These are things that I've noticed from owning multiple laptops (personally or from work) that have these issues and would be great if you design your system in such a way these avoids these mistakes.
Speakers have to point upwards.
This is important as speakers pointing downwards get muffled when having your laptop sitting on your lap or in bed, when getting cozy to watch a movie before bed. If the speakers point upwards then the sound gets directed at you instead of the blanket offering a good user experience. This does not mean that you have to put the speakers on the sides like a macbook) but they can be placed on the top of the keyboard (like a HP elitebook). That would be an ideal placement.
If you still insist on placing the speakers on the bottom, then the hinge should allow 360 degrees rotation, since at that point you can turn your laptop in a tablet and have the speakers point towards you. But if you don't have 360 degrees rotation then keep the speakers pointing upwards.
No blinking lights.
Again related to the "getting cozy to watch a movie before bed". Any blinking/always on lights ruin the experience. Macbooks do this well as they don't have any blinking lights and are ideal for leisure and media consumption. But most other laptop still ruin this by having blinking lights visible. You should follow the macbook example here and have no lights that stay always on or activate for any reason. (Obviously keyboard backlight is important but that turns itself off after a set number of seconds).
On my laptops I ended up covering the 3 ON/SSD/whatever indicators with tape, as well as the power button as that was always on. But if I buy a new laptop, especially an expensive one as I expect yours to be, I want to not have to do workarounds for basic things like this.
If you're going to have a 15+ inch laptop please include a numerical keyboard.
A real one, with the propoer "calculator" layout. This is an extremely useful tool for people that have to do finance or numerical imput, and we use it with touch typing. That's why it's more efficient that using the number row or the pseudo numerical pad that turns certain letters into numbers (touch typing works way better on a vertically aligned dedicated numerical touchpad).
Personally I don't buy laptops that don't have one (and that includes macbooks, no matter how powerful, silent, virtuous, etc a macbook is I can not purchase it because the numerical keyboard is so much more relevant to my workflow)
Charger: please provide a charger that's USBC only.
Carrying a charger in a backpack is annoying as it takes too much space. I've already purchased a USB-C charger that's compact and would like to re-use that one instead of having a barrel roll brick that I have to carry around with me. Just like macbooks do now, I would expect a new laptop to only have USB-C charging and not needing a barrel charger. You can save yourself a port slot that you can use for something else and you save your users the burden of carrying dead weight in their luggage. Also, when the cable breaks you can throw it away and buy a new one, no need to buy an entire charger This is the current issue with barrel chargers, the cable is tied u to the charger itself so when something breaks you have to throw away the entire thing, causing huge waste in both the environment and more importantly in your wallet.
Camera covers, as well as physical switches for camera and microphone.
Having switches is great but having a camera cover actually gives you better peace of mind, as you can clearly see the camera lens is not pointed at you. If you don't add a camera cover then people will still put their own on top, which car using the experience if the extra shadow will mess with the light sensors or with the camera getting in less light that expected. That's why I think it's best if you have it built in by default. See the HP elitebook laptops that ship with a build in high quality camera cover.
No rounded edged at the bottom of the laptops.
This is somethign that the pre M1 macbooks had, square edges at the bottom, that gave them better grip and support when being placed on portable laptop stands. Compared to that, the non macbook laptops that have rounded edges, just so they look slimmer when photographed at a certain angle to give the illusion they are thin, make the laptop slide away from the laptop stands, and require extra accessories to hold them in place.
See for example this image:
Even though the laptop stand has an edge to hold the laptop in place, you still actually need to place those extra plastic holders in front. But due to the older macbooks design, with a straight edge at the bottom, they can easily and comfortably stay in a stand like that, as opposed to rounded bottom laptops.
Since this gives a better user experience, I think you should also take this into account and adjust the laptop chasis to have a straight edge, like in this image here:
Fingerprint readers are a good idea and you should include one.
Obviously with the proper firmware working on Linux and upstreamed to the relevant distributions so everybody can use them. Unlocking your laptop fast and securely is a great user experience that should be available even to Linux users, therefore it needs hardware support.
Fan control
The default laptop configuration for fans is too noisy. So you should allow fan curves to be configured by the end user, either from BIOS or from the OS. This means putting in fans that can be configurable. This will also help with the "getting cozy to watch a movie before bed" as fan noises should not ruin the user experience. And the difference between running at 40 degrees vs 60 degrees is not that important to spin up the fans at maximum and disturbing the experience you're trying to enjoy.
Easy cleanup and water resistance
Imagine you spill a can of coke on your keyboard. Ideally you should be able to turn it off, open it up, disconnect the battery and disassemble it to clean it up without worrying the liquid will enter everywhere and short-circuit your motherboard. Some amount if thought needs to be put into where the fan holes are placed and how liquid or dust can enter the inside of a laptop. Don't just allow water to sip in and be sprayed around everywhere by the fans.
