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Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

Not disagreeing with the premise, but just want to plug a machine I am very happy with.

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.

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I have both, and I find the things that Macs have that everything else is missing just aren't articulated on a spec sheet.

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.

You seem to have only looked at the older PCs. Have you looked at the Dell XPS 13 or Microsoft Surface Book? They may dispel your complaints. You can even buy the XPS with Ubuntu.

Worthless battery life for such costly machines. I would've bought the XPS 13 with Ubuntu otherwise.

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.

I googled around and found this:

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?

Ah my bad; I read somewhere it was much much less. Maybe that's outdated information. But when people say 9 hours, basically I get 3-4 out of them... Usually.

What are you doing, compiling a kernel or rendering graphics?

Probably not an atypical use case on here :)

It depends a lot on screen brightness and the power settings. The XPS13 has a bright screen....

Just one more thing to add to the list of things Apple do well - quote realistic battery life figures.

I probably get 6 hours on arch Linux full back light. Battery life seems better on Windows (my friend's machine)

My XPS 13 on Debian lasts around 8 to 10 hours without difficulties for long trips.

Is this with Jessie on the XPS 13 9343? I'm only getting around 6 hours on mine.

No. Sid

My XPS 13 with Arch Linux lasts 10+ hours of continuous use on a single charge. Mine is the non-HD non-touch model though. I suspect the model with the beefier resolution and touch screen wouldn't do as well.

I second this. I've been a long-time fan of Lenovo (the X1 carbons are particularly good), but recently got a Dell XPS 13. Aside from the camera (which looks up your nose), they are really great machines.

My XPS 13 with Ubuntu (dual booted) is a nice machine but still has problems (track pad, wifi, kernel panic waking from sleep).

I really want to buy a surface book. But it seems like everyone on /r/surface is having the same recurring issues: battery drain/overheating during sleep, tablet failing to undock, computer mistakenly thinking tablet is undocked, graphics driver crashes, slow SSD writes, etc.

It's also ridiculously expensive. The cheapest option with 16GB of memory costs $200 more than a 15" Retina MBP.

I'd like to buy Microsoft Surface Book or Microsoft Surface Pro 4 but after a glance at https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/ it seems like people who dual boot may be having trouble with Ubuntu failing to boot after system updates (either Windows or Linux updates, anything which re-runs GRUB or whatever the Windows equivalent of that is; there are work-arounds eg https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/43an26/repair... but i'm scared of them because i don't understand them well enough to know if future system updates will break it again), and with getting either of the touchscreen or the cameras to work at all. I may be wrong, though, I didn't read too closely.

Not to mention that the entire casing of the MacBook acts as a heatsink, which is really just awesome design.

Except for the bizarro people that seem to use their Macbooks on their bare laps (doing sauna?)

Or you know... sitting outside in 30C summer in shorts. That 80C chasis temperature then somehow isn't as fun anymore. Current rMBP is unusable outside in summer due to hot chasis... my previous Dell XPS didn't have this issue.

>Or you know... sitting outside in 30C summer in shorts.

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...

> and we complain for them being uncomfortamble to have on our bare laps...

"lap"tops.

Isn't that why they started marketing them as "notebooks"?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/22/man_burns_penis_with...

Heat, definitely. Also, that was the time you started seeing 17"+ notebooks on the high end. One of my wife's friends bought a 20" "laptop" for her electrical engineering work. It looked comical on her lap, but was awesome for bringing work home on.

People also wear "wifebeaters" but we don't expect them to beat their wives in them.

Also "laptop" is an american term. The rest of the world calls them something closer to "portable".

"laptop" is what they're called in Polish too

Only if you mean, "they sometimes use the american term".

Because otherwise the polish term is "komputer przenośny" (portable, movable, etc computer).

> Well, anyone that wears shorts and sandals and is over 20, deserves it.

He only said "shorts". You know, adults can wear shorts as well.

Yes, if they have juvenile clothing sense. They can also wear baseball hats and other things -- after all it's a free country.

Sorry, I felt the need to respond to this. Why are shorts juvenile? They are a perfectly rational and sane climatic adaptation of clothing, allowing decent airflow over a human body.

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

I don't live in the "free country" (I'm guessing you mean the US).

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.

The latter is barely better though. Gives the "still lives with his parents" or "just out of college" vibe...

Or if you're are resting your palm. Cold on winter, hot on summer, not really great UX.

