/huge Surface Book fan
Granted, it's not as seamless as it could be, but it's still new technology. There are issues with the USB-C connection cutting out when wifi is also on, so I've gotten in the habit of just turning off wifi when I'm docked. We're currently in the "first generation" of consumer USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 devices, so I expect those issues to get ironed out pretty quickly.
Just bought SP4. It is basically replacing my Chromebook. This will be my light weight laptop for work from coffeeshops and couch.
I have a 5 year old Dell XPS 15 for main dev work and some photo editing. Once it dies or gets too slow, I am going to replace it with a desktop. With SP4, I should be able to do a lot more work away from my desk. Chromebook let me ssh into my servers but sometimes it was not easy to be as productive in VIM as in real IDE.
Best of both worlds, to me at least. (Except for when I need to do something irresponsibly inefficient like run three VMs and full screen video at once... which will work, but not be great.)
I'm seriously considering getting one.
https://www.amazon.com/30000mAh-Portable-Charger-Outputs-Mic...
...
/saunters off to rethink his position on the Surface Pro
//wallet begins weeping in his back pocket
Depending on how well the SP4 can run Arch (well technically Antegros-and I'm sure it may still be a while for drivers to catch up), there's a very good chance I'll probably move to that platform and never look back.
Thought I may still get a new Macbook for work. Too much of the workflow I've developed and grown attached to include Mac productivity apps
Desktops are a shrinking market, but innovation continues. I'm glad I looked into them.
Plus 4K screens make me squinty (the SP4 has a lovely screen, but Win10 often gets confused on scaling and does horrific things to Java subwindows... and it's small). I'm pretty much a 30 year old curmudgeon now.
Oh and I used to use |-| with two 1080s on the sides of an IBM 2560x1600 monitor. Gosh you could spreadsheet the hell out of things on that 30" screen. Kinda miss it.
And Mac does high resolution very well.
I grew up on mechanical keyboards but after testing a bunch in a computer store, I realized I no longer care what kind of keys I use. It could be that I just got used to the Apple chiclet keyboards, but who knows.
My keyboard has four switchable profiles and 22 programmable keys, which means I can have 88 combinations. I mostly use the keys for launching apps and Sublime Text shortcuts though.
Not bad for around $100.
I had one of those dodgy early 2011 15" MBPs, and if I didn't have AppleCare, I would have been stuck with a costly motherboard replacement when my GPU croaked the first time. Granted, my MBP did eventually die after my AppleCare lapsed, but knowing you can get decent support in a major North American city on your warranty is something I value. I'm not sure that Razer (or ASUS, MSI or Gigabyte, for that matter) is well equipped to provide that level of service.
The only laptop I ever had that needed warranty service was my Macbook Pro. Good thing I got it, the logic board replacement cost more than the AppleCare did. Not that it helped though, my model of MBP had a design defect related to the GPU overheating and my laptop died after the AppleCare lapsed. Apple "recalled" it and fixed it, but not until after I bought a new laptop.
I've never had any issues with my non Mac laptops... None that required a major repair under warranty, at least.
The thing with third party warranties is the "put to the test" part. You never know how it's going to turn out until you need it. The thing with AppleCare and warranties from Dell/HP/Lenovo is that they are lower risk in my opinion.
That's not to say that third party warranties are bad, I just don't have much interest in trying them.
I generally look for a quad core i7/HQ and a discrete GPU. I guess I could probably live without the discrete GPU, but if I'm going to buy a good laptop, I may as well spend a little extra to get it.
Battery life isn't a big consideration for me - I'm plugged in most of the time and I consider any battery life >3h to be gravy.
It's a few years since I retired my old Precision laptop, but it definitely ticked the thick, durable, huge battery, tons of ports and reliable Linux drivers back then. I'm not sure how the contemporary models hold up.
More recently, I think the W range might have been superseded by some certain models in the P range, though I'm not too sure about this.
Mine has an M.2 SSD and a big hard disk in it, a real GTX 960 eGPU via Thunderbolt 3, and only 32 GB RAM for now. Running Linux it has tons of overhead for multiple VMs (my Win10 VM has 8GB RAM), and lots of processing power. Unlike most laptops the Precision 7x series also is built to run flat out without throttling under load.
Yes, it weighs like 8 lbs, and I don't think the new "carbon fiber" ones feel as durable as the older tan aluminum ones, but it's definitely a worthy replacement for a desktop. I just take a netbook with me most of the time when I need portability, but it's great when I know I need horsepower somewhere other than my own office.
Edit:
[0] Asus ROG: https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-G501JW/
[1] Razer Blade: http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade
There were other laptops I've been shown from Razer that looked way too much like a 'sexy' Macbook Pro style. Of course Razer / ASUS ROG are gaming specific laptops, so the specs and the prices will be higher than most laptops.
i was in a mall the other day and happened across a windows store. i was very pleased to see they had a range of xps laptops on display. i found them to be very attractive and well made. IIRC some of them had a power button on the side of the laptop instead of the top of the keyboard. my current laptop has a power button like this and i cannot fucking stand it. i press it by accident at least twice a day. any sane person would realize what a terrible idea that is -- it totally baffles me why they do this. its very sad to see such an obvious flaw on these otherwise great laptops.
e - i think that limit comes from airlines limiting the size of individual batteries they transport. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
The simple fact is that the FAA doesn't screen battery sizes. If you brought something the size of a car battery, they'd probably not allow it, but the difference between a 95WHr and a 140WHr laptop battery is something they're neither interested in nor capable of actively checking. Apple put a small battery in the laptop because it's more important to them to have a thin light laptop than it is to have more battery life. This random person unaffiliated with Apple then decided with no evidence that it was because of some basically unknown FAA document. That's all I meant.
The fastest silicon in the cheapest casing that would do the job was a reasonable strategy back when even the best hardware became obsolete within three years, but now this is much less dominant. People who are not willing to spend on build quality are likely to just stick to what they have.
266 stood for the cutting edge 266mhz Pentium II that thing was rocking.
Based on what I've been reading here on HN, most Apple users are pissed off by the choices that Apple made for the new MBP's, and are honestly exploring their options (as am I). That doesn't sound like fanboy behavior.
B) I believe Dell's sales volume is heavily inflated by all of the government and school contracts they have. Every computer I used in K-12 and most in college were dell machines, simply because that's what schools buy. That makes raw sales numbers irrelevant, because we're talking laptops for developers, not average office workers or students.