I think he's referring to the aesthetics and quality of materials.  Things have gotten better recently, but the majority of non-Apple laptops out there are made of cheap plastic and have terrible keyboards and trackpads - the only well made ones I've seen were similar in price to Apple's stuff.

When it comes to trackpads, I've yet to use a non-Apple trackpad that wasn't crap.  I either use a trackpoint (like on my Dell) or plug in a wireless mouse.

Of course, this goes back to what folks care about in a laptop.  Some folks want the best stats for the least money, and others care more about the aesthetics.  I usually fall in the latter category, but I suppose part of that is because I'm always somewhere where I have multiple computers, and I usually run my virtual hosts on my server.

I agree with you on Intel chips though.

Jeffrey.

On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 2:24 PM, thomas@redhat.com <thomas@redhat.com> wrote:

Meh. I've owned the following Thinkpads over the 6 years - T42, T60,
T61, X60, two X61s, T500, and T510.

All of them have Just Worked(TM) with Linux (inluding accelerated
graphics), and out of all of them, I've had *one* hardware issue
requiring a visit by a technician.

So I'm gonna have to call BS on your assertion. Thinkpads are not cheap,
but you get what you pay for.