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 laptops (at least at the enterprise end - SMB is a crapshoot) are typically backed by better warranties, guaranteed parts availability for a period, trade a more robust build for worse looks, have management features like PXE boot, and (historically) ports for docks. They’re also more likely to have compliance-driven features like fingerprint scanners, and are frequently more repairable.
Source: In a past life, I managed the entire end-user compute portfolio of a major OEM.
I am aware. I just assumed that since there’s not an IT department offering/mandating any particular option then it’s more of a prosumer type of situation. Both of my recommendations are a good fit. They both have good parts availability, an array of ports for peripherals, and Lenovo will provide next day service at your home or office with their premium support plans.