this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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Generally if you want long support windows you go for big boring brands’ simplest business class laptops. Or Apple.
Small companies an make a commitment to support, but they often have neither the money, customer base or manpower to follow through when the going gets tough.
I have found that popularity is a better predictor of spare part availability than any commitment from a company of any size. When they stop selling parts, there’s always the second hand market. When that dries up there’s always third party parts.
Firmware updates are one of the places that dell, Lenovo and Apple shine. Because of their customers expectations they tend to release new updates and drivers as functionality expectations or security conditions change.
Big brands have the money to provide longer support, but not the inclination lol.
This is sometimes true, but big brands have the market penetration to make hardware support very easy through second hand and third party parts and to be enticing fruit for third party support (see opencore and the dosdude patchers for apple stuff).