My MBP is the hottest machine I've ever owned. Run any game on it and not only is it too hot to put on my lap it's too hot to touch the keyboard. It actually stings my fingers

Have to agree. It's always the small details that aren't obvious at first blush.

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.

My favorite thing about the air vents is that when the Macbook is in use (opened), the backs of the keyboard and display close in against the vents, creating a natural barrier to prevent most things (like bed sheets) from blocking the vents.

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.

YMMV; my Thinkpad and my HP DV2 before that both had side vents.

Side vents are better than bottom vents, though macs have vents from top border of the keyboard. That's pretty ingenious design.

Without even passive vents? Which exact models?

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.

The Thinkpad is the X201, and the HP was a DV2, an old model. They might have some small bottom vents, but they didn't have any problems cooling while sitting on my bed. Neither are probably comparable to an MBP 13, though.

Hmmm

https://support.lenovo.com/at/de/documents/pd025709

Don't think I'd be comfortable blocking those for extended periods.

Must be the tablet version, mine doesn't have those.

I use my W530 on my couch frequently, with no issues. The main cooling happens in the back corner, where there are vents on both the side and the back. I'm not sure what the bottom vents are for, but blocking them doesn't cause issues even when I'm gaming.

None of those are vents? What are you afraid of blocking the docking connector or the speakers?

One thing that sucks about the display is the "glossy glass"-style which makes it very sensitive to sunlight or strong indoor lightning

You can have professionally applied an anti-glare film on the screen.

The application is perfect and resilient, and although it's "not the same", I will never ever go back to a glossy screen.

So, Apple used to ship the matte screen as standard, and upsold the glossy one as "movies! colours!". Then they shipped the glossy screen as standard, and upsold the matte one as "no glare!"...

They realized they were monetizing the wrong way. Make customers pay for a better customer experience always rubs me the wrong way.

We're the odd folks out in wanting the matte screens.

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.

It really is about the details - sometimes you don't notice them until you really need them. Examples:

- 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.

I have an i3-5010U hooked up to a 4k display (spare pc), and it tends to stutter a bit in actual use... is the 5200U much better? been thinking of moving to an i7-6600U brix, but concerned that I'll still have trouble with driving the display.

> Macbooks are great, and I wish I could find something as good to install Linux on.

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.

You can install Linux on a Macbook, but you'll fight with drivers and end up with less machine than you would using OS X.

Matter of opinion. I've seen better OpenGL performance on Linux on the same hardware, for example, and better filesystem performance too. (I'd also be much less productive without the customizability of Linux window management, but that's getting into more subjective territory).

On Apple hardware? Which?

It was a work-issued Macbook, can't really give you anything more specific than that.

I just put Ubuntu on my 2010 Air and gained battery life and a lot of responsiveness. No driver issues.

Aside, ticks me off to no end that Ubuntu removed the reverse-scrolling option (at least with a desktop) ... On windows, I use an autohotkey script to reverse the scrolling, and for media shortcuts (non-media kb). Ubuntu is the odd one out there for me now.

If you mean "natural scrolling", you can do it at a lower level in linux by remapping the "buttons" with xmodmap. Gnome ignores the system setting for this (or used to, at least; I don't use any Gnome stuff now, so maybe they've fixed it), but pretty much everything else in X will obey those settings.

Yeah, but it was a checkbox option in settings, and not something people trip over... they didn't need to remove it, at least they shouldn't, without another way to do it relatively easily.

I've got a MBP from around 2012 and a big problem is that when running any OS besides OS X, it runs very hot with very short battery life because it can only use discrete graphics (NVidia) full time. The integrated graphics is disabled in Apple's efi (maybe by Bootcamp?), and I don't know that anyone has ever found a workaround. There's an extremely longstanding Apple support issue still open about it.

So if planning to run anything other than OS X via Bootcamp on a MBP, do beware this issue.

Looks like this[0] should solve your issue. Also, it's my understanding that there's a way to patch GRUB for saner EFI behaviour.

[0] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/systemd-vgaswitcheroo-uni...

I'm not sure, it looks like it just disables the discrete GPU? If so, I've tried that - the problem is there's no other graphics to fall back on, Apple's proprietary EFI doesn't let non-OS X systems see that the integrated graphics are present at all (currently running only Windows 10 on it since I need Visual Studio). Maybe the patched Grub might be the start of a solution (could run Windows with a VM in Linux) but I'm not sure I'm that brave - last time I tried messing around with Apple's EFI for multi-booting it didn't end well :)

You'll need an older Mac Pro then. There is quite a bit of proprietary hardware in the new ones that I'm pretty sure have no open source drivers (ie: SMC controller, force touch pad, etc).

