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Comment by cft | Hacker News Reader

The last reliable laptops I had were IBM T40 (my first one) and IBM/Lenovo W500. I ran a bootstrapped software company and they didn't fail me. After that I briefly had a Samsung ultrabook (that was semi-reliable) and then a Dell XPS 13 that one day had a screen crack when I opened it. Then I switched to MacBooks when M1 came out: first keys got stuck in my M1, then the screen bezel spontaneously cracked on an M2 just when the warranty ended and I was in Europe. Apparently now Apple laptops are luxury items, you have to wipe the keyboard from dust before closing the lid.

I do not care about cost, I just need something that won't suddenly break when I am abroad and need to do something important. I miss those American IBM ThinkPads.

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How is this relevant to the article? I had a look at my Thinkpad T42 and X201 and both were manufactured in China. I looked up a picture of the T40's bottom case and it was manufactured in China as well. I think the differences in durability you're noticing are more because the majority of laptop buyers value the laptop being thin and light over being durable, so companies moved their product lines to suit these tastes. In fact, you seem to be a part of that segment. If you really value the laptop being durable over all else, why did you buy a Samsung ultrabook, a Dell XPS, and a MacBook (all thin-and-light ultraportable laptops) instead of a current generation T or P series ThinkPad or a Panasonic Toughbook?

I'm very happy with my Acer Aspire Nitro 5. It was cheap. And it looks cheap. It's mostly plastic. And it'll slightly bend if you carry it on one edge. Plus I took it apart once to upgrade the internal SSD. But it has survived 3 years of frequent travel including 10+ international flights. I run Pop!OS on it so that it's all encrypted in case I ever lose it. And a Syncthing daemon in the background to securely backup all of its data.

I know it's often heresy on HN, but I've found Macbooks to be fairly reliable. I've used my Macbook air for a decade now at this point - first as a Mac and later switching to Ubuntu.

Some are, but some are utter crap.

I have a 2018 with the emoji keyboard where said keyboard obviously failed, and then the display cable (i think, because it wasn't worth repairing) failed too.

That generation was mostly defective by design. The keyboard is too dust sensitive and uncleanable, while the display cable is simply too short.

I still have two apple laptops made before the 2018 and one made after that are working perfectly.

Framework? Or do you need something mainstream?

I'd like an ARM CPU- the battery difference is radical

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