Ask HN: Laptop that doesn't suck | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Laptop that doesn't suck

59 pointszepolen71 comments

I bought a MBP Retina 16gb with AMD M370X a few months ago. When I bought it, it was fast and snappy. Now during the summer the fans won't stop, crappy OSX kernel_task throttles the cpu with no way of turning it off and after a few hours regular programming use it needs a reboot because everything runs at a crawl despite only about 4gb mem used.

I don't know if it's the laptop, or El Capitain, but I'm done. Reinstalled osx from scratch, reset the both rams, even tried the 3 different methods of killing acpi but it made no difference. This laptop was a complete waste of money.

I want a lapop of similar spec - the monitor in particular was fantastic, I've heard good things about the Thinkpad t450 and the Lenovo carbon, are there others, what are your experiences with them?

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I dont care if you go PC or MAC, but this is not typical macbook pro behavior. Ive owned 4 since 2008 and have gotten 3 separate ones in that time frame for work. So Ive had damn near every single macbook pro that has been available in the last 8 years. I currently have a mid 2014 macbook with 16gb 2.5ghz 512. It can get hot on occasion, all of which are totally explainable:

1) I have Windows 10 installed running on Fusion- 'nuff said. Actually Im sort of kidding, win 10 is a lot better than previous versions heating up the mac. I do have SQL Server Developer installed and do a lot of data heavy development which is what really cranks up the heater. 2) I use Logic Pro and have a lot of DSP running in the form of plugins.

Either way, it gets hot, but doesnt slow down or cause me issues. However I would say that the first thing you need to look at is do you have that aluminum case wrapped in a heat blanket/"protective case"? If so you are not letting the aluminum do its job and dissipate the heat. If not, then something is faulty on that macbook and I would have it looked at. Again, the behavior you describe is not normal.

That problem you’re having with kernel_task is probably due to this¹:

“Activity Monitor may show that a process named kernel_task is using a large percentage of your CPU, and during this time you may notice a lot of fan activity. This process helps manage temperature by making the CPU less available to processes that are using the CPU intensely. In other words, kernel_task responds to conditions that cause your CPU to become too hot. When the temperature decreases, kernel_task automatically reduces its activity.”

There’s a high chance it’s reaching these temperatures so easily due to dust buildup in the MacBook. If it’s possible to open it up, I’d recommend doing so and dusting it out. If it’s not possible to open it up, you may have to take it to an Apple Retail Store and have them do it for you.

――――――

¹ — https://support.apple.com/HT203184

I doubt it is dust if they've only had the machine "months."

MBPs with discrete graphics cards often overheat and have for literally years, Apple shouldn't even sell them until they resolve the issue but they continue to do so... It is one scenario where the cheaper integrated graphics (Intel Iris Pro) make MBPs better machines.

I've brought this up before and people anecdote me to death, but that's always been my experience, the top end MBP with discrete graphics cannot cool fast enough and throttles like crazy.

For sure the graphics runs way too hot, but it will overheat even when running on integrated graphics.

You absolutely need to install Flashblock in your browsers (remember Chrome includes Flash). All the Flash based trackers and ads showing in your browser quickly drains the battery and often places a huge demand on the GPU.

Or simply select Settings => Show advanced => Content Settings => Plugins: Let me choose when to run plugin content

I think there are more and more HTML5 video ads though, so you also need uBlock Origin.

If the OP smokes there could be enough of a buildup to cause an issue.

> MBPs with discrete graphics cards often overheat and have for literally years

If you're hammering the GPU of course it's gonna create a lot of heat. Then the system will react to cope with that heat. What else do you expect to happen?

The integrated Intel GPU is slow by comparison. If you're happy with that there are hacks out there to tell the system to always use it and not use the discrete GPU but that seems really silly to me.

You're missing the point, of course hammering the GPU creates a lot of heat, but you would expect a high end system that came pre-packaged with the GPU to be able cope with the heat. If the system is overheating, clearly it is not coping very well.

Packaging hardware into a system without sufficient cooling to actually use it at capacity is just bad design.

The CPUs work the same way, my friend. If you hammer one core to its full capacity it will get throttled too. It's just how CPUs and GPUs are designed. They give you an option to "overload" them for a short time, and then they scale back to a sustainable level. Would you rather they only let you use them up to the sustainable level?

