They certainly have continued to take away nice features, stability, and build quality over the years. The "last good ThinkPad" is different for many. As you said the T42 or around there for pre-Lenovo, T400 for libreboot support, T420 for old keyboard, T430 for old charger/body design, T440p for last gen with socketed CPU and for coreboot support, T480 for last gen with a removable battery I think... But at the same time they've removed indicator lights, certain ports, I'm not even sure if there's a magnesium rollcage anymore.

I have a P15s for work and my initial model would hard freeze when putting pressure in certain spots. I used an external keyboard/mouse mostly, but it'd still happen occasionally. Eventually got a tech sent out and he swapped the motherboard. I think it's fixed, but I still touch it as little as possible and use external peripherals.

Some people defend modern ThinkPads saying they still beat the competition. I'd like to think the bar is higher than that considering some of what's out there.

My take on all this is that x86 is on its way out anyway, so I'm trying to make my T440p last and will try to go with ARM or RISC-V for my next machine. Likely just an M2 Max MacBook Pro when available. Hopefully Asahi support is pretty good by then.

The Framework is sort of cool, but it's just another modern Intel machine at the same time. Guts aside, they're doing a good job, but the guts are pretty important, and in this case, boring. The MNT Reform is a lot more interesting, although I don't know if any particularly performant SoMs are available for it yet. I'd like something with better performance than my Pinebook Pro if possible. The RK3399 is not quite Main Machine material.

I never really liked Thinkpads to begin with. The texture on their plastics makes my skin crawl. When I was working IT at the end of the '00s, I found Latitudes were a lot easier to repair and more durable.

My personal story is that I'll never use Lenovo, because of their crap website and customer service.

I tried ordering one of their laptops back around 2015 on their website. The cart just straight up broke during checkout. Tried contacting support - no response.

2 weeks later they emailed me asking how my purchasing experience was (hilarious that they couldn't tell the purchase actually didn't go through, because the card wasn't charged)

Was literally throwing money at them trying to buy their product, but I guess they didn't want it. So I'm never giving them a cent of it again.