Yeah, I agree with others that full numpad is one of those niche requirements that will really crimp your list to otherwise unappealing options. I would really recommend a separate USB numpad and/or a desk setup with full KB/mouse/monitor with a USB-C dock (this works great if you get a laptop with a full-featured USB-C port).
MacBook Air has recently returned to its status as the best all-around generic premium-value laptop so I’d get that or at least use it as a reference point
We have a two room apartment “the desk” is just our kitchen table.
even so, you can’t, like, use a 15" laptop on the couch comfortably! a 13" just moves around way more.
I understand that this recommendation has weird overtones of mac users / professionals / people being less averse to buying an array of peripherals, but I simply cannot recommend the alternative
I get claustrophobic trying to do any work on a 13 or 14-inch screen, I can’t understand how it’s the sole computer of some
My happiest laptop was a comfy, sturdy 17"-inch right at the height of laptop chiclet keys before they all bottomed out
15” 3:2 laptop 
(They are never making a Surface Book 3 lol)
15" 3:2 is acceptable, I have an old 15" 4:3 in the closet (http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:A20p) and it’s a joy
I have this really weird bug on my windows desktop where my second display doesn’t redraw. I can move the mouse cursor around and see that, but if I click anything nothing changes on that screen though I can see the taskbar change on my main display to see the active program change. The clock on the second display doesn’t update. If I lock and unlock the machine, the second display will update, but only once. It’s hard to google for because it assumes that I’m having trouble plugging in my monitor or whatever instead of this more subtle problem.
Any ideas?
My first guess would be the GPU driver is buggy with second monitors. (The mouse cursor specially bypasses conventional GPU rendering to get low latency.) I’d try upgrading/downgrading the driver or seeing if there’s some safe mode that sacrifices performance for reliability.
My laptop is dying in about three ways.
I don’t really need my computing locus to be a laptop, anymore?
I haven’t put together a desktop in… over 10 years?
What is the cheapest not absolutely garbage thing I can buy or assemble from parts that is not some kind of Felixonian Specific Use Case Minmax Jamboree?
Mostly swallowing a lot of tabs and video and typing OK Modernish Gamesplay would just be a bonus.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehaw
ave maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum.
benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, iesus.
sancta maria, mater dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. amen.
i was wondering what phone i would get if/when my 8 shits itself but i guess that’s sorted now
if I were doing a cheap but good build right now I would probably go with a b450 microATX board, a ryzen 2600, a gtx 1060, 16gb of whatever ddr4 (you could live with 12 if you can find someone selling a matched orphan set of a 4 and an 8 but I wouldn’t use unmatched memory with ryzen, you could even live with a single 8), a 512g SSD (probably regular sata unless you can get a cheapo nvme), and a case / psu combo. figure $700-800 if you hunt around at that point.
This is almost literally my exact build right now to the letter, except for the SSD
It’s good
let it not be said I can’t work to spec
get a ryzen 1600 af instead of a 2600. they’re the same chip, but the af is $85. I think it’s only on amazon. and it’s just listed as the 1600
it’s a smaller number though
there aren’t really any 1060s in the retail channel any more and a new 1650 Super pretty much replaces and if you’re buying used, the surplus of RX 570s and 580s from the mining boom are better values
it’s 2020
buy a dual channel kit please