Desktop GPUs and CPUs work the same way.

But don't all modern MBPs have both an integrated and discrete graphics card? Mine sure does. So when I'm not doing something graphics-intensive, my 15" MBP uses the Iris Pro graphics.

I can't say I've experienced the described behavior except on rare occasions when I need to find a rogue task and kill it.

Check out gfxCardStatus. To be fair, some apps (IntelliJ IDEs + Java6 cough) seem to force it into using the discrete graphics card but even then I don't get the spinning-fan-slow-to-a-crawl behavior.

Forgot to mention, I already cleaned it out, it had some dust, temp fell maybe a few degrees.

I would take it back. I had this problem in and older MBPr that had been in for a recent board replacement under Apple Care. Turned out the new board was actually faulty. They replaced it with a brand new machine again entirely under Apple Care.

I second that your experience is inconsistent with what I've seen and had myself. I think it would be worthwhile to send it in for repair to Apple under the assumption of faulty hardware.

It's supposedly unsafe to use an air compressor on a laptop because of concerns of static buildup, but I did that with mine that was full of dust and it worked great afterwards.

I've had this issue (during and after GPU-intensive tasks, which aren't common enough to be a major nuisance), and after blowing compressed air through all exposed vents, didn't notice a change. I should schedule a repair time at a retail store to see if that fixes the issue.

A jury-rigged stopgap that is surprisingly effective for me is setting the metal-bodied laptop on top of an liquid icepack for a few minutes. kernel_task drops to background noise and I can continue working.

Serious question - what's the ambient air temperature of your working environment? I have a mid 2012 MPB Retina - 1st generation. I've experienced similar problems with it, but only in the Summer. In my case this is a personal machine and is being used at home. I'm the kind of person who doesn't turn on the AC until the ambient air temperature in the house gets into the upper 80s. My MBP will have the fans a whirring and even get hot to the touch in those conditions. When I finally turn on the AC it's behavior goes back to normal. My conclusion is they don't take heat very well. Meanwhile the Macs I use at work never experience these issues since it's a climate-controlled office.

about 25-30 degrees celcius

30C is hot.

Do you see the same problems in cooler temps?

Yes but not on the same scale. In an air conditioned room it will take longer to 'bog down', but once it goes over the limit its over.

> 77F to 86F

that might be your problem. Is there anything else in the room generating heat, besides you and the computer. maybe try throttling down your processor

I live in a hot place and I work outside.

Something weird is going on, my friend. I have been using a 2012 rMBP 15" w/only 8GB of RAM (ordered the day they were announced before we found out the RAM was not upgradeable, whoops) every day, 10 hours+ a day and never have any problems. The only time my fans kick on is when you'd expect; when I'm doing heavy load tasks like playing a game or doing anything using Adobe Flash. I can stream HTML5 video full screen for hours and the fans never become audible. I can run Xcode for hours and as long as my app isn't being a CPU hog, everything's kosher.

So, something is wrong with your machine. The OS X reinstall failing to resolve the issue points away from malware, and towards an environmental or hardware issue. If your machine is only a few months old Apple will take a look at it for free, I'd consider that option to rule out any hardware issues if you can't think of any obvious environmental causes (Do you smoke? High temperature in your working area(s)? etc.)

My experience is identical to yours, but with an Early 2013 rMBP 15" 2.4 GHz / 8 GB.

This is not normal for an MBP. Get it replaced. Also make sure an app that you are installing is not triggering this. Oh and there is no better laptop than an MBP.

All laptops are tradeoffs, especially with performance versus battery life . I have been very happy with my Dell M3300 which is a MBP clone (15 inch "retina" screen and large buttonless trackpad). Great performance, excellent build quality, everything just works. I believe the current model is the precision 15 5000 which I haven't tried. Battery life leaves a lot to be desired, that's the design tradeoff for the precision line - perf over battery life. Works great for me because I always work plugged in. Not viable for work on a long flight.

EXACT same thing happened to mine, 3 visits to the Apple Store later until someone finally opened it up completely and dusted the insides. The computer is running like new again. At home dusting without opening it up didn't work.

MAKE SURE THEY DUST THE INSIDES. They do it for free, even if you don't have AppleCare anymore.

