The touchpad sucks and routinely breaks requiring restarts, constantly having driver issues (and you have to deal with the capital-N Nightmare that is SupportAssist for drivers), graphics card is busted and makes the display driver crash once a month.

Power states are completely broken. Laptop will randomly turn on when it's in my bag and rev up to ten thousand degrees. Laptop will randomly, when on full battery and closed, decide to hard-shutoff leading to a windows recovery boot.

Decides to do BIOS updates when it's at 3% battery in the middle of the night, then when I wake up for work the next morning it has to go through a ten-minute recovery sequence.

Battery is swelling after only a couple years of use, which sometimes causes keys on the keyboard to stop working. In the middle of a slack convo I've had to type "Sorrymyspacebarstoppedworkinggottarestartmycomputer".

BSODs, hard drive corruption, you name it. Never buy Dell. Not that there's many good options out there unless you're willing to drop two week's pay on a Framework - but anything is better than Dell.

EDIT: Another I thought of - sound card is busted and sounds like it has a low pass filter on it. I know it's not a speaker issue because on occasion it magically fixes itself until the next restart.

The build quality is nicer than my T530. The bottom cover doesn't have access panels anymore, but it's got just a few captive(!!) screws and the whole bottom comes off. Everything is neatly exposed and you don't need to access the top of the board at all. The bottom cover has plastic clips along with the screws, but they're spring loaded! They aren't simply molded in and cannot snap off. It's some incredible attention to detail.

I've noticed that most recent laptops have the vent behind the screen hinge where it's completely blocked if the screen is closed. Thinkpad has the vent fully exposed. In fact, it exposes more vent when the screen is closed.

Too bad the CPU is a lemon. One of the new AMD chips with a built in NPU. The NPU is slower than the integrated graphics for inference. Not a discrete card, just the GPU baked into the chip.

In contrast, I got a hand-me-down Dell XPS-something from 2020 when I first started this job. It idles IDLES! at 100°C. I tried to re-paste the CPU, but the heat pipes were so small and thin that I crushed one between my fingers. Even with massive airflow through the case from external fans, it never drops below 100C. Absolutely inexcusable.

Looks to me like Lenovo still has it. At least if you're paying real money for a professional level machine. This new Thinkpad is now my #1 most repairable and maintainable machine. T530 is a close second. Absolutely every other laptop I've ever used is tied for last place in the garbage.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/d/linux-laptops-desktops/

And as I often state here, Chromebooks have a Debian Linux distro 2 clicks away, including the ability to run X11 GUI programs like VSCode and Cursor for software development.

Because it's an integrated OS/hardware product, there's no fussing with display drivers or power management issues. It all "just works". High performance models kitted out with 16GB RAM and USB A and C ports can be purchased for < $800USD, like:

https://www.acer.com/us-en/chromebooks/acer-chromebook-plus-...

If high-performance is less of a concern, you can get models with very usable performance for < $500USD.

But, sadly, next generations went deep shit instead.

Nowadays, I have a very hard time selecting a laptop that would fit my needs, even disregarding the price. One of the worst feature in term of offender is the keyboard: Manufacturers are going on with this totally stupid unergonomic trend of having "half size" enter keys, removing page-up/page-down keys, and hiding directional arrows behind over keys needing to use the "FN+other_key" to be able to use the arrow.

I started buying 4x4 mini PCs. They're exactly what you describe. For $600 I got an 8 core AMD Ryzen 7 8745H with 96GB of RAM from Minisforum. The graphics aren't half bad and the overall system has been really good. It's even got better thermal performance than the Intel 4x4 I had previously and generally runs 10C cooler for the same workloads.

If you don't absolutely need a "backpack portable" computer I can only highly recommend them.

I'm starting to accept that if I want a development workstation class machine, I need to build a tower from components.

I was sucked in by the advertising I guess. They looked very good on paper - good battery life for the time, thin, light, powerful, sleek, latest everything. I've built computer systems for most of my professional career. Looking back on it, how I could have possibly thought some fresh shiny new design first off the production line was going to be rock solid work horse is beyond me. Lack of critical thinking skills I guess.

Now, I buy something like a Dell Latitude. It's an enterprise machine. Translation: a plain, boring design with parts that have been trialed by the XPS/X1 suckers, so most of the bugs are ironed out. Enterprise tends to mean expensive. But they lose 75% of their value in 2 years, so second hand prices are very reasonable, and since Dell offers 5 years warranty on them they can effectively come with the same guarantees as a new one.

