We Need a Better PC
blog.dcpos.ch
blog.dcpos.ch
I was a lifetime mac owner (since OS 9) and my 2010 Macbook Pro finally broke down this year. It made it that long because I doubled the RAM, replaced the battery, and replaced the HDD with a hybrid drive. Finally the battery puffed up and exploded. I brought it to the Apple Store and they were beyond useless. The new MBPs are not modifiable in any way, and Apple's customer service is not what it used to be. So I decided to get a non-Mac for the first time in my life.
I ended up with an Asus Zenbook UX305LA. It's a 13" 1080p screen, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Core i5 processor. Cost me $749 and I dual-boot WIndows 10 and Ubuntu (spending 95% of my time in Ubuntu). It costs about 50% what a similar specced Macbook would cost and is similar size/weight to the Macbook air. Build quality is fantastic (open with one hand, good keyboard, glass trackpad, etc). The battery life is not quite as good as a 13" MBA but better than a Macbook Pro. Overall I am extremely happy with it.
Considering that my last MBP cost me $2200 up front plus ~$300 in repairs over time and lasted me ~4.5 years. That's about $500 a year. This machine cost $750. If it lasts over a year and a half, the experiment is a success. So far it's been nothing but great.
You mentioned the battery life is not great, can you share some numbers on Ubuntu ? How much time do you get on a full charge?
I'd say 6h of use in Ubuntu. The reviews I read say that the battery is better using it with Windows 10 (closer to 10h) but I just can't get my work done in Windows.
Overall the battery is not disappointing. Not sure if I can change the battery by myself but for $750 I don't intend to invest much in repairs. I'll just ride it until it dies.
I installed Ubuntu 14.x and i3 window manager. I have dual boot with original Windows install and power use is comparable between Windows and Linux. It's a pleasure to use. Only power management tweak I made in Ubuntu was to install the TLP power management tool and (I think) make simple change from its defaults: http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html
Performance wise it's very nice. Screen is decent, too. My only complaint is the that the keyboard has a bunch of non-full size keys. End and Insert are on a single key. Someone should be shot for that.
The battery is proprietary but easily replaced. My main issue with my previous UX31 was with the SSD. It died within a year and was no longer readable. It was a piece of proprietary SanDisk crap. Googling around about it yields various complaints about it (http://www.pcper.com/news/Mobile/Be-careful-which-ASUS-Zenbo...).
Battery life: I run Arch Linux with LXQt and get about 6 hours on a full charge. It's not great but IIRC I was getting better on Windows so it might be a software issue.
you mean it was not a standard SSD ?
This is what it looks like:
http://www.pcper.com/files/news/2012-03-12/SSDR_Sandisk-SSD....
FWIU they went with a different brand on their newer models, might be better.
Still though, with Asus you never know whether your laptop will be perfect out of the box or not. That's what sucks about PCs in general - if you want a hassle-free laptop, you either have to pay extra or invest a lot of time into research. I had to send 2 laptops back before I got the Zenbook, but even that had the clicky trackpad problem.
This is why I'm thinking that when I have to buy a new laptop, I'll first be looking at the Apple lines. I've never had a Mac (since they're pricy), but I'm done with doing hours and hours of research. I just need a laptop that works.
The Zenbook is great though. Love it.
There were a few things I specifically wanted: fast processor (preferably i7 due to the occasional 3d rendering stuff I was going to be doing), at least 16gb of RAM, a decent, discrete GPU, and minimum 1920x1080 resolution.
Other stuff wasn't as important. I could do without the latest "retina" screen since I was mostly just going to be looking at DJ/VJ software interfaces and hooking it up to projection. SSD wasn't absolutely necessary but I wouldn't mind one (this was a few years ago when they were considerably more expensive).
I had it down to an Asus (non-ultrabook) and a Macbook Pro. The Macbook had a nicer display, slightly more solid hardware (the Asus was only aluminum on top and on the top of the keyboard side, not the underside of the laptop), and may have offered a faster storage drive (can't remember the details now).
On the flip side, the GPU options were all lower-end than the Asus. Also, the MBP in a configuration closest to what I needed cost around $2499. The Asus was $999.
The Apple had some other features like early Thunderbolt support but those weren't relevant to my uses. As much as I liked the display on the Apple and the somewhat stronger build, I couldn't justify paying more than double the cost.
If this was going to be my sole/main computer then I would've weighted stuff like viewing angles and storage drive speed higher but as a secondary computer, I was mainly looking to get certain specs/features without spending too much dough.
So yeah, it's a "budget" brand to me. I could get the major specs and decent build for a lot less but I gave up some things that would've been a lot more important if it was my main computer. To this day, my only real beef with the Asus is that the display's viewing angles suck. It's not one of those awful 1366x768 displays that OEMs were slapping into cheap laptops for so long and it's not a glossy mess but you really need to look at it dead-on if you want a decent image. For techie art projects it's great but if I had to look at it every day for 8-12 hours I would go insane.
As a side note: Asus's naming sure could use some help. If I search the Microsoft Store's website right now, there's a Zenbook UX305FA, 2 UX305CA's, UX303UB, and two Zenbook Pro UX501JW's. I'm sure if I searched Amazon I could find even more unique names. I consider myself a pretty savvy PC shopper and even I find that incredibly confusing.
I get 5-6 hours of battery life with real usage, close to 10 hours in "green" mode, I've got a 15.6" screen, a keypad, 16Gb of RAM, an i7 processor, and a 1Tb SSD. And it's just over 4 pounds and pretty thin. I have NVIDIA graphics. The Tecra Z has an available 3K touch display, and its HDMI port can power a 4K monitor at 60Hz (even while its internal monitor is still going, and its USB3 port is powering a third monitor; that's my office development setup).
I've had it over a year and a half already, and it's still going strong.
lenovo is not even relevant anymore. Their new keyboards (since 2009!) are complete garbage.
his "research" was probably asking some guy at the water cooler "what's a good PC laptop" "lenovo" "thanks"
It did fail as a laptop, though. Something about how it tended to bend on a laptop would cause the physical trackpad "button" to get stuck when it was sitting on a lap in some positions until you picked up the laptop by the sides. :| It was also a lot heavier than my Toshiba.
But as a portable computer, it actually did a fine job.
How is the highdpi screen on Linux?
But I don't use the mouse much anyway (hence ratpoison).
The HiDPI screen is pretty good, I talked about it in a sibling comment. Chromium understands the DPI setting and so does Xterm, and honestly I don't use any other programs. I imagine if I used different desktop applications, I'd probably run into some issues like maybe icons being too small or something.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/649103/proper-touchpad-thumb-...
I've got the new non-developer version and I did have to jump through some hoops to get the wireless working. And suspend still doesn't work. But other than that it is the best laptop I've used.
The card identifies itself as:
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev bb)
I fully expected to see the (2015) XPS 13 mentioned too and perhaps Microsoft's Surface Book (which could be used as a laptop 100% of the time if required).
The way he talked about "Microsoft Surface" made it sound like Microsoft only made the Pro model.
The keyboard has no flex or mushiness. The keys have some resistance and a nice feel when depressing them. Finally the keys are slightly curved inwards so that the fingesrs easily find the centers of the keys.
Still, I've heard of a lot of people that don't like the new keyboards. Maybe there are different versions for different models? I've only used W530 and T440s.
Instead, I miss the double-height escape and delete key, and PgUp/PgDown near the top of the keyboard. They're next to the arrow keys now, which isn't as nice as the back/forward buttons that used to be there.
What bothers me about it is that it's a 6-row layout. I liked the 7 rows on the old keyboards, with double-height escape and delete keys.
Otherwise it is a nice keyboard. Tactile feedback is not comparable to a Model M, of course, but it is okay. Acoustically it works nicely.
I am not sure how much of a difference it makes, but I was surprised when I got my machine to find out it is a 17" model, so the keyboard is rather close in size to an external keyboard, which is very nice. (I don't usually carry this beast with me, so I don't mind the size. YMMV!)
I still can't quite comprehend how the market could have managed to conspire to so thoroughly eradicate the technologically superior option that not even obscure non-US vendors serving only local markets offer it anywhere anymore.
i'd even rater a surface than a lenovo nowadays. ...just get me the pen and gpu working fine in linux and i bite the bullet btw.
anyway, with lenovo everything is wrong. with the other manufacturers just the flood of models and the sales is wrong :)
ok, basically i agree with his post in full. i just wouldn't have spent so much time on lenovo.
Also, didn't compare the Surface Book (only talked about why he didn't use the Surface Pro..). I find that particularly funny
On a side note, you've missed the retina thing, it's making a true difference.
I am still using a seemingly ancient macbook pro 15" 2009 model, simply because it has a matte screen, yet still runs the latest OSX. The super glossy screens make my eyes hurt after a while. I have been hoping that some day the glossiness gets down to a level that I can tolerate enough to get a newer macbook. However, if my laptop ends up giving up the ghost along the way though... I may look at using something like the matte screen zenbook discussed by the parent, and running FreeBSD or OpenBSD on it.
Still, I've just bought an XPS15; it has a better screen than the MBP and incredible specs. The only real downsides are 16:9 and not using the new Samsung 950 Pro PCIE-SSD (which is 25% faster). Upgradability, a massive amount of RAM, fantastic screen and a tiny shell more than make up for that :)
You might not like the form compared to the Air. Very few won't like the retina compared to the Air's monitor.
You then have the flexibility to just get up and walk into a meeting with it or walk out at the end of the day with everything just as you left it and carry on working on the train should you need.
When I was a die-hard Mac user, that was perhaps the only thing that I wish Macs had, minus the crashiness that docks caused on Windows.
Using an external keyboard and mouse solves the ergonomic problems of using a laptop for long periods. (Sad to say, I see very few people actually doing this.)
Of course, you don't get the benefits of running a faster, hotter processor, expandability etc, though Apple no longer offers a reasonably priced tower system anyway....
The most recent ones also half a decade old and still quite expensive, so I can't imagine buying one, but Apple would tell you that they do have a first-party docking station, complete with monitor built-in!
But moreover, a PC forces me to do my work in a place I have dedicated to work. People are now recognizing the importance of sanitary sleep habits. Well, my PC helps me maintain sanitary work habits. Well, it did when I was working from home a bunch.
I started a new job a couple months back, which has me working from their offices on a shiny new Mac Book Pro. I hate it. I've grown to love the efficiency and instantaneousness of everything on my utterly predictable libre *nix desktop. Plus, even if I don't plan to do work outside working hours, there's a strong corporate culture of taking your laptop home--I don't know, to maintain optics of always being working or something. Either way, my employer could have saved a few dollars and made me much happier by locking a workstation to my desk.
In less than two weeks I already have neck and back problems from hunching over my laptop all day. Thank god I only have two more days of this insanity.
EDIT: Your guide[0] to intel CPUs
[0]: https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/proce...
The display on the Macbook Pro Retina is just flawless. The colors, the anti-glare, and the picture quality from all angles, it's just really well done. The brushed aluminum chassis makes it very cool and lightweight, great to travel with and keep on your lap. Excellent battery life. It's just a great machine to live with overall.
Most of the PC options are steel and plastic, so they're hot and heavy. They'll burn your legs, they have comparably poor battery life. The screen looks terrible if your viewing angle isn't perpendicular. The hardware I've had has tended to die faster, too.
I do spend most of my time in Linux on this old Dell, though. The OS is more important to me and I prefer Linux. But Macbooks are great, and I wish I could find something as good to install Linux on.
Edit: I read reviews like this http://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/dell-xps-13-is-a-major-dis... cannot find the other ones though. It is better than I remember; I thought it was worse. Still; 6 hours is not really usable in my book.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/dell-xps-13-2015-review-batter...
which gives a rated battery life of 18 hours and a real-world use battery life of 9-10 hours
http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/dell-xps-13-battery-life-f...
This article suggests a battery life of 12 hours.
