So I've added an a super slim EliteBook 1040 (not an Apple, but they're all based on an Intel reference design which was shown here on El'Reg years back) laptop which is easy to carry round. When my much loved box started to play up I bought the replacement system, a ZBook or some such, which I loath, partly as the display is crap and partly because it is so damn heavy I just can't be arsed to carry the thing around, consequently it has hardly ever left my desk. I spent years flying around the world with two of these buggers in my laptop bag, fortunately no airline ever asked to weight my laptop bag! I've had a succession of "mobile workstations", I had the HP equivalents of your IBM, I loved by 8730 and even more so the 8740 that followed it (a laptop display you could comfortable read in the mid day sun in a coffee bar on the med, oh with 12bit per colour and 1920x1200 ). On the other hand, decency does not account for a lot these days. If you need something smaller, you're spoiled for choice. Now that we have tablets, phablets, massive-screen super computing cell-phones, convertibles, glorified Palm Pilots, and so on, I think there might be room, yet again, for decently sized, decently equipped, decently upgradeable laptops, with a decently long life. You may have lost your life savings investing in Sun Microsystems, but at least you could buy a half-decent laptop. It makes one really miss the near-end of the dot-com bubble days. To think that Apple once made one of the most enviable laptops made, not because a swallow could reach a velocity of 30 MPH carrying one, but due to its durability and expandabilty. Even Lenovo, heir to IBM's industrial reputational might, hardly acknowledges the hard-core leather pajama, studs, and straps wearing Thinkpad group any more.
I would gladly pay $6K+ for a modern take on the PowerBook Pismo G3.
I can't imagine that an inch-thick, highly upgradeable, high-value laptop would not be welcome, especially among the semi/pro crowd, trading for a fractional-inch form-factor and Timex watch upgradeability. Maybe I'm stuck in the glory days of my G3 Pismo with two incredibly flexible drive/battery bays and processor slot, (and praise the Lord) DIMM slots, and battery life measured in days, and the long-term reliability of an old Volvo. I may be an old curmudgeon, but I really don't know where today's obsession with paper-thin, un-upgradeable, planned-obsolescence laptops came from. Not a one burst into flames, unless left to charge in an oven, or an enclosed vehicle during Minnesota's deceptively warm summers. The IT shop I used to work at used to quote out multi-kilobuck 17" to even 21" Sager-Midern workstation-replacement laptops weighing 5 pounds or more, with specs that would make a contemporary Xenon system blush with pride. I'm reminded of the Good Omens incarnation of Famine when it comes to modern laptops, at least in the past 10-15 years.
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