Enterprise also means well supported. It's almost night and day. Ring Dell about a Inspiron or even an XPS issue, and you are met with a wall of excuses. Contact them about an Latitude issue, you get a fast response. The one time I wasn't happy with the outcome, I said so in their "how did we go" questionnaire, and they rang me back begging me to let them have another go.

I had one issue where I needed to ship it back: it would reset and then it was running off the battery, and no matter what port I plugged a charger/docking station into it wouldn't charge until I powered it off and back on again. I got them to do a replacement under warranty a couple years ago.

Around a month ago it was doing the reset fairly frequently and then wouldn't power on sometimes, and I noticed the wrist rest was a little bowed. I replaced the battery pack (kind of a pain, but not the worst I've done), and it was good for around a month, but now it has that "won't charge the battery" issue again. I believe when they did the previous repair they replaced the motherboard, but now I'm out of warranty.

For my next laptop I kind of want a Framework, so I can replace the mobo if I need to. My work likes us to replace hardware no more frequently than every 5-6 years, but we get a warranty for way less than that (my laptop I pushed to get a 4 year).

Meanwhile my previous Thinkpad T470s is still going strong, though the screen just developed a line through it. That's ~10 year old now.

My personal 4 year old Macbook has been a real workhorse, never had any hardware issues with it. My son's macbook has been another story, he's had that in for service 4-5 times in the 3 years he's had it. But, I suspect that is more him than the hardware. I don't baby my MBP, but he is just terrible with things. He's lucky if a pair of glasses can last 6 months, ditto with a phone (usually broken screens), so I'm not sure I can blame the MB Air...

I'm also currently upgrading a refurbed Lenovo X270 for my granddaughter who's starting high school, and I am thoroughly impressed. Newer Lenovos are slimmer and slicker, but this thing will still be trucking after the cockroach apocalypse.

Coming to my previous laptop which I still have with me, I bought a Thinkpad L480 in 2018. It was then a dirt cheap version of a Thinkpad. But it did the job with no complaints. I had to replace the battery after 4 years but that wasn’t an issue. It did everything a daily driver is supposed to do, reliable and never threw a fit. I only had to change it as I felt I needed a better screen and performance. The Intel processor was showing its age.

I have only minor complaints running Thinkpad with Ubuntu. But if you start moving away from popular distros, then you have to accept you will occasionally have to tinker to get things work.

There's also the software/hardware integration side.

Power management on Macbooks is unbeatable in my experience, both Windows and Linux have really serious issues dealing with sleep and low power modes.

On the Lenovo side, the only one I'm still reasonably happy with is my Thinkpad, but it pales compared to a Macbook (Air, Pro or whatever).

I personally prefer desktop workstations. They are better.

Now 4.5 years in: cursor moving randomly, with jitter (the same symptom as before), when TouchPad is activated. Plus: barely used trackpoint is defect.

That device was mainly used with an external keyboard and mouse -- no excessive usage of the built-ins.

My G11 carbon is tolerable, but I did have a motherboard replacement in mine mid cycle. Known issue with charging just giving up. I like my carbon, but its a lot of money.

I have a gen 1 carbon, a gen 7 carbon and a gen 11. I still think the G1 was best in a lot of silos. The keyboard especially.

The G11 is performing better than the G7 overall, the G7 had the shittiest case so far.

Recently did an analysis on price/performance across Dell, Lenovo and Surface for a customer, and the Lenovos came out at best quality but not price competitive. This was before EOFY however and vendor pricing might have turned over. I also got the impression that both Dell and Lenovo were halfway through launching new product lines, and certain features were only available in either new or old, not both.

The Dell Pro line of laptops seems quite bad, having deployed several. Seems like they are trying to take Latitude and split it into Bad and Worse categories. Cant praise a single thing on it, case feels worse, screens worse, everything just got soggier. But it has an Ultra sticker on it so YMMV.

So I would never recommend that one, but reportedly this is common among the "low-end" ThinkPads (mine was at around a thousand euros).

I've had good luck with a Macbook Air and running a Debian VM for anything of import. The build quality is good and I can go to a physical location for repairs.

(Though over time more and more can't be fixed on site sadly.)

For some reason, the MOBO was dying slowly after a year. My other coworkers also reported similar problems.

Lenovo-wise:

    My personal Thinkpad X1 Extreme was a champ for 7+ years, and a few P series I've used over the years since 2021 were also great.

I got a 2021 Macbook M1 Pro to replace it, and I can't imagine needing to replace it for at least another 5 years given what I usually need my laptop to do (any really heavy compute gets off-loaded to a desktop). My only worry would be the same as my previous machine: the battery.

