this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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Every laptop I've ever owned has been at the 500USD or less price point, and every laptop I've ever owned has had some kind of catastrophic structural failure in the chassis that causes the entire thing to gradually disintegrate after about two years, like clockwork.

Like, that must absolutely be something they do as an explicit design goal that forces you to buy a new disposable laptop just after the standard warranty expires, right? It's not just me being bad at computer or something?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Thinkpads and other non consumer laptops (Dell and HP though they are seen as B tier to Thinkpads) i.e. use business laptops are the only ones meant to stand up to continual abuse within a corporate/work setting.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I just got a refurbished T14s thinkpad and it's the most pleasant laptop experience I've ever had. Worked with every Linux distro I've tried out of the box. Good build quality, great matte IPS screen, charges by USB-C. It even has a little built-in sliding webcam cover. Not great for gaming but fantastic for travel.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

Not great for gaming but fantastic for travel.

Yeah for gaming you'd need a thinkpad with a descrete GPU and there are a variety but sadly they're value goes down on the secondhand market much slower. For instance I recently splurged on a previous gen refurbished P16 that came with an nvidia gpu and it does acceptable gaming but nothing crazy like what you'd see from a desktop setup

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

yeah i got a new T16 and the build quality is 100x better than the new Inspiron we have. bendy plastic trash in comparison

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

MY favorite are their X1 carbons that have the magnesium carbide outer shell that has a nice durable feel to it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Eh, kind of but I even found Thinkpads to be lacking there, they start showing wear and tear symptoms after around a year tops.

Unfortunately, literally the only company that produces laptops with some actual durability and build quality is Apple. I would really like to be proven wrong here but so far I haven't.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

True though in contrast with Thinkpads you can buy a lower spec model and not worry about soldered ram or in a few cases have the option for a GPU swap out or even CPU swapout/upgrade (this is for the PGA prev gens only though).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Oh yeah the repairability/upgradability of Macbooks is absolutely horrendous but at least you can be pretty sure it's gonna last you a while unless you have an accident with it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

Truth as well, they really can be driven for at least a decade reliably

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

To second this - Thinkpads in my experience have been pretty solid. I'm still using the second hand x280 I bought a few years ago and installed linux on. It took a big hit and the screen smashed so bought a replacement (higher resolution) third party screen on aliexpress. I poured a glass of water on the keyboard. It still worked but some of the keys had to be pressed quite hard, so I got a replacement keyboard also on aliexpress, was pretty easy to install (youtube video plus 20 mins time, the replacement even came with the screwdriver I needed). I treat it pretty rough but it keeps ticking along. I don't think I'd ever buy a new laptop unless I could expense it. Plenty of second hand thinkpads online with decent processors / ram. idk if they're any good for gaming but for work/web browsing they're great.