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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I want to be excited by a good non-Apple laptop. But they're all just so terribly designed. They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy, have grills and screw holes and uneven surfaces and stickers everywhere.

I had a T530 for a few years at my first job and just hated it. It had fantastic specs but it felt awful and unreliable and like I had to babysit it. I got a 2015 MBP to replace it after IT damaged it (broke off a bunch of plastic bits from two grills) and while it was a migraine getting Windows and Ubuntu to dual boot, I don't think twice when closing the lid and slipping it into my backpack to go home. Tossing my backpack into my trunk, or in the overhead carry-on.

I would pay a fortune to have a solid chassis (not case) metal non-Apple laptop available.

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Errr.... T530 had titanium cover and endoskeleton chassis. My friend routinely walks over his while it's powered on, as a demonstration. How is it possibly an example of a "plastic, flimsy, bendy" laptop?

Yes it has screw holes and grills... it's a working-person's laptop :). The new ones don't, because they're becoming more like apple - which means I cannot as easily replace battery, hard drive, memory, etc as I do on the older Thinkpads.

Yes, this is Hacker news. Since when did having screws accessible to the user become a bad thing?

The screws are accessible on my MBP 2015. They are just not in recessed screw holes, and are flush with the body of the laptop.

Ya, I'm really not sure what they're on about. I took parted-out a Macbook Air, and it was the easiest laptop I've ever disassembled. Having everything built for the specs of one manufacturer means a lot less 'glue' to make it all one piece.

When they became less fashionable and calling yourself a "hacker" because you use social media became fashionable.

As a non-social-media using "hacker" (HN is the closest thing to social media that I use), I think portability in laptops should be picked over ease in hardware replacement (if you're often needing to change hardware, that's a quality problem). Recessed screw holes and bulk are a departure from that and feel like stepping into the past after using a macbook.

Similarly, I spend far more type writing software than with the soldering iron.

There were quite a few models where the RAM wasn't upgradable - I believe they were soldered directly to the main board. Is this the case for this revision? I can't tell!

Seriously, I used to be able to tell from product spec sheets, but Wikipedia also used to have model lists for each major product line with detailed specs. Wikipedia doesn't do this any more? Not even as part of Wikidata?

It's possible to have screws to access case-internal hardware without a laptop being bulky and hard to look at.

I'm also hungry for a macbook pro alternative (after Apple's courageous decision to remove function keys and magsafe and not meaningfully improve hardware), but I've yet to find something that isn't at best a flimsy clone -- I travel a lot and don't want to sacrifice look and feel for the 30 minutes every three years that I'd need to swap ram/hdd.

Laptops are status symbols now. Design commentary is beginning to reflect that. Screw are so declasse.

The MacBook has screws. What it doesn't have is cheap plastic held together with clips (like most Thinkpads).

At least on the T-models I'm aware of, the important parts are still easily accessible. And the rest is also replaceable, it just may require some more work.

Here's for example the maintenance guide for T560 http://ok1.de/thinkpad/HMM/t560_p50s_hmm_en_sp40k04930.pdf

There are so many factors to consider in a laptop: CPU and TDP, memory, disk, screen size and quality, size and weight, keyboard, track-pad, maintainability, OS, price ...

Different people give these factors different weights according to their resources, needs and preferences.

There is one more factor - the image the laptop projects. To each his own, but if you give the image a high score compared to the other factors - be honest about it.

The Carbon-X1 has screws, and the battery is easily accessible. https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/PD103715

The body is made out of carbon fiber. Technically this is 'plastic', but not in the context of your comment.

I have a T530 laying on my lap right now. I would call it plastic, flimsy, and bendy. Pick it up by one corner, it creaks and I can feel it flexing. I can see and feel the screen flex as I adjust the angle. Close the screen by pushing down on the top right corner, and it doesn't latch properly because it flexes so much. I can feel and hear it flexing as my left wrist rests on the palm rest while typing. I would not want to walk on it, I would be willing to bet money that I'd break it. This is not a solid laptop, and I will not be sorry when I replace it. My previous one was a T500, and it was well built. My next laptop will probably be a Dell Latitude, the ones I have held were solid as a brick. I saw one that was kicked as hard as possible by a large guy. The screen was broken, and it was visibly bent, but still solid.

> My next laptop will probably be a Dell Latitude

You'll be disappointed by battery time and sometimes CPU whining/noise. Coming from there and love the price-performance ratio, silence and battery from the T460 now ;)

Yes, my Dell latitude experience was filled with coil whine - highly irritating!

T530 had titanium cover and endoskeleton chassis.

Titanium?

walk over to my work T530, leaned up against the wall...

What 'cover' on this is made out of titanium? It's all black plastic. I've heard it has a magnesium skeleton...? Maybe you mean the hinges? I guess those could be titanium - they're some kind of metal.

Dude - the whole case on this thing is made out of plastic. I'm scratching the whole thing to find anything on this that's metal at all. What are you talking about?

I don't know about the modern ones. I've been a thinkpad user since 2005 or so and my impression is that the quality has been dropping consistently. Traditionally though, many of them came with a magnesium alloy roll cage that protected the internals quite well. It considerably reduced flex and made the whole thing quite solid. The X1, it seems, has a carbon fibre roll cage. I don't have any personal experience with it http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/thisisthinkpad/innovation/roll-c...

I'd agree with others that it (t530) feels flimsy, it creaks and moans when I moved it. However it did fly off a car (in a backpack) at 85mph in the middle of Nebraska and survived with only minor damage. I was sold on the build quality, regardless of the sound it made. What killed me and eventually drove me to buy a mac was the size, weight and battery. I'd love to not be on mac, but still nothing else has been a compelling enough option. I hope this changes by time I am ready for something new.

> They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy

The Carbon X1 is made from carbon fiber. It super-robust and light-weight at the same time.

It feels light years ahead of the super-heavy aluminium-nonsense Apple is trying to peddle. Count me happy my laptop doesn't double as a bench-press.

When we got accepted into YCombinator back in 2011 (Mailgun), I remember PG looking at our Thinkpads running Linux and asking something along the lines of "what's wrong with you?", with almost [1] all YC teams using Macbooks.

I wonder if it's the Valley culture? There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad [2] for programmer productivity: the keyboard, the UltraNav, the swappable batteries (you can fly around the world with a x260 + spare battery), a nice docking station, upgradeable storage/memory and a trouble-free Linux distro. Plus, they don't burn you with ice-cold aluminum every morning.

The gap is huge! If a Thinkpad is a 100, the prev. gen Macbook Pro would be 60 and everything else lingering in misery under 10.

Full disclosure: I am 100% Macbook right now because Photoshop/Sketch, the struggle is real, I miss everything about Thinkpad, hence this passionate comment.

  [1] Another 100% Linux, 100% Thinkpad company was http://www.acunote.com 
  [2] Properly configured, i.e. IPS, Intel graphics, etc.

I don't understand it either, the thing that always gets me is most developers setting up vagrant on their Mac just to get a working environment.

Cut the bullshit and just run Linux on the bare metal, your program will run faster, and your laptop battery life won't be halved.

You will have to claw my x201 out of my cold dead hands, I've not found a single notebook (even the newer ThinkPads) that are as comfortable to use. I've got no crummy trackpad wasting space and a 16:10 display that's designed for work, and not watching cat videos.

Spare parts are dirt cheap, and since the magnesium alloy rollcage is on the inside I don't have to worry about ugly dents, I just swap plastic panels out on the cheap when I think they are getting a bit too worn.

> not watching cat videos.

yea. ok

edit: Why not watch cat videos?

I've been a thinkpad user since 386 days, and love my x201 and x220, but I prefer the Dell Rugged Extreme (price notwithstanding) -- feels like an old school bombproof (literally in this case) thinkpad...

but I really miss the UltraNav.