What kind of battery life are you expecting?
It's also ridiculously expensive. The cheapest option with 16GB of memory costs $200 more than a 15" Retina MBP.
Well, anyone that wears shorts and sandals and is over 20, deserves it.
>Current rMBP is unusable outside in summer due to hot chasis...
Maybe sit on a table? I use mine in a country that frequently gets 38-40 oC, and in a country that is constantly Lousiana-summer level heat and humidity (Singapore) and never had much of a problem.
Or one could use any kind of towel or pad below their laptop.
Kind of reminds me of the Louis CK routine about people complaining about trivial things (e.g. the food) while flying, sitting on a chair in the sky, across thousands of miles, in a few hours (something that just 3-4 generations ago took days or even months, discomfort and a few deaths along the way).
We now have undreamt-of power in our PCs or even mobile phones (power which used to take a device as big as a house and with its own cooling infrastructure), and we complain for them being uncomfortamble to have on our bare laps...
"lap"tops.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/22/man_burns_penis_with...
Also "laptop" is an american term. The rest of the world calls them something closer to "portable".
Because otherwise the polish term is "komputer przenośny" (portable, movable, etc computer).
He only said "shorts". You know, adults can wear shorts as well.
To decry shorts as juvenile is sympotmatic of simple minded attitudes that lead to people in warm climates spending the hottest part of the day wearing full suits in fully glazed boxes which need to be energy intensively air conditioned so that they don't die.
This is not a sensible path for society to take
There's more to shorts than this:
http://www.sandalandsoxer.co.uk/linus+andrew.jpg
I'm from Europe and especially during the summer you can see people dressed like this:
http://www.menfashionhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/men-...
Some of them even go to work like this, especially if they don't work directly with customers and their companies don't have business attire requirements.
Here's another one that always gets me about PC laptops: Air vents on the bottoms so I can't safely rest it on anything soft that would block them. On my MBP I only have to worry about the very back.
It seems really minor, but it's seriously prevented my Macbook from overheating probably dozens of times by now. I can't say the same for my PC, which has the flat ventilation panel on the side and has been killed by bedsheets many times.
A minor detail, but a really clever one. I like it.
I might need an additional laptop soon and would love to know about anything comparable to a MBP 13 retina but doesn't have any vents on the bottom.
https://support.lenovo.com/at/de/documents/pd025709
Don't think I'd be comfortable blocking those for extended periods.
The application is perfect and resilient, and although it's "not the same", I will never ever go back to a glossy screen.
Glossy looks way better in stores (especially since Apple controls the lighting to make glare incredibly unlikely) and in pretty much any case where you do not have direct light. It's what the public wants.
- MBPs have the best wifi of any notebooks - to my knowledge, they still are the only ones to have 3 MIMO streams. Right now, my TX rate is 585 MBit/s.
- Thunderbolt and I/O: we recently started to stream our tech meetups to Youtube. The two thunderbolt ports are processing two 1080p streams from BlackMagic Mini boxes - other laptops simply don't have the necessary ports or enough PCIe lanes to do this reliably.
- We just got Dell 4k/60Hz monitors. Most of our MBPs can drive them just fine via DisplayPort, others can only do it at 30Hz, if at all.
Intel claims that the i5-5200U included in the Zenbook UX305LA is capable of driving 3840x2160@60Hz over DP.
You can install Linux on a Macbook if that's what you want. Despite the marketing a Macbook these days is just an expensive, well-designed PC with particular software.
> Most of the PC options are steel and plastic, so they're hot and heavy. They'll burn your legs, they have comparably poor battery life. The screen looks terrible if your viewing angle isn't perpendicular. The hardware I've had has tended to die faster, too.
Not my experience for machines from the last couple of years, particularly if you look at similar price points.
So if planning to run anything other than OS X via Bootcamp on a MBP, do beware this issue.
[0] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/systemd-vgaswitcheroo-uni...
Not that the community couldn't find a way to reverse-engineer and build an open source version... but a straight up Ubuntu install on a current-generation Mac Pro is probably the fastest way to kill a battery, processor, flash drive and miss out on taking advantage of the ambient sensors.
To use an unfitting analogy -- you might as well buy a sports car to retrofit it into a classic gremlin.
On the Wintel side the more powerful machines seem to be more or less targeted to very specific use cases, like CAD and these computers are more like portable workstations than laptops.
I asked about a replacement and they said they don't make them anymore, but said if I really want one to get a third party battery from Amazon (the guy even searched on Amazon to show me how much it would be).
I can provide details of my "experience" with them, but the Internet is already full of horror stories that cover everything that is to say about that topic.
And no, buying a new laptop after a year and a half simply isn't acceptable to me, even if it makes sense in your economic situation.
Best they would offer is an out of warranty repair.
I know someone with the same model, exact same problem happened to him.
Horrible build quality and support.
On the other hand, MBA's monitor is a complete joke compared to the one on ASUS UX305.
I bought a MBA 11' (2012) because it's an all-Intel machine, which was used by Linus for some time and hardware support is almost perfect. It's only lacking ACPI events for battery discharge, something very few machines have.
While Macs are good, I think they are optimised for the looks and not for robustness. Glossy screens are a bit uncomfortable, and aluminium tends to be too rigid, transmitting shocks to the screen as a consequence.
I don't think I'll go back to Linux any time soon, though I do miss tiling WMs.
Watch out though - some of their cheaper machines are just weird. The X205ta being one example.
Admittedly, my desktop keyboard is backlit (I had to buy a gaming keyboard to get the macro keys I wanted), but the only purpose of the backlight for me is to know which of the four keyboard profiles I'm using -- and this feature isn't on many laptops at all.
For example, I use the backlit keyboard when I'm debugging at night, because hitting the wrong key carries a penalty, and F9 is not nearly as heavily used as 'A'
I've been practicing by my work (as a programmer) and actively learning it aside -- typing without looking, and I am damn good at it.
There are however different use cases. Sometimes I have long reading sessions. Suddenly I decide the story is too big and want to stop reading it. Or I try to find a keyword in it. Or a hundred more things.
If I am to use programming terms, it reduces your bootstrap time when you want to use the keyboard after a period of inactivity.
...That, plus the fact that most are gorgeous and simply very nice to look at. There are definitely aesthetical factors as well, won't deny the facts. So it's 50% subjective, no doubt.
The new MacBook Pros are nice, I've got a work-issued one, but whatever configuration you buy is what you're stuck with until you replace it. That sucks.
I paid about $2,300 for a Performa 550 back in 1993. That machine served me well. I added memory, internal and external hard drives, a Zip drive, a 68882 FPU and a bunch of other peripherals. Between 1990 and 2000, I probably spent $6,000 in hardware, software and peripherals for those machines.
They served me well. I still have a G3 and Performa 6400/200 with G3 upgrade under my desk. Every once in a while, I fire one up just to reminisce.
Commodity parts and easy interchange is just so powerful that the community of Apple users just doesn't provide the same kind of benefits to outweigh that. At least, in my humble opinion.
I finally decided to go for a new laptop last December because the battery life was degrading after the years. I was consideing just buying a replacement battery, but I wasn't able to find one under $200 including shipping and I got a really good deal on a top of the line refurbished X220 together with a docking station for 380€.
My sister, a teacher, is now using the Asus laptop and not considering the battery life it still runs smoothly.
Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the machine you are going to buy (unless you also want the website).
HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad.
And last but not least I would like to give this entry the RAGE post award, nomination points for
What I want is a computer with:
-Decent build quality
-Decent performance and battery life
-A decent website. It doesn't have to be an icon of web
design, like apple.com. It can be simple and
utilitarian, like an Amazon page. It just has to be
honest and up to date. It should contain pictures,
text, and a Buy button.
-A clean OS without crapware or malware factory
installed
Is that too much to ask? Make one and you can have my
money!
Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.
Rage score 9/10.
I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image and you buy direct from Microsoft. I just wish they'd sell me the XPS 13 9350 (the highest spec'd one) in Australia.
Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.
Also, what if someone in the US bought one and had it shipped to Australia? Is that doable?
My other constraint is weight, for $REASONS - I don't really want something >1.5KG.
Yeah that sounds interesting. Looks like they have Lenovo hardware too. I'll check them out.
It's not just OSX—even using Safari instead of Chrome or Firefox adds over an hour to my battery life (god knows there's no other reason to use it). As of ~1 year ago when I worked somewhere that required me to use lots of tablets from both Apple and a variety of top Android manufacturers on a regular basis, battery life (especially idle battery life) on the Apple devices was borderline miraculous while the Android devices seemed to treat the battery like an infinite resource—the difference was not subtle.
I'd love a world in which it seems like any company other than Apple holds battery life as a high priority. My observation has been that we do not live in that world. They're the only hardware manufacturer I've seen that gives more-or-less honest battery life estimates in their marketing, and those figures are not low. It'd be really, really hard for me to jump ship solely for that reason.
Windows 10 via dual-boot empties the battery in around 3hrs.
Just one poorly written driver can ruin your battery life, and that's a place where the MS "hardware manufacturers write the drivers for their hardware" model really falls down - there are Windows laptops where you can nearly double the battery life by fixing the touchpad driver, or the webcam driver, or, .... In theory a manufacturer/integrator should be auditing the drivers they're shipping and making sure the whole thing works together. Maybe the signature edition programme will improve this.
> Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.
Does anyone really care a whole lot about the HP website?
LOL. Yes, that's fair. I was frustrated with Lenovo's website for all the reasons I described.
> Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.
Apple's website is an icon of web design. It's 100MB not because of needless JS & ad tracker bloat, but because of high res images.
Just look at it. It's gorgeous: http://www.apple.com/macbook/
>Apple has great design
Functional design. A lot of haters misunderstand it as style.
>but
Uh-oh
>they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software.
OK, I guess you read that on the Internet. But you should question it.
When I bought my first Mac the first thing I did before buying it was call Apple support and check whether I could open it and upgrade the hard drive without voiding the warranty. The answer? YES. Same goes for memory, etc.
Was true then, is true today. Although for some models the options are now removed due to technical limitations put in place not because Apple is trying to offend you, but because that's how they get the battery life you like. In my experience Apple is very cool about user upgrades.
What they're not cool about is stuff like putting in third party batteries, which then explode, and then asking Apple to eat the cost for that. Um, no.
On the software side, of course Apple doesn't want to set all its users up with totally vulnerable systems that can lead to all manner of harm. But it doesn't prevent more advanced users like us from doing what we want to on our own systems. Feel free to install Linux, even though it's already a UNIX machine, whatever... So you don't have to let the software factor in to your decision about a machine.
>You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts
It's just normal life that some things can be replaced, and some can't. This isn't specific to Apple. If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames. Therefore, they are made, deliberately, to be hard to open. And you being not supposed to open them is a correct thing, not a problem.
We don't know the story behind pentalobe screws But I imagine maybe third party battery replacement businesses were getting out of control, leading to damaged phones and fires, and that little side industry needed a speed bump while it got its batteries up to snuff. Who knows. It's easy to think up legitimate reasons rather than "Apple hates your freedoms." But bashing Apple is just the cool thing to do, right?
> and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style.
I would encourage you to think beyond style. I build my own PCs too but the Geniuses are backed by a truly awesome knowledge base with problems, troubleshooting tools, solutions, and discretionary power to make you very, very happy when things go wrong, if you're not a dick about things.
>Also, Apple makes beautiful hardware
Functional. I'm sure beauty is also a goal but I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail. But yeah, it's beautiful too.
>but their software is getting worse.
You read this on the internet too. Please. Think for yourself. Of course their software has problems. All software has problems. Apple's software is taking on HUGE challenges, basically helping each person manage all their information, and responsibly, which means with security measures in place, which are there to reduce the likelihood of actual harmful real threats to their users. Yes, it's complicated.
