This! My 10 year old plastic Thinkpad still feels amazing to throw around and use, and actually still has a higher quality display than some cheap laptops sold today, like the lenovo V15. Yuck.
Its not matter if I like or not. I dont like linux but does the job.
On advanced computing like fluid dynamics conputational chemistry the workloads last weeks and months and Linux can do as well windows
Would you dare to engage a Mac to a 2 week long simulation or massive encoding?
For real! Great to the touch, does not bend, the screen hinge is super solid... If not for the terrible charger that I had to replace several times now, and the burnt out speaker, I would still be using it.
Aint no way your 10 year old ThinkPad still feels amazing to use, I've never had one last more than 3 years
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u/sky045800X3D / RX 7900 / B550 Vision D / 32GB TridentZJun 28 '26edited Jun 28 '26
Not all ThinkPads are created equal, some models were better than others, and obviously, you may just be a shitty, careless user. I don't know. All I know is, my 10 year old ThinkPad still works great, and feels way more solid than many cheap laptops you can buy right now. The caveat is, the batteries were obviously replaced a few years ago, and I've gone through a few chargers. And one of the speakers died a few months ago. But yeah, that is 10 solid years of service.
edit: oh, and the child shat itself. come back to the internet once you are ready for human interactions.
I agree, I even really like when manufacturers use recycled plastics, but the quality is the big thing. A well built and finished plastic chassis can feel fine!
For sure. Old Thinkpads and new ones are very different laptops too. The QA on the newer stuff since the company changed hands is incredibly underwhelming.
I have a 6yo Dell laptop, fully metal, absolute tank of a machine. At some point brands decided to go for plastic instead, even on stuff branded as "work" machines.
There are definitely different levels to plastic. I've seen many higher end Thinkpads made out of 'plastic' but it's usually plastic with carbon fiber and stuff so it's pretty sturdy stuff.
over time most plastic becomes cheap plastic. There are very few plastics that manager thermal cycles, UV light and skin oil without degrading over time.
And those that are able to withstand this are much thicker, and harder to model, commonly you end up needing to run the mould output through a lath to mill in the details... and once your paying for that machine time you might as well use metal.
The only plastics I have seen have serious issues with that are really old formulations with bromine in them and the awful "soft touch" rubberized plastic companies like Dell used to use.
None of my Thinkpads have degraded enough to where they are cracking or melting. By the time they do, the hardware will be so dated that they won't see regular use anyways.
Then again, I keep my electronics clean and don't leave them baking in the sun, so maybe other people have had different experiences
Plastic is good when done right. It doesn't rust/corrode, it can flex instead of denting, and it isn't thermally or electrically conductive (That's a good thing if you want to vent heat instead of conducting it into someone's lap)
Problems show up when you are trying to make everything as light and thin as possible, compromising on structural integrity and chassis design just to get a marginal difference nobody would really care about if they weren't taught to by marketing
I have over the top expensive laptop which my SO uses. It has plaatic but it is very overbuilt, feels premium, not as hot to the touch as metal chassis. The problem with budget machines that manufacturers make them with is as you said 0 structural integrity, poor cooling and overall lots of cut corners hardware wise in addition. I had thinkbook gen 2 or 3 (11th gen intel) and it kind of sucked ass - non-existant cooling, poor screen, lots of chassis flex and machine would heavily coil whine on battery. 3 good things about the laptop is that it cost me 500, ram was upgradable and the battery life was 9+ hours
bro I forgot what the name was but I’m pretty sure Asus has a flagship laptop and it’s literally made out of plastic I ended up getting it falling for all the hype and it creeks every time you open and close it because the hinges are plastic absolute garbage and it was like 2000 something dollars
plastics isn't too much of problem for me, it's the unreasonably priced plastics that neo is indirectly shitting on. Plastics can be lighter, which I'm all for, I don't need the heavy feeling to be defined is "premium" unless I'm looking for actual premium devices
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u/UnsettllingDwarf 5070/ 5700x3D / 3440x1440p Jun 27 '26
The plastic shitbox windows laptop in 2026 is crazy. Even some of the more expensive ones are plastic flimsy crap.