If you want there was a P series of thinkpads that are designed to be milspec and IP60 something.

Not all the P-series, as far as I can see - the P50/P50s/P70 do, but the P40 Yoga notably doesn't (and I'd be impressed if they had made a hybrid tablet/laptop that did).

(And here I thought the P-series was "just" what the W series morphed into...)

Yeah I bought a pretty expensive Macbook Pro earlier this year and recently ended up switching from OSX to Ubuntu after I got tired of dealing with all sorts of random Docker issues. To my surprise, I've found Linux to feel faster and be somewhat more pleasant than OSX. Now I sometimes wish I had just spent half as much money getting a more powerful (bulkier) laptop that just ran Linux.

Docker outside of Linux has been a major pain point for a while. I'm switching to a Linux laptop and native Docker is one of the things I'm most looking forward to.

I know the feeling. I was sick of using company's laptop (ideapad) to everything I needed to (messing personal stuff together), and went forward looking for a new (used) laptop in internet classified boards. I wanted a well built, portable (like 13" max), and mint condition used laptop. Went to Docker Slack and asked what were their experience running docker on mac. There are still some improvements to be made there, and besides I dont want to run VMs again unless its totally needed (like a windows environment in a vm, or coreos on qemu as I use here for k8s testing, but not docker itself). I know xhyve is transparent and everything, but lets face it, its just another virtual machine running docker, from boot2docker to xhyve was a no-go to me. So I decided to go for a Linux laptop (using linux since 98, in fact I got excited about it). My options for a decent linux laptop concerning portability were the Dell XPS, or a Thinkpad X260. So I started to watch reviews on youtube for both laptops. Doing so I found that the Dell has a coil whine issue that would really drive me crazy having a laptop screaming right out of the box. It was a no-go for me. If you want to check what I am talking about, watch this https://youtu.be/cwR4CWzDtfQ. My boss has one and I started to listen to the laptop and yes it is kinda noisy. So there was this thinkpad. At amazon the X260 was USD 2750. Far from my spending range right now, so I decided to check classifieds for a used one. Keeping in mind the linux laptop for docker development, I found a thinkpad x240 which is a beast - 12,5"/i7 proc/8GB ram/256 ssd. its silent, portable enough, feels well built as most thinkpads, its possible to upgrade the memory to 16GB when I have the resources for it, has back-light keyboard, a nice keyboard indeed. The trackpad is sort of weird, but I am getting used to it. The version I got is a touchscreen HD display and not FHD, so my max res is 1366x768. Using the gnome tweak tool I was able to change some fonts and icons size, its just great now, feels like HD for me. Has 2 video ports, VGA and miniDV. it has card reader. Even a sim card modem built in. It was USD 500. I dont see myself changing to another one soon. And docker is flying over here - as well qemu. Cheers mates.

> Cut the bullshit and just run Linux on the bare metal,

I run Linux on Linux via vagrant, it's not about my program running faster it's about isolating a client projects dependencies from each other so when I have to work on that system that is still in production on PHP Current-1 or Ruby-1 I don't have to fuck with my host OS at all.

In fact I have very few developer bits and bobs installed on the host (mostly just JetBrains stuff) and all the actual tooling is run in the VM, this makes for far easier deploys for myself since my process is

pull projectname/(site||name), pull projectname/vagrant, vagrant up.

It takes me less than 30 minutes from reinstalling to having half a dozen projects with all their weird dependencies and cruft installed and I never have to worry about breaking something else or needing to blow away a machine for some reason.

I'm happy to trade some performance for running damn near everything in a guest OS for that.

Curious, why Vagrant and not Docker? Then you don't need to run a VM, but still get the same isolation.

well pointed!

I am guessing is that when he started working on this stuff docker was in it's infancy (still is IMHO), and had no reason/time to port it.

Or you could have glanced at the article and seen that your guess is wide off the mark.. ;-)

Which article?

Absolutely this, vagrant has bee reliable, stable (barring the odd oops on a new release) and fits my workflow, docker is interesting but the switching cost to payback ratio isn't there (yet, I'd really like to get rid of having to use NFS, that's accounted for 80% of my vagrant issues).

> Curious, why Vagrant and not Docker?

I have a Vagrant/Virtualbox workflow (on Windows host, so Docker not a great option yet) but curious: does Docker have shared folder support - via NFS or other?

It's been the getting stuff into & out of the VM that's most painful IMO.

Docker has better than just shared folder support, you can share folders, UNIX SOCKETS!!!, and DEVICES!!!!! And no need for NFS either, its just a bindmount into the container...

On Windows, if you are using Docker Toolbox, you can keep using VirtualBox. The corresponding driver of docker-machine will spin up the VM that runs the docker daemon, which, once it's running, you can control from the "outside". It uses shared folders support to map the user's home directory by default: https://docs.docker.com/machine/drivers/virtualbox/

> On Windows, if you are using Docker Toolbox, you can keep using VirtualBox.

Oh awesome, thanks! I looked when Docker for Windows came out and (thankfully) spotted the "After Hyper-V is enabled, VirtualBox will no longer work" (?!) warning before trying it. I didn't dig any deeper.

Not the person you asked, but I use Vagrant because I deploy to hosts that I consider disposable and don't trust Docker in production, for reasons more thoroughly explained by the person that wrote this article: https://thehftguy.com/2016/11/01/docker-in-production-an-his...

I thinkimux is rather hit and miss when it comes to battery life on Linux.

I've never really quite understood why, as I though ACPI is meant to handle this. But I'm not terribly au fait with this interface, so there might be good reasons, I know Torcalds criticised it early on as a "design disaster" and there were and I think still are concerns about the way that bytecode has unfettered access to the system.

Yeah, I wouldn't want a crummy windows trackpad taking up space either ;) also all Apple laptops are 16:10, other than the 11" MacBook Air.

What's a Windows trackpad?

> You will have to claw my x201 out of my cold dead hands, I've not found a single notebook (even the newer ThinkPads) that are as comfortable to use. I've got no crummy trackpad wasting space and a 16:10 display that's designed for work, and not watching cat videos.

the X201 has a trackpad. The X1 carbon (and several other models) have 2560x1440 displays.

The x201 was the last ThinkPad to offer NOT having a Trackpad, you just swap the palmrest.

http://mos6581.com/pictures/thinkpad/201-palmrest.jpg

> (...) most developers setting up vagrant on their Mac just to get a working environment.

What kind of working environment requires setting up Vagrant on OSX? It's a Unix-based OS, if you're doing any web development you can do it on the host system.

You generally develop on the platform that your software will end up running on, and nobody in their right mind uses OSX on a server.

If you have a SaaS product that needs 3D rendering on the server, Windows and Linux servers that have a GPU are targeted towards GPGPU and are expensive to rent.

MacPros have two descent AMD FirePro GPUs but much cheaper to rent.

If you are trying to match your production platform then you will use a VM of some sort in Linux anyway. If you are not trying to match your production platform then you can develop just fine on OSX.

Isolation and reproduction.

For one thing, you want the development environment to be as similar to production as possible – same OS version, same webserver version, same DB version, same dependencies, no unwanted extras that differ between environments.

For another thing, you don't want to have to solve conflicts between project A and completely unrelated project T if you need to work on them both.

If you care about isolation and reproduction then you're using a VM anyway and the host OS is completely irrelevant.

Using a VM is the reason to use Vagrant.

Yes, I know.

You hinted at it in the end: MacBooks have good software that works. No troubles connecting to peripherals like printers and projectors. No worries about laptop sucking battery when I close the lid and forget to sleep.

And MacBooks have the best touchpad of all laptops.

