Well I'd never personally buy a brand new Thinkpad. Against a new mac or dell it's not a super great deal. But if you like to tinker, Thinkpad is really your o

Well I'd never personally buy a brand new Thinkpad. Against a new mac or dell it's not a super great deal. But if you like to tinker, Thinkpad is really your only option. It has widely available and inexpensive user replaceable components(screen, chassis, RAM, SSD, keyboard, mousepad, etc). Lightly used thinkpads are available for a few hundred bucks on ebay. I picked up a year old T440s with I7, 12gb ram, and 256gb SSD for $400 last year. Also hot swappable battery, wide linux compatibility, spill proof keyboard, awesome industrial design.