12 Years ago I had a Sony Vaio. I quite liked it. Then in my next job, 2017 or so, I went for a Toshiba Portege, and absolutely loved it.
Guess what the above two have in common? Yup, they stopped making laptops for the professional market. So now I’m a bit at a loss. Any recommendations?
Requirements:
- Lightweight and easy to carry around.
- 13-15" display, preferably
- Decent battery life
- It absolutely must have an RJ45
- Works well with linux
- Good keyboard quality
- ISO keyboard availability
- Touchpad. Bonus points if it has the touchpad buttons ABOVE the pad itself.
Business grade Thinkpads (usually the more expensive ones, not the “Thinkpads”) are usually a solid choice. Mine came with a USB-C-TO-RJ45 adapter, which I now find nicer than having built-in networking as it gives me more extensibility options without reducing speed. I could even switch it out for a 2.5Gbps or higher dongle in the future should I get the opportunity to upgrade my network.
If you can tolerate macOS and are willing to spend extra money on better speakers, Macbooks are also pretty good. Their WiFi cards are good enough that they can keep up with or even outperform ethernet in most scenarios if you have a good access point/router.
If you want your laptop to last, Framework may be a good option. Easy to repair, I/O swappable in the fly (want four ethernet jacks? Why not! Two 3.5mm plugs and four USB A’s? You can! Serial adapters? There’s probably someone selling a compatible dongle!), but pricey.
All the good laptops are moving towards dongles and soldered-on RAM, unfortunately. I’m hoping the upcoming RAM standard will bring back RAM modules in laptops and that not too many manufacturers follow Apple’s example of soldering on the SSD.