> MacBooks have good software that works

I just spent my entire workday struggling to figure out why `kernal_task` was constantly using 16gb of RAM. Whenever people say macOS "just works" I assume they do nothing but web browse. It's great at that.

Your OS manages all of your memory. You can't get any memory at all without asking it for it. How much memory were you requesting, and why didn't you get it? Is that the problem you were solving? Is there some reason you suspect the OS preferentially gives memory to web browsers?

Did you figure it out? If not, you may want to try choosing "All processes, hierarchically" from the View menu in Activity Monitor.

I "solved" the problem by restoring a week old backup from before I'd upgraded to Sierra. All other things were equal, so the OS was the culprit. This is why good backups are important, never know when Apple's gonna screw you.

The browser takes up most of takes up most of my resources. Apart from that it would be Adobe products and sometimes MATLAB (all less resources than safari). My terminal would be negligible.

I agree with your comment. Generally, OSX often means I am using more resources to do the same task than when I use my archlinux. But in the era of 16g+ ram and terabyte Harddisks, I find it simpler to just let OSX use extra resources so I can spend less time thinking about low level processes.

Man I feel like I'm attacking apple a lot recently but this is something else I saw on my MBA - various daemons (powerd, kernel_task, accountsd, and more I can't remember) spinning on 100% cpu usage leaving the laptop unusable.

The only software I miss is "Preview" on Mac OS. It's amazing for editing pdfs - merge, split etc.

Preview.app is one of the few things I miss when working on Windows or Linux systems, we just had to buy a Foxit PhantomPDF license to do basic PDF editing like this and I was thinking "why the hell is this not just a standard feature like it is on macOS?".

>Preview.app is one of the few things I miss when working on Windows or Linux systems, we just had to buy a Foxit PhantomPDF license to do basic PDF editing like this and I was thinking "why the hell is this not just a standard feature like it is on macOS?"

For that we have to go back about a decade:

http://betanews.com/2006/06/02/adobe-to-sue-microsoft-for-pd...

http://windowsitpro.com/windows-server/microsoft-strips-key-...

The long and short of it is that Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft for including PDF support as a feature in Office (despite allowing it on OS X and OpenOffice at the same time) so MS stopped doing anything PDF related. Adobe was widely derided in the software industry over the incident.

So we all can thank Adobe for that.

IMO Windows is better than OSX, but to each of its own.

For example I hate Finder, I dont like that I am not able to run lots of software, I dont like that its running an ancient version of OpenGL/there is no Vulkan.

I'm of the opposite opinion. I like finder since I can do a search and have instant results, rather than the hour wait that Windows Explorer provides. I also like how file indexing is built into macOS by default, rather than having it available only via a nebulous add-on.

I agree when I switched from Windows to osx, I had a lot of trouble with finder. But now I am slowly getting used to it.

Also, as a mac user for the past year and a half, I still can't figure out when the three coloured dots are useful. Just give me windows-style minimize/maximize/close buttons please...

Every long time Mac user I've asked says they just don't use those buttons. Maximising windows is a mess in mac. Multi monitor support is also rather poor.

Over all, I've had no real problems with OS X (at least after installing my own terminal program and own version of bash and such) and everything worked smoothly, which is great, but I certainly wouldn't hold OS X up as some example of perfect design because there are lots of things windows and Linux do better.

> MacBooks have good software that works.

More specifically, the stuff I don't want to mess with just works: peripherals and GUI stuff work without intervention, and the thing goes to sleep when I close the lid. And the stuff I want to mess with is still good old familiar Unix. I haven't tried out desktop Linux in awhile, but the Free Software model only seems to work for things coders like to work on in their spare time, like terminals, text editors, and command-line programs. For the rest, I'm willing to pay my fellow coders so I don't have to deal with it.

> I haven't tried out desktop Linux in awhile

I read your first sentence and was like "wow, this guy hasn't used Linux in a while." Then I got to your second sentence.

So, yeah, maybe give it another go. In my experience most of the complaints I had 4-5 years ago are gone at this point, and the convenience gap has closed substantially. OS X is still more user friendly of course, and there's a little bit of configuration required to make everything work smoothly under Linux, but it's a lot better than you remember.

Importantly, I've seen some devs using OS X, and they spend way more time dealing with dev tooling issues than I spend dealing with printers, devices, and gui stuff.

> No troubles connecting to peripherals like printers and projectors.

Well, except for all those dongles you need to drag around with you.

I've had problems connecting by MBP to the projector system in a company that uses predominantly macs... (but not using Apple TV - that's always worked flawlessly for me). So I definitely disagree with the no trouble connecting to peripherals like projectors.

Bollocks. I have plenty of Mac uses at work asking me for help setting up their Macs with peripherals.

A lot of developers love their Macs and I don't get it. For me OSX 10.6 was the last decent one. Mission Control is garbage compared to Expose. I got so frustrated with it that I started running Linux in a VM on my Mac as my primary system. I also got into tiling window managers, which killed every going back to Mac/Windows.

Today's Dell and Lenovo laptops are good Linux dev machines. I've never had a problem with putting Linux one one, either my Dell Inspiron at work or my XPS at home. My old first gen carbon can even run FreeBSD-11 fine. Everything worked straight off with a stock kernel and the current linux-firmware package.

At one time, Macs were more cost effective for the specs you got. But with all the ram and SSD storage you can pack into modern laptops, they're really good dev machines.

Decent machines indeed as long as you are close to a wall socket. Linux power management has a lot of growing up to do.

My experience with linux power management has been alright, or at least better than my expectations. I have an asus laptop that gets f*-all battery life under windows (either 8 or 10, though it seems to be worse now) but I can usually get at least 90 minutes more out of it under linux. It took some tweaking to get to that point, and I have no macbooks to compare it to, but I think the situation isn't as grim as I see a lot of people say it is.

I'm not sure if this is a fare comparison, but my MB Air can easily get 9-10 hours of battery life (if I don't run Chrome).

Agreed. Lenovo claims "up to" 9 hours for the 3rd gen X1 carbon, I get at most 5 under linux.

That said, I still prefer my X1 to macbooks. I find the MBP 15 heavy, the air has an atrocious screen. And both make my wrists hurt when typing - the edge of the laptop is too sharp. The X1 has a great screen (QHD), is very light and has an excellent keyboard. I think the trackpad, software and battery life are better with macbooks.

I get a measured 13 hours of work time on my new T460. You're citing intuition which is awfully stale.

13 hours with the extra goiter-battery? Doing what?

Let me rephrase, if for no other reason than to give you the ability to retreat to some other anatomical metaphor:

This box, with a i7-6600U, routinely idles with the screen on at 5.5-6W with a current kernel (spending almost all of that in PC7 per powertop). Your ideas about Linux power management are just plain misinformed.

I have an X1 (Yoga).

Tiny almost weightless (feels lighter than current-gen Macbook Air) laptop, and it runs between 10 to 11 hours on the battery when doing normal work (programming, mail, web, spreadsheets etc..) on wifi with pleasant screen brightness ...

Linux power management is fine today on modern hardware... (Powertop reports 5.2-5.5 watts)

Is there anything you need to do / configure, as I am not getting that sort of battery out of my X1 Carbon running Mint. (I realize I usually leave bluetooth on, and the screen at mid to high brightness and have about 20-30 tabs open in firefox but I would still be lucky to get 5 hours out of it.)

On my machine mentioned upthread, I have a third party SSD installed which apparently fools the firmware into disabling SATA link power management. Powertop will tell you about most goofs like that.

Beyond that, run a current kernel (my measurements are on Fedora's 4.8.12 kernel). Also recognize that recent Intel SoCs have gotten a lot better at idle power draw. The "X1 Carbon" brand started with (I think) Ivy Bridge boards which obviously aren't going to perform like this.

