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I have laptops from the the last two decades that still work. My X201 has been used and abused in every which way, it has problems that I gave it (BIOS), but for the most part it's completely fine, my T440p is fine but the screen was cracked, again, by my dumbass leaving it on the floor and stepping on it, and I also replaced the keyboard with one off another model that didn't quite fit. Still, besides all that it worked like a champ, can even put a quad core in it.

While I'm overall not impressed with my new laptop - the X1c because it's performance is dog shit and I've not figured how to control the fans manually yet (thinkfan doesn't seem to work), it's far from the worst - my MSI GT60 2PE was such a piece of shit and definitely fits this post, so does anything labeled "Netbook" and/or anything that has an Intel Atom CPU which is truly cursed

Phones on the other hand? Imagine you want to take a screenshot of a video on a phone for future reference, but android says:

So you have to use the volume down+power like in the good old days

A laptop you can take apart and put back together and it’ll be fine. You take apart a phone and put it back together and it’s like haunted now. You can’t get it wet anymore, and it rattles sometimes. It says it doesn’t like its new screen, so it’s not gonna let you unlock it with your face anymore. It doesn’t trust you since you took it apart. The buttons feel different now. They still work, but they feel… different.

This person and I have had wildly different laptop experiences.

My current laptop survived three phones and it was already refurbished when I bought it. And I can still install current versions of my OS (Ubuntu) on it.

Buy better laptops.

I've got a 23-year-old netbook that slowly perished under the weight of windows. I've got some lightweight Linux distro on it and its absolutely fucking fine.

I resurrected it specifically to use as a digital reference guide for electronics, and to program my new Arduino. It can even barely load Firefox (exclusive) OR play videos!

Tldr is: Buy old electronics. Use better software.

Mobile phones are so locked down from regular users that those usually just physically break before the operating system becomes unusably slow.

Laptops can be destroyed by software. Give a regular user permission to install programs, and suddenly there are a random purple monkey sitting on the desktop telling jokes and multiple crypto miners.

There’s definitely a ring of truth to this. Not for me personally - as others have commented, I know what I’m doing and tend to look after my tech well - but for plenty of friends and family who are seemingly incapable of taking care of a real computer with a desktop OS.

Happens all the time: they buy a new laptop, probably without asking for advice first, and within weeks they’re asking for help because it’s on its last legs. The fans spin up like jet engines, two dozen random apps open as soon as it boots, the desktop is a landfill of icons, normal actions cause error messages, etc.

‘Oh yeah, it just does that.’

Some people can’t be trusted with full control over their hardware.

I only recently sent my old as fuck Windows Xp laptop that didn't hold a charge anymore and had to be plugged in just to be turned on off to a recycler. I still worked. Probably coulda slapped a new battery in it if I could have found one. I used to use it for WarDriving back in the very early days of wifi when everything was either just open or using an easily broken encryption method. Shit made me feel like one of those heist movie hackers even though all I was doing was mapping where I could get free internet. 😎

Try buying quality laptops.

My experience is pretty much the opposite. Phones give weird problems and I can't even properly diagnose.

I think this is more of a bloated ass windows problem than the form factor. It's so fucking heavy that it kills the machine, crushed under the weight of an inferior OS

Y'all're talking about this as a windows problem but for my old laptop it was the USB ports started dying then some keys stopped working and finally the frame began dying. It didn't last 5 years.

That motherfucker should lay off the DMT

I'm afraid to even hear what this person thinks about a desktop.

Surprised everyone is blaming windows. Maybe I just have bad luck but almost all of my laptop problems have been hardware or firmware related. Although windows certainly doesn't help the battery life when it decides to just ignore power rules and I open the laptop to find it never reacted to closing the lid and it has just enough charge left to flash 'battery low please plug in' before dying on 0%.

Sounds like Windows laptop problems.

I have no idea what this means

I have a 2010 Thinkpad that I ordered new. I still use it on campouts and in the garage and stuff (plugged in, no battery)

Lmao what have y'all devolved into?

It's not that I don't like it, I'm just scared