All that being said... I agree with one thing, which is that it would be great if there were more fantastic machines out there, from more vendors. But I think to make machines really great, they would inevitably end up including some of the features that you diss when talking about Apple, like security features and tradeoffs on end-user upgradability in return for other benefits.
The lack of buttons below the trackpad makes right clicking in a controlled manner impossible - I cannot feel nor hover my thumb over the button I want. Accidentally touching the "right" part of the trackpad jumps the mouse cursor over there, or activates some multi-touch gimmick.
The power button looks like a regular keyboard ke.
The edges of the case are actually too sharp to rest your wrists on. Rounded edges would solve this problem. So does filing down the case as some have done Youtube.
The keyboard keys lack any concavity. This is on all keyboards made since type-writers because it helps center your finger when you side-strike a key. This stops it slipping to the neighboring key. In the case of the Apple keyboard, it slips towards the gap between keys.
The keyboard has no Home, End, Page Up/Page Down or Delete keys. It is also lacking an Insert (overwrite) key. These aren't unused keys, they're pretty ordinary text editing functions.
Functional? No Apple absolutely made a whole bunch of stylistic choices. Apple wants a very specific line and minimalism to their products. Accomodations for practicality complicate that - otherwise why are we losing 3.5mm jacks on iPhones in the interest of thinness when most everyone agrees they want more battery life?
Concavity helps but chiclet keyboards are usually better than regular ones for notebooks
> The keyboard has no Home, End, Page Up/Page Down or Delete keys. It is also lacking an Insert (overwrite) key
True, that sucks. But there are combinations of keys to do that. PgUp = Fn+Up direction key. Home/End for single line entries is Up/Down, etc (google it)
You kind of get used to it until you plug a PC keyboard then hate yourself for a couple of days (but it gets back eventually)
I rarely click buttons with trackpads, only when I drag things. I almost always tap.
The power button is both a keyboard button and a pure hardware button if you keep it pressed for longer. Don't let the look of it scare you off.
The keyboard keys are quite clearly separated for me. I can't really use mechanical keyboards very well.
The home/end/page keys are replaced by cmd+directions. Delete is Fn+Backspace. If you're using emacs or vi, it won't matter either way.
The second comment is more amusing, given you then compare Apple's laptop with a battery case, instead of other vendors' laptops, whmo frequently provide free service manuals with exploded diagrams showing exactly how to open the thing and get inside.
The whole comment reads like apologia, but the funniest part was the assertion that Apple don't design for beauty, it just happens to be a by-product of designing for function. Apple. The company famous for intentionally designing beauty into their hardware products. The company that files design patent after design patent. Ah, well, I guess "you read that somewhere on the internet", but really, you should "think for yourself".
>the funniest part was the assertion that Apple don't design for beauty
Where did you see this "assertion"? I think you're reading something else into what I said.
If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames.
Batteries come in cases, whether it's the shell around a single battery cell, or the plastic armature that holds several cells. If you really want to go down this pedantic road of "I didn't mention a case!", then you should have called it a cell.
> Where did you see this "assertion"?
"I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail."
Again, pedantry isn't going to get you anywhere. You were suggesting that Apple was only minorly interested in physical appearance, but were first-and-foremost designing for function. This flies in the face of what Apple (and Jobs) are famous for, and their actions as a company. Their attention to design is not the side-effect you paint it as.
As a clear example: if physical beauty was not their main goal and only functionality was, then "you're holding it wrong" would never have happened. Any radio designer with half a clue knows that human touch changes the tuning of an antenna. This event was an unmitigated disaster for them, both in the short term (Jobs insults his users) and in the long term (users are now trained to hide the beautiful hardware inside crappy plastic holders). It was definitely an event where form took precedence over attention-to-detail function.
> I think you're reading something else into what I said
Well, I did "read it on the internet"...
> You read this on the internet too. Please.
This (along with the ad hominem part of the rest of your post) is uncharitable. The GP is hardly alone in thinking that Apple software is getting worse; I think it, too, and not just out of conformity—if anything I'm frustrated by not being able to find enough people on the Internet who agree with my longing for the good old days of Snow Leopard.
Meh. The pictures are pretty, but other than that, what's so great about it? The stuff moving up and down as you scroll is just dizzying, and the tech specs page is way too sparse. Frankly, I prefer the ASUS notebooks site.
It is slow to load, looks like garbage on mobile, is really jumpy on my desktop, and hides useful information within marketing mumbo-jumbo.
Thats is basically the opposite of gorgeous.
I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping for). Specs were great, among the highest end available at the time. The quality, on the other hand, has been worse than any computer I've ever owned.
I guess is isn't all that constructive as comments go, but I feel ethically obligated to steer people away from considering HP laptops.
By the way, upon first boot of an HP laptop you will be prompted to burn recovery DVDs. $10 is actually pretty reasonable compared to what others would charge you.
The EliteBook line is the one laptop where seeing inside actually made me want to own it more. (And I did buy one, and it was an excellent machine that served me well for years and would still be decently competitive today.)
Other neat thing: the EliteBooks I was refurbishing tended to be 2007 models—but they came with fully-working UEFI, hidden under a "this is only a prototype implementation" warning. It was fun playing with 64-bit Windows 8 on them; none of the other machines in the shop could make heads or tails of the W8 install discs.
They also tended to come with fingerprint sensors. I got used to unlocking my laptop with my thumb long before TouchID was a thing.
I'm sure they're sleeker now but that thing was pretty thick and the batteries on them seemed to wear down and die very fast. Bonus points for having an AWESOME dock that worked near flawlessly in Windows 7 for me, not so much, but not bad with Ubuntu 10 Desktop. Also you could get extended batteries and the batteries swapped easily, so I had a pair that could get me through a day at a client's site with no power if I needed.
I can't imagine I'll go back, I love my MBPs, but I would check out the latest EliteBooks if I was going that way again.
Apple get all of this stuff right almost all the time, in almost every machine they build.
In fact, I only say almost above because it seems like they would have at least one lemon, but I can't think of what it is.
How ever, I know friends with HP's that breaked very easy. One give small electric shocks. Other had an previous version of the same tablet PC that me, and it ended generating smoke (Old touchsmart TXs have a tendency to overheat)
Bingo. This seems to be the pattern across the market. I have heard time and again that Acer laptops are crap. But at the same time i have seen at least one of their enterprise models survive basically decade of use with just the cooling fan needed replacing.
The only thing that makes Macbooks "special" is that they are effectively enterprise grade products sold to consumers.
That the article author balks at getting a Thinkpad because of the Superfish debacle shows a lack of research. No Thinkpad was found to have that installed, it was strictly limited to their Ideapad range.
- Yes, the crapware is unavoidable. but who doesn't ship with that?
- For me the system restore worked like magic. I tried it a bunch of times on my own machine and those of some friends. The machine was virgin again with just a click of a button.
- It's also very easy to get into. Very helpfully labeled; tons of guides available online. It's like its designed to be opened and hacked around. When it finally died, I scavenged it for parts and ported to my new desktop machine
Well Apple for one (unless you count their superfluous apps, but I find those much less intrusive)
I think the crapware is inexcusable. If almost every car manufacturer places a fresh pile of dog poo on your brand new car seat would you be okay with it just because everyone does it?...
Microsoft's own-brand surface line, for one. Even MS has realised that the crapware situation is out of control.
However, they may have "useful" extra software, which I could do without. (Dell Data Safe backup etc. Lenovo is the worst.)
But you can download a crapware-free version of Windows 7 or 10 from Microsoft and do a clean installation.
Why didn't you install a clean OS downloaded from the official Microsoft/Ubuntu/Debian website instead of waiting two weeks for a restore Windows restore DVD from HP with crapware pre-installed? The first thing I would do after buying a new laptop is to format it completely and start afresh.
Sometimes[0].
P.S., if you're interested in helping, we'd all appreciate it!
Huh? My chrome network panel registered 13.3k for apple.com
Where's the source on that?
If you had a hardware failure, did having a non-Apple-approved OS cause any problems when you tried to get it fixed?
Also, I know they're uncool and all, but the author should really look at the Dell XPS series. They're rather expensive but hit most all of his points.
Here's a review of the XPS 15: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-...
Yes you can change it, but it's the equivalent of buying a car and change the wheels when you get it.
It felt silly to spend a lot of time researching and configuring a custom laptop. I've never purchased a pre-built desktop but customizing a laptop seemed too poor a risk/reward proposition for my liking. Even with a great deal of effort it would be difficult to create something comparable to what I could simply purchase.
Apple's hardware is easy to appreciate down to small details. You can open the lid without holding the other half of the laptop (my previous laptop would lift up otherwise) and the screen isn't too loose either (doesn't bounce when you type hard). The speakers sound orders better than any of my previous laptops. Battery life is great. Retina is beautiful & responsive (easy to read text, even while scrolling). The trackpad is unbelievable for a variety of reasons (click anywhere, accuracy to the very edge of the pad, multitouch/gestures). I hadn't previously seen any trackpad worth using let alone nearly as good as a standard mouse, but haven't ever needed to connect a mouse to this one. It's just a great overall experience.
There have been a couple software glitches that required a restart to fix, but other than that and the temps (~90°C) it reaches under load it has been a pleasure (@ 2 months of heavy use). Figuring out OSX took a week or two.
I don't envy anyone who tries to save money while achieving a similar experience.
Even under heavy load you can sit the thing on your legs and it won't burn you. The machines are very sturdy and don't bend, so they remain level (unlike even the 'sturdy' Thinkpads). The rubber feet are svelte and not blocky and intrusive. There are no stupid panels to catch on clothing, or vents on the underside of the machine to get blocked.
Then there's stuff like MagSafe. And Thunderbolt (sure, USB 3.1 with Type C will do this stuff soon, but TBolt has done it for years already).
The two Mac laptops I have, they get hot and the fan is noisy, especially my Macbook Pro.
The port selection is nice, but the ports are too close together unless you're using all Apple cables. A chunky USB key or mini-display port cable can block other ports. I had to use a knife and shave off the edges of a mini display port cable I had.
What are you doing on them? I'm generally running browser/Xcode/iTunes or Logic Pro X/iTunes/Browser and my fan never spins up. In fact it spins so rarely I tend to think somethings going wrong when it does. It freaks me out. I'm on the lowest spec 13" MacBook Pro.
My Macbook Pro (2011, quad core i7) is famous for heating issues, but that aside, any app that forces use of the discrete GPU (at one point, even Coda did) would cause the fans to spin.
I don't want to sound like a snob, but the 13" MBPs aren't comparable with 15" MBPs, since many of them use lesser CPUs (i.e., not the MQ/HQ/QM series chips) that don't generate nearly as much heat.
You've gotta work them pretty hard to start reaching thermal issues - as you are doing with lots of Chrome tabs :P
edit - as for the thermal issues, you don't have to work it hard, that model year had all sorts of issues in general, hence the Apple repair order that was issued last year. My MBP bricked itself a couple of months before that repair order was issued. That was the first laptop I ever had (Windows or Mac) that just up and died.
Apple was basically in denial about the issue until last year when they issued the repair order.
Having said that, most of the quad core models will get hot pretty fast, especially if you use something like Chrome. If you use Safari, you probably won't have those issues, as it's much more efficient than Chrome, but that's a preference thing.
Not sure if that'll be okay, it is helpful to be able to angle the screen backward a touch if you're close to it and higher than the screen. That's probably less often the case with a stand since the laptop will be higher but helpful to keep in mind.
What sold me more than anything, though, was that I could select the best parts without being forced into a touchscreen. In so many other company's product lineups, if I wanted the 1440p screen (or whatever is highest), they were convinced I absolutely wanted a touchscreen, yes sirree! Thank you, Lenovo, for understanding my needs.
I don't remember which manufacturer it was, but I remember one option page where if I wanted to select the Core i7 option, it required the touchscreen upgrade as well. I don't see any logic behind that at all except "Hey, that i7 means you must be a big spender, guess we'll milk you for all you've got!"
