My Thinkpad T440p, its a reliable laptop that works amazingly. It may not be the most powerful but the keyboard is amazing and the build quality is better then any modern laptop.
This. Don't buy consumer laptops. You can get secondhand business laptops that are just as cheap and more durable. You won't get one with a touchscreen but that's about it for the downsides.
Can't miss what you don't know. I refuse to purchase at a laptop without a touch screen.
When you don't have a mouse it is great for quick interactions that cover a distance across the screen - interact with a button here, another over there, select a field far off from where my cursor is, screen skip, quick markup, etc. It's also far friendlier to use when commuting or flying where there are bumps and little elbow room. It isn't a 100% replacement for a touch pad but having it there to augment at times is such a boon.
I have a Surface 2. I only used the touchscreen when it's in tablet mode or the dogshit type cover starts annoying the fuck out of me. I don't miss it when I'm on my work laptop. As for moving the cursor and selecting things I just turn the cursor speed all the way up on every pc I use.
Lenovo has decent clearance prices around Memorial day for their last gen ThinkPads. Otherwise they're definitely not worth over 1k new like they pretend.
The problem is that the current generation is literally worthless in between their defective CPUs and pushing the new Windows spyware so I'm not sure the same statement will be true next year.
Cries in European. Any decent Thinkpad is 2.5k+ and rarely are any discounts. They just don't care about private consumers over here. Either university students or big companies can get reasonable prices.
It's been several years since I ran Windows on any of my laptops. And haven't run into any CPU issues yet. In my experience if stay away from the slim models and go for the more high-end ones you're good.