I have owned Thinkpads since IBM days, testing the waters occasionally outside of the brand. My proposition is also a bit easier since I will only ever use Linu

I have owned Thinkpads since IBM days, testing the waters occasionally outside of the brand. My proposition is also a bit easier since I will only ever use Linux or FreeBSD (and never Windows or Mac). I stand by the W530, the P50, and most recently, the P52. I felt so strongly about my initial impression of the P52 that I bought one for myself to use for all of my personal work. Perhaps it's just a thing with the X1 Carbon? That being said, my personally-owned P52 is the first Thinkpad I've ever had that required me to re-paste the chips. For the benefit of readers, Thinkpads have a not insignificant chance (~5-10%?) you'll need to re-paste the thermal paste on the CPU and/or GPU, and this is the first one I've ever had that needed the re-paste. I have always re-pasted the chips perhaps the last ten years or so -- doing this while changing out the components (usually RAM and disk) with top-of-the-line components I buy separately because they're oftentimes hundreds of dollars cheaper if you install them yourself -- but didn't need to re-paste until this one, which would immediately throttle out under any kind of load. One more complaint: I wanted a P52 with a 4K display, but Lenovo refuses to sell a configuration with a 4K display that does not have that awful, terrible, shitty fingerprint-magnet glossy TOUCH screen. There is no way in hell I would use that glossy screen or a touch screen of any kind on my daily driver, so I was forced to stick with a "regular" HD display. In hindsight, I'm actually happier not having spent the money on something that I don't typically use (as I am far more likely to use workspace-switching hotkeys than try to make my use of screen real estate more efficient). Anyway, I agree that Lenovo is starting to cut corners, and it seems that eventually (perhaps soon) Thinkpads will no longer be suitable in this role. But today, with my recent history with the W530, P50, and P52, I still stand by Thinkpad as my rugged daily driver and constant life companion.