A few grand is nothing to scoff at, but if you use it for half as long as your older one then a reasonably kitted-out 14" would work out to ~$80/month.

I didn't know that about the touchbar, that's pretty awful. It's also a shame they couldn't manage to integrate their fancy taptic engine stuff.

Ports are back on the new machines tho--removing them seemed so braindead, but then again I'm not an industrial design machina so what do I know.