Current/modern kernel (I run Arch), disable unneeded radios (bluetooth and lte for me), slightly lower (but still nice) brigtness on the screen and agressive tuning by powertop..

Can confirm this (>14h) for T460 with the large battery option and under normal 'working load'

It certainly does, but my XPS 13 lasts ~7 hours running Fedora 25 and my work-issued W540 gets around the same (this is a stupid beast of the machine that only gets that much running Windows, a 40W quad-core i7 in a laptop isn't power sipping when I'm building something in Visual Studio or IntelliJ). It's getting a lot better as long as you're not running a Skylake chip, Haswell/Broadwell and below have pretty decent support these days.

I don't mind Mission Control too much, I've got a hotspot set in the top left which triggers it, it means I've got shared muscle memory between OSX and Gnome 3 on my other machines.

> I also got into tiling window managers, which killed every going back to Mac/Windows.

I'm also a tiling WM fan. I found amethyst a resonable comprise when using macOS though.

Aquasnap for windows is also pretty nice. Though lately, I just use the window management shortcuts added in Windows 10 for setting up tiles.

Mac OS X 10.6 was great.

I remember when Apple released it saying, 'no new features'. Just bug fixes and speed improvements.

We need one of those again.

Snow Leopard was super stable. I can't remember a single crash.

10.6 was great for the time, I was actually really pissed after 10.7 and many releases afterward fucked up Expose during the Mission Control debacle (I think there's now a way to turn off the window grouping, but this was what ended up making me sell my 2012 MBP and switch to Fedora since GNOME 3 manages to have all the comfort features I liked from macOS).

and move away from the annual major release cycle again...

You're in a thread responding to someone (who I happen to agree with as well) that disagrees with you on "There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad". It's a bit a of a bold claim. I disagree with you on the keyboard and the navigation. The solid aluminum construction of the MBP is one of the best aspects of it, next to the display. I've dropped the thing probably 20 times without issue. I will admit, knowing how carbon feels on my bike, I'm curious about how it looks and feels on the X1. My 5 year old MBPr still gets 5 hours of battery life while the Thinkpad I had got 30 minutes when it reached the 4 year mark. Not in the valley, by the way, and I also prefer linux.

Curious: my 2012 X1 Carbon still runs about as long as ever from battery. (It never got 5 hours, more like 4.)

My X61s (with extended battery) went from ~12h to 9-10h over the four years or so I was using it.

> There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad [2] for programmer productivity: the keyboard, the UltraNav, the swappable batteries (you can fly around the world with a x260 + spare battery), a nice docking station

Keyboard and UltraNav are more taste than anything else. I have a T450s for work and a 15" rMBP and vastly prefer the keyboard/touchpad on the latter. It doesn't help that Lenovo's QA is shit. My T450s keyboard is bulging in the bottom right of the keyboard deck, and several of the keys stick for a millisecond on the way down. As if they're not quite seated properly and hitting the key causes something to click into place. I suspect it's temperature related, because it goes away after typing for awhile, but comes back after a bit of non-use.

> upgradeable storage/memory

Programmers are expensive. No reason not to buy a maxed-out machine to begin with.

Also, it's hard to get over Lenovo's penchant for shit displays if your job is to stare at text all day.

I have an X1 Yoga (a touchscreen equivalent of the X1 Carbon) with an OLED display and it's absolutely gorgeous. It's much better than the ~1 year old Mac Book Pro I have for work. The colors and contrast are incredible—it can even render a black that doesn't glow at all.

The Carbon is touchscreen, just not a convertible.

The X1 Carbon (4th gen) mentioned in this thread is not a touchscreen, they don't seem to offer a Carbon Touch anymore. It appears the X1 Yoga is essentially the Carbon Touch.

Agreed, I was wrong. I have a 2015 X1 Carbon, which has a touch-screen. I'm surprised they removed this, it's quite decent. But it is unlikely that I'll miss it.

So they basically just renamed the X1 Carbon Touch to a X1 Yoga but it is a convertible so I guess that is why.

Anyways, the 5th gen Yoga was just announced at CES 2017!!

It is pretty impressive and is my new dream machine, http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-yo...

Lenovo is infamous for shipping shitty RAM / Disk options. You often can't buy appropriately maxed out hardware from them. A few years ago, I was procuring a few Thinkpad W520 for a new team and at no point did they offer a 500gb or larger SSD. The 384GB drive they had was an extra grand. I bought the machines in max cpu/graphics config and ordered ram and disks separately. Nobody on the team had an issue using a screwdriver for 5 minutes of their life.

Thankfully the W500 series is super easy to upgrade aftermarket like you said, we've never bothered ordering ours with anything but maxed out CPU's - RAM and SSD's are cheap and easy DIY upgrades and everybody on our team can swap them out in a minute or two.

This is what I did with the P50 my work bought me. Basically I bought a dual-4k-monitor setup with tons of RAM and disk for what a comparable MBP would have cost.

> There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad

Your criticisms are pretty almost all a matter of taste, and we're in disagreement just about throughout.

> I wonder if it's the Valley culture?

I'm not in the valley. I've never found any non-apple laptop with a good (or even decent) trackpad, and I like that OSX has a community of indie developers who actually care.

> the keyboard

I don't enjoy thinkpad keyboard.

> the UltraNav

Same as above but much stronger, I absolutely hate this thing, and I love Apple trackpad. In fact the trackpad is one a huge reason for remaining on Apple laptops despite other shortcomings: I can and even enjoy using MBPs without a mouse.

> the swappable batteries

have never been something I've needed, plus that requires carrying additional batteries.

> a nice docking station

Meh. "nice" is in the eye of the beholder, the thing's ugly as sin. And with type C/TB3, you can actually replicate it without being beholden to Apple (!).

> upgradeable storage/memory

That is indeed a really annoying "feature" of Apple over the last few years. Though of course you can get a maxed-out MBP.

> Linux distro

and I don't see that as an advantage.

> The gap is huge! If a Thinkpad is a 100, the prev. gen Macbook Pro would be 60

If you like thinkpads more power to you, but all my experiences with them were disappointing, I'd put the 2015 rMBP at 70 and the average thinkpad at 40, maybe 50.

You've never used a business thinkpad for more than 15 minutes

That's interesting - do you know him?

Eh, different strokes.

Personally, I have a ThinkPad W540 for work and while it weighs like a brick man is it easy to work with. The UltraNav isn't as nice as the trackpad on my XPS 13, but I usually work with the TrackPoint on ThinkPad's anyway (killer feature for me to be honest, even Apple's awesome trackpad disappointments in comparison to a good ol' TrackPoint in my opinion) - upgrading the RAM and SSD required a couple screws for the appropriate bays in the base cover instead of needing to take the whole thing off like my old 2012 MBP. Also, while USB Type-C and ThunderBolt 3 "work" for a dock, being able to plop by ThinkPad down on my desk at home and have it start charging and connect all of my peripherals is still easier than plugging in a cable (even if it's just one cable).

Also, as far as Linux support I guess that all really depends on the individual. Most of my workflow is heavily dependent on Linux (Java/Python dev in JetBrains products, ansible stuff, administering a couple dozen Linux VM's) with the exception of our .Net apps (where I run Visual Studio in a Windows VM) - there's not a whole lot of benefit to me running macOS, and in fact, I'd really rather run Fedora (call me an oddball I guess) since anything not getting deployed to a Windows server goes to a CentOS VM, makes moving from development to production a lot easier.

"Also, while USB Type-C and ThunderBolt 3 "work" for a dock, being able to plop by ThinkPad down on my desk at home and have it start charging and connect all of my peripherals is still easier than plugging in a cable (even if it's just one cable)."

I have an older Retina Pro, and I have a dock that works exactly like this. I stick the MBP in, and it's charging and connected to a keyboard and mouse, two displays, and my printer, along with speakers.