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.

I know that you know but i read this so often i might as well state it: You mean Macbook Pro, Mac Pro is a different product.

Just out of curiosity, would a Mac Pro booting Ubuntu have similar effects on hardware? Minus the battery

On the latest Macbook Pro everything works under Linux except for the webcam and maybe the brightness sensor (it's hard to tell because it doesn't seem to do anything under OSX either).

2015 Macbook user here. Still possible to burn legs.

Macbook Pro is the first laptop that I've ever owned that was so hot on the bottom that you can't rest it on your lap. If anyone is doubting this, please try to do something that involves all cores for 10 minutes. Any kind of non-trivial parallel task would do that.

The XPS13 may fit what you're looking for, if you want a PC. Amazing screen (touchscreen even). Solid, great build. Not hot and heavy. They even have a special one built for linux.

And it is pretty amazing that Apple packs in quad core CPU to the very slim package. Of course the drawback is that you don't get onsite repairs with this construction, but still. Compare this to for example Lenovo quad core models which are quite rare and thick.

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 think if you are spending more than 10 hours per day on your laptop, price shouldn't matter.

On a side note, you've missed the retina thing, it's making a true difference.

I've had retina for the last couple of years and while it's a nice bit of fluff I'd take software & service reliability over it any day

But it has a matte screen, which sounds glorious!

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.

Have you tried using an anti-glare (matte) screen protector? I haven't, but they're reasonably priced and it seems like an easy product to get right.

From my experience the matte films are pretty poor, they really do reduce the visual quality of the display to far worse than the actual Matte displays

Agreed. Most of them I have seen range from really terrible to only just crappy.

I use a screen protector on my MBP: it removes the glare and covers up the horrible ugly streak marks (production fault which Apple only admitted after being sued).

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 :)

What does a 'true difference' mean? (retina screen) => (mediating factor) => ( more productivity / better eyes )?

For coding, I use a smaller font size now than I used before I had a retina display. It allows me to use a physically smaller laptop, which is a huge advantage when working on the train / on the bus etc.

For me Retina meant that I stopped printing papers, now I can read PDFs comfortably straight from the screen. Not sure it's better form my eyes, but it saves time a lot.

That depends on your taste. I bought my first retina macbook pro last year and I really don't like it compared to my Air. Actaully it's rotting in a cupboard now because of the ghastly battery life. I agree with the premise; computers are locked down and cheap build quality in general. But for me only battery life matters, so I bought a stack (from a broker; it was very cheap) of Lenovo X220s with a 9 cell batteries and i'm happy as a clam. It costs a fraction of the Macbook Pro (10% actually) and it actualy just chugs along with Ubuntu installed for 12 hours after which I just swap batteries for another 12 hours. I was never that bothered with the whole lock-in thing before but now that i'm back working in Linux (2009 was my first Mac, before that I went from DOS to Unix in the early 90s and after that straight to Linux until 2009) I really don't want to touch anything else. But YMMV.

>That depends on your taste. I bought my first retina macbook pro last year and I really don't like it compared to my Air

You might not like the form compared to the Air. Very few won't like the retina compared to the Air's monitor.

If the battery life is the only thing that matters then a USB-C charged laptop (Macbook one, pixel, some new stuff) + some heavy duty battery pack is probably a good option as well.

Yes, agreed. I had that for a while, but it was one of those cheap things from Asus. I did not know the Macbook can do that via USB... Maybe i'll sell my Pro and get me one of those... Thanks.

If you are spending more than 3-4 hours per day on your laptop, you should really be using a desktop, for the sake of your long term health....

I think a lot of people use a laptop throughout the day like in our office - plugged into a large monitor, mouse, keyboard and put up on a desktop stand.

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.

The Macbook isn't very usable in that space though, since they have no first-party docking station support.

I use a MacBook Pro like this every work day. Plugging in four cables (power, 2x DisplayPort, USB) is not really that big of a deal.

But if details matter (they do for a lot of Mac users), nothing beats a drop in dock. There's also no wear to the plugs or ports with a drop-in dock.

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.

You could simply add a Thunderbolt or USB 3 dock....

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....

