BarryBarrington [any]

Machine translation: In agreement with our Italian friends, we could take advantage of the Vatican power vacuum to launch a special operation on the city, abolish the absolute monarchy and proclaim the Vatican People’s Republic

To second this - Thinkpads in my experience have been pretty solid. I’m still using the second hand x280 I bought a few years ago and installed linux on. It took a big hit and the screen smashed so bought a replacement (higher resolution) third party screen on aliexpress. I poured a glass of water on the keyboard. It still worked but some of the keys had to be pressed quite hard, so I got a replacement keyboard also on aliexpress, was pretty easy to install (youtube video plus 20 mins time, the replacement even came with the screwdriver I needed). I treat it pretty rough but it keeps ticking along. I don’t think I’d ever buy a new laptop unless I could expense it. Plenty of second hand thinkpads online with decent processors / ram. idk if they’re any good for gaming but for work/web browsing they’re great.

Rowing machines are good for all round fitness, but correct technique is non-intuitive and takes a long time to learn. Done correctly it will build core strength, legs and shoulders. But most importantly cardiovascular fitness. It is low impact so it should be fine on your knees as long as you aren’t splaying your legs apart on the drive. I would personally recommend an exercise bike / spin bike in place of a cheap rowing machine for cardio especially if you can’t be bothered with the technical aspects. Just sit on the bike, watch tv, get your heart rate above 130bpm for an hour, easy peasy.

Yeah seems like a lot of people do. Rowing technique actually takes quite a while to hone, and it is difficult to transmit a lot of power without good technique so people often crank it to max to feel like they are working hard. In reality rowing is more of an endurance sport and rowers will often sit at low intensity for 30-60mins on the machine at a steady pace to build conditioning, endurance, and cardio.