It depends on what you want. You can buy reasonably cheap laptops with similar specs, either by buying >2 generations back (this T430 was $300), or by buying n

It depends on what you want. You can buy reasonably cheap laptops with similar specs, either by buying >2 generations back (this T430 was $300), or by buying new models that are made of cheap plastic. In my experience, all laptops eventually suffer damage, the more durable ones just take longer and tend to be more minor faults each time. So if you can afford your laptop suddenly failing and switching to another machine (possibly by swapping the drive out, presuming that didn't fail, or restoring from backups/cloud storage), great, you have a robust setup. But many people don't have such a robust configuration, nor do they bring a backup laptop when e.g. traveling. So for individuals and businesses that have configurations of Highly Replicated Data (where it doesn't matter if you lose an individual laptop), it might be worth it to buy lots of cheap laptops. For cases where the amount of time/value of data lost to failed laptops is worth far more than the cost difference of the more durable laptops, it's probably worth it to get the ones with the rollcages and carbon fiber-infused chassis and [...].