Apple's official monitors double as docking stations, with USB/Firewire/Ethernet being carried over thunderbolt.

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!

I do it. I have four plugs to connect and disconnect once a day. (i.e. no dock) I don't really mind.

Oh my yes! For the reasons mentioned in the article (laptop manufacturer suckage), I went back to a PC at home last year. It's been great. Great hardware compatibility, even with OpenBSD. I spent practically nothing for a whole lot of horsepower too.

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.

Just started a new job, since we're moving to a new building with an "open" concept and dual 24" monitors at each station, I didn't get a monitor since I'm in an older building.

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.

Quick short-term fix is to stand the laptop on a pile of books and plug in a cheap USB keyboard......

+1 to this machine. I bought one for my wife last June and so far it's been great.

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.

The worst part of their naming conventions is that the larger numbers don't always mean better / faster. And this would be ok if it was consistent but its not.

Asus also often has many sub-models specified by a suffix to the main model number. And what they show on their many inconsistent marketing websites often won't match what's actually available in your country. Not to mention that it appears on the website months before the product (well, a slightly different, less attractive product with a similar name) becomes available. Asus are bad for this.

I'm really happy with my Toshiba Tecra Z series. The article totally missed Toshiba, which is still a decent manufacturer.

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.

the article misses everything.

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"

That was my impression too. I'm not an expert on Windows hardware/devices but from what I hear the Dell XPS 13 is an excellent machine if you don't want a MacBook. Not even mentioning Dell tells me this guy misses a few things.

Fair points. I'm personally not a Dell fan, though I used one for a year that was purchased by my employer, and yes, it didn't completely suck. Just wasn't my first choice.

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.

I have the XPS 13 Developer Edition, and it's a fine laptop in many ways... But it's marketed as a Linux laptop, yet requires a proprietary WiFi driver. After I upgraded my kernel a month ago, the WiFi started kernel panicking randomly and often, so I don't bother even using the computer anymore... I just use a full screen terminal on my old MacBook and ssh to a VPS. One day I'll reinstall the driver or something, but, god damn, why must everything suck?

How is the touchpad? Is it comparable to Mac?

How is the highdpi screen on Linux?

Oh yeah, the touchpad is frankly awful compared to my MacBook's. I've almost considered disabling it, because I keep brushing against it with my palm causing wild cursor behavior and accidental button presses. It's difficult for me to control even when I do it intentionally.

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.

I don't if this is available on Ubuntu, but recent versions of libinput are way nicer than the old synaptics touchpad driver.

Interesting, thanks!

Yes, for 15.10 (and 16.04) install xserver-xorg-input-libinput, then edit the config files:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/649103/proper-touchpad-thumb-...

Presumably this is the older non-skylake model. I heard the new one (9350) will ship with an Intel wireless card which already has support in the kernel. But I don't think it's out yet.

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.

I too was quite frustrated with the wifi card, apparently they've sourced different cards. The Broadcom (I think?) was pure crap in linux, fine in windows. I upgraded to the non bluetooth intel card, everything is fantastic now.

Yeah, Broadcom. Oh, how did you upgrade? Ask the Dell support?

I figured out which part people were having luck with, archlinux forums/wiki, and ordered it on amazon. intel 7265ngw + bluetooth. Looks like I went for BT and turned it off in bios. Currently 22$ + 2$ shipping. Maybe 8 torx 5 T-5 needed to be removed, swapped in a few mins.

I have the same laptop. I wanted to run Debian/sid on it so I knew going in that I was going to need to do something about the wireless card. I researched[1] a bit and bought an Intel Wireless 7260 for ~$25, swapped it in, and it made all the difference.

The card identifies itself as:

    02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev bb)

[1] https://yurovsky.github.io/2015/05/18/dell-xps-13-wifi-linux...

Thanks. The proprietary Broadcom driver worked well enough until it didn't, and now I know firsthand why not to use them, so that's a useful experience at least.

> Not even mentioning Dell tells me this guy misses a few things.

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.

I was not even aware of the surface book, and I was recently in the market for a new power user laptop (ended up getting the dell xps 13).

I just got the new skylake XPS 13 and am loving it. Fantastic hardware.

I don't agree at all with the new Thinkpad keyboards being garbage. The old ones were nice (maybe even nicer than the new ones) but the new ones are still the best laptop keyboards in the market at the moment.

