Hearing you talk about Thinkpads so much makes me depressed. When IBM owned them they were a beacon of hope in the tech industry. After Lenovo bought them things looked good for a while, but I’ve seen improvement upon improvement, and I’m not quite the namesake is being milked and that is it.
Still I have a x220t and x230 that are both still going strong. I bought the x220t in 2011 and it still work without any problems. Got the x230 in 2014 and have used it nearly ever day without any problems.
I originally got the LIbrem because it was US ‘made’, supported replacing the battery, and was made to be serviceable.
If Lenovo didn’t have security issues with the US government occasionally, and if they didn’t keep cheapening the hardware of thinkpads, I’d probably never would have bought any other brand.