2020 is just around the corner, and I have been messing with my Thinkpads again, as well as recommending, shopping for, and thinking carefully about Thinkpads in the coming year. For refrence, I have five Thinkpads of my own, a X1 Carbon (1st gen), X61, T61, X200 and X220. Of those, I only have daily driven the X1 and X220 for the previous year. These are the laptops I consider the limit for where to go shopping for Thinkpads. All the Core 2 Duos and 1st gen Intel Core devices are really starting to show their age in raw horsepower, as well as I/O capabilities. Other quality of life features are also missing, such as backlit keyboards, HDMI, Thunderbolt, USB 3.0+, full HD screens, and AC wifi. These going into 2020 are very noticible, as modern low cost devices often have some of these features at the same price as a used device. Even the great benefits of the old Thinkpads are hard to justify picking them up: better keyboard layout and typing experience, ability to neuter Intel Management Engine or Coreboot, better form factor, and availability. These older devices often do not have the battery life to keep up today (especially the older ultrabook processor models of X1s, etc). That doesn’t make these devices an automatic skip-over, but for similar prices what can you get in the Thinkpad line?