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.

wow, honestly, you are one of the first people i hear talking good things about the concave-chiclet-keys. Good to know it. for me the keys are already too spaced out and the travel is so low and i would have welcomed flat or convex keys. ideally less space (so larger keys) and convex to prevent mistype.

No dedicated function keys are the worst decision lenovo made. Kind of a pain in the ass when one is trying to avoid using the mouse (which most developers working for long periods tend to do).

At least on mine, you can use Fn-Esc to engage "FnLk" and use the F keys as default. Also, somewhat related you can swap Ctrl and Fn in the BIOS if you prefer your Ctrl key to be in the bottom left, like me.

For me the keys default to F1-F12 and multimedia functions require the Fn key. Works pretty well, I don't use the multimedia keys except for adjusting volume (this is a Desktop machine with the USB version of the keyboard, on a laptop the brightness keys would be relevant as well). Considering how often I hit F<something> (a lot!) and how often I adjust the volume (rarely) this works very well for me.

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.

Completely agree. I use the ThinkPad external keyboard as my main keyboard at work, mostly for the TrackPoint but also because it's just a really nice keyboard.

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.

At work, I have a L540. I don't like the look of the new-ish ThinkPad keyboards, but otherwise, the only complaint I have is that a few keys will sometimes (rarely) fire twice when I push them.

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!)

The new keyboards are pretty good (perhaps even the best) relative to other modern laptop keyboards, but probably wouldn't even have earned a mention eight years ago before the great chiclet revolution...

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.

Did you somehow just read the paragraph where he was disappointed with Lenovo, and miss the entire rest of the blog post where he was also disappointed with a bunch of other manufacturers?

he barelly mention asus, toshiba, dell, sony, etc. and all those are already better know then lenovo for linux (& windows) laptops for some years.

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.

Lenovo is the #1 PC manufacturer in the world. Their new keyboards were released in 2011-2012 and they're not garbage at all.

I used to buy only Toshiba, Fujitsu & Panasonic. Panasonic still has great laptops in Japan and Fujitsu (used to) have the best warranty I could get where I live; no questions asked new laptop whatever happened for 5 years. But that time laptops were all expensive if you wanted something good; now these are overpriced last I checked.

I laughed when he was talking about the System76 laptop and being "modular" as a bonus. Then complaining about the empty space for the HDD.

Also, didn't compare the Surface Book (only talked about why he didn't use the Surface Pro..). I find that particularly funny

... and god help you if you ever need the Asus customer support for repairing that thing. A truely horrible experience.

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.

I don't know how things are over in the US, but here in Czech republic, my experience with them was nothing but good. When my SSD broke down after about a month of using the thing, they paid for the shipping to and from the repair shop and replaced the drive in... a week I think. I've been using it for about a year now and I've had no other problems.

I had a poor experience with them in the UK. The hinge snapped on my ultrabook (I don't remember the exact model as the codes are obscure.) E-mailed support, provided plenty of pictures of the issue. Keep in mind I only owned the thing for 6 months so still in warranty.

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.

If you're ever in that situation again, take it to the seller, mention the sales of goods act if you have to. Warranties aren't how things are supposed to work in the UK, it's the seller that carries the responsibility and so they're generally a lot better at it.

Of course, I went straight to amazon after the experience with Asus customer support and got a full refund in an hour.

Sounds like it worked out pretty well for you then? Full refund after 6 months of use, you could buy another one or the next model up.

I was pleasantly surprised when I needed my Asus repaired under warranty here in Spain. Came and collected at my work, and returned it within 3 days.

I have had good service from Asus in the UK.

Can confirm - ASUS declined my warranty on a keyboard problem people complained about (basically sending thrash instead of pressed keystrokes); I had to order a new one from Asusparts and replace it myself; all within 3 months of purchase of their most expensive Zenbook. They even attempted to sell me a "repair" of motherboard that would cost almost the same as a brand new Zenbook (yet the mobo works fine since I replaced keyboard). Horrible, horrible experience.

I had great experience with Asus service in EU. I called them up, they asked for a serial number and what was the problem, they sent UPS to pick it up (from Cyprus), a week later I had it back fixed. Considering how bad support for hardware is in this country and the fact that the service center is overseas I'd say they were one of my best after sales experiences.

I join the others in praising ASUS support in Europe. Here in Belgium I had a laptop still under warranty picked up the day after calling support service for a failed motherboard and two weeks later it was back, no questions asked. Picked up by EDP (or something) and probably serviced in The Netherlands.