Henge Dock? I had one for my 2012 MBP, the downside was I lost the display which I find useful for keeping my email/TFS/whatever up instead of needing a second monitor.

Henge Dock indeed. I have two 27" displays to make up for the loss of the laptop display.

> Eh, different strokes.

Er… yes that's quite literally my entire point, and specifically spelled out as my first paragraph.

> there is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad

Isn't this one of those YMMV kinda things that really depends on the person, though? It seems equally wrong to say that no one could be productive on a MBP as it is to say that no one could be productive without a MBP.

I used to be a strong Thinkpad adherent. But then Lenovo really jumped the shark, and I moved to a MBPr 2012 which was not even remotely in the same class as my T410s it was so much better.

Maybe they are better these days, but I need to spend more time with one. But they changed the keyboard, the trackpads were almost laughable, and the battery life was an utter joke - not even enough juice for a MSP-LAS flight. Not to mention (at the time) laughable resolution, and miserable build quality compared to the IBM nameplate T-series.

I'm looking for a nice 14-15" laptop like an old T60 that is built like a tank with amazing battery life.

It's tempting for me to try the T-series line again, especially if they bring back the classic keyboard they so stupidly did away with. But for some time it was utterly stagnant and more or less unusable trash.

I want to like the X1 Carbon

>I wonder if it's the Valley culture? There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad [2] for programmer productivity: the keyboard, the UltraNav, the swappable batteries (you can fly around the world with a x260 + spare battery), a nice docking station, upgradeable storage/memory

You completely missed the most important productivity tool for a programmer, the display and no thinkpad can compete with a macbook in that regard.

In addition new Mac keyboards are better than new thinkpad keyboards. Mac trackpads are better than thinkpad trackpads, the ultranav is not good, battery life on macbooks are better than thinkpads and you don't need to carry extra batteries, and macbook docking solutions are better than thinkpad docking solutions.

Also why would you want to use linux when that will 100% give you shorter than 4 hours battery life along with a host of other issues when you can use OSX and get good battery life along with a fully posix compliant os?

> the swappable batteries

the Carbon X1 doesn't have swappable batteries.

I've got similar experience, but at my new employer. When I got an offer I had to choose which laptop (MacBook Pro or ThinkPad W, the recruited insisted on Mac), I chose Thinkpad because I'm a Linux person.

Right now I'm the only programmer in my department that has a Thinkpad (and the only one that has Linux on a Thinkpad). Which is a strange thing for me, I always thought that Macs are more for designers or endusers not programmers/hackers (as you mostly are very limited at hacking on Mac, quite the opposite of Linux).

We have all the developers using Linux, and it-ops and product management using MacOS.

For myself, instead of a laptop I ask for a custom workstation. For the same price, I get four fast cores, lots of RAM, lots of ports, huge monitors and lots of (fast) disk. I have a good sound setup there and developers usually don't do meetings or when we do it's whiteboard only and quick. I think it's very satisfying to use a minimal xmonad setup with a proper workstation, then running cmake and seeing your CPU and RAM is used in stuff that actually matters.

If I need to do home office, I use my own laptop. But I prefer to be in the office, otherwise some of my time goes to the cats, who want attention the whole day. :3

Neal Stephenson summed all this up in In the Beginning Was the Command Line.

Macs are beautiful, hermetically sealed devices that work perfectly until they explode.

Linux (or thinkpads) are like M1 Abrams tanks you can service yourself, run forever on a nuclear battery, and people think you're weird if you have one.

Hm, half the photos on the YC website front page have Thinkpads.

Is it as slippery as Apple laptops?

> Count me happy my laptop doesn't double as a bench-press.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon: Starting at 2.6 lbs (1209 g)

MacBook Pro 13: Weight: 3.02 pounds (1.37 kg)

I think the more important part is where OP implied anything not made of metal was deemed unreliable.

I think that's a pretty stone-age point of view given modern material technology.

People say this, and I really really want to like the ThinkPads and in particular the X1 Carbon because it's black and badass but it can't possibly be made out of carbon fiber for how flimsy it feels. Granted perhaps it's more durable than it seems but MacBooks are so solid and dense and rigid by comparison.

One of my friends has dropped his Air out of his lofted dorm bed numerous times and you couldn't even tell by looking at it, it's totally fine. One of my other friends has a ThinkPad Yoga and the fancy hinge was fucked within two weeks of purchase.

I did the yoga thing with a Macbook Air and it's hinges was fucked instantly :)

My X1 yoga has no trouble what-so-ever and I dropped it a few feet.. (and it rattles along unprotected in a leather bag every day)...

Well the MacBook Air is pretty obviously not designed to do that. The ThinkPad hinges are different on either side, and they came out of alignment and then jammed and broke.

You may have dropped it a few feet, but I drop my MacBook Pro all the time because I'm a terrible person. This dorm-bed fall has happened several times now too. The durability is simply off the charts, and I can't say the same about ThinkPads. They just feel so flimsy, everything bends or flexes on them.

Well obviously (or maybe not) it was a joke.

In all seriousness four comments:

- I bend my X1 fully around all the time, not problem with the hinges

- all X1's I have ever seen have 3-year ON-SITE warranty, your friend should call support and get it fixed next business day (where s/he is).

- Strength and "flexiness" are not related, often materials are allowed to flex to keep them from breaking. The X1s are made of carbon fibre and have sufficient strength even if our ape-brains prefer something that does not flex...

- and even if not, there is always next-day onsite warranty (mine is upgrade to 5 years - not having the option of onsite for Macs is alone a disqualifying trait for me)

It's worth noting that thanks to a clever configuration, the X1's 14" screen and keyboard are a bit bigger than the MacBook—enough so that it feels significantly more roomy while only being a little bit bigger. (It barely fits into my bag designed for 13" laptops—but it fits!)

that was a unit mess...

ThinkPad X1 Carbon: 2.51 lbs (1.14 kg)

MacBook Pro 13 ......: 3.02 lbs (1.37 kg)

or about 17% lighter

I don't like the aluminum bodies (as a matter of taste, I think they are ugly). But carbon fiber isn't functional. I've had a carbon-fiber-body laptop for ~3 years now. In that time, I've had to replace the fan twice. My bet is the flexible carbon fiber allows more bending than the electronics can actually handle. The flexibility also makes it feel cheap; why would i want a laptop that gives in when I type?

I have a 4th gen Carbon X1, and I have to admit it feels flimsier than the last MBP I've used (I haven't used the latest generation MBP).

There's still some give when I pick it up one handed. I'd happily trade some weight and thickness for a more durable feel, but I might be in the minority.

I use the 3rd gen - agree it's possible to slightly bend it. I can only do so when open, with either screen or very slightly with base. When it's closed, I would probably need to step on it. A MBP 15 feels a bit more solid.

No, it doesn't. I had gen 1, gen 2, gen 3 X1 carbons. Each was flimsy crap. Each was unrepairable. The gen3 literally fell apart when the screen needed to be replaced due to a manufacturing defect. This flimsy build is not a problem with my Apple laptops.

They have become flimsier, but also lighter. I have tried several, and have stuck with my first gen x1. But the newer thinkpads are so light now you can get a like-for-like with an original X1 by replacing it with a T-series.

> The Carbon X1 is made from carbon fiber. It super-robust and light-weight at the same time.

If I'm honest I have no Idea why there is an ad for the X1 on hackernews today. The page itself is 404-ing for me.

That said, I held an X1 carbon last september when shopping for a new laptop with my girlfriend. It was a fucking glorious machine.

In the end we wound up buying the lenevo yoga because it comes with an i7, SSD, & 8gigs ram (the three checkboxes I need on a laptop) - this was the cheapest with all my boxes ticked.

