Happy holidays with X220

It's Christmas 2018 and -10°C outside. Been working with my second hand thinkpad X220 now and I have to say it's amazing machine. From 2011/2012 we get ultimate Linux laptop with i5 and keyboard beyond anything other.

I swapped HDD to 256 GB SSD and plugged in additional 4GB RAM module to make total 8GB available for my Debian 9.6. During these times, I've seen all those 1-2k€ laptops at store but none of them are at this level of comfort and functionality. And now comes the best part, this beauty was less than 200 € and it's A+ grade second hand unit from all aspects. Even battery from 2012 holds charge pretty well, even I am ready to replace that when needed.

Cleaning up and backup strategy

Most useful feature on my CF-54 is removable hard drive bay. It takes any 2.5" SATA drive and makes it breeze to upgrade and backup my work. As an developer and traveling dev, I cannot take all my work with me all the time and especially this turns my favorite CF-54 valuable tool.

I have two HD trays, which I rotate based on my work situation and travels I am taking. These serve also on update situations, since I just swap SDD out and archive it and buy new to install things from scratch.

By doing this, I have pile of SSD's archived with date and fully working environment - compilers, tools and probably some specific tweaks on my Linux. I have found this solution better, when I might need to return to some old project and deliver something on that. Since SSD prices are dropping, I believe this is pretty good backup strategy as well. Of course, I do run off site backups to USB HD's and USB sticks, but hardly any cloud based.

All I wish from Panasonic, please deliver CF-54 with i7, upto 32/64 GB RAM and couple of NVME bays together with decent Linux strategy (like Dell's project Sputnik). There are tons of professionals working with your gear and Linux.