I bought the first Zenbook UX31 when it came out and last year bought a retina MBP. The zenbook was at the time half the price for the comparable mac air and I enjoyed it very much the first year, but since then I had it repaired 3 times costing me more than the purchase price (HDD, ram, power plug) and the power plug still doesnt work well so I can't use it anymore. It served me well, but not sure I would recommend it again. I'm very happy with the MPB so far, never thought I'd buy a mac but there was just no alternative for build quality, as the article suggested. Still haven't put Linux on it, which I thought I'd do immediately, so the OS is not that bad. If the MPB were a little lighter, it would be the perfect machine for me.

I think it's not only about build quality. If you use Linux, sadly it's also about compatibility.

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 had a Thinkpad T440s running Ubuntu and then Arch, and now I have a 13" rMBP. I love the glossy screen, vivid colors, and most importantly, battery life. OS X also has the advantage of everything just working perfectly out of the box so I'm happy.

I don't think I'll go back to Linux any time soon, though I do miss tiling WMs.

I have good experience with Asus as well. Until recently I was still using my early 2011 Asus U36JC. It was probably one of the first ultrabook-like laptops, even though it wasn't branded as one, since it had a second discrete GPU. Reasonably thin at 19 mm and 1.4 kg, with stellar battery life (10h+ under Debian) and great performance. Even though it had 1st generation Core i5, it was still snappier then most of my classmate's laptops with latest i5s. It even had a USB 3.0 port, which was something for a ~700€ 13" laptop at that time. Over the time I upgraded to 8GB RAM and swapped the disk for SSD. Only downside was a pretty crappy glossy screen, but I mostly had it hooked up to an external monitor so I didn't mind so much.

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.

If you still want to bring your old MBP back to life, I just replaced the battery on my sister's 2011 MBP with an aftermarket one from Amazon. There were a lot of pro/con reviews and it's only a couple weeks in but so far it's great. I went the one branded by Anker and it came with the correct screwdriver which was a nice touch. Installation was very simple. She also needed a new HDD so I put in an SSD and the machine is surprisingly zippy with the latest OS X.

For the Asus Zenbook UX305LA, how flexible is it ? Can you open and change the battery by yourself, for example ?

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?

It's hard to say since I mostly use it for heavy-drain stuff. Streaming movies on Netflix, building apps in Android Studio, etc. Always have Chrome running with a ton of tabs.

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.

6 hours is not bad at all. (on Linux!) :) I'd be pretty happy with that.

I also have UX305 and I easily get at least 6 hours under moderate loads. Eight or nine with light web-browsing (avoiding javascript pages that spike cpu usage), ten or more with lighter use (text editor).

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

I have been trying TLP but I failed to notice any significant difference in battery life... is it absolutely needed to tweak its default settings?

I don't remember. I would check power usage with powertop and make sure you've got no 'bad' indicators on the 'Tunables' tab (actually I think I still have one bad). On the 'Device Stats' tab you should be able to get 'system baseline power usage' under 5 watts under light loads. I run mine with display brightness fairly low, 20% or 30%, but it's still has comparable brightness to my other main laptop's (Lenovo x220) full brightness.

I actually have a Lenovo x220 as one of my machines, and with 70-80% brightness I get about 4 hours of battery life (wifi included) on a 9 cells battery. Does it sound reasonable or am I not getting what I should?

Sounds about right, I have 6 cell in my x220 (with Win7) and I'd guess its life is around 2.5 hours with those settings. It's short enough that I don't feel comfortable using it on the go, keep x220 at home almost always plugged in to AC. The battery difference between it and the UX305 is huge.

Thanks, good to know I'm in the average then. I wonder if the newer Lenovo (x250 for example) have much better battery life (on Linux) than the x220.

Hmm. My X220 has a 6-cell battery (almost new though) and I get 4+ hours easily with 70% brightness and medium workload (software dev).

The x250 has great battery life. The keyboard is a little better than the X240, but not as good as the X220 or even the X230. Some of the keys are not full size. The function keys are garbage by default, but there's a persistent Fn lock (might be a BIOS setting, don't recall).

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.

I have the x220 with a used 9-cell battery (last full charge was 75%) and I'm easily able to get just under 6 hours of standard use (browsing, WiFi, watching movies, coding) and screen brightness at around 60%.

