Originally Posted by
hfly
What you write may have been the reality a decade ago, but these days is often just what the cheapest/best deal an IT department could get, and these machines generally come off the same line and have the exact same components as the "consumer" machines, often with even lesser specs. The World has changed.
We're still buying enterprise-grade-only for the majority of users. I do have a few Lenovo Yoga 12" out there operating as thin clients, but we're still using T, X, and P series ThinkPads here. They've been very reliable, stable machines, even if the users aren't. Then again, we typically operate on a 6-year lifecycle for these, with a mid-life refresh (max ram, faster & larger HDD/SSD). I even have a few 8 year old ThinkPads being used everyday by some users as their daily drivers. I can't say I've ever had a consumer laptop from Best Buy ever last that long under daily (ab)use.
There's more to a laptop than hard drives & RAM. Sure, those commodity parts are widely used. Even Apple use commodity parts, often with much lower specs than competing machines. There's a serious difference in keyboards, screen hinges, case plastics (ABS vs. glass fiber-reinforced), power, and thermal management. Volkswagen builds the up! and Polo, but they also build the Bentley Flying Spur as well. Yes, the Flying Spur's radio in the dash is identical to that found in a lowly CC or Passat. BUT I can guarantee the experience between the two cars is substantially different.