On Sun, Jan 05, 2025 at 06:19:25PM -0800, Jonathan Thornburg wrote: > And finally, Murphys's law applies to laptops: they break, often at > quite inconvenient times. The worst OpenBSD laptop I've ever owned > was the one I had to buy (around 2008) at a small-town big-box retailer > in a snowstorm the night before I was flying to a foreign country, after > my previous laptop died 2 days earlier. After that experience I switched > to owning pairs of slightly older/cheaper laptops, so I always have a > spare on hand.
I've never had a laptop mainboard or screen or keyboard fail in several decades of roaming. I did have a pre-SSD hard drive fail (a decade or so ago, while at a software conference, and my fault) when the laptop fell out of a backback onto a concrete floor. Went to a nearby computer store (remember them?). When I asked for a replacement, the sales person squinted at my broken drive and said "I'm sorry, they don't make them that small any more!" It was actually a win because I wound up with more space to clutter up. And that laptop lasted several years and was retired in working order due to CPU speed. And the only massive laptop failure I saw close up was when an admin person came to me (I was a developer, not their IT person) and said: "I spilled my coffee into my laptop keyboard, and it made a sort of zzzzzt sound. Do you think it can be just cleaned up?". I came in the next Monday and found a new admin person in their desk. So although I do get the point, I use one laptop, a Framework 13, with the original Intel CPU. It's fast enough for general use, though I wouldn't push it for gaming. Suspend/Resume works on current, though I've not tested hibernate in ages.