Which UX305? The UX305LA has an i7 or i5, the UX305FA has an old core M, the UX305CA has the latest core M. Some have HD or QHD displays.

EDIT: Mine is a UX305FA, the one with less powerful Core M processor. It's slightly slower than my Thinkpad x220, which has an older i7. So it's not a powerful machine, and I assume less powerful processor means better battery life than the faster x305's that have come out since I got mine.

I own a UX305LA and have owned two previous models in the UX line. Glad to see it mentioned, I like them all very much.

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.

> It was a piece of proprietary SanDisk crap.

you mean it was not a standard SSD ?

It wasn't, no. The UX is too thin for 2.5in SSDs. I had to find a special adapter to attempt reading it when it died.

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.

That looks like an M.2 PCIe connection. Is it something less standard than that?

I have the UX305LA. I had a clicky trackpad[1], so I opened it up and fixed it. It was too good in other aspects, so I couldn't bother sending it back. Battery is replaceable.

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.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un6TSK0RCxQ

How did you fix it? I just mapped caps-lock as left mouse button :| I hate clickpads.

One thing Apple does very well is simply not shipping crap products. It's forgivable from Asus since they started out as a budget brand, but the premium PC brands like Sony have really dropped the ball.

Yeah...I primarily use a desktop for anything demanding but at one point, I needed a laptop for occasional multimedia dj/vj stuff (nothing paid or professional, more personal or artistic endeavors) and I spent some time doing price comparisons.

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.

I have a similar Asus machine. Nice build quality. Lasted 3 years of fairly hard use so far. Shiny screen could be improved, that's about it. Would recommend Asus highly.

I love ASUS, and second your recommendation.

Watch out though - some of their cheaper machines are just weird. The X205ta being one example.

I'm in a similar boat, I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro which I've added RAM and an SSD to. I'm dreading the day it dies because it's such a perfect laptop for me.

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.

If what happens to the economy, and Apple sales--I feel comming. I think you might see, a Mac that's easy to upgrade/repair be suddenly available. I just hope they don't wait too long, and their stores look like Sears.

I was a long time Mac aficionado. I loved Apple and their products. It was a heart breaking experience when I felt like it was time to move on.

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 was so very tempted by this laptop but there's one requirement I will never forego -- the backlit keyboard. If they make a second iteration of that model with a backlit keyboard I'll run to the nearest store and I WILL JUST BUY IT right there and then.

Serious question - can someone explain the appeal of the backlit keyboards? I notice it's a big deal whether you're a Mac or PC fan, but I generally don't understand it. Is it for people who can't touch type without looking at the keyboard?

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 me I would say its about simply initial orientation of setting my hands down. Its hard to articulate but like the OP I will never buy one without it again - its just a nice feature that I have decided is essential.

It's nice if you use the weird keys that are far from the nubs - like F10, F11, F12, or anything where the grid doesn't give you tactile wayfinding.

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'

As others have said, it helps quickly orientate yourself before you start typing. It's hard to explain rationally but having that makes me much more productive.

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.

I also relatively recently bought a Zenbook with the mobile fanless processor also (battery life is pretty decent, but of course I can't play many games on it or anything), put Arch Linux on it -- been happily hacking ever since!

A 13" macbook air with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Core i5 processor costs $1 299.00, so more like 60%. There also seem to be some small things where Asus is saving money: It uses a SATA SSD instead of a NVMe PCIe SSD for instance.

True that. MBA also has better connectivity and audio.

On the other hand, MBA's monitor is a complete joke compared to the one on ASUS UX305.

There are third party batteries that will puff up and explode. I wouldn't blame Apple for that. If it was an Apple battery, I'm curious which Apple store gave you grief about this. Care to tell?

I noticed the original battery of my 2006 MacBook was puffed up when I was at my parents over Christmas, so yes Apple batteries do definitely have the same issue.

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).

My 2008 macbook's (removable) battery also puffed up.

Same problem here. AppleCare went through three before I moved on from that machine.

The one I found had an Intel Core i7-5500U .. Which is not for power-users.

EDIT: Your guide[0] to intel CPUs

[0]: https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/proce...

The Zen Pro 15" is not bad [1]

[1] http://store.asus.com/us/item/201511AM230002951/A26128

I was thinking about buying this exact machine. Does Bluetooth work well on Ubuntu out of the box?

That laptop looks amazing! Quick question: does it have a backlit keyboard?

Wait till 2022 to compare?

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