The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

I am still running an Ideapad from 2017. In its entire life I've never been able to get an external HDMI monitor working on it, but could at least attach a DVI monitor. The "updated" video drivers make the whole unit horribly unstable and it will hard freeze randomly, so I downgrade back to the original shipping drivers from 2017. However, this means I can't control some of the video card settings and I think I may be missing some brightness in the LCD because of it.

Some years ago even the DVI adapters stopped working. About 7 years ago I dropped it and bent the metal frame of the laptop, but didn't affect function. I replaced the battery this year when its original one was only holding a charge for about 40 minutes total. Its back up to a 3 hour charge now using a questionable no-name battery because Lenovo doesn't even sell first party batteries for it anymore. Recently the touchpad has stopped working, but will start working again with a full power down then power back up. I'm still deciding if I want to spend the $30 on a replacement part from ebay or just put that $30 toward a new unit.

On one hand I should be happy I'm still using it as my daily driver for a personal laptop after 8 years, but on the other, it was flawed from day 1 and is slowly getting worse.

Late to the party, but still have suggestions for people in your situation, looking for a decent laptop.

Look at refurbished laptops!

There are plenty of used laptops that can be found for a decent deal, with the only downsides being that the laptop will be slightly out of date (but can often be granted a new lease of life by upgrading the RAM, just make sure to read the specs to see if you can replace the RAM in the first place, and how much RAM you can use.