You need to get a dumb brick for that Rock 5B. Looks like you got one of the ones with a bad firmware. When it negotiates the power drops out. There're tons of forum posts.
I've had the HP Dev One now since shortly after introduction. It has been rock-solid and everything just worked. Also the memory and SSD are upgradable easily enough.
I used to use ThinkPads exclusively, but Lenovo's priorities for ThinkPads no longer match mine.
I've since moved on to HP Dev One. It's well-rounded for me, was easily upgraded to 64GB of ram, and came with Pop! OS out of the box. I've also used System76 machines in the past with success, but I'm rather attached to having a pointing stick.
My dayjob provides a Dell XPS 13 (factory-loaded with Ubuntu) which is an acceptable machine, but I don't travel with it much.
I always use GNU/Linux. Of late I've been sticking to LTS Ubuntu or Pop! OS releases. I'm a strange case though, because my desktop is LXDE, and all I ever really do is run a browser or two with a pile of terminals, so I'm not running heavy desktop apps like Slack, Discord, or LibreOffice.
Simple solution here: don't buy locked phones anymore. My last locked phone purchase was in 2011. In the US, you don't need to buy a locked phone anymore to get service.
Two months ago I bought Samsung A03 to sit 24/7 on the charger and WiFi. I would have bought even something cheapear, but it was the cheapest one (without bothering with delivey) and it had everything need for a modern smsrtphone
Their Quinn/Doyle lines are frequently TW, too, and you can tell a huge difference versus Pittsburgh/Pro that are CN. I am not 100% if they bin batches differently, or if specific products switch from TW/CN and back. The TW Pittsburgh tools (some of the 72 tooth ratchets, 6pt sockets) are decent quality for their price-- but you still should feel them and inspect to get an idea (e.g. the foam used in grips for Pittsburgh pliers is junk, wobbly joints, poor finishes/grinding).
The things they offer lifetime warranties on keep getting better. Some things I wonder about though. Their 200amp multi process mig welder is only $200 less than a Hobart or Lincoln-- but who knows how long HF will sell replacement parts, their warranty process for OOS items and what will actually break, so the gamble to save 10-20% doesn't seem worth it.
Apex (Crescent/Gearwrench) are mostly TW and come in a little higher than HF's 2nd tier, but are solid quality for most of their hand tools.
Quality from Harbor Freight? I use tools for my day job and almost nothing from Harbor Freight holds up.
Edit: Sorry, I should add a bit more. I certainly have not used all (or even most) Harbor Freight tools, but for the work I do, the tools I've bought from Harbor Freight, they just don't last. For a backyard mechanic or Average Joe Homeowner, they're probably just fine.
I'm on a Pi4 8GB now with a 1TB USB SSD (Adata). The only issues I generally have are anxiety around Chromium staying up to date (it is still on version 98.0.4758.106 as of this writing.) and YouTube video playback can drop a lot of frames if the system is any kind of busy. I run Raspberry Pi OS 11 on it at present.
I love that it is just Ubuntu underneath, so I just install `lubuntu-desktop` and I've got my preferred desktop environment, while not losing the benefits of their kernel tuning and such.
I also used to always run ThinkPads (and Precision workstations with pointing sticks). I these days run a System76 Lemur Pro with a USB thinkpad keyboard I stick on top. The built-in keyboard is good, but trackpads and I have never gotten along. They've come a long way. Another option that friend got was the Frame Work. I helped him assemble it, and it also is a great GNU/Linux machine. Everything just works.
