You can, however, put whatever amount you want (up to the small claims limit) in the initial paperwork. It would get reduced to actual damages if you won. But...big companies often try to settle with you before the actual court appearance. By padding it, you set an expectation that might help. They are likely to settle if the amount is less than the cost to have someone appear.
The GP was talking about Small Claims specifically -- I don't see anything on the linked page that refutes that. In fact, it seems like this applies very narrowly and only where specified by statute.
It was the best I could find. My understanding is that here in CA, if your landlord does not refund your deposit (or properly itemize legitimate expenses against said deposit) you can sue in small claims court and recover 3x damages, up to the small claims court maximum of $7500.
That said, I've never tried it, so it's possible my understanding is wrong.
The real stopper is the unix-like environment. With MacOS you have (or used to have) a very good UI environment, but could just open a terminal and have all the unix goodness.
I know windows have a terminal too, but apart from being black, they are completely different. PowerShell was promising but cannot (IMHO) replace the old fashioned Bourne Again Shell.
All this makes sad, because my MBP is quite old and the prospect of having to deal with windows again just makes me cry.
It is far better than it has any right to be, considering the work they have to do in the background to get it to live happily in NTFS. It still has a way to go, but you can get real work done.
My Linux-of-choice remains Ubuntu on a VM on my Surface, but having the subsystem installed as well is nice. If they keep at it, I can see ditching the VM in a few more revs. X doesn't officially work yet, although you can hack around and get it kinda-sorta going.
"Why deal with these issues when there are great Windows 10 options from many vendors?"
Because the Win10 environment is pretty shoddy, in general. And it's not a secret, so your question is surprising.
The OP talks about random bits and pieces of non-functional software and hardware, and all I could think of was Win10 on a "nice" laptop. It's pretty regularly an awful, hair-pulling experience, on any average day.
I've been very excited about ReFS -- a real "modern" Filesystem that leaves legacy issues behind. We've been using it for large storage systems, and am hoping it will become a viable solution for everything soon. It solves most of these issues.
