So I have a few thoughts.
Long ago, I made a deal with the universe, I set up a code of conduct/ethics in how I would interact with the world and the people in it, but mostly with hardware purchases.
Things that I physically interact with, keyboards, mice, laptops — I’m not going pursue any warranty claims if something goes wrong. There’s always the slightest possibility I might have caused some kind of damage so I don’t want to risk karmic retribution by seeking warranty replacements, even if I’m entitled to.
Same for things that I provide ac power to, like power supplies, chargers/adapters, monitors — if they die, eat the cost and take better care of the replacements or make smarter purchases.
Internal components are fair game, if they develop problems and die, go ahead and get them replaced at the manufacturer’s expense.
For things that are DOA or damaged, if it was due to poor packaging or carrier abuse, I’ll ask for compensation. But if everything is okay externally and the side panel is cracked or something is dented, then that’s just the universe telling me that this was not meant to be. Do better.
About specific brands, I used to be a huge HP fan. It was probably because I loved Compaq stuff in the late 90s and HP acquired them.
This lovefest was dampened slightly when I found out they actively blocked Apple devices from working with their hardware. You couldn’t use HP DVD drives with the early Mac minis.
Then it was soured with how they hyped up and then abandoned WebOS, I’ve not purchased a HP product since then.
They rebranded in recent years and I love what they’re doing but I’m still not brave enough to give them a third chance at letting me down.
I was also huge fan of Toshiba and Sony for laptops in the 2000s, they were absolute legends with product lines like the Qosmio and AW series:
I still have one of these in storage somewhere:
MSI had a range of Whitebooks, those were super cool.
These days, there’s just one brand that seems to be passionate about computing, Lenovo. I probably have more Lenovo branded hardware than any other brand, they’re just built different. Maybe it’s their IBM heritage or a bias on my part because of that, but I’m really happy with Lenovo stuff.
There are new players that I’m cautiously optimistic about, like Minisforum and Framework and older players I keep hoping would return, like ECS.
I usually have a neutral stance on mainstream brands like Asus, Acer, Dell, Gigabyte etc — no real preference or avoidance for them. No passion either.
I have a soft spot for completely lame and underpowered hardware, maybe it’s a psuedo-netbook-esque nostalgia but I felt so alive during those days. The $99 laptop era was real and I experienced it and it was awesome. I used to walk around with an Eee PC laptop in the back pocket of my jeans haha.
So things like mini pcs, thin clients, chromebooks, windows tablets, I adore them, as if they’re like tiny stupid squirrels or something.
Am I rambling? Probably so this is where I stop.
