by Steve Endow
[This blog post was 100% human written. None of this post was drafted, written, or edited by an AI.]
In September 2020, I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 laptop. For $3,271.
It was a massive waste of money. Huge mistake.
This was back in the heyday of using Docker and BcContainerHelper for Business Central AL development. The conversation at the time was that a powerful laptop would allow a BC AL developer to run Docker Desktop locally, allowing the dev to write code and test PTEs directly on the laptop. And there was even a belief that "I can develop when I'm on the train, even if I don't have internet access!". (I learned this last one wasn't really possible, because there were so many apps and services constantly calling for internet access.)
The laptop was absurdly expensive. It was very heavy. The 170W power adapter alone weighed a full pound. It was very large and cumbersome, barely fitting in my backpack, and impractical to use on a flight. And the battery life was terrible. I hated using the laptop.
After that experience, I was on a mission to find a better solution. A much cheaper solution.
Enter eBay. Turns out there are truckloads of used Lenovo ThinkPads for sale on eBay.
But isn't it risky to buy a computer on eBay?
Nope, not at all. Just search for Lenovo ThinkPad or ThinkCentre, and you'll find quite a few sellers that refurbish corporate computers and have thousands of reviews. Some of the ThinkPads I've purchased are literally like new. 4 years old, but in perfect condition. And some are still under Lenovo Premier Support warranty.
(Yes, you can also find lots of Dell corporate computers on eBay. Similar concept, but I happen to know Lenovo models, support, quirks, and parts, so I've stuck with Lenovo.)
I have now purchased over a dozen ThinkPads from seller "ItsWorthMore" on eBay, who have sold over 716,000 items on eBay and have over 80,000 positive reviews. I've also purchased many other Lenovo computers from several other eBay sellers, and have not had any problems. I have received 2 or 3 that have had small hardware issues, but the sellers accepted the return with no questions asked. (Make sure to read the listing carefully, verify power supply is included, and check the return policy.)
That's how I got into buying used computers on eBay and I have now saved tens of thousands of dollars on laptops for the ERP Center of Excellence in El Salvador.
So then I started to wonder: What about desktop computers? Or servers? Or...since I have some of the highest electricity costs in the US, what about low power Tiny PCs that I can use as servers or workstations?
And that's how I found the Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny PC line up. There are dozens of them available on eBay at just about any price point. These tiny PCs only use 4-8 watts at idle, run cool, and are so small that I can have a stack of 6 of them in one quarter of the space required for a full size PC case. They are basically laptop system boards in a small metal box--without the display or keyboard.
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| ThinkCentre Stack |
I've been doing all of my BC development on an M910q that I bought on eBay for $99.99. I installed a 1TB NVMe SSD that I had laying around, and I bought 16GB of new RAM for $50.
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| M910q for $99.99 |
Yes, it's an old 7th gen CPU, but it's worked perfectly fine for all of my Business Central development. Office, OneDrive, VS Code, Visual Studio, Claude Code, etc. Even OpenWhispr with a local model runs well on it. The only time I notice its age is when a long background process, like a Windows update runs, causing the CPU to spike and the fan to turn on.
Since these ThinkCentre Tiny PCs are so inexpensive, I want to take one to my office in El Salvador to handle a few tasks there. Since I don't need anything fancy for El Salvador, I figured I would buy a newer model for myself, and take one of my older ones to El Salvador.
After learning about the newer models that have been released, I found this fully loaded M70q, with 10th gen i7, made in Feb 2022, for $375, plus tax.
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| Fully loaded for under $400 |
This will be my new Windows 11 development workstation. It will stay on 24x7, run Tailscale and RDP for remote access, and allow me to do development from anywhere in the world.
Postscript: I forgot to mention that the ThinkCentre Tiny PCs are absolutely amazing for Linux. Depending on what you are doing on Linux, 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD could be plenty. And Linux on a 6 year old ThinkCentre i7 is absolutely blazing fast. I moved my Pi-Hole server from a Raspberry Pi to a ThinkCentre, and I run OpenClaw on Ubuntu on my ThinkCentre stack as well.
Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP in Los Angeles. He works with Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies.
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