I'd agree with the Thinkpad T series (namely the T--p range, like T460p) and what used to be the Thinkpad W series which is now the Thinkpad P-- series (like the P50) which are "workstation replacements." Heavier but also much more powerful.

There's also Microsoft's Surface Book, which is wonderful, but a little too expensive in my OPINION.

I've also had personal success with Asus's ROG range of super-heavy laptops (e.g. G752VT), they literally weight 10 pounds(!) but the cooling is incredible. They're designed for "gaming" but due to the raw power and ample cooling, they're wonderful development machines no matter what the workload or workload type. They're definitely only for "around the house" levels of mobility.

I have the T450s and absolutely love it. Small, lightweight, portable, and affordable.

I'm not sure about the T460 in that it is a slight aesthetic departure from the 450. The 460 is more tapered while the 450 is more boxy. And I like the boxyness of thinkpads.

What's not to like about the 450 is single expansion memory stick. There is 4GB soldered to the mb so (afaik) unless you're running 8gb total you'll be in single channel memory mode.

I also like that you can order it without a camera.

+1 for the ASUS ROG, I've had one for nearly two years now and very happy with it. The fact that it's built for video games means that pretty much everything else runs fast on it.

I'll add a +1 as well. Mine is due for replacing now though and asus isn't helping me pick a replacement. There are far to many sku's available.

Thinkpads are fantastic, but no matter what you do, do not purchase any of the T*40's (T440, T540, etc) - Lenovo fucked up that round of releases hard (tried to move from discrete touchpad keys to integrated touchpad).

If you're a developer that's a fan of running your own systems, Thinkpads can generally run Linux systems with minimal effort (seriously - I bought an X220 recently, and getting Windows working on it was more effort than getting Arch Linux to work).

/r/Thinkpad is also a fantastic resource if you want purchase advice.

I'm a big fan of my Chromebook Pixel. galliumos.org is my daily driver, which is the best linux experience I've ever had -- everything just works.

I have a Pixel LS running Ubuntu natively, it's by far the best laptop I've had, excellent specs, build quality second to none.

Would you say it's better than an MBP? Considering trying a linux distro full time, and I've heard good things about the Pixel.

All Mac products come with a year of Apple Care, even if they're refurb units. If you purchased it within the past year I highly recommend getting in touch with Apple support about the problem - what you're describing is far outside the normal behavior of a MBP.

I have the Lenovo W541 w/ 3K screen, and am VERY hapy with it. Battery life is low, at 1-2 hours, but the 32gb of RAM is essential when running VMs. (though, admittedly, now that we've gone to docker, my memory requirements have drastically reduced.)

The one issue I have is that the keyboard is off-center. (with a number pad on the right). Installing Ubuntu was super easy, no tweaks necessary for the nvidia/intel combo (unlike the W530). Power Management is weak, at 1-2 hours... but I haven't run up against that enough to look up what I can do to make it better.

So, a LONG time user of Lenovo laptops, (10 years)... Still great laptops. I look forward to the P series (which replaces the W series) with the Xeon processors.

I'm liking it, how long have you had it? Does it have loud fans when trashing the cpu?

sorry for late reply...

Had it for almost a year. Almost no fan noise whatsoever.

I can recommend the german but english translated site Notebookcheck reviews. All components are checked in great detail. Hint you can search for max 12 months old laptop and order by review score.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s-Top-10-Premium-... http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s-Top-10-Subnoteb...

I'd try to put a linux distro on it before I look for options (I guess that's what you'd do with a non-apple laptop too).

At the dayjob a little earlier, we were talking about office move and I was asked what kind of laptop I have. I couldn't even remember the brand. It's just a featureless, bland chunk of black plastic that'll die of some mechanical failure within three years. And I got it in February (as a replacement for the previous featureless chunk of black plastic that died).

I thought it was HP. Turns out it was a Dell. C'est la vie.

For the OP, what you're experiencing is not typical MBP behavior. Something toxic in your environment, probably in a browser. If you use Chrome, try switching to Firefox, or vice versa (I find Safari is actually the most robust browser I've used). If you want to be radical, try setting up a partition and booting into Linux or Windows instead of OSX.

Nobody makes better hardware than Apple, period. The only thing I've seen that even comes close is a Microsoft Surface Pro. Most PCs are junk.