As for OS, I run Linux Mint (Cinnamon) currently and experience no particular hardware or driver issues. Battery life is 5-8 hours depending on load, screen brightness, etc.
Easily the best device i have used in a very long time. Expensive (especially the i7 dGPU option) but i am amazed at how good this machine is.
Huge battery life, powerful when it needs to be. Connect to a dock and you have a powerful desktop.
Currently use it when im working in the office doing design work (plugged into a couple of Dell U2715H) then when i am out on mine sites use it as a portable machine in the field.
The tablet mode and pen is just a cherry on top. Writing notes in the field, marking up drawings etc. ridiculously easy.
i love it.
People get the difference between the Mac, Macbook, Macbook Air, Macbook Pro. Why is Surface, Surface Pro, Surfacebook any different?
The problem is that Surface can mean anything. It can mean a tablet, a laptop, or a ginormous screen or table e.g. Surface (a tablet, a table, or a laptop?), Surface Pro (a more powerful version of the tablet, table or laptop?), Surfacebook (another version of the tablet?)
Am I wrong? Think about it. Why would a blog post complaining about the absense of a great PC laptop get so many upvotes on HN when MS has the answer in the form of a 'Surface'? imo something is just really wrong with MS's marketing.
Closest I can think of would be Android, but you're throwing a lot of flexibility and openness out already. I had high hopes that FxOS would grow into the {reasonably hackable, consumer pricing, works out of the box if needed, higher abstraction (eg. don't make me think about my kernel) system APIs} market. Right now, to have any degree of control beyond "here's a GUI with the 5 settings we thought you'd need", you need to use way too much relatively advanced knowledge (setting a 'nix ARM system up, hardware quality, commitment to maintaining your setup at a fairly low level) for it to be widespread.
I guess I'm asking the smart people on here why can't we have a tablet ecosystem more akin to the mid/high end desktop market? (Emphasis on modularity, _standards_ and interoperability) Do the actors in that area reckon there's not enough interest/commercial opportunities in contrast to the OEM/OS siloing? Or is there a project out there I should start throwing contributions at?
((EDIT: please don't say Canonical: the GUI is nonstarter because of limited resources, and if you're using server editions then we're back to the original low-level problem in this case))
Also I'm not sure why you're being downvoted - I'm a .NET developer and spend all day in Windows but even I appreciate that others' workflows are built around Linux or OS X. Horses for courses and all that.
Mushy keyboard. Average speakers. Lacklustre I/O port selection. Kinda average camera, despite its resolution. Headphone jack in a stupid place for laptop mode. No brightness controls on keyboard. Trackpad might look and feel nice, but it just isn't as good as the Mac's for palm rejection, and scrolling is still stuttery vs butter smooth on a Mac. Power connector has nothing on MagSafe.
Then there's the price. Woooah.
It's also an Ultrabook-esque machine. I'm not really wanting one of those. I'd be happy to take the thin tablet part, but mate it to a thicker base that gave me things like... RAM slots, a gruntier CPU, user serviceable storage, triple external display support.
Recent discovery from my Surface Pro: You can adjust the brightness with Fn + Backspace and Fn + Del. Works with the Surface Book as well.
Regarding multiple display ports, I think the SB was meant to be used with the dock for the "power user" mode. I quote like the ease of the docking capabilities even though I've had a few display issues with it when the machine resumes from sleep
My favorite is actually Nix/Guix but I haven't bothered to set it up on my daily driver.
- you have way more packages on any Linux package manager.
- Linux package managers do not mess with /usr/local as expected in a UNIX compatible OS. Homebrew does. Linux package managers run as root, not in user-space.
- Apparently Homebrew gets broken by Apple software/OS updates.
- Linux package managers are an integral part of the OS environment and update process - it's structured this way even for critical system and kernel patches.
- Aptitude, for example, gets rid of older versions of packages, while Homebrew keeps all previous versions and simply changes the symlink. Cleanup is also automated in Linux package managers, not Homebrew as far as I know.
- Homebrew sometimes pulls up sources to compile software locally, while Linux distros usually pull up binaries (except AUR on Arch or Portage on Gentoo, or Sbopkg on Slackware). While compiling from source is nothing wrong, it can take a lot of time depending on what you are building.
Being broken is a feature? Changing /usr/local instead of being sane? Leaving old versions of packages lying about instead of cleaning them up? Breaking when the Apple devs wonder if it would be fun to switch things up a bit under the hood without telling anyone?
The one thing I can think of that's a "feature" is that brew compiles locally, instead of pulling down a binary, but even that has some draw backs.
I'm all for product loyalty, but a spade's a spade.
Sometimes older versions of different packages may be dependencies of newer packages. This is a thing that happens with software. When it's not a problem, `brew cleanup` gets rid of old versions.
Most of the time brew does install binaries, they're called Bottles. When it can't find a binary, it compiles locally. Yes this is sometimes annoying but it's not a deal breaker, at least not for me.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Breaking when the Apple devs wonder if it would be fun to switch things up a bit under the hood without telling anyone." This has never happened to me or anyone I know and furthermore Brew is a Unix compliant tool and OS X is a SUS compliant operating system.
Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, it just sounds a little like you're a Linux user who doesn't or possibly hasn't ever used OS X. Brew is not a panacea but it's honestly pretty good. There's also MacPorts if you're used to more old-style tools and a couple other package managers as well. You can even use Nix on OS X.
Better than most OS X programs, which seem to have paths like /Applications/Something.app/Contents/Resources/SomethingElse.app/Contents/Developer/Frameworks/Resources/Something.dylib/Contents/Resources/MacOS/Resources/Frameworks/Something.dylib/Contents/Developer
Case in point, an excerpt from the program Lipo's usage text:
fatal error: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/lipo: Usage: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/lipo [input_file]
However...what specifically are you wanting to install and update on Mac that a better package manager would significantly help with? I find on Mac I'm rarely installing or updating new packages so it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. As long as I can easily install and update Python, Node, Vagrant, Chrome and a few other things I'm happy.
I'd love a laptop that had a long life battery, good screen, good build, was light, ran an open source OS that supported all the software I need etc. but you have to compromise unfortunately and I can compromise on package management.
And Homebrew tends to be more up to date then most distribution repositories. Especially if I want to have a stable OS.
Linux package managers do not mess with /usr/local as expected in a UNIX compatible OS. Homebrew does.
You can install Homebrew in another directory, it works fine.
Linux package managers are an integral part of the OS environment and update process
Which is bad. Application updates are typically tied to base system package updates. Either you use some stable branch (like Debian) stable and you are stuck with old software. Or you use some rolling release, but then your kernel, X11, Gtk+, or whatever could break.
Decoupling the installation of applications from the base operating system is a good thing.
- Aptitude, for example, gets rid of older versions of packages, while Homebrew keeps all previous versions and simply changes the symlink.
brew cleanup
While compiling from source is nothing wrong, it can take a lot of time depending on what you are building.
Luckily, Homebrew bottles most software that has long compile times. I have a MacBook with a Core M processor and install times have never been a problem (and I have installed Boost, Rust, and ghc, to name just a few larger things).
How is that a good thing if an application needs some core OS features that are not available in its current state? Newer libraries become available for all software and benefit from the upgrades. And yeah, sometimes some things break, but it's easy enough to roll back to a previous library version if you need to, instead of bloating the system with multiple versions of different libraries.
> You can install Homebrew in another directory, it works fine.
But it's not its default. How many users change its directory ?
> And Homebrew tends to be more up to date then most distribution repositories. Especially if I want to have a stable OS.
Honestly you can't compete with AUR (Arch) on that level.
"Homebrew failed to do thing...here's exactly the commands you can run to make this thing work now though if you are so inclined."
apt fails? Good luck
I actually see this as an argument in favour of OSX, as it is much more straightforward to change package manager than on Linux, where the sane way to change package manager is to change your distribution.
Home brew, when things go wrong, goes wrong disastrously in my experience. You're never quite sure where you're left, and you have to spend a fair bit of time picking through what actually failed.
By the way, aptitude does not really help you in the typical error case: a package (continuously) fails in dpkg-reconfigure, which causes the complete install/upgrade to fail.
It's actually better, for three reasons:
- If a library is not in Homebrew (which happens frequently when you are a developer ;)), you just install it into /usr/local/Cellar/<name>/<version> and you can use all the regular Homebrew tools (brew link <name>, brew unlink <name>), etc.
- It's much easier to build and distribute your own stuff in Homebrew, by providing a repository of formulae. I have packaged both Debian packages (distributed via Launchpad's PPA) and created Homebrew formulae. Packaging for Homebrew is much easier.
- Homebrew is packaging is decoupled from OS packaging/updates. This means that you can update a new application without having to upgrade half of your system. In Linux, you usually have the choice of: stable OS, outdated software. Up to date software, in-flux OS.
I've never seen an application on Linux asking to update half of my system libraries or something. Please stop using hyperbole, this is not useful for the sake of conversation.
On top of that, you can install recent software in many ways (OpenSUSE has specific, updated repositories that can be triggered with one-click on their website, Ubuntu has pretty much the same thing with PPAs) or you can even build everything from source on Arch with AUR and just ensure you have updated libraries as required (which is not half of your system).
And if you don't want to update ANY of your system libraries, it's fairly straightforward symlink local versions of libraries instead of system ones.
Homebrew frequently requires you to manually perform steps or edit files. While it might not be directly homebrews fault, that 100% disqualifies it for the label "It's actually better".
¹) The differences between various package management systems are not significant in this context.
SSH and rsync for remote editing work just fine from an rMBP.
Don't bother trying to connect an external monitor with a different DPI though, hehe. I've heard that problem is unsolvable with the X11 paradigm but will be fixed in Wayland (whatever that is).
It's bullshit to you, but it doesn't make Linux bullshit - others prioritise different aspects.
You care about HiDPI - perhaps you are a designer, so it's important. But, you're not everyone. For example, I have no need for HiDPI and I personally have much more focus on the power and control Linux gives me. I wouldn't want HiDPI if I had to give up a proper Window Manager.
Your choice is fair enough, but it's no more than a personal preference.
I haven't met a single person that didn't immediately appreciate the benefits of HiDPI when they saw it.
Oh, and higher DPI cures cancer.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. I just want to get work done in a sane way. Linux is insane to any normal human being.
There are indeed a lot of Linux enthusiasts here, myself included, but being a Linux enthusiast doesn't mean we all want to act as systems integrator all the time.
I happen to see a lot of value in the availability of a free and open operating system, so I take offense when people rail against it in this sweeping way. Yeah, it's not polished perfect like Apple's products (let's imagine that they don't have any tedious bullshit problems), but it's free software and a community effort.
So when people say it's "insane for any normal human being" to use it... eh, that pushes my buttons.
If you install Postgres, you have to mess around with some configuration files. Some people might consider that tedious, painful, horrible bullshit. I just see it as a necessary reality, and I don't whine condescendingly at people who offer advice or anecdotes.
Someone said proper HiDPI support is not available on Linux. So I replied that I have used HiDPI on Linux for a long time without major issues.
That's not an advocacy argument for anyone to choose Linux. So I might ask you to re-read my paragraph—unless you're so allergic to Linux "bullshit" that mere anecdotes cause you pain, in which case I'm sorry. (That's meant to be just slightly condescending...)
I live in the command line and use a modern toolchain. Package management has no bearing on my development. mvn, npm, composer, gem, and pip all work just fine. Home brew gets you the OS packages and I've yet to run into an even remotely popular package not in a Homebrew repo somewhere.
On top of all that- with Vagrant and (or even just) Virtualbox you have whatever flavor of Linux you want running on your desktop.
I have found OSX to be the best combination of just works enough OS with all the command line power I need. I can't effing stand Windows anymore and all the Linux desktop distros, though may have some appealing niche characteristics over OS X, there are way more rough edges. I could see one day leaving OS X for a Linux distro, but it won't be any time soon.
