Solid utilitarian laptops seem hard to come by these days, what with the S3 removal fiasco and the desire for making an aesthetic statement over function. My wo

Solid utilitarian laptops seem hard to come by these days, what with the S3 removal fiasco and the desire for making an aesthetic statement over function. My work Dell Latitude (came from the factory with Ubuntu) isn't particularly stable. The machine will randomly power off (under light workloads or heavy - no obvious difference) with full battery and will not power on again until it's connected to the power brick. Once it's powered on I can disconnect the power cable again and be good for a few days to weeks. It's not an obvious thermal issue because I regularly run 100% all-core workloads and it's fine (thermal throttles, but fine). It also burns through a full battery after a weekend of sleep. On a whim I upgraded an old hand-me-down ThinkPad T430s to the classic 7-row keyboard since I had one lying around, and I'm finding myself using that machine more and more. Planning to upgrade its screen soon. Not all older laptops are good, of course, but the T430s with the upgrade feels like... a computer fit for getting things done. Everything gets out of the way. Full of utilitarian touches. For example, the lid's profile conforms to the palmrest's downward curve, giving it a functional sunshade.