Lenovo ThinkPad T400

Underrated point, maybe it's aluminum unibody or more stable OS, but in my experience average MBP lifetime is meaningfully higher compared to a windows machine. My longest lasting windows machine was T400 Thinkpad which lasted 5 years before Core 2 Duo architecture stopped being able to keep up. It got replaced with HP Envy with great specs but made out of plastic which barely lasted 1.5 years before screen fell off (literally). Replaced with 17" 2014 MBP which is still alive after SSD replacement.

As someone that believes that ultimately in the end Stallman is right, this situation isn't great. I do run a T400 Thinkpad with Libreboot and Triquel Linux, one of the FSF approved libre/free distros. But... the state of available hardware that is completely open/free is getting worse. That the T400 laptop is the most modern machine that can run fully free form top to bottom says it all, it is 17 years old. Also thanks to Libreboot, it cannot use the inbuilt Radeon GPU. As much as I wish one could easily get full free hardware, one has to make compromises nowadays just to have anything. It is mostly the low level stuff like the firmware and management engines that you don't have a huge choice on. But you can still have libre operating systems and the driver support without binary blobs is actually kind of ok nowadays. But the trend is clear. The last decade hasn't been great for libre hardware, it is now just a game of making the least compromises. Funnily enough, it was Stallman who once said that if you have to use a proprietary system at least use one that is possibly compromised by a government that doesn't impact you. For instance, it isn't too likely that Chinese government is going to actively work with the US, so using Chinese computers is probably a better choice. The same goes the other way. It isn't perfect but I at least get the logic.

I too had a Thinkpad T400, in about 2013. Compiling my undergrad university course code made the music I was listening to skip. Modern software sucks, I can not imagine using a core2duo to do any task other than ssh/word processing

My daily runner is a T400 Laptop with 4GB RAM on a fairly slim Linux distro. But in the last 6-12 months it is starting to feel a little tight when it comes to anything web browsing. Even things like Thunderbird are getting very bulky in keeping up with web rendering standards. I pulled down an Audiobook player the other day, once all dependencies were meet, it need 1.3GB to function! At least VLC is still slim.

I also agree that saving up for a MacBook will be worth the money. My first laptop was a Dell Vostro, which is essentially a rebranded Inspiron. The keyboard and screen were excellent. I had issues with stability (BSOD), the slow 5400rpm harddrive didn't have much kick, the trackpad sucked, and the AC port broke. Luckily, due to my warranty, they sent out a tech to fix the AC port the next day. Next up was a Lenovo Thinkpad T400. While the trackpad was slightly better, and the laptop itself was built like a brick, the quality of the screen with subpar, I still had BSOD issues, and the overall performance seemed to degrade very quickly. Like you, I wanted some killer battery life, so I went for the 9 cell instead of a 6 cell -- basically, a larger battery that "stuck out" of the back. Brand new, the laptop was getting a solid 8 hours, but within 15 months, it was down to 3 hours. It was really, really disappointing. In addition, the default settings for the laptop being unplugged limited the power to the wireless adapter to 50%. This was buried under several menus, and caused me to have intermittent connectivity issues for the first year I owned it, until I happened to stumble upon that one setting. Lenovo didn't offer and onsite warranty, so I had to yank the harddrive out and send mail the laptop back to them to get it serviced. Two years ago I got a 15" MacBook Pro, and I'm still very happy with it today. My battery has degraded about 10%, so I get around 4-5 hours unplugge

I use a ThinkPad X60 and Synergy as my "keyboard". I've had way too many keyboards over the years, but the X-series ThinkPads are the only ones that don't make my hands ache after a day (or night) of code wrangling. Alas, I can't comment on which modern ThinkPads are best. I know for a fact that X40 and X60 lines are perfect. I've never used an X200 though. On the other hand, I've had a T400-something from work for a few months. That keyboard was worthless compared to my current X60.

The way 99.95% of customers would replace a macbook battery is to take it to the Apple Store and have them do it for a fixed charge while you wait. It's a great service. Apple will still replace the battery in your 2013 MacBook Air. By contrast there hasn't been a first-party battery pack for the T400 in many years. These "fragility" arguments always, as in the case of the OP, ignore the actual experience of owning and using the thing. People will adopt an ancient smartphone because they are locked into the idea that removable battery and removable SD cards are morally superior, and then blindly ignore the fact that the battery life sucks, the only batteries available are random chinese junk, the backs are easy to break and lose, SD cards are unreliable and easy to lose, and so forth. There is a reason that the market overwhlemingly prefers phones and laptops with fixed storage and integrated battery packs.