Laptops
A random rant at the market.
The last laptop I bought new was the GPD Pocket 3. In many ways it is a really nice machine – the build quality is really good, it’s small, light, easy to travel with, despite the size manages to have decent set of ports (USB-A and USB-C and full-size HDMI and RJ-45, plus the audio jack), and a keyboard with a very good feel to it.
Fast forward two years and I barely ever use it. The keyboard turned out to be too small to be useful for me – at this size the layout sacrifices too much usability, with some keys in very wrong places and the lack of the right alt which makes typing in Polish or French more complicated and slows me down. It works just fine when plugged into external screens and a keyboard but at home I have a full-size PC that works better, and when I’m traveling with it I tend to stop using the laptop and doing much more things on the phone instead.
I bought it new because it had a combination of features that have disappeared from laptops built by major manufacturers: small size, lightweight, good set of ports, and the ability to support two external screens plus the built-in one for a lot of screen space. The devices currently being sold by major brands are weird – either “full” machines where small means 13" or more, or tablets with dedicated keyboards and heavily restricted I/O. And, of course, in the last year or two the highest priority has been to push the slop, so the target has been completely misplaced and I don’t see it changing anytime soon.
So, with the full understanding that this is subjective: there is nothing I see in the laptop market now that would justify the price of a new machine. I have been increasingly reaching into my pile of old ThinkPads, almost all of them bought second hand, and if anything I see more of those in my life in the future, with another one in delivery as I type this.
