That is why it is always so fun to give you a bad time. I started out as an enthusiast a little more than 40 years ago. I worked for a while maintaining computers in a professional capacity. After that I helped others keep their computers and related hardware and software running... sometimes at work, sometimes as a hobby, and as a friend. From my perspective it seems that the types of failures have shifted a bit from heat related hardware failures to build quality related mechanical failures. With your business experience, you probably know more than I about that.
When we were paying an arm and a leg for those now ancient laptops it seems like the hinges didn't fail and the keyboards didn't fall apart after a year or two. HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple and all the other manufactures know almost exactly how many times a lid can be opened and closed before a hinge will start to pull out a nut secured in cheap plastic. And they are hoping that you will blame yourself for that type of failure or if you have an extended warranty that the repairs will be more expensive to complete for the insurer than just sending the insured a new or refurbished computer made by them.
They know that a certain percentage won't make it through their initial warranty period and they will lose a little on that. But most will go a few months to a year or two past their manufacturer's warranty and then the consumer will find that it is a better choice to buy a new improved computer than try to patch together the old one. Mechanical failures are likely much easier to predict than heat related component failures and the last couple laptops that we have purchased run very cool anyway. The fan on the one that I acquired a week ago barely comes on except during very processor intensive tasks. So the manufacture’s best bet to force you to purchase a new laptop is to install hinges that they know will bind up within a year or two and pull the nuts out of the plastic. Simple, effective and something that can blamed on mishandling or abuse by the customer. It also can be blamed on pressure to produce devices as cheaply as possible.
If I didn't have a pile of fairly recent laptops with broken hinge assemblies purchased by me or given to me by friends and acquaintances I wouldn't have thought of this strategy. But this is something that seems to have started mostly in the last ten years or so. Before that if a laptop hinge assembly came apart it didn't seem to be such a pain in the rear to fix. As a retired professional, I am curious if you have had similar observations.
Once upon a time HP built computers and printers like Mack and White Freightliner built semi tractors. . . Metal parts. . . Metal and Nylon gears, the only plastic was outside on the case. That was when you needed a Mack truck to move a printer amd many computers. Remember ten pound laptops? Now, everything is plastic except for a few rods and springs and even some rods and springs are getting plasticized.
Warranty repairs are a cost included in the bill of materials of every product made, and the length of time it will be covered is part of that calculation. Increase the length of the warranty, as did the EU, and the price of the product has to go up. TANSTAAFL! Someone has to pay for the parts and labor of warranty repairs. That cost is amortized over all units of each model sold and reduces the profit margin on the product when sold or increases the retail price. They calculate it to the penny and are usually quite accurate using historical experience. . . But it is always their best professional guess. They also include the guesstimated cost of consumer lawsuits. They have to.
Frankly, I saw more laptops with multiple missing key tops (why should so many keys just spontaneously pop off, especially keys that were not keys frequently used?) that made them unusable and lower cases splitting (users swear they did not drop them) than broken hinges, but also some with just floppy hinges where the friction no longer kept the screen in place. The other likely failure point was power jack ports, usually applied with only two extra mechanical solder dollops plus the actual power input solder points instead of screw connection mechanical strengtheners.
Commoditized laptops have to fail at a known rate. The business model of the industry demands it. The manufacturing/selling company requires more sales to remain in business because their margins are far too narrow to survive without repeat sales every so often, at least every two to three years. So, either the keyboards have to fail, the hinges, the logic board, or power supply has to die an economically justifiable, non-repairable death, requiring a replacement. . . Preferably with one of their own brand, but they really don’t care if it is.
Being a commodity, if their customer doesn’t buy the same brand again, some one else will jump ship from another brand to their brand just as easily when his old one died an equally justifiable, non-repairable death. It’s a game in commodity computers where brand matters less than OS, just as in commodity Android phones.