I guess most people, even in HN circles, agree that Microsoft as well as other PC manufacturers like Dell (XPS) or Lenovo (Thinkpad) can built beautiful, high q

I guess most people, even in HN circles, agree that Microsoft as well as other PC manufacturers like Dell (XPS) or Lenovo (Thinkpad) can built beautiful, high quality hardware, but as you already state in your last sentence, that's not the problem at all. Windows is. Or the lack of macOS, for those of us that can't use Linux fulltime.