X1C was a lot more expensive, but you could feel why when you held it. What a beautiful machine.

(Again, why is it listed as a link on HN? Just so we can moon over it? Fair I guess)

Then you should try the X1 Yoga - basically an X1 Carbon 4th gen with the yoga hinges and a wacom digitizer and a glorious screen..

It has been my main laptop since release and it is by far the best laptop I ever owned...

5th gen X1 Yoga just released. MMMM, it has USB-C now, aka finally a real docking solution. Also has WiGig but I am not sure how that is.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-yo...

I am typing on one right now.

The light weight actually makes it feel flimsy / cheap at first, but having used it for the best part of a year, I realize there is a stiffness to it that you don't get with cheap plastic.

I just recently bought a ASUS ZenBook UX360UAK with a 7th gen i7, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD.

It's made out of aluminium, has a glass touchpad and costs around half of what a similarly priced MacBook pro costs in Germany.

It's my first non-Mac after 20 years. I've owned it for a good week and so far I'm very happy. It has superb battery life, great build quality and is fast. Only 1 minor con: the fan always runs, but it's not too loud and I can live with it...

How's the keyboard? I'm so so sad that most laptops' keyboards are terrible... You can't imagine. I so much would love to buy an ASUS or similar laptop as the one you purchased, especially since they are affordable, but every time I check some laptops, their keyboards are beyond terrible. It's a shame, really. I will have to stick to Thinkpads.

To be honest it's not as good as my MacBook Air's. I have very low requirements when it comes to that. If it is of importance to you I guess you might not be happy with the ASUS...

My GF has one and I was surprised when I used it, as it was great for a slim laptop. I'm used to using a mechanical keyboard or a MBP keyboard.

If you really cared about the keyboard, they all suck. Get an external mechanical keyboard. I've used one with Cherry MX blue switches at two jobs and no one has threatened to murder and/or fire me yet. Guess I'm lucky. :)

I've actually thought about doing so, but I'm always moving back and forth, so right now I think my best choice is to stick with a laptop. I agree that they all suck, but some (most?) of them suck so much they are out of question. I don't know what happened, really. 10 years ago you bought a laptop, no matter which brand, and you would get a decent keyboard. They have sacrificed quality for aesthetics too much, but maybe you are right; I should just buy a mechanical. I looked into the Happy Hacking keyboard. It's a bit pricey, but I've heard very nice things.

If you buy a 10-keyless keyboard they are usually small. You can pick up chinese cloan switches now for extremely cheap right now.

This one looks good enough: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Water-Resistant-VicTop-Mechanical-W...

IF you're concerned wrap it in some kind of cloth but for under 30 bucks it's not a major concern if you get a decent lifespand out of it. I'd say anything over 2 years is a huge win.

Thank you very much for the link! That one is pretty affordable. I might purchase it actually.

Thanks for alerting me to these, I've kept looking at the proper 10keyless keyboards like Topre [0] thinking "Really? Is it worth that much?".

Be good to try something cheaper, though the single-height enter key would drive me CRAZY.

[0] http://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard/realforce-88ub-45g-key-bl.... £192!!

Something is only worth how much you will use it. If you will use your keyboard every day from now until the cataracts and arthritis gets you then you'll probably find it worth the money to invest in good tooling. My keyboard was is actually and open boz/broken from manufacturer version of an OK one, I paid 37$. Worth twice that for how easy it makes typing and these are bad switches mind you.

I agree, but until I have tried one (never having used mechanical keys) I don't know how much it's worth to me :)

> I don't know what happened, really. 10 years ago you bought a laptop, no matter which brand, and you would get a decent keyboard.

THIN became a much more important marketing tool than GOOD, or even FUNCTIONAL.

There is nothing more "good" or "functional" about deep travel keyboards. They're just a matter of taste. You can type just as fast on something like a MacBook keyboard once you get used to it.

Sure. That's why Cherry went out of business years ago...

Lots of companies stay in business selling subjective experiences. But there isn't a functional advantage to keyboards with a lot of feedback.

Got any research to show that? Or should I just assume that your personal opinion is worth more than everybody elses'?

You're the one making the affirmative statement that high travel keyboards - which the whole market is moving away from - are functionally better than low travel ones. You prove that there is any real rather than purely subjective benefit.

The whole market isn't moving away from high-travel keyboards. In fact, there's a lot of interest in them, and they are generally preferred by gamers.

How do you explain the widespread perception that laptop keyboards used to be good but are now crappy?

> real rather than purely subjective benefit

Subjective benefits are real benefits.

On Cherry Browns, my managers believed that I was more productive because they could hear lots of key noise.

I have Cherry Blues at home but wouldn't dare use them in an open-plan office environment - far too noisy.

Macbook/Macbook Pro/Macbook Air keyboards are probably the highest quality laptop keyboards I've found (I have 2x cherry red mechanical keyboards at home). Every other laptop keyboard I've tried feels like _garbage_ in comparison.

Linux or Windows?

Currently running Windows with Bash installed though. I briefly tried Xubuntu, but occasionally it froze while booting up. Didn't have time to check what was wrong (needed to hurry for a project) so decided for Windows.

I took a look at the ZenBook range. The range looks decent, but the 15'' has a hard drive (!) (no option to choose SSD only, apparently), a numeric keypad (!!) and the highest-performing model is a dual-core i7 with 16GB RAM — so aside from the price, not a good alternative to a MBP.

(I find the shiny brushed aluminium look to be embarrassingly tacky, though not quite as bad as the rose gold model.)

Not true, you can find them with SSDs. For example heres a revieew for one: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ZenBook-Pro-UX501VW-Notebo... Also unlike in Macs you can buy extra RAM to go above 16GB.

Thanks. Weird, I didn't find that model on Asus' site.

Shame about the keyboard not coming in different variants, though. I am sure that some people like numeric keypads, but ever since my first PC cirka 1992 I've always hated them. It's the last thing I need on a small laptop.

Sadly, most recent 15", of all brands, have a numeric keypad. IIRC I only found one non-MBP beside the XPS15 that still have no keypad, but it has way worse issues (very bad heat issues). So you pretty much only have the choice between an MBP and an XPS if you don't want a numeric keypad(and an off centered touchpad, beurk!) on a recent 15"

Really? The Asus and some ThinkPad models are the only ones I have seen this in. For example, none of the models offered in this Verge article [1] have a keypad.

The 14'' Razer Blade [2] also has a normal keyboard, and comes close to being a MBP replacement, though it's not perfect.

Apparently a lot of these laptops have issues with heat and noisy fans. Some articles say i7 laptops (the quad-core ones) tend to have low battery life. I'm getting about 4 hours from my MBP 2015 using only Safari, Terminal and VSCode, and I can't imagine these other laptops would be worse than that.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/2/13497094/be...

[2] http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade

Actually I just found that some Samsung Notebook 9 "pro" 15" have keypad-less keyboard. However, they seems to be limited to 8GB, and I don't want to be sent 6 years in the past. I also don't exactly know what the "pro" in their name is for, given they ship with Win10 home...

I bought one of the first gen zenbooks. The trackpad was completely unusable due to terrible windows drivers (dragging didn't work right). I vaguely remember failing to install linux on it.

They had two models of ssd, but one laptop sku. One model went to review websites, the other's performance degraded to actually be noticably slower than a hard disk. You could replace the ssd, but it was a non-standard form factor, so you needed to buy an expensive m.2 converter.

The keyboard dropped keystrokes.

The screen was meh for the time.

This was their flagship laptop that year.

After it has been a full decade, I might consider buying another asus laptop.

> the fan always runs

Are there laptops where it doesn't? I've had 4 different models from 4 different makers, including a MacBook Pro, and every one has run the fan 100℅ of the time.