Modern ports
I would say keep it modern and copy what current macbooks do. No need to over complicate things, just coy the experts on this one.
These are things that I've noticed from owning multiple laptops (personally or from work) that have these issues and would be great if you design your system in such a way these avoids these mistakes.
This is important as speakers pointing downwards get muffled when having your laptop sitting on your lap or in bed, when getting cozy to watch a movie before bed. If the speakers point upwards then the sound gets directed at you instead of the blanket offering a good user experience. This does not mean that you have to put the speakers on the sides like a macbook) but they can be placed on the top of the keyboard (like a HP elitebook). That would be an ideal placement.
If you still insist on placing the speakers on the bottom, then the hinge should allow 360 degrees rotation, since at that point you can turn your laptop in a tablet and have the speakers point towards you. But if you don't have 360 degrees rotation then keep the speakers pointing upwards.
Again related to the "getting cozy to watch a movie before bed". Any blinking/always on lights ruin the experience. Macbooks do this well as they don't have any blinking lights and are ideal for leisure and media consumption. But most other laptop still ruin this by having blinking lights visible. You should follow the macbook example here and have no lights that stay always on or activate for any reason. (Obviously keyboard backlight is important but that turns itself off after a set number of seconds).
On my laptops I ended up covering the 3 ON/SSD/whatever indicators with tape, as well as the power button as that was always on. But if I buy a new laptop, especially an expensive one as I expect yours to be, I want to not have to do workarounds for basic things like this.
A real one, with the propoer "calculator" layout. This is an extremely useful tool for people that have to do finance or numerical imput, and we use it with touch typing. That's why it's more efficient that using the number row or the pseudo numerical pad that turns certain letters into numbers (touch typing works way better on a vertically aligned dedicated numerical touchpad).
Personally I don't buy laptops that don't have one (and that includes macbooks, no matter how powerful, silent, virtuous, etc a macbook is I can not purchase it because the numerical keyboard is so much more relevant to my workflow)
Carrying a charger in a backpack is annoying as it takes too much space. I've already purchased a USB-C charger that's compact and would like to re-use that one instead of having a barrel roll brick that I have to carry around with me. Just like macbooks do now, I would expect a new laptop to only have USB-C charging and not needing a barrel charger. You can save yourself a port slot that you can use for something else and you save your users the burden of carrying dead weight in their luggage. Also, when the cable breaks you can throw it away and buy a new one, no need to buy an entire charger This is the current issue with barrel chargers, the cable is tied u to the charger itself so when something breaks you have to throw away the entire thing, causing huge waste in both the environment and more importantly in your wallet.
Having switches is great but having a camera cover actually gives you better peace of mind, as you can clearly see the camera lens is not pointed at you. If you don't add a camera cover then people will still put their own on top, which car using the experience if the extra shadow will mess with the light sensors or with the camera getting in less light that expected. That's why I think it's best if you have it built in by default. See the HP elitebook laptops that ship with a build in high quality camera cover.
This is somethign that the pre M1 macbooks had, square edges at the bottom, that gave them better grip and support when being placed on portable laptop stands. Compared to that, the non macbook laptops that have rounded edges, just so they look slimmer when photographed at a certain angle to give the illusion they are thin, make the laptop slide away from the laptop stands, and require extra accessories to hold them in place.
See for example this image:
Even though the laptop stand has an edge to hold the laptop in place, you still actually need to place those extra plastic holders in front. But due to the older macbooks design, with a straight edge at the bottom, they can easily and comfortably stay in a stand like that, as opposed to rounded bottom laptops.
Since this gives a better user experience, I think you should also take this into account and adjust the laptop chasis to have a straight edge, like in this image here:
Obviously with the proper firmware working on Linux and upstreamed to the relevant distributions so everybody can use them. Unlocking your laptop fast and securely is a great user experience that should be available even to Linux users, therefore it needs hardware support.
The default laptop configuration for fans is too noisy. So you should allow fan curves to be configured by the end user, either from BIOS or from the OS. This means putting in fans that can be configurable. This will also help with the "getting cozy to watch a movie before bed" as fan noises should not ruin the user experience. And the difference between running at 40 degrees vs 60 degrees is not that important to spin up the fans at maximum and disturbing the experience you're trying to enjoy.
Imagine you spill a can of coke on your keyboard. Ideally you should be able to turn it off, open it up, disconnect the battery and disassemble it to clean it up without worrying the liquid will enter everywhere and short-circuit your motherboard. Some amount if thought needs to be put into where the fan holes are placed and how liquid or dust can enter the inside of a laptop. Don't just allow water to sip in and be sprayed around everywhere by the fans.
I would say keep it modern and copy what current macbooks do. No need to over complicate things, just coy the experts on this one.