Which $4-500 thinkpad to get?

[moijk]

posted in another thread, but thought of making it more general.

I've had a macbook pro late 2008 until now. it's a core 2 duo model and it works well, even today. But it spins up at random times when doing nothing too demanding so I need to move up a few years. Given that I'm not a heavy user (i got a desktop for that) and the core 2 duo would have sufficed otherwise I was thinking around haswell.

My main use is the bicycle trainer, coding, some light hd video editing and photo work. I have used a t61p with the bicycle trainer, but that was a bit of a letdown because the display was either quite soft when running in lower resolution, or show how bad windows (prior to 10) scales dpi when running it at full 1920x1200 and setting it to a dpi that let me actually see anything on the screen from the bicycle. Now I'll use a 22" external monitor, but I still would like a more modern machine.

I started looking at the t440s. But the trainer software suggest a discrete display card. So the t440p came into mind. it got the 730m which sounds like an ok card. this computer (my desktop) has a 750 and I also got a core 2 duo desktop machine with a 730.

But then again, there are other machines. Is it worth getting a t540p? or another serie than the t serie? I'd like 14 or 15". And I don't want to miss the macbook pro that much, so it shouldn't be too annoying.

How much noice do the t440p have? Portability isn't important for me, so a bit more weight isn't a problem.