[lxn]

I'm not fond of Intel, but I recently bought a laptop with an Intel CPU. I'm stuck with them for a few more years. My PC is already AMD-based, and I loved the new mobile CPUs from AMD, but they are either hardly available or in undesired packages (bulky gaming laptops).

I assume that they have great deals with laptop manufacturers. You can't find a Dell XPS with a Ryzen, for example. Ultrabooks are mainly Intel-based. The Framework laptop is not available everywhere yet.

It's the same frustration I had many years ago when I had to choose between a diesel car in stock and waiting 8 months or more for a gas one.

[sevagh]

I got a nice Thinkpad T14 Gen 4 recently with a 7840U, if you like Lenovo Thinkpads. I've used many Intel ones before and I like them all equally.

[lxn]

Thanks for the recommendation. Thinkpads are excellent, and honestly, I wanted one. Unfortunately, I'm not too fond of the company.

This is because they've done shady security and privacy-related stuff in the past, for example, shipping laptops with malware in 2015 or selling US Marines' laptops with altered hardware to send data back to China [1].

To make it worse, they also have weird practices regarding buying used products: they recommend you avoid buying used laptops (saying they might have viruses but later removed the page [2]) or saying that once you unlock your phone, you are not allowed to sell it [3].

TL;DR: Lovely machine, but I can't trust the company behind them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahw1cppZi-g [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2k9D81fbpA

[sevagh]

Fair enough. I have blind spots for sketchy things done by companies that make products I like.