I have used many laptops so far, as daily drivers or otherwise.

I have daily driven an old HP Compaq (4:3 screens era), a newer HP Compaq, a Lenovo and a Dell Latitude.

Not a single laptop has ever failed me in so many ways as my Acer Swift 3.

Other laptops

I will not tell the story of the (more recent) Dell Latitude, simply because I only used it for one year. Suffice to say the only problem I had was a RAM failure and it needed a motherboard replacement because it was soldered LPDDR (avoid this thing).

Old HP

I stopped using my old HP because it has gotten too slow. Or should I say mainstream software has gotten too bloated to run on it. The only visible problem was silver paint on left mouse button wearing out to black. (My sweat has quite low pH. Any nutritionists around to cure me? Contact info in about section.) The hairy trackpoint stood surprisingly well though (just as the barrel jack charger - I keep using it for the new Compaq).

To be fair, I was very careful handling this first laptop of mine, because I needed to share it, so I never dropped it for instance.

HP Compaq 6910p

My new Compaq had this annoying LED bar for toggling Wi-Fi and controlling volume. It was an aftermarket laptop, bought from a company that amortizes equipment every 2-4 years. After some extended period of heavy use, including dropping the laptop bag several times, the bar in question started bending and therefore disco flashing all indicators after feeling constant ghost touches. The bar is still broken today, but the laptop keeps serving my website. Also, the rubber trackpoint could not resist my toxic sweat.

I absolutely love the design that I can swap every component by removing just one screw. Despite never even wanting to.

Additional bonus points awarded here for the absolute surprise of 5GHz Wi-Fi support (802.11a/n I guess).

Lenovo y510p ‘ideapad’

My Lenovo was supposed to be a high-end gaming laptop du jour. Despite having a nice metal cover it has quite a lot of cheap plastic in other places. The keyboard is made of red plastic keys painted black, some of which fell out, and the ones used the most are no longer painted (remember my reptile acids?). The hinges lost their grip and the cover either opened wide (bonus points for limiting maximum opening angle) or closed with a slam. Then the part limiting the opening angle started cracking.

An unpleasant surprise was that when 5GHz Wi-Fi started getting popular, I noticed that it does not even support it.

But the truly depressing part was the charger. Angular barrel jack with cheap plastic on the cable. The cable kept bending of course and it is now a monster.

Acer Swift

I am quite sure all of the previous laptops were used for a bit longer than 4 years each. Now this laptop has so many things designed wrong that I need to split it into several sections.

Keyboard

Oh man. Where to start. There are no separate Home/End keys. There is no separate Insert key. How am I supposed to use X11 clipbo^Usorry, I think nobody uses Ctrl+Insert/Shift+Insert these days. I guess it is Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V or some other thing. The arrow keys are so tiny that they keep falling out if pressed at the wrong angle. I gave up with the right arrow (which could not hold in place) and I left a bare contact which I still do occasionally press when faced with no other choice. In hindsight I might have used it extensively (I value my time, may I please skip your vpn sponsor segment Dear Mr Youtuber). This had been so ridiculous that I even learnt to use ^A/^E in Bash (and other libreadline-based programs) and stopped using GUI editors altogether. At least in Vim I can navigate using HJKL.

Hinges

The hinges. Oh. They do hold tight. This is where the good part ends. They have been held using some chainmail strap. And maybe glue? Instead of screwing them together with the cover. The hinges are fully separate from the structure of the cover! Can you believe this? Because when I took off the bezel I was not even certain how on Earth it had possibly held together previously.

(Oh and I found some repair technician rambling about this design to fail.)

Actual digital components

Yes I know it sounds crazy but actually true: the Wi-Fi card decided that sometimes it is better to just not show up on driver startup. It used to work fine for 3 years straight. It only started this strange pattern after I re-glued the hinges to the back cover. This is Intel’s AX200 in case someone still wants to embed this crazy thing into new equipment.

Summary

Do not buy this thing. If you need a laptop to last even 4 years, buy a Framework or buy a MNT reform.