If you wanted your comparison to be as lopsided as it sounds like you were thinking it was, you should've listed different companies. All three of those companies make high-end business laptops (EliteBook, Latitude/Precision, ThinkPad) that are absolutely built to last and have a cult following for it (ThinkPads especially). You should've listed Acer or some of the gaming brands to represent the ones that don't seem to last. I can say personally I have a ThinkPad X220T (Sandy Bridge) and ThinkPad T440p (Haswell) that are still working great. I sold a ThinkPad T60p just a few years ago that was still working as well, although it was showing its age with its 2GB of RAM and 32bit CPU (upgradable to a 64bit Core 2 Duo in theory).

> find that hard to believe. You're claiming plastic race-to-the-bottom laptop pc makers are building machines that last as long as all aluminium premium Macs? Fat chance.

I'm not saying that, at all.

I am saying that people keep reasonably priced hardware for longer than Mac owners because they don't have money to waste and can actually repair and upgrade them for cheap.

It’s not a waste. Referring to mac purchases as “wasteful” recycles tropes that are just false. That’s all I’m getting at. But I realize I’m shilling for a company that doesn’t need me to. Buy them, or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me or to Apple really. I prefer them for hardware. I like MacOS most of the time but sometimes yearn for Linux though things on my mac just work and I’m super keen to move to the M1 or M2.