Getting a new laptop (B-Day) - Need recommendation

I would go to ebay, look for a Dell latitude or G8 or some other slightly older business class laptop, and replace the battery and ram and buy a 1tb drive to go with it.

I did this with a dell latitude G8, ran Fedora on it, and love it. Replaced the screen an battery with a 60 wH one, and I get about 10-12 hours of battery life. I spent about $400.

You will spend way less, can install linux and use it as a tinker machine. The only thing i will say is that the business stuff doesn’t always have a dedicated GPU, so might need to look around, since i can see your older laptop does have a GPU.