On my X1Yoga, the fan almost never runs.. When it starts up I look at the running processes (because something is likely wrong)

My 2013(?) MB Air is not running its fan at all...

According to this page, the asus laptop costs around 2500USD. If you buy a MBP (Mid 2012 non retina), it would cost around 900USD and then you swap out hdd for ssd and max out RAM at 16 GB so the total price would be something around 1250 USD.

Can't beat that.

[1] http://www.amazon.in/ZenBook-UX360CA-13-3-inch-Touchscreen-W...

In Germany it's 1300 euros which is half of what the new MB Pro without touch bar costs: https://www.notebooksbilliger.de/product.php/asus+ux360uak+b...

I looked an the ASUS ZenBook, but the screen was too dim and the trackpad not functional enough for my tastes. I've grown less enamored with Apple since Job's passing, but I've yet to find anything that really compares, even with Apple's current warts.

This is the first one that comes more than close enough for me to make the switch. Was worried at first but am really happy with my decision now :)

>> I want to be excited by a good non-Apple laptop. But they're all just so terribly designed. They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy, have grills and screw holes and uneven surfaces and stickers everywhere.

Is this really a serious reason to buy a laptop, or not, the design? You buy a computer because of its performance, not its appearance- which is something completely subjective in the first place.

I agree about the toughness requirement, but, like others said below the X1 Carbon is called "Carbon" as in "carbon fiber", which it's made of (although the fourth gen model has a lid that's a mix of carbon fiber and plastic).

I've stepped on my second gen. Carbon a good few times and I've dropped my fourth gen on its lid from a coffee table, and they're both hale and hearty.

> Is this really a serious reason to buy a laptop, or not, the design?

Yes.

> You buy a computer because of its performance, not its appearance

For a desktop/workstation maybe, and even that is debatable (I would not buy a desktop computer with plexiglas panels and LEDs all over).

For a laptop though, the design is part of the function and has an impact on it. Design is part and parcel of a laptop's usability and usage, and impacts its effective lifespan (you can get mileage out of a laptop while it's falling to pieces but that's not an enjoyable experience).

And of course a laptop is not stashed away in a corner of the desk (or under it hidden from you), it's usually right in front of your face and right under your fingers, liking how it looks is a pretty good idea.

> which is something completely subjective in the first place.

That just means the design you want is different from the design I want. Maybe you like the Surface Book and I don't (I do, but bear with me).

> Design is part and parcel of a laptop's usability and usage, and impacts its effective lifespan (you can get mileage out of a laptop while it's falling to pieces but that's not an enjoyable experience).

I don't think that's a fair characterization of the thinkpad experiance. I own one, and every other owner I know, hasn't had these things crap out. Also, if they do crap out there are guides telling you exactly what to do. The case also exposes the screws you need to take out to fix certian problems.

Spill coffee on your laptop and need to order a new keyboard and trackpad module? Flip over the laptop and the screws are labeld with pictures of a keyboard and a trackpad.

> And of course a laptop is not stashed away in a corner of the desk (or under it hidden from you), it's usually right in front of your face and right under your fingers, liking how it looks is a pretty good idea

A computer is a tool. Would you buy a shovel if it was very bad at shoveling and had a pre-determined lifespan just because it was colored to match your khakis?

> A computer is a tool. Would you buy a shovel if it was very bad at shoveling and had a pre-determined lifespan just because it was colored to match your khakis?

In that sense, a car is just a tool to get you from A to B. So buying a Porsche would be completely pointless.

Clothes are just tools for keeping you warm. It's pointless to take pride in how you present yourself.

So many of my engineering friends think this way. Too many. In fact, most of Sweden thinks this way about cars, and most of Germany thinks this way about clothes.

> In that sense, a car is just a tool to get you from A to B. So buying a Porsche would be completely pointless.

A Porsche is a different class of car in quality of construction and maximum speed achievable. That's the only reason I'd buy one. My car is a Subaru Forester and I love it.

> Clothes are just tools for keeping you warm. It's pointless to take pride in how you present yourself.

Some clothes keep you warmer or cooler depending on the environment. I guess I'm a minimalist but all of my shirts and pants are either single colored or a line pattern on a button up. They work fine as shirts, the only upgrade they need is pockets.

>So many of my engineering friends think this way. Too many. In fact, most of Sweden thinks this way about cars, and most of Germany thinks this way about clothes.

I guess some people are just fine with presenting themselves as a person and don't want to look special. I personally thing my winning personality will keep people away if my cloths don't so I'm already set.

>> So many of my engineering friends think this way. Too many. In fact, most of Sweden thinks this way about cars, and most of Germany thinks this way about clothes.

Are we talking cars and clothes now? I'm Greek and I don't drive, but I certainly like my Italian fashion as much as the next fashion victim. Brains just don't come into it. But a computer is a computer and a coat is a coat- you can't think the same way about both.

Even so, in fashion too there's a lot to be said about building stuff to last, even as you make them look and feel good. Terry Pratchett has a bit about this in a couple of the Discworld novels, where he notes how cheap shoes end up being more expensive because you have to buy a new pair every year whereas expensive ones are made to last for decades, so you may pay a premium once, but it turns out cheaper on the long run (and I think he goes on to comment how this is another way rich people keep their money etc).

I think you'll find that the most highly valued (and therefore, most expensive) fashion tends to be made according to this ideal, of beauty that lasts.

For me it has nothing to do with appearance - it has to do with feel.

My job provides me with an HP Ultrabook. When I type on it, the plastic near the trackpad creaks. If I bought it retail it's something like $1400. And it creaks.

If I'm spending $1400 on a piece of technology I expect to have for 3-5 years, and I'm going to be hauling it between locations (on-call schedule) I really need to feel like "Yeah, this won't get broken if I accidentally put something a little heavy on top of it (e.g. in my bag)".

It's partially a performance story, but I rather pay an extra $100-200 for a solid chassis that makes me think the motherboard won't bend when I put pressure from my wrists on it.

I think you're focusing too much on the aesthetic aspect of the word "design," and not enough on the functional aspect.

I buy a laptop to use, and if I have to use a spongy keyboard, a stupid pointing nipple, a subpar trackpad, or deal with a creaking, bendy case, then the 8 to 10 hours I spend in front of that damn thing every day are not going to be very pleasant for me, and I cannot stress the importance of that enough.

I understood that the OP mostly meant design as in aesthetics:

They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy, have grills and screw holes and uneven surfaces and stickers everywhere.

The "flimsy and bendy" feel is more than just aesthetics, but owning two generations of the Carbon, it really doesn't apply to it. For the second gen. the term "brick shithouse" comes to mind. The fourth gen. has more plastic on the lid (which though feels "smooth as a baby's butt" according to a colleague) but its innards are tough as nails and knowing that's enough for me.

In any case, like I say what I need from a computer is performance: fast processor, as much RAM as you can fit on a laptop and plenty of storage. If I really cared about durability and toughness that much, I'd get a Toughbook [1].

_____________

[1] http://business.panasonic.co.uk/computer-product/products-an...

I've come very clost to buying one, several times. I just like the idea of a computer I can take with me on the beach and use to browse the 'nets while lying on an inflatable mattress in the sea. That'd be cool and it'd border on "design" trumping specs even in my book. On the other hand, I'd look a bit of a pillock so I've never gotten round to it.

I've had the new MacBook Pro 15" with Touch Bar for several days now. I'm returning it. The Lenovo is what I really wanted, but it doesn't run MacOS.

This Touch Bar is the worlds worst idea. I literally now have to look at the keyboard to type again, like I'm 10 years old. I haven't looked at a keyboard in decades. The machine is going back this week. What a disaster.