I'll give Framework a try when the time comes. It's probably the only one outside of Apple that I have any confidence in not being horrible in some way. There are some other options with decent Linux support, which I would need if I am to migrate away from Apple, but they are few and far between, especially if you rule out Lenovo.

In my opinion Dell laptops have never been good. But I never bought another one since that happened, so maybe I've missed out.

lenovos remain good if you get a high spec thinkpad. maybe get a few year old high spec thinkpad new/refurb off ebay with a three year service contract (search "p1 gen 6" on ebay)? i think you can always re-up the service contract on new ones as well.

For personal stuff just dual boot my old Thinkpad, at work I use Macbook.

This, and literally all of them have paint chipping off the chassis at the slightest provocation. I have like 50 at work.

edit: we have now a mix of MacBook Airs/Pros (most of workforce), Frameworks (specialized tech roles running Linux and resource-intensive software) and HP ProBooks (run-of-the-mill Windows machines, or just where you don't need anything special at all).

I wish they'd make something like the x220 again.

edit: to lenovo/dell question I'd say the quality varies by model - lower end thinkpads are better while expensive one got worse. But there are still a lot of differences between a small business series and enterprise. USB-C perfect as a connector, but if it is not replaceble it is a nightmare.

I've been getting into astrophotography recently, so I went out to my local Astronomy club's dark site in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Ohio, star tracker, DSLR, lens and nearly brand new HP Gaming Laptop I bought specifically for this purpose in tow.

It was cold as shit outside - 25 with a wind chill of just under 15 degrees. But I came prepared, and the club has a small heated clubhouse on the grounds of the site, so I set up all my equipment, did my polar alignment, and left my laptop plugged into a power outlet and remoted into it on my iPad so I could monitor the data capture from inside where it was warm.

About 20 minutes later, I lost remote access to my laptop suddenly. No problem, I thought. I headed outside to go debug what was going on, to find that the laptop had shut down randomly. That's weird. I tried to turn the laptop on, and it spun on the windows logo for over 5 minutes. I got worried that somehow out of all this gear I brought out to the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold, somehow the laptop was what had died. I try force-resetting a few times, to the point where I get the windows recovery environment, and it boots _so slowly_ that I think something is seriously wrong. Then the CMOS battery reset screen comes up (what the fuck?) and I finally get it to boot after about 8 attempts. However, it's so slow it's completely unusable - the CPU is pegged at the lowest possible frequency and just opening up the controller software for my star tracker takes nearly 5 minutes. decide to pack it in for the night, assuming my laptop is dying.

I bring all my equipment inside to tear it down, and leave the laptop in the warmth for 15 or so minutes while I tear everything else down. Then I hear the familiar Windows 11 startup chime behind me. I turn around and the laptop happily boots up, running at full speed, as if nothing was wrong.

Friends, the laptop got _too cold_. I have never experienced this before in my life, and I have put laptops through similarly extreme conditions in the past for other projects, let alone all the Raspberry Pi's I've left to bake in the sun and freeze in the cold. I am so done with modern technology, I want to return to 2011 when Thinkpads were good, Macbooks were great, and phones couldn't break my brain's dopamine circuits. I'm so tired.

It still hold its charge but then I mostly work on it plugged either via RDP from my personal workstation at home or from the docking station in my office at the campus. So it has less than 50 charge cycles.

Those brands aren’t really the end all be all like they used to be.

Based on the requirements that OP has I think they’d be really happy with a Framework system.

OP could also run Linux on the MacBook Pro M1 that they already own.

For laptop reviews, I’ve been enjoying Just Josh on YouTube, and he has a website associated with it. There’s also rtings.com

Another Lenovo model that’s getting acclaim as a solid premium laptop is the Lenovo X9 15 Aura Edition.

It's not copying Apple. It's that every port does everything, including charging. It is standards-compliant.

As just one example, you no longer need to lug a laptop charger with you; there are no longer "computer chargers" and "phone chargers", but one charger that can charge everything, often simultaneously via multiple ports. When you combine this with a docking station, one cable truly does all.

It is wonderful. Embrace it.

Dell, however is absolute trash now from what I’ve seen.

There seems to be a lot of profit in buying brands with a reputation for high quality and then replacing it with lower quality and reaping the profits.

It shouldn't be legal if you ask me, it has elements of fraud, the brand should be consistent, Apple implies quality for example, if Apple where to release a cheap badly made product at an expensive price, they would be breaking the brand-contract.

Meanwhile my M2 MacBook pro is still going strong