You’re not really paying a premium for the Apple brand these days when it comes to laptops. If go out and look at laptops of similar quality you’ll see there’s

You’re not really paying a premium for the Apple brand these days when it comes to laptops. If go out and look at laptops of similar quality you’ll see there’s not much in it. Sometimes Apple is even the cheaper option. Don’t think that by buying a cheap consumer grade laptop you’re "getting a deal" - you’re just paying what that machine is worth. But if you don’t want to buy Apple, by all means buy a decent Thinkpad or Dell business grade laptop - Dell will certify Ubuntu on some of their machines & Thinkpads have had decent support since forever. If you buy a bleeding edge machine it will probably have some wrinkles to iron out though. You can do what I do & pick up refurbished Thinkpads which are "good enough". Everything just works on those, because the bugs have all been ironed out. Plus, they’re cheap enough to buy a spare. X201 represent :)