Can we not do that?
Various utility scripts need to be written more defensively to run correctly in OS X with its ancient shell and BSD tools.
Overall it's just not worth the hassle, particularly when you need to ramp up new developer machines in minimal time.
I could definitely see how clang would screw things up. I don't have experience as a C/C++ developer in OS X for anything other than personal electronics projects.
My personal and professional experience with significant development time in Java, PHP, Python, and Node has been that only Linux could do it as well, but the trade offs for daily desktop use simply aren't worth it. Being able to pump my development environments into a VM of the same flavor as the target environment has given me the best of all worlds. But I've genuinely never run into anything that just refused to work on OSX. I will say that Python and Python env are sometimes a PITA, but not any constant issues.
...for you.
When you're building for a managed runtime it's fine. When you're building native code not so much.
Developing native code means writing code, reading code and documentation, and interacting with the build system / debugger. Those tasks need to happen directly on the developer's workstation, but not the actual building and execution/testing of that native code.
This is better done in an environment with known state, i.e. either an isolated local or remote VM that will have the environment set up as required for production, and likely multiple different, incompatible environments, or some external hardware for many use cases of native code. Best practices and a modern toolchain would imply things like reproducible builds which you can't really have if you're building and running C or C++ code directly with whatever setup and libraries each developer has on their own workstation, no matter if they're on linux, windows or mac.
Not everyone is writing POSIX only code.
UNIX having a cli doesn't do anything to help us.
The external keyboard uses a non standard USB port. That's broken.
It's not easy to maximise a window fully. Apparently I'm not supposed to do this, but I don't like being told how I'm supposed to use a computer.
Focus follows mouse can't be done.
There are very few ways the window manager can be customised.
Homebrew lacks many packages. Coming from Debian / Ubuntu, the package repository was always the first place to look when I needed some software.
The window manager plus homebrew pushed me to using Kubuntu after a month. It doesn't yet support using a high dpi display at the same time as a normal, external display, but that's all.
I'd rather deal with these issues and run a ubuntu VM for some things than deal with the cornucopia of crap that is the PC laptop market but hopefully some day that will change.
Installing Kubuntu fixed all of the issues at once, and should I decide to fix the issues it introduced at least I'm improving open source software.
There's such an extreme lack of decent laptops around that working around the limitations of OSX seems to be the only option for now.
Maybe the next version of the Pixel will be more suitable as a general purpose development machine or someone else will make a decent linux laptop (if Google can do it, why can't Dell?)
Haha! High-end Dell and ASUS machines are good, but the lack of Apple competition is why Microsoft made the Surface Book. "We gave you nearly twenty years to make something good! Fine! We'll do it ourselves."
With the way MS is going maybe they'll introduce official support!
OTOH it is pretty easy to run just about any OS in a Hyper-V VM. My SP2 has FBSD running most of the time. One use is letting the VM act like a remote node that clients on the host OS can access. Makes a convenient arrangement for server development and testing in a way that dual booting would not accomplish.
On the downside MS hardware means running Windows 10 on new machines, which I'm not happy about. I won't go into details re: Win10, it's been discussed plenty. When it works the hardware's great, though MS firmware skills are marginal at best, it's bitten me a few times, but there's another bunch of long stories that ATM I'll refrain from telling.
MacPorts is more complete in my experience, but tends to lag behind Homebrew for the new and shiny a little.
After 5-6 years of adoring a series of macbooks, I finally got fed up with Apple slowly locking down OSX. And if you're not willing to run OSX, then even the macbooks lose a lot of their luster.
If you run a desktop, though, then most everything pretty much works great (even with Linux). You can spec up to a giant monitor or multiple monitors, incredibly powerful graphics, CPUs with lots of cores (or even get two), and 64 or even 128GB RAM, or any combination of the above. Or you can build a compact, low-power system. And you can swap components in and out, buy upgrades, and sell/gift parts you don't need, etc.
I still have the laptop, but I only use that whenever I have to move around (and I use syncthing to keep everything synced continuously between them to make smooth transitions between them).
Everyone's got a laptop too, but they can now also VNC or SSH to their Linux machine if they need to work remote. Hell you can VNC into them from a chromebook.
I _do_ think it's interesting to think "maybe buying 1 (even 2) desktops is actually better for me than buying 1 laptop", but I cannot bring my desktop to the library. I feel like this comment is on the same level as "don't buy a phone, you can do better with a laptop", which is absurd on a similar level without extra context.
What do you do for a phone? What works for me is: 6"+ phone that does anything I'd use a 7" tablet for (smartwatch means I don't need to take it out my pocket as often), 11" ultrabook for doing things on the go, 18" "desktop replacement"/"gaming laptop"/"luggable" for home and the occasional longer trip or LAN party. (I do have a desktop/"home server" but these days it's pretty much an oversized NAS).
I used to think that. But then i got the hang of it and now I do most of my writings on my tablet
> What do you do for a phone?
I don't have the use case for an expensive phone or even a data plan. I have a low end smart phone ($70) that I use mostly for just texts and calls. Even my whatsapp is on my tablet (needs manual .apk as playstore won't let you do this).
I am at my desk most of the day (office), so all Internet related things I do on desktop. After work hours I have my tablet at home so don't really need my phone for much else. Have a desktop at home as well.
For me it just meant one less thing to carry (you could see it as less getting rid of the tablet and more buying a tablet that does phone calls so that I don't have to carry a phone around). Public transport especially is where a 6-7" device is really handy, but I don't want to be carrying more than I can fit in my pockets.
Isn't that an interesting bit of nuance that you so blithely elide.
Past that: it costs me three hundred dollars, round-trip, to fly from Logan to Reagan. Where does "thousands" come into it? Why would somebody who occasionally fly for business necessarily have the cash to burn on redundancies? Why would having that money imply that one should?
It is true that not every work load needs such a capable machine and you should only spend as much as you need.
That being said, I was working with a friend on a recent project and he told me that his MacBook was "burning up" while running through a build script that put together a a handful of Docker containers. My ~5 y/o Desktop barely even hiccuped on the same thing.
Desktops can do things laptops can't.
I was mostly responding to:
>Why would somebody who occasionally fly for business necessarily have the cash to burn on redundancies?
It wasn't clear to me that `somebody` was exclusivly referring to you.
You might do well to look at https://puri.sm if you're a Linux user, they seem to make pretty good machines with free software down to the BIOS. There's also always http://minifree.org but they don't really make modern machines.
If you don't like the OS and the free software that's included, replace it. You weren't gonna stick with the OEM bloatware Windows install on the Thinkpad anyway.
The author is correct, we need more competition, but for the time being a Mac is truly the best piece of kit you can get. It'll run any OS and doesn't ship with an ssl mitm.
Fair point. I've heard mixed reviews from people dual booting Linux on a retina MBP because Ubuntu has bad high DPI support.
> The author is correct, we need more competition, but for the time being a Mac is truly the best piece of kit you can get. It'll run any OS and doesn't ship with an ssl mitm.
Yeah, I think there's an untapped market for a well built standard laptop (not a tablet crossover, not a Chromebook) that's not a Mac!
It also has yet to slow down.
But that's just my anecdotal experience. Think of it what you will.
I'm no Apple fanboy, but the difference in hardware quality is incomparable in my limited experience.
I bought Apple Mouse and found that I have to clean it every week and that to do this I have to break it, because it's not meant to be taken apart for cleaning. And to take it apart I had to deal with two tiny connectors and three very small screws and other paths that are rather hard to handle. Compare with my Logitech mouse: I can easily take it apart with a plain screwdriver and over ten years of everyday use I only had to do it twice.
I tried to install new memory into my old Mac Mini myself (there's no Apple service where I live) and while I'm reasonably savvy with this, I ended up breaking one of the plastic holders and probably broke the sound somehow, because now it is silent. All this was in vain though, because it turned out Macs require some very specific memory chips, usually twice as expensive as normal ones.
The only working piece of Mac hardware I still own is an old Mac Mini that is practically unusable since I've had to upgrade the OS to v10.9 or 10, I forgot which. Everything became so slow I could not believe it. Fortunately, all I need from Mac is to compile code for Mac OS X and I can do this via SSH from my Windows laptop. It certainly works faster this way.
I don't think I'll ever buy anything from Apple unless I absolutely need it for business and that is going to be the cheapest option.
Purism must have great marketing, because I keep seeing this fiction repeated. Their BIOS is not open.
The only big difference between a Purism laptop and other laptops (Acer, Asus, Dell, etc.) is that the CPU has been fused to allow running unsigned firmware. Unfortunately, since we still don't have free firmware to run in place of Intel's, Purism has no present advantage over buying most any laptop and installing Linux yourself.
Purism loudly trumpets their roadmaps[0] and plans[1] so as to suggest a trajectory towards totally free software, but until they achieve it their product is not worth a premium compared to installing Linux on an ultrabook of your choice.
[0] https://puri.sm/posts/roadmap-to-a-completely-free-bios/ Here they outline many things that need to be done. But note the language- "Purism’s goal is to publish a Free Software implementation ... as soon as an implementation is available." But who is responsible for implementing it?
[1] https://puri.sm/road-to-fsf-ryf-endorsement-and-beyond/ Note that the FSF hasn't actually endorsed them yet, although this page is supposed to convince you that they're awful close. Why not wait until they're actually endorsed?
I did buy a Libreboot X200 from minifree, and I am quite happy with it.
Alternatively, you can replace a Thinkpad X200's firmware yourself by following these steps (hardware required) http://libreboot.org/docs/install/x200_external.html
The BIOS is not free and the laptop won't be free anytime soon due to Intel ME [1]. Unfortunately the compromise for the foreseeable future seems to be freedom vs. more power or hoping for something awesome non-x86.
[1](PDF): http://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf
The money you'd spend on even a 'cheap' macbook pro will get you something solidly built with a nice screen that's plenty fast for devlopment work AND money left over for an extra battery or 2 + a brand new fat SSD + 16 GB brand new RAM + a nice dinner (maybe even with a date).
Just be careful not to get one from the awkward phase recently where they didn't have individual clicky-butons and this strange ceramic trackpad.
If you're thinking about a Thinkpad to replace a Macbook Pro, consider: - X220, X230 with IPS displays. Most aren't. Check for backlight bleed. - X250 with IPS display, but be mindful that the CPU is actually no faster than the X230 (15W U series vs 28-35W). X240 has weird buttons that don't work, avoid. - X1 Carbon, 1st or 3rd gen. Avoid 2nd gen as split backspace key will drive you insane if you ever use more than one keyboard. Again, be mindful of U series CPUs. - T5xx have better displays than T4xx in general. But if you don't want the extra size, then avoid AU Optronics displays on T420 and T430 series, as they are grainy and poor. I believe the Tx50 series has IPS display options, maybe on the s model?
My wife has an X1 2nd gen and the split backspace is something I must have repressed, good call there. Total shit.
I would also make sure not to think of a used, "does enough" thinkpad as a replacement for a new Macbook Pro any more than picking up an early 2000s Acura would be a replacement for a new Mercedes. It's an alternative, with its own trade-offs that may suit some people, but by no means a direct replacement.
How is this a complaint? I'd love other companies to post both good and bad reviews without filtering.
> Except that page is deceptive, because that's actually the old X1 Carbon
Don't know about other locations, but here the X1 got a really nice discount once the 2016 model got announced. (also visible in the screenshot) I got it and I'm really happy about it. It has a high res screen (WQHD), so the same as the 2016 model, so that note in the post is also a mistake.
