It’s true. They’re one of the best values if you can afford them all things considered. Store network, long term software. Quality of SOC, all components.

If you can't afford one at new prices, you can always pick them up for a fraction of that 2-3yrs after release, and still get a solid few years of supported use out of them at that point.

FWIW there are still some awesome themes out there on Gumroad. It’s just much less done because the ux is reasonable versus XP.