Judging by how much interest this has garnered on HN, there does seem to be a market. I think people would at least like the option.

Every time I buy a laptop, it's a matter of tradeoffs. Some of these tradeoffs are technical (like battery life vs power), but some are purely based on what level of planned obsolescence the manufacturer thinks they can get away with.

I'm not sure if there was ever a time when manufacturers competed solely on putting features into their hardware, but the situation right now is at least as much about how many antifeatures they can get away with. The "free market" stops working when every manufacturer does this and the barrier for new offerings is impossibly high.