You might not be able to get a Framework here (yet), but ebay is FULL of ex-business Thinkpads that are almost as easy to refurb and cost <$500. Hell a lot of them are new enough that you can still get genuine parts for them direct from Lenovo.

Australian here - me too. And I need to buy a laptop now (haven't had one since WFH meant I didn't need anything but a desktop).

I'll be going for a ThinkPad Gen 2 instead.

Not sure if by Gen 2 you mean Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 - if you did, as an owner of the said machine, everything generally works but that is the best I can say about it. Battery life isn't exactly stellar, graphics issues with NVIDIA drivers all the time, fans start blowing full-tilt at the earliest opportunity and can get pretty hot.

Practically being a life-long Linux user, I've never owned a Macbook so not sure if things are better on that side.

I'm looking at the L14 model, I don't exactly need "spectacular" just "Intel graphics": https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadl/th...

EDIT: Man, reviews for that and the Gen 3 just really aren't great in terms of Linux support.

And they are not exactly cheap either - practically same as P-series.

I have said this before but Framework are leaving the opportunity to create a Thinkpad-killer series on the table that would be perfect to target all the folks unhappy with the decline of the Thinkpad. Heck, these people would probably pay more than they did for Thinkpads just to get those features back and make up for years of pent-up disappointments. Such a device has a good chance to become the "de-facto" developer's choice for Linux folks.

Have you considered using a third party shipping service?

It'd cost about $250-300 to ship to Australia, based on the last time I bought a laptop from the US. Then you pay customs & import taxes on the combined purchase+shipping costs, which would be about another $200-250.

Wow. A person could perhaps not cover, but at least nicely subsidize, the cost of a trip to Australia by hand-carrying a couple of laptops with them... wonder how many you can bring through Customs before they start to get suspicious?

It reminds me of my family from the UK when they used to travel to the US decades ago. They'd go home with half a dozen pairs of jeans each, and nearly pay for their tickets.

If any of them are still in the box you'll be enjoying a nice customs bill (doubly so because you definitely didn't declare them)

Even if you exclude the cost of shipping to purchase it, it becomes a significant risk if something were to go wrong and you needed to ship it back for repair.

Shipping it to the US and then back might involve not only stupid expensive shipping, but also having to figure out paperwork for both Australian and US Customs, unless you want to potentially pay double import-duties on each side.

I did it with Lenovo laptops years ago, because buying from the US and with shipping it still worked out to be around 1/3 the price of buying it from the AU Lenovo store, and Lenovo had a Global warranty program on their Thinkpad line. Smaller OEMs without that, I wouldn't risk it.

There was a point in history, where it was cheaper to fly to the US, buy photoshop and fly back to Australia.

If you do this you often get hit with significant import & customs duty (at least in NZ, everything here is more expensive than in US)