Technology

Don't buy HP laptops. They're terrible. Framework is great, and Lenovo and Dell are generally pretty good. Put Linux on it if you care about privacy.

Apple products are without critique for sure. But if they last 2 or 3 times as long, are they all that anti-consumer? Compared to Windows, are they all that anti-privacy? I suggest you take another look, without your preconceived notions of Apple products.

Any laptop designed for enterprise like Lenovo Thinkpad or hp elitebook/ProBook

Your laptop was an HP pavilion, right? Those are designed to barely last the warranty period. Their engineers on this product line have a long experience of carefully choosing plastics that will degrade within 24 months

IMHO MacBooks are super overrated. OS support is not as long as normal computers (5 years instead of "indefinite") and they still have hardware flaws to hinges and keyboard

I would not trust apple products. Self cracking display on laptop? Updates that slow down devices on purpose? no, thanks

• Laptop: Framework. Modular hardware, easy to upgrade and repair.
• Smartphone: Pixel + GrapheneOS.

Laptops: ThinkPad P-series. The repairability that the T-series used to have with slightly beefier specs and better heatsinks. Great for Linux.

Phones: FairPhone 4 (FP5 will likely be announced end of the month so wait for that) - user repairable, supports alternate operating systems, 7 years official OS support from FairPhone.

ThinkPads are considered the Windows/Linux equivalent of Apple laptops in business settings.

For phones, new pixel with grapheneos.

The new pixel phones have 5 year support windows now.

Similar longevity to Apple products isn't a high bar.

Okay i'm not sure how much + is in your 1000$ and obviously there's a manufacturing defect at olay here. But man a MacBook is 2000$+ I have heard this argument too often unfortunately:

I tried Android once and it was horrible so i just went back to iPhone©™ and now everything is great again.

Context: they bought a 300$ Samsung phone and expected it to perform the same as their previous 800$ iPhone....

And this just sounds too similar. "I previously had a 2000$+ device, now I bought a 1000$+ one and it doesn't perform the same." Except for the part where it's also a shitty brand and the device had a manufacturing defect.

For phones 5+ years of updates is good compared to the alternatives, and is why I have one. For a computer, on the other hand, it’s just not very impressive. Perhaps FairPhones come close (don’t know how long their software is supported but their selling point is longevity), but their specs aren’t that impressive. On the flip side you get something repairable.

MacBooks are often built better with higher quality materials than many other laptops, but it is essentially a computer. Most computers that have high enough specs will always run the latest version of most Linux distributions or Windows barring any need for weird drivers from the past century. Feels a little iffy to have a perfectly good computer that won’t update software anymore just because. Up until recently you could just install some Linux OS on your old MacBooks when it went out of support but honestly I don’t know whether you can still do that after they started making non-x86 stuff.

With all that said, haven’t seen many laptops physically outlive MacBooks’ updates. With the exception of some ThinkPads and possibly some XPS models. Plastic laptops with plastic hinges tend to struggle keeping up, especially if the display is on the larger side. A large gaming laptop living the life of a typical MacBook, going to cafes and university in a backpack every day is probably gonna have more stress on hinges etc.

As for HP I have only heard bad stuff about them for the last 10 years or so. Don’t think I’ll buy stuff from them due to their evil printers that won’t scan without ink etc.

Not many specific recommendations here but just some observations I have made. Hope it’s helpful.

I can't say if the quality is still the same, but I bought a Chromebook when they first came out for $99 and that little buddy has lasted me a decade now. It's seen me through a deployment, a degree, several moves, and has been through a load of abuse and come out the other side working as spiffy as day one, minus some scuff on the screen. (Unfortunately Google has recently aged it out, but I'll find a use for it with a virtual machine perhaps).

I imagine most little netbooks are similarly built and can withstand a boatload, although their computing power definitely lacks.

thinkpad T series laptop

Oneplus phones are good. Beastly specs and run LineageOS. Also not too challenging or expensive to replace (most) parts.

I mean, if we're going by anecdotes, on average, most gear will last 5 years more often than not. I still have my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 that's still working, just that it's sorely obsolete on the software side. Another even more extreme example: I also have a Samsung i600 that's also still working, and only recently has the battery started showing signs of bloating. That's a 15+ year-old phone!

The several thousand laptops the charity I worked for (and still volunteer for sometimes) give out yearly also indicate that plenty of laptops will make it past the 5 year mark. Until last year we were still giving out 6th gen Intel laptops.

Side note, I have such mixed feelings on HP. I have only anecdotal things to say, so please keep that in mind!

I bought a budget HP Pavilion back in 2020, for a similar reason to you, because of the Ryzen setup. It sees use 4-5 times a week. And I have to say... I love it.

The build quality is, in my opinion, outstanding for a budget ($600) laptop. Its metal, solid, with almost no noticable keyboard flex. It feels so much better than both Dells my wife and I use for work. And the keyboard is actually my favorite of all the boards in my house.

My family has always had new tech coming in and out of the house and one of the longest lasting devices we had was an HP 2-In-1.

I don't support their scummy software practices (shoutout brother printers). But for the most part every piece of HP tech I've bought has been average or above. But online they're somewhat universally panned. Its interesting.