As well as a live fleet of about 30 units, we have about 5 HP Probooks at work in different states of dismantlement; they fell apart or broke in various mechanical ways and are cannibalised to sustain the working ones. In my previous role we were a Dell shop and the XPS laptops were much more reliable by comparison.

They've been building laptops with failure prone fans since I bought one with Windows ME on it 15-16 years ago. Other manufacturers don't seem to have this problem.

Agreed. It's hard to find data, but based on knowledge of many IT departments, HP corporate-line machines (not the consumer line and not necessarily the small business line) are among the highest quality pieces of computer equipment I know of. So often when I've had to dig in, I found smart, careful engineering down to the smallest details. Also, they publish extensive, detailed, easy-to-find, and accurate specs, which is unfortunately rare.

The results are that they last forever, well past when the user would like something newer and shinier. There's a 12 year old laptop not far away that, after maybe 5-6 years of heavy use, is in perfect condition other than one USB port (IIRC).

Currently at an HP Elitebook 8750W, and quite happy with it.

Only complaint is that it's most comfortable in a dock: The fan and heat sink exit at the top left (where I used to put a water bottle before I had this heater blowing on it), and this side becomes uncomfortably hot to use the integrated keyboard and trackpoint/touchpad.

I swore off ever buying HP products after I bought an HP Envy with a year warranty and exactly after one year, the hinges wouldn't work. I still used it but just at home, until the hard drive had a catastrophic failure and I lost everything.

Every model of hard drive fails sometimes, and with rare exceptions the rate is more or less the same.

I used to work with someone who designed hard disks (electronics) and his mantra was '4 years'.

Have a MacBook Pro for work and a much, much preferred HP laptop when I can get away from the MacBook.