Laptop recommendation? User serviceable, non-gaming

After many years I'm in the market for a new laptop. I'm looking for something for work, which mostly involves lots of documents. I don't need something for gaming.

The last laptop that I really loved was my trusty old Thinkpad X301. (It actually still works fine, I just want something with a higher-res screen).

The main things I want in a laptop are:

1. User serviceable, i.e., I want the ability to at least replace the HD and RAM easily.

2. Durability (no cheap plastic Asus crap)

3. Around $1k.

4. No macs.

Are thinkpad T-series still the way to go here? Has anything else come along? I haven't paid much attention to the laptop market in the past 10 years, so I'm not really sure what's out there.

Thanks!

Still the T series for me, although with a little configuration you'll easily exceed 1k budget.

I'm using a 2.5 year old P50 at the moment.

I was going to recommend a Lattitude, but this is a stickler:

Slartibartfast said:

3. Around $1k.

Click to expand...

You haven't mentioned what performance bracket you're looking at, and that changes things very quickly. I would point you to Dell's refurbished outlet to take a look around and see if anything looks like it fits the bill.

Check out the Dell 7567. It has one screw on the bottom to take the panel off.

Thanks for the input everyone. Realistically I know I will probably end up spending around $1300. Performance-wise it doesn't have to be much, I will mostly be using it for writing and editing large documents. However, I absolutely do not want to buy a cheap piece of plastic that will crack or fall apart in two years. I would rather pay a bit more and have it stick around for quite a while.