Musing from an E6430S

The things I'd actually change about my Latitude:

1. Not weigh 3~4 lbs.
2. Have more than 16GB of RAM.
3. Have USB-C where the USB2 + ESATA is.
4. Swap the rear USB3 and side VGA cables.
5. Have internal Bluetooth instead of dongle in my rear USB3 port.

Notice, these are pretty much in the order of impossible, lol.

Newer machines offer faster processors and better capabilities for USB-C than Stark does, but not by much. I think the hardest to solve is the weight problem. The closest thing to a lightweight laptop in Stark's formfactor is the X1 Carbon, and I say that's lightweight relative to its peers rather than my tastes.

And there in lays why when I reach for my laptop at home, it usually has more to do with an x-terminal than a keyboard. Because my tablet's weight is < 0.5 kg and my laptop's weight is < 4 kg.

On the flipside, one of these days I should probably dig up one of the old E-series docks and see how well that works with Linux. I seem to recall the D-series docks worked pretty good with FreeBSD if you followed polite undocking procedures, and I don't think Linux gives as many farts about the hotplugging.