For most vendors, there is a big difference between their consumer hardware, sold based on price, bells & whistles; and their corporate hardware, sold based on cost of ownership - availability, manageability, serviceability, support. In many cases, the corporate model is worth the extra cost up front - it saves much more in headaches down the road. But usually they lack features for gaming and some other consumer or specialized applications.
I've seen many HP corporate models last seemingly forever - so long that the users grow frustrated because they can't justify a new computer. There's a ~14 year old one not far from where I'm sitting that runs perfectly and is in perfect condition, other than the pointstick (it has a trackpad too).
Dell's XPS 13/15 line run Linux very well, as do Lenovo's Thinkpads.
If you do go down the Windows route, just make sure you create new installation media from the Microsoft website and do a clean install before anything else.
https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/huawei-matebook-pr...
I kept a 2011-era one alive for a long time, but it finally died late last year - and nothing that Lenovo was selling at the time seemed very tempting.
Also Dell support for me personally has been great so far. I had a single dead pixel on my screen and they replaced without any questions within just two weeks.
Most Linux distros work out of the box. Manjaro took me 20 minutes to set up.
I also use an old Thinkpad 11.6" inch - it runs Ubuntu. I put it on a self-driving RC car and it won't die. Generally recommend Thinkpads.
I also have an HP Spectre x360 13" 2017. The trackpad is a bit buggy with Ubuntu but apart from that its seriously not a bad deal. It has USB-c and I can connect an external GPU enclosure for machine learning. Also great as a Netflix device
Under the new models, the old non-touchbar 15" with deeper keyboard is shown.
The touchbar is entirely useless though. I've mapped the escape key to capslock, not doing so would have driven me insane.
I actually like the feel of the new keyboard but the "J" key is busted and compressed air isn't cutting it anymore so I'm going to have to send my main laptop off for a week which is a huge disturbance in my work flow (gotta set up the backup Mac)
Yeah, the screen is old, but it's not that big of a deal IMO.
The wife has a Macbook Air I believe from 2013. Swapped in an SSD upgrade some time ago, still kickin.
The biggest issues IMO are ghosting and color gamut, but I don't really care for using Sublime or browsing Reddit and HN. The MBA is not my main machine anyway.
Looking to give Apple the least amount of money as possible.
Mpbs were, and still are, very popular dev machines, so most dev tasks are pretty easy to achieve. Just be careful not to install multiple package managers or you may never find some of your libraries again.
It's annoying that Dell and HP decided to continue to copy Apple by going all USB-C.
Ive had good luck with a Asus AFTER it was formatted. The bloatware from the original install had me trashing Asus as a company because I thought their hardware sucked.
I dont think HP can be trusted, they have 1000 dollar laptops without onboard graphics that they sell to computer illiterate people that want big touch screens and gimmick features.
Any recs?