entracte:
answering this question is pretty difficult. features are subjective, and even then, nothing is perfect (except God). i wanted to do a post similar to this for a perfect operating system, but following thoughts about if i should keep my old ThinkPad or just upgrade to something more modern and have an easier life, i thought this would be more important.
this post also serves for people who are searching for a laptop to maybe reconsiderate their choices. in 2022 i bought a used ThinkPad X220 for cheap (which is still my main machine at the moment), after digging a bit on 4chan, seeing the /tpg/ (ThinkPad General) thread. this was also the time where i discovered YouTube channels like Mental Outlaw or Luke Smith, showing their minimalist Linux setups.
the 4chan thread was advertising old ThinkPad laptops as good choices, because they're cheap, easily repairable and upgradable, excellent support with Linux and *BSD, and their great keyboard. all of these statements are true: i bought mine for around 100€, i removed my BIOS supervisor password by shorting the EEPROM, which took me around 3 minutes, i easily upgraded the RAM for free because i had spare DDR3 laptop RAM sticks laying around, i had almost no issues with Linux or BSD (except Devuan, and i don't know if it's my machine or the OS), and i absolutely love the keyboard.
after receiving it, i installed Artix with OpenRC, used Luke Smith's LARBS script that automates the installation of dwm on an Arch/Artix system, and then started my minimalist lifestyle. by the way, note for all Linux users: there is a great chance you'll have to go through this minimalist phase one day. most of us have went through a dwm setup with Vim or Emacs, and at one point realised all of this is fucking stupid.
since that day, i tried very hard to follow the UNIX philosophy of minimalism, reading the suckless and cat-v websites for knowing what software to use, and also knowing i couldn't do big/resource intensive things on it. i even went through the ninth circle of hell: infinite distrohopping to find the most minimalist one, at one point even daily driving Plan 9 (9front). and now, i'm back to a classic Debian system, with an overheating laptop, horrible fans that make too much noise, and i can't even use some programs used by my uni correctly, e.g. Visual Studio Code (with a shit ton of obligatory Java addons) takes around 30s to fully launch, maybe 1 to 2 minutes for big projects with other programs behind, with CPU temps shooting to 95°C constantly (update: since then i repasted the CPU so i now have better idle and work temps, around 40 in idle and 65/70 in work). other programs just don't work. i couldn't even use my laptop in class just to take notes, because even launching only Obsidian seems too much for that machine, making fan noises that everyone hears (not a problem anymore since repasting).
so, if you're searching for a new laptop to buy, and someone advertises you to buy a very old business laptop (ThinkPad, Latitude...), more than 5 or even 10 years old, search more elsewhere. don't buy an old laptop that will permanently overheat for nothing, nor buy a new laptop with abhorrent specs that will overheat even more just by booting.
design: Apple MacBook Pro (2023)
nothing else to say. it is the most beautiful laptop and cleanest one i ever saw.
CPU architecture: ARM
this will also be part of an other blogpost that i will write later this year, but x86 CPUs were never meant to be on laptops. desktops and servers, yeah. but not laptops. they are too hot, use too much power, have mediocre battery life compared to ARM-based laptops, require much beefier cooling, and much more. ARM (done well) can be faster than x86, with better efficiency, battery life, temps, etc; look at what Apple is doing with their Apple Silicon (M1, M2...) CPUs.
build quality: Lenovo ThinkPad P Series
the P-series ThinkPads are the most durable laptops on the market. non-professional laptops, and even some ThinkPad series (e.g. E, L, etc.) are built like dogshit.
repairability/upgradability: Framework
i should be able to replace simple components like RAM, SSD, battery, etc. easily, which is something Apple apparently doesn't care about. soldering components forces the consumer to buy the entire computer again or send it and have it upgraded by the manufacturer itself, which is sometimes really expensive. even Lenovo, who were considered the best consumer-grade brand for laptop repairability with older ThinkPad models, began to go the way of soldering essential replaceable components like RAM, for no reason. recently they seemingly stopped doing this on RAM with the recent ThinkPad models, using LPCAMM modules. Framework does this the right way, by offering spare parts freely on their website: mainboards, RAM, SSD, keyboards, batteries, screens, internal modules, cables, etc. and making repairability extremely easy.