New laptop derecommendations

[Peter Flynn]

I'm looking for a new laptop.

I am NOT looking for recommendations (but if you have them, by all means
send them directly to my email address) because I suspect one or other
variant of Ubuntu will run on pretty much all modern laptops.

What I am looking for is warnings: DON'T use XYZ laptops because...

Knowing what to avoid is probably more useful than knowing what to
choose from, and I already have a checklist of things it MUST have.

I have been using an ancient but reliable Dell Latitude D810 through
many versions and distros of Ubuntu. I've been using Dell for many years
but recently got a loan of an XPS 15 which should have been wonderful
but which has been a disaster: the keyboard is horrible and the only
distro which would install on it was Mint 18 — everything else hung at
the installer's splash screen. Weird for a machine whose smaller brother
(XPS 13) is actually sold with Linux preinstalled). So Dell is out.

///Peter