I can luckily do everything I need to on the same laptop I cut my teeth for my degree on. Thankfully no chiclet keys and I have a working track point. It's even

I can luckily do everything I need to on the same laptop I cut my teeth for my degree on. Thankfully no chiclet keys and I have a working track point. It's even easily user servicible, I have replaced the keyboard once already with cheap parts from eBay. I guess I'm lucky I don't need massive power to still run most things I work with natively, but if you mostly work in the commandline it wouldn't be a nightmare to ssh/mosh in wherever you need to. After that I get to enjoy working in a Linux desktop environment with all its programmability and keyboard shortcuts go a long way. I've never known an environment like the one you describe, but it may surprise you that a relatively luddite setup can go a long way once you're accustomed to it.