Call me crazy but this is why Apple is even a thing
I get the whole apple cult idea and buying a status symbol. But if anyone is going to compare the products, they'll just go to another site and see exactly the same ratings. Allowing ratings on your main page even allows you to respond to some specific issues. (wifi 5G disconnects often -> we published a bios update for that here/link)
I don't have an issue with featuring third party reviews of your own product on your own page. But if you're going to show those, and they're only 3/5 star reviews, the assumed law of self-interestedness would seem to indicate that that was the best you could do... 3/5 stars. You're stating publicly that you can only satisfy your customers to 60%. Why are your standards so low, I would ask?
Store.apple.com ALSO shows reviews, but they're almost all at least 4 stars. That's something to be proud of.
Reviews should rate quality.
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD818AM/A/lightning-to-usb...
Recently released 5510[1] is looking absolutely awesome, will be picking one up when return to States in April to replace current Precision M4700.
2 X SSD + 32GB memory, high end CPU, decent GPU with 3840 X 2160 screen...will be sorted for next few years. If you NewEgg a couple of 480GB SSDs you're around $2,500 for a beastly machine that weighs under 4 lbs (M4700 is nice but hefty, nearly 7 lbs).
[1] http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=0...
I also switched back to Safari from Chrome b/c I found Chrome to be a horrendous battery drain.
As much crap as Apple's gotten recently for their software, the attention to battery life is a huge blessing. My MBP is easily worth $ for the time and convenience.
Bring a cable where ever I go, never think of battery life.
btw, Dell Precision M4800 is a beast, evil mean machine, its the best computer I ever had, macbook pros are trash in comparison. The keys are so soft, so finely grooved, so silent, so evenly spaced, the screen color reproduction is best ever, and its heavy, it doesnt feel like a toy to toss around, it sticks on the desk where I put it. It has 3 mouse buttons, on two places. Who can work on a computer without middle click to paste!? To not speak of the internals, i7, 32GB ram and so on.
Highly recommend Dell Precision M4800.
I remember the day UPS delivered it. I had a flash drive with a Debian 6 image ready to be installed, didn't even boot up the windows to check if everything was OK.
~2.5 years after using it for about 10 hours per day USB ports started to randomly disconnect and reconnect it was very annoying.
I had no idea that ThinkPad X series has 3 years of warranty and still cannot believe that Lenovo sent someone to my house (3 days after I contacted them!) and changed the motherboard it's basically a brand new laptop. FYI, bought it directly from lenove's outlet website for ~$700.
My thinker is ~4 years old and it's still one of my most beloved objects in this world.
I gave $10 to their initial Kickstarter but have never used one.
None of their marketing materials make reference to better build quality, battery life, or support, just "security, privacy, and freedom". I would love for them to hit all of these boxes, but I am unsure that their hardware will be as free/secure as they claim (see https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-p...).
Admittedly there were some issues early on, but now that issues have all been patched it's an excellent laptop. Fantastic build quality, great battery life, and the display is the best I've seen on a laptop.
About 1/10 of the time when I would be at a coffee shop or something and would try to connect to the wi-fi router, ubuntu simply wouldn't be able to connect. This thinkpad had one of the officially supported wifi chips in it, and it still didn't work.
Lots of forum posts told me to downgrade driver versions or some such thing, I wasted a bunch of time trying many different solutions and nothing ever fixed it.
I'm a web dev, and without internet I can't get anything done- I had to eventually get rid of it. Too bad, because the build quality was nice and it's a much better deal than a mbp, but unreliable internet is a deal-breaker.
(If there had been some way for me to pay someone with driver knowledge to diagnose and patch the driver problem I would have done that!)
I think the big issue here is that if a piece of hardware is listed as officially supported and it still doesn't work after you try to fix it with whatever hacks are suggested, it's not a workable situation.
a. Hardware drivers are not independent of distro
Technically most drivers will land-up in the main-line kernel at some point. But, for testing whether a "whole" laptop works means making sure all the drivers are working at the right version - it's fiddly. Consequently, what you really care about is whether your distribution supports that hardware version.
b. Getting support for a Linux laptop
In many ways the fact that users had to load Linux themselves in the 90's has been the biggest problem for users now.
If you want a "Linux" laptop you should buy one with Linux preloaded. That way you'll get one with a known working configuration on the hardware and software. If something doesn't work there's a venue for you to get support - the person who sold it to you. Otherwise, if you do have problems you're stuck doing whatever "the internet" tells you to do - half of which will probably be wrong, or it's just happenstance that it worked for them.
That's why buying from a Zareason, System76 or Dell (XPS 13) is important
c. Lenovo certifies but doesn't provide support for Linux
Lenovo does a type of certification for Ubuntu that means it "works for them". But, AFAIK there's no avenue to get support from them if the hardware doesn't work. Generally, it does work (writing this on one now), but you're stuck if you have problems.
Even if the wifi doesn't work on your mac, but it does on your phone or some other device, you can be pretty sure your mac is not working properly.
At a previous workplace, the folks on macbooks often complained of wifi dropouts and the folks on windows laptops never did.
But then there are stories like yours that are the other way around. Wifi is a difficult thing to pinpoint, because you can never be sure just what it is that's causing problems; there are so many factors, and it's difficult to really nail down without a lot of time and alternate parts to swap out.
[0] - http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth
The real downer is Intel's appalling OpenGL support in their Skylake drivers. Games and certain other applications are pretty much hosed if they expect remotely modern shader support, otherwise it is quite the capable chip.
On a separate note though, Lenovo has kinda promised to build a 90's-level robust "retro-Thinkpad", the feedback forums for which were wildly successful.
It's all subjective, but big pros for me was Win7 (as a business machine this was available over a year ago, at a time when most new laptops were Win8 only), really good Debian support (with VMware I rarely need to boot into Win7 now), 16GB RAM option, two drive bays (mSATA and SATA) so 2TB SSD is obtainable, very high resolution screen (3200x1800).
Cons - gloss screen occasionally frustrating, all that space and they relegated page-up/down and home/end into Fn-accessible keys, short battery life, 15" is perhaps too big (but 13" is untenable as a mobile computer), poor touch-screen support in Debian, hideously expensive when properly kitted out (16GB, after-market two x 1TB drives, best display, etc).
In any case, OP has some good points - with Lenovo breaking everyone's trust (and their keyboards going downhill) options for good GNU/Linux mobile workstations are drastically reduced, and it's a painful process to try to work out what hardware support is actually like before you actually have a new machine in front of you.
My one complaint is that the (small, light) power bricks are apparently made of unobtainium. They're near impossible to find, and the ones you can are extraordinarily expensive.
Given my hate for proprietary power adapters - I'm holding out for a USB-C powered replacement.
Asus doesn't appear to be offering anything, but Razer's Blade Stealth[1] looks like it could be a great option.
- Battery life: with Ubuntu I'm getting ~2.5h, which really sucks. I'm still in Ivy Bridge though, I've read that newer ones double the life. Still ridiculously small
- The SSD is also proprietary (but I've read the ones from 2 years to now are standard). Same as Macbook
However, it also has some good advantages:
- Normal keyboard
- 1080p screen
- $900, which was around 700€ at the time I bought it
Hopefully things have improved now.
My issue is that the variant isn't available at all.
http://www.amazon.com/International-Shipping-Direct/b?node=2...
At the moment, the only thing that doesn't work yet in Debian Testing is the wifi... but I'm happy to wait - currently on a Ethernet-to-USB dongle.
Edit: oh, just noticed you were after the 13". It's nice, but I'm pretty damn happy with the 15"
Unfortunately Dell never puts the Latitude line front and center on the website, so you have to know to look for them.
There's also Vostro, which is the small/home office line.
I wasn't making a comment on build quality, just on Dell's branding and pricing.
The soho bit was what Jeff Clarke (1) told me, and he runs Dell's PC business. Yes, I have it on tape ;-)
> Optiplex and Precision are desktop brands only
There are Precision desktops and laptops....
I haven't done the research but I bet you could see lenovo pages ranking higher for long-tail keywords (specific products) than than more general pages.
Every SKU, every option, every detail, in a PDF.
http://outlet.lenovo.com/outlet_us/
http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals
etc.
Seems simple. Sure you are locked to apple hardware issues/resolutions, but Apple today is what the Thinkpad was for years (pre-Lenovo), hardware mostly just works.
Insert arguments of customization, configurability, etc... Most people don't care. Lenovo doesn't deliver as well as IBM did on the Thinkpad line. What's the alternative besides Apple?
It was addressed in the first full paragraph. He's one of the ones that cares.
And running Apple's OS as the top level OS would drive me insane. So unless you're suggesting I try to run Windows 10 on Apple hardware, I agree with the article that the world needs a better hardware options.
Until then I'll stick with my Toshiba. I'm pretty happy with it, all told. I don't see it as "better" in an engineering sense than Apple, but I get an i7 with 16Gb of RAM and a 1Tb SSD for about 1/2 the cost of the equivalent Apple hardware.
And the control key is in the right place (the bottom left corner of the keyboard) ergonomically. That alone kills all Apple hardware for me.
Personally I prefer using the caps-lock key as control, which can be set in the system preferences on a mac.
Actually that can be set on Windows as well. But my fingers know the bottom-left corner, and Ctrl-ZXCV would be much worse from the caps-lock location. It also messes up the symmetry; I use right-ctrl a lot as well, usually with arrow keys.
Which is another thing the Mac keyboard control gets wrong without plugins. Sigh.
Eventually, I got myself a Lenovo Thinkpad T450 instead. So far this T450 has been very good. The fan almost never comes on. However, it should probably be noted that I got the T450 model with the slowest CPU.
For those of us who are sensitive to noise, I suppose it's a good idea to always choose the slowest CPU, if several options are available. I didn't think about that when buying the X1, and bought one of the faster models.
Ubuntu 14.04 works like charm.
With an additional battery (the thick one), I can spend a whole day without electricity and the battery can be swapped without switching off the laptop.
It's so far the best ThinkPad that I had until now. I have the impression that at least with this one Lenovo improved a little bit the quality and usability.
The T440s was unusable - I sent it back after two days. The T430s was good, but flimsier and much heavier than the T450s.
The keyboard was utterly broken (I guess it was the keyboard electronics or firmware), because combination of some three keys didn't work - I remember that RightCtrl + AltGr + H, didn't work, I use this kind of combinations with Virtualbox.
Additionally I have chosen a screen that was reflecting so working more than half an hour made the head hurt. And on their web-site there was no indication which screen had anti-glare.
I guess there were more things that I disliked, but I don't remember any more. Sent it back and bought a used T430s that served me very well.
I'm very pleased with my laptop and would recommend the Chronos range to others.
It upgraded to Windows 10 Pro quite well.
It is one of those cheaper laptops and it has an AMD GPU as well. I don't know how user serviceable it is, but it hasn't needed any work yet.
I used to have Ubuntu on it, but my wife didn't like it so I had to put Windows back with it as we share the laptop. So I know it runs Ubuntu very well, and it runs Ubuntu faster than it does Windows.
But PC quality has gone down since they moved things to China. Motherboards, you are lucky if they last three years now. My son had an ATX custom system with an ATX motherboard for the Intel 1150 socket made by ASUS, and it went out and was replaced with an Intel brand motherboard that we had to buy from eBay because the socket is so old they don't make new motherboards for it anymore. Motherboard lasted maybe two years before it blew out. We got a Datavac to clean up dust from it and would replace the CPU resin every six months or so.
If you want to make a good laptop, there are people doing that, in an open hardware and open source way.
http://www.geek.com/microsoft/linux-users-rejoice-heres-ubun...
In my opinion it's the most well-rounded device out there.
Lenovo's is not quite as bad, but the article already highlighted the worst offences. At least I've memorized what to augment my google searches with to find the specific page I need. (I know, I know.)
From the "enterprise" vendors, Dell is the best, because you only need to navigate through a single poorly worded drop-down menu to find somewhere to enter your service tag. Their shop, on the other hand, is absurd (clunky interface and zero configuration options) and seems to solely exist to make you bother a Dell reseller instead (who have better prices, more options, and are, despite email ping-pong, faster).
