it was corebooted, it would require many proprietary blobs and it's highly unlikely, if not impossible, that they will be ever able to remove the Intel ME.

There are other options that are nearer to be completely free (as in freedom) hardware, eg the Pinebook Pro. I'm unsure if there are any proprietary blobs required to boot it tho, but the lack of Intel ME makes it a much better candidate for a new generation of 'libre' hardware.

[marcan_42]

That 2009 ThinkPad that the FSF certified is running proprietary blobs in updatable microcontrollers connected to the LPC bus which have full access to RAM and to take over the OS. Blobs which you can't audit, modify, sandbox, nor verify are the correct intended version.

I'd rather buy an M1; sure, it runs a pile of blobs, but at least I know those blobs are there and they're all sandboxed behind IOMMUs and cannot take over or compromise my OS.

[na85]

>Even the T60 offers a decent performance if your usecase is browsing the web,

I actually own a T60 and this is not true, for any reasonable definition of "decent".

The web is a horrid wasteland of poor performance JavaScript.

Forget running any Electron apps (a necessity it seems in this day of Zoom and MS Teams).

[YEwSdObPQT]

That hardware is 13 years old now and laptops tend to start falling apart and spares become difficult to source.

I have a Dell E6410 laptop. Which is really easy to repair and built like a tank. Keyboard has started dying and there are no replacement keyboards on ebay that are UK. You are asking people to use things that are quite out of date and may not be easily repairable.

I've got desktop machines from 2007 that I've had to replace the motherboard (wasn't worth it really) because capacitors had started bulging (and it was a board from a well known manufacturer). It probably more capable than the machines you mention but it was unstable as the parts were literally disintegrating.

> Even the T60 offers a decent performance if your usecase is browsing the web, mail and other simple tasks.

I really get annoyed by this. "If your tasks are restricted to a very small subset of what I think a basic user actually might want to use your computer for this will be okay". What happens when someone needs to use more modern software (even for one off thing like a job interview over a video conference), or use a particular site for taxes or whatever that needs a more modern hardware. They are screwed.

I have an Amiga 1200 with an accelerator card and technically I can use the web, check mail, chat (IRC basically) and do 85% of what I do online. But for the other 15% it is a total non-option and that other 15% might be what pays my bills.