[legitster]

Part of the issue here is that "Windows machines" could mean anything from an el cheapo Asus to a mil-spec Thinkpad.

I also think that people don't necessarily appreciate how much quality improvements have been made in the last 5-7 years in consumer laptops. Optical drives are gone, everything has an SSD, performance has plateaued and AMD is good again.

Someone walking into Best Buy today and dropping $500 on a laptop will be getting a much more robust machine than when I did the same back in college.

[bardworx]

You are 100% right, besides the mil spec, which explicitly means the “least expensive option that does the job”.

I can attest that recently, the average laptop is way better. My machines were a toshiba, surface (2nd gen), and think pads (during their dark ages), dell XPS.