Hey, I faced the exactly same problem with my MB Pro(late 2013) about a couple of months ago. Tried all the solutions I found on stackexchange/apple forums but with no luck. Then I installed Ubuntu and have had little problems since. Checkout any online tutorial for installing Ubuntu on your Macbook.

You have to download and install the wifi drivers manually, I have written a small tutorial on how to get wifi working https://medium.com/@afmsayem/installing-linux-on-macbook-pro...

XPS 13 or 15 are worth looking at

Seconded - I have a Precision M4800 for setting up and doing actual work (real keyboard, big screen, etc.) and an XPS 13 for portability....in theory. In reality, the M4800 has been off for months, and the XPS 13 is the best device I've ever owned (though the first was DOA and I had to get it replaced).

I'm pretty happy with my xps 13 but I think it falls short of the MBP in keyboard and trackpad.

The keyboard is a little too shallow and the flat profile of the keys makes it harder to find the center of each key. I've never used an Air so I don't know how it compares but it is better than the Macbook (not the pro, this guy http://www.apple.com/macbook/).

The touchpad is the single-button kind, it looks like a MBP touchpad but the actuation force is much higher and gets even higher at the top of the pad. The pad is a lever with the fulcrum at the top, clicking on the bottom is easy but much harder at the top. tap-to-click, multifinger gestures and all that work fine.

I've had the laptop for 6 months and I've already seen some physical problems, the screens backlight flickers (black for a millisecond every 5-ish seconds). the touchpad sometimes 'locks' thinking that there is one finger pressed against it, dragging one finger will scroll instead of moving the mouse.

Clean it out? Blow out any dust from the fans, either by simply blowing into the air vents (output vents, of course, you want to blow the dust out through the input vents), using a compressor to do the same (at a reasonable pressure, you want to clean it, not air-cut it nor use the fans as generators) or a can of compressed 'air'. This has restored many a sluggy laptop to working order here.

If OSX is not your thing you might want to consider installing something else on the thing, some Linux of choice or Windows if you so prefer.

Otherwise just get an old Thinkpad, they work and keep on working - typing this on a T42p, 12 years and counting...

I'm running a 2016 Lenovo X1 Carbon with Mint 18 Linux on a Samsung 950 NVME SSD.

I've never had such a flawless Linux desktop experience. Almost everything just worked out of the box, it's super-zippy, and the laptop is so light and portable. Never heard the fan yet.

But if you want to an external GPU, this is not the system for you. Also, if you get the hi-res screen, you're forced to play the LCD lottery (LG vs. Panasonic, one has PWM, and you don't get to pick.)

Desktop Linux has really come a long way. Just in time too, now that MS is probably gonna force us to 'subscribe' to Windows, send us ads, etc...

I got an 2015 X1 carbon, too (used). I have dual boot with win10 and ubuntu xenial. Win10 was just for checking it out and occasionally remote server management (Juniper VPN/Junos Pulse is a nightmare on Linux).

Ubuntu works great despite some problems with the keyboard back light turning on automatically with newer, unsupported kernels.

I love how light the laptop is and the display (got the high res) is great.

Another thing that is just beautiful: the support. I got a pixel error on the display, opened a ticket with lenovo support and two days later a technician showed up at my place and changed the display (worth a few hundred bucks) in 10 minutes, let me verify that it was fixed and took off. And I was in a foreign country at that time. I loved it and tell everybody about this great experience. I don't think the apple store can even remotely compare to that.

edit: Oh, and the quick charge. THE QUICK CHARGE!! Only 10% battery left (still >1.5 hours) and 10 minutes near a power point? It will charge up to maybe 70-80% in that few minutes. If you travel a lot this is fantastic. Combined with deep sleep (laptop goes from standby to hibernate after a set amount of time, 3 hours for me, great if you don't know how much time before using the computer again) the battery was never a problem.

I agree, the quick-charge is astonishing sometimes. And I love how with Thinkpads you can limit the max battery charge to 80%, to maximize the lifetime of your battery.

I've been saved by the on-site service a couple of times, it's really good (just wish 3 years of it was still included by default - those were the days!)

My daughter has a laptop for school. She's tried Toshiba and HP, and on both she's had the hard drive die after a few months. (In fact, I think she's never not had the hard drive die after a few months - she's never gotten a year out of one.)

She doesn't seem to drop it or step on it or pour liquids in it or any other form of obvious abuse, but the hard drives always die.