Asus was lauded ITT for their website design. I'd disagree because I've been considering a zenbook. I couldn't find the comparison between the models or even the submodels of the UX305. It is pretty though.
In Europe that means interacting with Digital River. It's extremely common that your first order will just be binned by their fraud squad, and from there if you persevere you'll be welcomed by even more pain and torture until the laptop eventually arrives and your view of Lenovo is already very negative.
In my mind, the only competition is with the Surface Book, but even that's debatable given the screen size.
The part where it will actually have a clean Windows installation with no crapware is pretty excellent.
1) No malware/spyware tainted brand.
2) At least 32 GB ECC RAM, 16 GB is so 2010. ECC, because memory errors do happen and cause instability. 64 GB option wouldn't hurt either.
3) HiDPI (retina) display (IPS or equivalent)
4) Fast PCI-e attached SSD.
5) Ability to run two 4k monitors @60 Hz.
6) Stable USB3 ports (My 2015 RMBP keeps resetting USB3 ports, making it nearly impossible to run VMs on USB3 drives)
7) ~10h+ on battery.
Do you know who OEMed those ports? I've had a horrible run of luck with crappy USB3 chipsets in desktops - with the same symptoms as you're having. Do you still get the resets in Windows 8.1/10?
Looks like Intel:
PCI Device ID: 0x9cb1
PCI Revision ID: 0x0003
PCI Vendor ID: 0x8086
Just running latest OSX El Capitan.
That's odd, Intel have been the ones that work the best in my experience (have also tried Renesas and Etron).
The power brick is heavier than my own little 11 inch personal machine. It is a workstation line, not an ultrabook line.
1) well, PC-BSD most probably. I am more an OpenBSD person so I might still go that route.
This is the major drawback of lenovo X1s - they only have 8GB of RAM max. In today's world. Crazy.
If I knew it would not be an adventure installing Linux on my MBP, I'd pay good money for such a distro!
Of course, nothing beats a PC but its tough while travelling or when you just want to move around while working.
Micheal Dell making the company private will be good if he planning to focus on making quality hardware like Dell Developer Edition XPS + Project Sputnik, which is an interesting project. But still needs to mature.
So if I have to buy a machine today, I am lost. There is a need for quality machine for developers as we spend long time with it. It needs to be durable, light, matte screen(its very tough to get that now a days), low heat, good keyboard (mechanical like old thinkpads), good driver support for Linux, decent battery. PLUS have a higher score on iFixit. I like the rating of XPS 13 @ https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Dell+XPS+13+Teardown/36157
Which is unfortunate, since Thinkpads used to have the best support for Linux in earlier generations :-(
Software: Would love something that comes with a Debian distro installed. Something minimal and clean.
Body: Brushed metal exterior, hard rubber for hand rests- no sharp edges either (my wrists hate MBP's edges). Nice big touchpad. Elegant branding (love the lightbar on the chromebook pixels) but perhaps even more subtle (the new macbooks do a good job of this- eliminating the obnoxious glowing apple). Thin would be good.
Hardware: 500GB SSD would be more than enough. Don't need GFX card. 8gb ram is more than enough. Good CPU please. Fan-less would be amazing. USB-C would be interesting, at least need a couple of those. And then a pair of USB-3 ports, and a headphone/mic jack. Maybe an HDMI. It would be good if the internals were simple enough to swap out everything with a small philips head.
MOST IMPORTANT THING: I can buy replacement parts on your site for everything (screen, keyboard, shell, all of the hardware, touchpad, etc.)
Price: I would pay anywhere from 1-2k US for this computer. Honestly just to support some healthy competition in the space- I would even go to 2.5k
I think there is another issue with PC battery life here. Nothing heats up/drains my macbook pro's battery life quicker than windows 10. I have tried various power settings, but nothing ever quite "fixes" it. I have had to do the following "tweaks" to improve battery performance of Windows 10: 1)Disable Cortana(at least as much as you are able to) 2)remove this "phone companion" app that seems to reinstall with every new update 3)adjust power management which noticeably slows performance and or annoyingly shuts down the screen. 4)randomly go in and kill rogue battery robbing processes
Mac OS seems to seamlessly handle power management regardless of what Im doing- including multitrack audio recording/processing. I never hear the fan while running OSX only. But without fail my laptop heats up and the fan starts cranking while I have Windows running. I am getting closer to not ever needing to run windows, but I still do some .NET work and work with Sql Server. For me, its a huge turn off to hear a laptop constantly fighting to stay cool. In fact this is the major flaw I saw with the HP laptop I got my father in law. It would get hot and crank the fan. In my anecdotal opinion, windows is a poor laptop OS, and I don't see how there could be a better pc/laptop/tablet until Microsoft figures out how to manage power. I don't have a use case for Linux, so things could be better there, but Linux is still relegated to niche users for the most part in laptops.
I have always heard good things about the ASUS ZenBooks.
I try to be platform-independent as much as possible. My "operating system" is Jupyter/Python. Knowing that I could switch to Ubuntu in a jiffy makes Windows seem much less annoying.
- Last old-style ThinkPad with great build quality
- Last one with the classic keyboard
- Small form factor
- Sandy bridge i7, still kicks butt because it's not undervolted (check the benchmarks)
- up to 16 GB memory
- 10 hours of battery with a new 9-cell battery (+ tlp package on linux)
- Linux or Windows works great
My guess: if you're prepared to pay several thousand you can still buy quality modern laptops today (like ThinkPad P70.) Or do it the cheap way: buy old hardware that's known for its reliability like used ThinkPads (currently using a ThinkPad T520 myself.) There's a good guide here for choosing a ThinkPad model if you're a fan of solid laptops that will last: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/images/8/8f/Tpg140901.png -- it's a bit memey but has solid advice.
- Same build quality as Apple
- Thin and light as the Macbook
- Pixel density higher than Retina
- Powerful CPU
- Just released
And do you have this ultrabook or ever touched it yourself?
My guess is that the Razer thing is based on a Clevo frame. If that's the case, I'd somewhat trust it.
That's not even remotely true. I am posting on a Razer Blade Stealth QHD/256 right now running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
This thing has only been in my possession since the first of the month and already I have experienced the following:
- The trackpad is poorly constructed and is prone to randomly sticking when clicked. The drivers on both Windows and Linux also do not remotely have the level of work pumped into them that the OS X trackpad drivers had, so there's a lot of false inputs and finicky behavior.
- The chassis is not at all a proper unibody construction and already the bottom plate on the lower right of the machine is starting to separate as it throws a screw I need to keep tightening. The plate wobbles if I squeeze the lower-right corner.
- The fans like to buzz and whine in a very obnoxious way due to poor construction, they rattle against things.
This is a pretty okay laptop and overall I do not regret the purchase yet, but do not kid yourself for a second thinking that Razer builds things on the level quality Apple does.
> Thin and light as the Macbook
This also isn't true. The 2015 MacBook I just replaced with the Razer Blade Stealth is both smaller and lighter.
* 2015 MacBook: 11.04" x 7.74" x 0.52" @ 2.03 lbs
* Razer Blade Stealth: 12.6" x 8.1" x 0.52" @ 2.75 lbs
The Stealth actually feels a lot heavier after using the MacBook solidly for a year and I keep thinking it weighs as much as an older MacBook Pro I used to carry.
ALSO: This isn't even going into what a fucking NIGHTMARE it is dealing with the RazerZone store and its almost total absence of support when something goes wrong as they limit the means of contacting them. I'm still waiting for them to refund me for the second Stealth they shipped (and charged me for) by accident.
In reality, it doesn't seem very easy to install Linux on the 2015 Pixel or any other Chromebook without either remembering to press Ctrl+D on each boot or by going through a significant set of hoops.
It's like installing Mac OSX on a PC, or Linux on a Mac: you can, but not easily and not in a way that is supported by the manufacturer.
You just have to scroll down in the link to see that there are several limitations that you wouldn't have with an OS that is supported natively.
if the SSD weren't only 64GB... I could put Debian and chrome OS on it.
It lets me run ChromeOS most of the time, and then fire up an Ubuntu session when needed.
I'm shopping around for a new laptop to replace it, that will be more linux-hacker friendly (more keyboard keys, touchpad with real buttons, etc.)
I am Longtime Lenovo + Linux user that recently switched to Mac and as much I really hate OSX UI the build quality of apple is worth it (that and skype sort of works better on mac than Linux).
The thing that shocks me with my new Mac is how incredibly unstable OSX is at times (El Capitan and previous version). You would think given such hardware control my mac would be more stable than my parents Windows 10 Lenovo Yoga or even Linux on crappy hardware but lately it has not been the case for me.
The Surface Book failed in that regard and I haven't gotten confirmation from Dell that the TB 15 Dock will support it.
In the 15 inch Category there is only the HP Zbook with its gorgeous 4 Thunderbolt Ports that allow it. But that's Desktop Replacement, not a portable 13 incher.
Currently I drive 2 2560x1440 Monitors on my Surface Pro 2, one via MiniDp and one via USB3 and am kinda happy with it, I just need more ram... But upgrading and then once again hitting the limits so soon would give me buyers remorse quick.
So by 'better PC', the author really means 'cheap PC filled with top-end gizmos and a top-end build quality'.
Well, I can understand the physically part, but fortunately you can solve it with money, you just have to pay for your hardware upfront, it is expensive, but I work on my MacBook Pro > 9hrs a day. It's four years old now and doesn't need replacement yet, it's doing fine, the battery is doing fine.
Most people only look at how much an item costs at the time of purchase, but a fairer comparison would include the span of time that your device is sufficient and you don't need replacement.
I use my laptop for my job, the amount of money I make with a laptop outweighs the cost of a laptop by far. Most professionals in their job invest in good material, why would it be different in IT?
As for the software part, the software that Apple provides is astonishing to me. For example wiping a HD multiple times is just a setting, in windows you can start looking for freeware for doing the same thing. It comes with so many possibilities out of the box, I can't think of anything that I would want to do that I can't do now.
Just yesterday I sat next to a guy running Ubuntu and I couldn't believe what I saw, when he tried to search his hard drive he typed in his search parameters.. but then the first thing that popped up were shopping items, faster than the items present on his hard drive... Really?!?
A MacBook pro isn't perfect and it is costly but it's simply the best option for me now.
If you just wipe Windows clean on those Lenovos and use them for Linux (Fedora runs great on them!) you wont have to worry about those Superfish issues and everything else plaguing the world of windows-users.
I can see why you would decide not to want to reward Lenovo with your money after those incidents, but it's still some of the best you are going to get.
Ubuntu and desktop linux continue to be extremely frustrating. I tried Suse, Ubuntu, and Mint in the last box I built for Xmas, and Ubuntu was the only one that installed cleanly, a marked improvement from the previous couple releases.
OSX is hardware-locked and it has many many problems and frustrations, especially if you are used to key bindings from the PC / Linux realm.
Desktop/laptop is steadily dying. We are all basically waiting on a hybrid of Android to take over desktop.
I continue to be mystified as to why Google does not pursue a desktop Linux operating system that's good. (aka not ChromeOS). It's a gigantic market to take over that Microsoft was begging someone to take from them throughout the Windows 8 debacle. With an unnoticeable hit to their bottom line they could assemble a team that would clean up Crossoffice, merge with Android, make tons of money from Android app store, get search/voice search/services integration at the OS...
ChromeOS could/should be this, but either it's not properly funded to handle the Windows interoperability (put/fund WINE on steroids) more seamlessly or doesn't have very good people on it.
If you need a Desktop PC the options are plenty, you can pick from a large set of components and build pretty much what you want, from decent formfactor to big towers with powerful and good hardware.
