Funny enough I have one of those exact same models next to me! I completely agree with you, and think that it’s still one of the best laptops ever built. That said, I’ve now given it to my wife as her iPad Mini wasn’t cutting it for her work.
I never got on with docking my MBP though. The screens I had access to were always inferior to the laptops own, and by the time you’ve hooked up a monitor, keyboard and screen it felt like a waste as you may as well be using any old computer.
Again, 100% agree on Linux laptops. The few I’ve had a play with just weren’t quite there. Plus, my main motivation behind all of this is get to a position where I can incrementally upgrade components, which basically means I’m looking at a desktop, or abstract the entire thing away by just renting hardware in a data centre.
I’ve been primarily looking at Ryzen chips so far. I hadn’t considered single-core Turbo performance, so maybe that’s something I’ll review.
I think I may end with this exact setup, just using my iPad instead of the cheap laptop
