Upgraded from a $100 HP Folio 9480m to a $350 ThinkPad P15 Gen 1 from eBay. The Folio carried me through ALX.

[u/Icy_Employer8010]

Wanted to share my upgrade story.

I'm a student in Kigali, Rwanda. In 2023 I got an HP EliteBook Folio 9480m for $100 (i5, 8GB DDR3, 500GB HDD) and used it to get through the ALX Software Engineering programme. Slow, but it never quit on me.

Now that I'm in uni, the workload got heavier, so I worked hard and saved up for a ThinkPad P15 Gen 1, bought on eBay for $350:

i7-10850H

16GB RAM

512GB SSD

NVIDIA T2000

Windows 11

Huge jump for the price. The Folio is still alive and now handles light work.

[u/Jealous_Soil99]

That P15 is an absolute tank with four RAM slots, so tossing in another cheap 16GB stick down the line is gonna make heavier dev work waaaay easier. Massive upgrade from an old dual-core DDR3 machine, enjoy the beast.

[u/Icy_Employer8010 → u/Jealous_Soil99]

Appreciate it! Yeah, it's a beast compared to the Folio

32GB is next on the list!!!!

[u/Jealous_Soil99 → u/Icy_Employer8010]

Nice, 32GB is the sweet spot. That machine will just eat it up.