For high quality notebooks however I came to the same conclusion as the author. I wanted to buy a new personal notebook last year, and actually did not want to get a Macbook, as I am not that into Apple and OSX. But I could not really find an alternative, even in the same (high) price region, so I got a MBP13 and I'm happy with it. For the windows machines either the build quality is way lower, battery life is lower, screen resolution is lower, input devices suck or the price tag is even higher (X1 Carbon, XPS13. Surface book too, but it wasn't available in germany anyway).
Another thing that influenced my decision heavily was the Touchpad. On the MBP it works beautifully, and in combination gesture features of the OS it makes working on such a small screen and without an external mouse much more pleasant. On the windows machines the touchpad response is mostly somewhere between bad and mediocre, and there's no swipe between workspaces and such stuff.
He is exactly the kind of person Apple makes products for. Just get a Macbook already.
See http://www.linux.org/threads/how-great-is-the-korora.5955/ for a sample review.
You have zero rights to complain about hacking and acts of war.
That said, he can grab a Chromebook and install a full-blown Linux distro on it.
To be honest, sometimes I even think my MBA is unnecessary and contemplate a cheap Asus Eee PC netbook because I live in the command line (and consequently don't need to load up heavy IDEs). However, I understand if that approach is too much work for most people who just want a simple solution without all the fuss, but where's the fun in that?
Call me crazy but I'd rather just have a machine that's specced right out of the box, and with a battery module that I never need to replace.
My 2012 15" Retina MacBook is still going strong over 3.5 years later. Not only that but the machine has been a pleasure to use every day.
It's true there should be alternatives to Apple products out there that are similar build quality, but I have yet to find them. Some of my coworkers are hard line anti-Apple and their laptops are all really poorly made, IMHO.
1. http://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-gram-15Z960-A.AA75U1-ultra-s...
2. http://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-introduces-new-notebo...
3. http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10720212/dell-latitude-13-w...
What I want is a real personal computer that can fit in my pocket. A mobile device that is extremely open and very easy to hack on. I would like it to expose sensory readings in a UI and then provide a simple if-this-then-that UI that would allow me to teach daemons to respond to events that occur during the day and additionally support scripting for more complex automations. And once this device exists I'd like open protocols to exist to help other I/O devices to expose themselves to it.
Simply put I'd like devices to start offering extra senses to us beyond the five we were born with, and for these to be unencumbered from walled gardens.
Does such a thing exist?
I wanted a decent CPU, high res screen, , good build, long battery life and small chassis. Then I chose whichever was cheapest which met those criteria.
I've not been disappointed with my decision!
Roughly translated: "Very good build quality, light and nice design. Everything works out of the box. Great and nice customer service. Thanks again!"
Haven't searched for other reviews yet.
http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebook...
(This is a genuine question - I've always found OSX sufferable enough to not need to, and I have a fanless Acer for Ubuntu that travels with me).
"However, I don't want a Mac.
Apple has great design, but they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software. You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts, and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style."
I was strongly under the impression that other manufacturers' products were becoming less-and-less hackable by design. Am I wrong?
It is true that there is a lot of crap out there for PCs but there are some decent laptops, it's just harder to find them.
Dell XPS' are good. Surface Book is totally equivalent to a Macbook Pro in terms of build quality.
The only minus on your list would be the battery. It can reach maybe 4 hours (Linux) but not more. I knew that and it's not a problem, there is always a power plug nearby where I work.
The only minus in my list was the keyboard, because it has a number pad, but the keys are excellent. It's also definitely not a 1 kg laptop and the power brick is as heavy as a brick, but I don't care much.
I just wish there was a real alternative to the 13" Air.
I have a MacBook Pro for work and a Dell Inspiron with Ubuntu (which I bought on the day the System76 failed) on it. Generally, I like the latter.
I believe it is a rebranded Clevo, which is custom-built for you. Lately, I changed the WiFi card without any issue. You can also change the SSD if you want, same for the RAM. The best parts are: Build quality, price (you don't pay for the OS, only if you want to and you get to pay for parts you want), keyboard is nice, lightweight and screen is great.
I am due for an upgrade and was looking at the T460p. But I just read about the bad decisions Lenovo made regarding internal storage so now I am looking for something else.
Though, I do understand there are plenty of people out there who requires a laptop with decent capabilities. A $300 machine that "surprisingly usable" can be a good compromise in some use cases.
I did buy an MS Surface and it was by far the best PC experience I ever had, however they don't make a keyboard cover with a touch-stick, that's the only reason I went back to a ThinkPad.
Here's the teardown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMH0r76zdt0 . It's only upgradeable to 6gb though. Would love it if they had a 16gb upgradeable version.
I also have two older Vaios, a P (yes, this one http://www.getitnow.gr/MEDIA/content_CustomProductCatalog/m1...) and an EB (17" laptop), which both work well under Linux.
Reagarding the newer models, I have no feedback yet but I hope they will be fully supported, if not at the time of release then a few months later at most.
http://blog.nqzero.com/2016/01/1610-or-better-32-43-laptops-...
i don't understand how there can be so little differentiation in this market
Unfortunately there isn't. Apple just makes hardware that's so sexy and intuitive to use. Example, Apple TV. I never used one before but I demo'd one at Best Buy the other day and in 10 seconds I knew how to operate it. Apple does this best, their earnings prove that.
Just buy a Macbook Air, sturdy as hell, long battery life, and great Unix-enough-y OS.
In the future, I'd like to be able to choose a design of laptop or tablet online, modify it, choose an open cpu core and so on and create an entire, beautiful computer at home. Not everyone will want to do that, but I think enough people will realize open source hw is the future especially in terms of supply-chain security and reducing or adding features. (More broadly: How cool would it be to have company-specific devices, designed and built just for them?)
I've repaired it from severe rain damage, and it's generally easy to disassemble and replace the parts to.
it's got a reasonably nice screen, nice build quality, and reasonably good performance, though you cant change out the wifi chip, nor the ram The webasite also said about enough to do well, and the windows install it came with just had some acer junk on it.
I've moved from a macbook pro retina to a Lenovo x250/i5/8GB/HD screen, Running xubuntu 15.10 ... most bits work (DualScreen/VPN/NiceRDPapp(Remmina)/etc etc)
I've had major issues with Webex (need to have a jre 32bit running on a 64 bit os) but other than that all good!
Good luck!
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth
Only downside is only 8gb ram, otherwise great machine.
Once a 16/32gb version available, it'll be purchased pretty quickly ;)
The only laptops worth considering are the enterprise lines from dell hp, and lenovo. They are night and day differences from the consumer products, because they are usually entirely separate divisions. Within this, certain lines are better than others. For example, with lenovo I would only really consider a t-series, w-series, or x-series. The p-series looks promising, but that just came out, so maybe don't rush into that if you want to reduce risk.
If the laptop doesn't have the RAM or harddrive soldered on, it's probably cheaper to buy from newegg and install an upgrade yourself than it is to upgrade through the product configurator. This does not void the warranty. The support pages from the website have explicit instruction manuals for doing this yourself as well as full disassembly instructions.
The enterprise laptops have support pages with crapware free drivers. If you don't feel like surgically removing crapware from a new installation, just nuke it from space and install the OS fresh. Heck, most time you don't even need to install those drivers, because the base windows drivers are fine for most things (there's probably a performance bump to using the drivers, and some things, like the fingerprint reader, will need a driver), so you could just skip the driver install.
Since these are enterprise laptops, you can still get 7 and 8 preinstalled (thank god for corporate compliance policies, am i right?! ;). MS call it "downgrade rights". Much like Apple, the best MS OS is the one released in 2009 (windows 7), so splurge for the "downgrade" to it if it's offered for the laptop you want.
If you care inordinately about crapware and don't want to spend time nuking a fresh laptop, then buy a laptop (again only enterprise laptops from lenovo, hp, and dell) from microsoft directly, since those don't come with spyware: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store?SiteID=msusa&Locale=en_U...
You can also get warranties that last much longer than 2 years (some go up to 5), cover accidental damage, or cover the battery, but the specific policies offered depend on which company you go with. I have taken advantage of the lenovo accidental damage warranty a few times, and it was great. The default warranty requires you to ship the laptop off (lenovo overnights me a box with a prepaid overnight shipping label inside it so all I have to do is pack my laptop and drop it at the UPS store) and then they return it within a week, but you can also get an onsite repair warranty where someone will come to you to fix the laptop.
Trust me, it's worth dealing with a website that isn't as shiny as apple's website.
Maybe they're different now, but if not, I mean, great scott that's terrible.
The keyboards were about as good as a macbook, which was nice.
http://bi9he1w7hz8qbnm2zl0hd171.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...
so it's funny that it's about laptops :)
I think we need a beautiful, functional servers,computer, handheld and wearables with opensource desktop lithography and 3d material deposition. It would take about $20 million and the right people to get going, but it could be hw UNIX -> Linux.
name a non-mac laptop that' doesn't suck
(is it injection molded plastic with a screen that will eventually flop flop flop? then it sucks!)
then let's find a distro that doesn't suck! (does in include binary blob drivers? then it sucks! is it unity? then it sucks!)
Also, most of those can be bough on Ebay for a fraction of the cost. I'm very happy with the value offered by 2 year old laptops.
I wish apple forget spinning hardrives, go full on SSD and ship with > 512 GB
You can always get some China-made Intel Mini-PCs like these: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fanless-i5-Mini-PC-Windows-Ba...
Jeff Atwood seems to like them (as routers): http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/
Yes, Lenovo sales and support are pretty hopeless. Just got to factor that fact in. Must say Apple are pretty hopeless unless you get Apple care.
Anyway, the real problem in my mind is that there is pretty much no competition to Intel nowadays.
10.4 took until 10.4.11 to be stable. Snow Leopards wasn't great out of the box either. Marco's original post was nerd rage and the new mDNS solution. Was it annoying? Yes. Is it symptomatic of a larger issue? Hardly. I think, like may others, you are looking at this with extremely rosey glasses, especially given the comparison to Linux desktops, which in my experience (around 15 years) is still not as reliable as OS X out of the box or intuitive; too many desktops trying to do too many things too differently. Of course YMMV, but I'd argue it was likely due to confirmation bias.
I stand by the fact that this is nothing more than a meme.
I won't even try to defend Linux desktops, but I definitely notice just as many day to day issue with OS X than I did in the past, and really, I notice a lot more little bugs that really affect me. Like my multi monitor setup menu items disappear. And sometimes the windows don't render themselves correctly. Finder and smb etc..
I've had lots of issues with Mail.app recently too. Especially with older IMAP servers. Then there are also issues with the systemwide accounts.. ugh. I've literally filed over 100 bugs in Radar in the past 2 years vs a handful before that.
Lots of niggly stupid issues - like terrible audio quality, or poor LCDs, or poor build quality requiring stuff like shims under keyboards to stop them rattling (seriously?!). Crappy touchpads. Dumb experiments with the keyboard and touchpad/trackpoint buttons.
Every time I think I should give one of the newer X's a proper go, I go and have a play with them and realise that they're still full of compromises.
They are closed (unfortunately) but they are not full of bullshit, at least.
- Decent build quality
- Decent performance and battery life
- A decent website
- A clean OS without crapware or malware factory installed
If you want a laptop that's somewhat thin, light and with decent battery life, you often do have to sacrifice being able to replace anything. By soldering on the RAM and storage, you get more room for batteries. This also especially becomes evident by his System76 Galago that can last 3 hours.
So in conclusion: Just get a MacBook, it has decent build quality, performance, battery life and website. A good OS? I'm not going to be the judge of that, but installing Ubuntu or Windows on a Mac is luckily very easy.
tl;dr: “Picky, picky! wags finger”
How can I trust their peripheral chips and firmware? Or BIOS and SMM for that matter?
Maybe some nasty things unintentionally slipped in their SMM code as well?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode
There's no way I could verify all the firmware code contained in the laptop. Heck, not even one chip.
Lenovo has had things not intended happening with their BIOS [1] as well. It's fixed now, but what else there might be lurking under covers?
[1]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/lenovo...