Hey, everyone!
I’ve decided it’s time to get a new laptop, as the screen is cracked, black in major areas(incident at the airport:[ ), battery is drained(need to keep it plugged in, or it dies instantly), the arrow keys don’t function, and they’re missing. Haha, I can’t believe it has survived this long. Any one else have/had something similar?
I’m thinking about getting a ThinkPad, as they’re cheap. I’m a little worried that they might be too cheap, but cheap is a must right now. I’d love to hear your thoughts on ThinkPads. Should I purchase one or will I regret spending the money?
Thanks, fellow campers!
Note: thought I’d add that I’ve used this laptop for six years, with daily, extensive use. It kinda hurts to see it in such bad shape.
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 11e that I got for a couple hundred bucks. I’m not a fan of how small the screen is (for any serious usage I plug in an external), but it works well and the thing is built to be fairly indestructible which it sounds like maybe you need 
.
It looks good, and it’s definitely small 
. When do you have difficulties due to the screen? Like, when is it time to plug in an external?
Well… everything was fine until I flew for the first time, alone. I put my laptop in “checked luggage”, instead of carry-on. I think someone had dumbbells in their luggage, which was thrown onto mine. Very unfortunate for my laptop. But, I’ve gained some wisdom, so I can’t complain. 
I’m pretty spoiled when it comes to screen real estate. Most of the day I’m on four 27" monitors, so my bitty Lenovo feels like a cellphone. For doing dumb stuff like internetting it’s fine, but when I am writing code I like to have more than one window open. Anything that splits the screen (CodePen, for example) is a bit inconvenient.
What is your budget? I personally use lenovo thinkpad T430. They can be bought real cheap, and have no real competition in same price category(speaking of used laptops). Thinkpads are built like a tanks and surely can survive a lot of abuse. Also there are lot of options for upgrade, pretty much everything can be swapped under 15 minutes. If you want more information checkout /r/thinkpad on reddit, there are a lot of active members over there
How cheap are you looking for? A rinky-dink $300 laptop, or can you go higher? This model doesn’t look bad, and a friend had the previous-generation E440 which was pretty good: http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-e-series/E470/p/22TP2TEE470
A lot depends on the screen size you have in mind as well, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to get a screen less than 15.6" that goes up to 1920x1080, as 15.6" is sort of the practical minimum for that resolution without inducing eyestrain. 
It is difficult to find one for you, when we don´t know your budget. But I will recommend getting a laptop with a SSD (makes your pc MUCH faster) and a Full HD screen or higher so you good workspace.
Maybe look into getting a refurbished business laptop. You’ll get for example a stronger build quality, better keyboard, and no bloatware.