I've got a Dell at work, but I use it almost as a second desktop - I (almost) never move it. It's been quite reliable. (If I lugged it around, though, who knows?)

I have had heating issues on laptops in the past that were caused by a poor thermal interface between the CPU cooler and the CPU. Either the thermal interface material was insufficient, or just not there at all. I was able to solve it myself by disassembling the laptop, removing the CPU cooler and cleaning the cooler and CPU heat spreader with alcohol before applying an appropriate amount of quality thermal paste (I used Arctic Silver of some sort... IV? V?)

I have a fancy MBP that's about a year old and experience similar behavior on warm days when I don't run the AC. It seems that my tolerance for heat is a few degrees higher than my macbook's :/

Propping it's back end up an inch or so (I stick my car keys under it) instead of having it sit flat on my desk seems to make an appreciable difference in performance.

Can confirm that I've had the same problem with my El-Cap / 16GB MBP system too. I still suspect it was a faulty USB Network connection that caused it to throttle so much - but in the end, they diagnosed it with a faulty heat-sink on the MB and replaced it out. I've not had any other problems since then.

Surface Book: high res display, solid as a brick, and ConEmu + powershell works wonders if you've got Unix skills.

It sounds like abnormal behavior and could probably be fixed.

As to your question, I'd recommend the Surface Book. I got one last December and couldn't be more pleased with it. Hi-res screen, good RAM + HD space, fast processor, keys feel nice to type on...the list goes on and on :)

Surface Pro / Surface Book. I presume Linux support on them is good enough now, but at least if you're stuck with Windows you can get a proper bash environment now without cygwin that I hear works well.

I upgraded to an XPS 15 9550 last December. I'm very happy with the hardware but Windows 10 still has some rough edges.

I've been really happy with my XPS 13.

I highly recommend Lenovo carbon X1/3

Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

Over the last 2 years, I've used:

- MBP Retina (13", late 2013)

- Asus C200MA-DS01 (Chromebook thingy)

- X1 Carbon (3rd gen, 8GB)

- iPad Air 2 (WiFi)

They all suck. All of them. Period. End of discussion.

That said, the ones that sucked the least for my lifestyle of web development, writing and email are (in order):

1. X1 with Ubuntu 14.04

2. iPad Air 2 paired with a linux VPS w/remote desktop

3. Chromebook

The X1 takes the cake because of the weight and the ability to have a full OS on it. The iPad A2 comes in as a close second, only because it requires a bluetooth keyboard and internet to be useful. The chromebook takes 3rd because I cheaped out and didn't get one with a 1080p panel in it. I'm convinced that a 6+ hour ultraportable laptop would displace the X1, and can't wait for my budget to let me pick up a refurbished Pixel.

> They all suck. All of them. Period. End of discussion.

It'd be nice if you explained why they sucked

laptops overheat :(

1. Try wiping the drive and reinstalling the OS.

2. This sounds like it could be a hardware problem—try sending it back to Apple. You can get a hardware lemon from any manufacturer.

3. Do you want Windows or Linux? If the latter consider a Dell XPS: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/the-xps-13-de-dell-co... or Purism laptop (high DPI version to ship shortly: https://puri.sm/posts/4k-at-last-purism-librem-15-rev2-4k/).

I ordered my librem 13 when the ship date was july 1, it's now mid-august (no laptop) and they're not communicating at all. I love the idea of the librem, I love the fact that they're linux first, I love that they're anti-blob, I'm still excited to get & use it -- but I'm experiencing some cold feet.

Yeah, Purism is not very good in communication with customers.

Not sure about Librem 13, but my Librem 15 shipped >1 year after the date initially listed on kickstarter.

BTW it's July 18, not mid-august (unless you're in a very strange timezone).

Are you posting from the future? Kickstarters have a hard enough time fulfilling orders on time without having to worry about time travelers.

If you're in a situation where you can't fulfill on time, it's even more crucial to keep good communication with your customers than at any other time. The impression I have is that Purism is not succeeding at this.

I wish I knew the time traveler prepositions from douglas adams, this would be easier to explain.

The ship date on crowdsupply.com changed, in mid-july, from july 1 to mid-august. In other words, it's the edited ship date that is in august. I remain in july.

Did the first already, linux would be the way to go, have you used those yourself?

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