Tried Pinebook Pro, and while the screen is bearable, its keyboard is really not good for long stretches of work. And then, it can not sleep properly, so it's not really ready to be the daily driver.
Would like to try Getac s410, but it's difficult to find A-ware refurbished devices.
Are the tinkerers running out of options?
Lots of positive reviews out there for this, though I haven’t tried one.
To that end, I propose the HP 13 G1. Yes, a Chromebook. Hear me out...
I had a few Asus Eees back in the day, and I used them a little. They were fun but ultimately too small to be usable.
By contrast, the pluses of the HP are: Everything just works (no suspend/resume issues, 4-6 hours of battery life, premium fit and finish in a slim case, and ~$170 (landed) for the hidpi display and 16GB RAM, and Linux containers.
The downsides are: I believe end of software support is 2023.
~5 years ago I bought one refurb for almost half price, around $550. I had gotten a cheap Chromebook but the build quality was not great. I couldn't bring myself to spend a grand on trying a Chromebook, but I jumped when I saw a refurb, almost top of the line model. Since then, it has become my go to machine when I'm away from work. I've recently been thinking about replacing it (more on that later), but was having a hard time finding a worthy replacement.
For the longest time it looked like they weren't going to do the Linux crostini containers, and I had all but given up on that. Maybe a month or 6 weeks ago though they did end up adding support.
Mostly my personal laptop use consists of: Browser, VPN(s), password manager, and SSH into boxes at work. The chromebook was able to do all these things, though the SSH component was a rough edge. I'd do most of my programming or other more serious things SSHed into a work or personal server.
With the addition of Linux, my rough edges have all been solved! I can now reliably mosh into work machines, and that's been super robust. On rare occasions I also need to run RDP clients, which I now have. I can even run a full programming environment like Python, vi, onivim2, probably vscode or similar, though I haven't really done that.
Once I got Linux containers, I decided to finally get one of the highest end ones, from i5 and 8GB RAM to i7 and 16GB, figuring I could use that. One ebay I was able to find the top end model for $170-ish to my door. Hard to beat that.
So, if the market doesn't change soon, I'm going to upgrade the display, buy a new battery, change some stickers and go on with my tank.
As you say, newer machines are let's say...different.