Good for you. I started out on a T20 (I'm old). Still have it. Still love it. One of these days I'll move up to a T60 or whatever. For now, T42 still kicks a$$.
I started out with a Powerbook 140, and I don't think 26 counts as old here. I have a T20 too - 6th laptop I've owned. I've rebuilt it 3 or 4 times and replaced everything but the screen at some point. It's a good machine aside from having an annoying tendency to corrupt the contents of its CMOS chip.
I've noticed both Apple and IBM/Lenovo dropping in quality over the past 10 years or so. I have a Thinkpad 600X from 1998 or so - it's made mostly of carbon fiber, with a rubber coating. My Z61m is made mostly of cheap plastic, though it does have a metal frame and titanium lid. Apple uses either polycarbonate or aluminum, but seems to have a high rate of logic board failures. I'm not a huge fan of metal on the surfaces of a laptop that come in to contact with my body during use either - it transmits heat.
I still have a T22 with Libranet (Debian) Linux on it. The keyboard light was great! (Much cheaper than a backlit-keyboard, and accomplished the same thing. But I do everything nowadays on my old G4 Powerbook.