Actually, it was a "Macbook Pro" that was mentioned above. All my searches for these end up around $1100+, so yeah, my estimate is correct.
At what point was I questioning the price you quoted on MacBooks? Regardless of the model (regular Macbook, Air, Pro)?
I know how much a Macbook costs. $1200-2000 is completely accurate, I was never questioning that.
I'm 100% realistic.
No, no you're not. You're comparing 4 year old Sandy Bridge i5's to laptops with Haswell and Broadwell CPUs and acting surprised that they cost far less.
You could do some research about what you are calling an "utter piece of trash". Thinkpads have amazing build quality, are powerful, and are every bit equivalent to top tier laptops.
I own three Thinkpads. They're great. At no point was a questioning the Thinkpad line. What I'm questioning is a $250 laptop being compared to a $1200-2000 laptop, which is utterly insane.
They're utter pieces of trash by comparison. Regardless of brand!
These things have 2nd gen (Sandy Bridge) Intel Core i5/i7 with 4-8 gigs memory to start with (can be upgraded to 16), Nvidia Quadro NVS 4200m, can come with either HDD or SSD (or both)
Not for $250 they don't!
For $250 you're looking at a lower end i5, no SSD, 4GB of RAM. And that's the point I'm making here. Sure, you can upgrade the RAM to 16GB, but that's not going to cost you $250! Sure you can upgrade to an SSD, but that's not going cost you $250!
and you can actually tinker with or upgrade them YOURSELF. Just look at all the easy ways you can upgrade or replace parts without having to take it in to a shop and lose access to it for weeks: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thinkpad+t420+replace
Congratulations, that's not even close to the argument we're having here. You can replace all the same parts in a Thinkpad T420 as you can in a standard Macbook Pro. Compared to the Air or the Retina Macbook? Guess that, Lenovo makes ultrabooks and thin laptops you can't replace as many parts in either. Most manufacturers do.
The reason these $1000+ value Thinkpads are so cheap is because businesses (with an over abundance of money) like to give their employees (and themselves) a good quality, sturdy, and fast laptop so they can be more productive. They can just write it off on their taxes. Then next year they do it again with the new model. These get sold with very little use as refurbished or used, and they are only 2-3 years old with maybe a few months of actual use.
When were we talking about $1000+ value Thinkpads?
Technology hasn't sped up much since Sandy Bridge gen CPU's, so these things easily keep up in terms of speed.
That doesn't mean the latest gen CPUs are going to be magically cheaper.
I'm not saying a Thinkpad is better than a Macbook Pro (although I could definitely argue that they're better), but for under $250, a refurb/used Thinkpad has MUCH more value per dollar than any Macbook Pro (or pretty much any laptop period).
Value per dollar is not the argument you made and it's not the argument we're having here.
Value per dollar, a Raspberry Pi 2 is an incredible machine. Does that mean someone should be using them as their daily driver? Hell no.
Look, this is what you said:
And why would anyone buy a $1200-2000 Macbook when they can get a Thinkpad T420 or X220 for under $250?
And that is what I'm responding to. That is the ridiculous statement you made. It would be like saying "Why would anyone buy a $1000-1600 Thinkpad when they can get a Thinkpad T420 or X220 for under $250? I'm pretty sure you can answer that question for yourself, and THAT is why you're not being realistic.