A good SSD would take some of the bite out of that 512MB RAM requirement. Swapping to SSD is much less painful than swapping to a slow laptop HDD.
The single core CPU only requirement makes finding working hardware quite a challenge. Core2 era chips were usually dual core, and the single core options were mostly put in trash that people have already thrown away.
ZRAM makes 512MB really bareable, as if you had 1GB.
I used a ZipitZ2 with 32MB and ZRAM, I could even watch MPEG/DIVX videos on it with mplayer and multitask over CLI with streaming music.
I also still use an X200 and only rarely feel the need to upgrade. There are some sites that load a little slow, probably some activities I can't do, but mostly I just get stubborn and paraphrase Office Space: "Why should I change, [this future] is the one that sucks!"
Agree with you on RAM and SSD. My wife had an X200 as well until recently with 4GB, and that was mostly unbearable.
Heh, the only issue I noticed with my X200 is if I am forced to use Zoom, I cannot do anything else on it. Besides that, I can't tell a noticable difference between my x200 and my much more modern Desktop rig.
I have the same setup [0]! My main PC is a slightly more well-equipped Haswell rig, but I certainly love my x201 to death. I've also got maxed out memory, though I upgraded to an SSD some time ago (a swan-song upgrade on a device like this). I still prefer taking the x201 on trips if I need to get stuff done, even though I have a maxed out T460s sitting in the dock, ready to go.
The two hardest parts of this challenge:
- 512 MB of RAM: There are unfortunately a lot of programs like to eat up RAM (I am sitting at 3.9 GB used right now on that Thinkpad).
- (not a hard requirement) HDD. HDD is unfortunately painfully slow. I put an SSD in the x200 and that make a world of difference for speed.