I probably use my laptops harder than most people, but this has not been my experience with plastic laptops. I lost two laptops in a row to the plastic case cracking. In the first case the case broke around the hinge and destroyed a fan. In the second, about half the keys on the keyboard stopped working. I'll never buy another plastic-chassis laptop after that second one.
I can beat you! I had both issues, cracked hinge AND keyboard not working anymore on the same PC! It wasn't even a "cheap" model, but a rather mid-range HP ProBook. Judging by current prices, it should have been around €800 at the time.
> I probably use my laptops harder than most people
Yeah, I didn't. This was basically a sedentary laptop, 95% of the time sitting on a desk connected to external screens / kb / mouse in an AC office, never in the sun. The other 5% I'd carry it around to meetings in the same building.
Since I was using it so little as a portable, it actually outlasted my colleagues' ones by two generations! So, it wasn't just my particular one that was a piece of junk.
