Why the fuck don't they build laptops like old Thinkpads, like laptops are one of the things where you can genuinely say "They don't build them like they used to". All the new ones are thin and don't have the really nice keyboards like the old ones do, and a load of them don't even have the clicky touchpad buttons and only have the nipple! At least they’re still waterproof though… But they don't have upgradeable components and aren't serviceable in general, they don't have the metal roll cages that the old ones had which made them both indestructible and deadly weapons! The X220 that I have features the start of that with a soldered in CPU but at least the RAM, battery, and storage are dead easy to replace, with it of course also having that nice keyboard and the little light in the lid in leu of backlighting which is just cute.
But at the same time that soldered in second gen i7 with only two cores is really showing its age. It can’t run modern mobile game ports, it can’t run things like CAD software particularly well (a problem when studying an engineering degree), can’t run other bits of sim software, and the new battery I got is now starting to act up.
I love it to bits still, yet I also want a new laptop at a decent price and there is just nothing that is really as durable. Sure, refurbished laptops fit within my price range including some newer ThinkPad ones, but all of them are still fixated with being as slim as possible to the point of looking like they might snap in my bag! If it dosen't have enough heft to double as a self defence weapon I'm not interested. Where is an actual, durable, laptop that is content to be thick and tall in return for being smaller width and lengthways? While also not costing more than an old used car (Seriously you can get a 2000s Fiesta for cheaper than a load of new laptops). Bonus points for some customisability and the option to ship without an OS so I can slap Debian or something on it rather than Windows.