Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what would constitute my ideal computer, given the kind of work that I do on a daily basis, and thought I’d try to write down some of my thoughts.

First, a bit about what my use case is. About the heaviest thing I do on a daily basis is accessing social media, which I can easily do only on my phone. The rest of my everyday computer use consists of programming, editing plain text and playing music while I do those things. None of these are particularly heavy, and it’s for this reason that my 2006 T60, weak even by the standards of its proper time, generally suffices for when I travel. But I still have 2 big problems with that computer compared to the more modern one I was using until it broke: the battery life (atrocious even after a battery replacement) and the size (unwieldy to fit in my backpack). Of course I think there are also some clear benefits, but the merits of old thinkpads have been talked to death online.

Another feature I would want in my dream machine that I’m honestly surprised at the lack of in modern laptops is data connectivity. It would be amazing to be able to be somewhere without wifi but where I can still talk to a cell tower and be able to use a real computer, unconstrained by a tiny touch screen-only device. There are many laptops out there with LTE connectivity but in my searching they seem mostly geared toward Business Users™ so they cost $$$.

Lastly I think it barely needs saying but I would need it to be able to run Linux (sorry BSDfriends, I’ve loved tinkering with FreeBSD but I can’t make the switch). Until recently I wouldn’t have thought this needed to be said since the last time I had problems installing Linux on a laptop was circa 2011, but just recently I found that the completely normal low end modern laptop I had purchased had a networking card that was incompatible with Linux. Also, I’ve seen a lot of chromebooks that fit characteristics I want but to my knowledge Linux support there is still spotty at best (surprised nothing has improved since I last looked into this in high school honestly).

So to summarize if there are any hardware manufacturers out there who want to make a laptop that’s

• low spec
• low power consumption
• small
• upgradable/repairable
• LTE connected

I’ll give you my firstborn child and shill for you forever online. Also just for extra fun points make it use ARM. Or even better RISC-V lol.