And, don't tell me to learn to use Caps Lock for ESC or to type control-[. I've been using VI since 1988, I'm not about to retrain that length of muscle memory.

My feelings exactly. When is this X1 Carbon coming out? I can't see any models online.

Agreed. It's really disappointing they didn't simply offer the TB as an option on the 15".

You could always get one of the new MBPs without the Touch Bar. I think I agree with you, though. I also touch-type, use vim, and the Touch Bar breaks my flow.

Just for the record, retraining your muscle memory is good for your hands. (Disclaimer: I have the same rMBP-touchbar, for about a week now, and I love it. Remapped CAPSLOCK and not looking back...)

I'm surprised you say it had fantastic specs. My case was the complete opposite: my Thinkpad had pretty terrible specs for the price I paid for it, but I'm yet to find a keyboard that comes close to it. I don't think the keyboard is incredible, but it's depressing most laptop's keyboards.

I was given it on day one so I don't know it's history, but it was definitely maxed out specs. So fantastic for what I was used to? =)

The keyboard was very nice. Though the trackpad was terrible. The #$*(# thing is a damn sticker. And I had to replace the sticker twice because it would wear smooth where I used it most.

Thinkpads T have a huge range of specs.

For any reference, there are hundreds of sub-references with different combinations of hardware.

Yes. I was referring to the relationship price-specs. Unless things have changed, a 1000$ thinkpad T won't probably buy you more than 8gb, an i5, possibly still a HDD (hopefully not anymore). I suppose people that are used to Macs won't see a problem with this, since Macs tend to be quite expensive, but it's still a bit of money, although I would rather spend this than buy a laptop that doesn't work well, like plenty of what's out there.

Lenovo's prices for a lot of upgrades (RAM, SSD) tend to be high. My recommendation there is to upgrade the things that aren't reasonable to do yourself/later (screen, WiFi adapter if you have choices between 2x2 and 3x3, backlit keyboard, fingerprint reader). RAM and HD upgrades on Thinkpads tend to be pretty easy (though I don't know about the X1 never having looked at one), so for those it may be better to get the cheapest option then upgrade on your own.

X1 has gone back and forth between upgradable and soldered on. Occasionally I will see an X1 at a price I'm willing to pay only to find out that I can't upgrade.

Yes, I actually did that with my SSD and memory. One of the things I miss of Thinkpads is the GPU. It seems like in the past two or three years it's been increasingly hard to find a Thinkpad T with GPU. I'm aware that the W have them, but those are beasts. I read somewhere that you could buy them through other countries, like Japan, but didn't look much into it.

They're not mentioned very often, but it looks like at this point for the T4xx you have to go with the "p" models to get a Nvidia GPU - the T460 and T460s are only Intel, as I understand it the T460p is somewhere between the T460 and the W product line - a little bigger, a little more expandable, etc.

Looks like you can also only get the GPU with the i7-6820HQ, so out of all the T product line there's a single CPU/GPU combination that's not using the Intel graphics. That may in part be related to the significant improvements in Intel's graphics capabilities in recent generations - starting around the HD4000 in the third-generation processors the GPUs are actually reasonably capable, and they've improved rapidly even from that point.

It's an unfortunate consequence of the ridiculous markups on hardware add-ons, but if you're willing to apply a little elbow grease and look at resellers, it's not too hard to get what you're looking for for 1000$.

New:

  * 818$: cheapest T460 on the website
    * +270$ for i3-6100u => i7-6600u
    * +390$ for 500GB HDD => 512GB SSD upgrade
    * +470$ for 4GB RAM => 32GB RAM

Here's your 1000$ build:

  * 700$ for a T460 with an i5 on eBay (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_Sold=1&_udlo=700&_dmd=1&_ipg=200&LH_Complete=1&_sop=15&_nkw=t460%20i5)
  * 170$ for a 500GB 850 EVO (https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E500B-AM/dp/B00OBRE5UE)
  * 108$ to 170$ for Crucial's 16GB RAM kits (depending on specific specs)

If you're willing to part with another 200$-300$:

  * <800$ for a T460 with an i7 on eBay (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_Sold=1&_udlo=700&_dmd=1&_ipg=200&LH_Complete=1&_sop=15&_nkw=t460%20i7)
  * 340$ for Crucial's 32GB RAM kit (http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/thinkpad-t460/CT8304418)

If you're a more on-the-go person who needs a small laptop that needs to do it all, and do it all day then you might consider also checking out the x220T laptop.

They have a model with an i7, sometimes they have 3G sim readers, and has a touchscreen + touchpen (you can disable one, or both of these in software). These are great for taking notes, more then enough power to survive a day of real programming.

I've actually got an x220 with the original 6-cell and a slice battery, which puts me at 6 hours unplugged. It's not very impressive tbh, but it's been worth what I paid for it.

The Dell XPS 13 is great. It runs Linux very well. The WiFi is excellent. It's got an aluminum chassis. The part where your hands rest is carbon-fiber composite so it isn't cold in the morning. The HiDPI touch screen is incredible, and the performance is pretty amazing. There is a single hinge stretching across most of the laptop for the screen (like the Macbook), unlike the flimsy set of two hinges on most laptops. Most laptops I've seen have broken at the hinge. I customized mine by maxing out the processor, screen, 16 GB RAM, and 512 GB SSD. The unboxing experience was very well-designed and it really felt premium.

In short, this is the good non-Apple laptop that you're looking for.

> It runs Linux very well.

I've been researching into the XPS series, and online there are plenty of reports of problems with Linux.

Can anyone here confirm first-hand that they have an XPS 13/15 that's running Linux flawlessly?

Got the previous generation (9333) running Ubuntu 16.04, no troubles.

I have an XPS 13 (9360) - the Kaby Lake Developer Edition.

With Ubuntu 16.04 (or more specifically kernel < 4.8) the only issue I had was dynamically adding a Thunderbolt 3 (to DP) monitor.

With Fedora 25, Ubuntu 16.10? No issues.

Wifi is great. Sound. Performance. Display (I have the QHD version).

I have the XPS 13 9350 (dmidecode c&p). The only issue is the BCM4350 Wifi card, and its a biggie. Do not buy the BCM, get the Intel Wifi card fitted. Or replace it yourself with this one: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Generation-Wireless-Computer-No..., they cost about $15.

I also had suspend/resume issues occasionally, a recent bios upgrade fixed that, I think.

Apart from the original WiFi, I'm very happy with the XPS 13.

Slightly off topic, but has anyone had luck with a (preferably intel) 3x3 wifi adaptor? I want one for a desktop. The linked one is 2x2, and amazon has a m.2->pcie wifi adaptor for $17.

I have a 3x3 broadcom now, but it occasionally disassociates with the access point (and the box suffers from undiagnosed kernel hangs whether I plug an nvidia or amd video card into it...)

Linux Intel support is the best of all vendors, as far as I can tell. They have dedicated Linux driver devs and their specs are open. The quality of their drivers reflects this. In future I'll walk wide circles around anything broadcom.

Qualcomm Atheros also has dedicated devs for their Linux driver. Broadcomm stopped making wireless cards for the PC market earlier this year.

It looks like this may be a winner: AEX-QCA9880-NX

Except maybe they explicitly removed linux support:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg110852.html

I can't find a hardware rev number on on the amazon page (was 1.0 ever sold to the public?). Also, the amazon page says it is for engineering samples only / contact vendor before ordering. Hmm.

According to Intel, installing Intel wifi adapters in computers or laptops "may be illegal":

https://communities.intel.com/thread/108092

I'll probably buy one anyway.

They actually make an XPS 13 Developer Edition preloaded with Ubuntu.

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-13-linux

That's the URL for one of the older versions. In general dell.com/sputnik (same as dell.com/developers) will get you to the current systems.

Oh, and we've moved the XPS 13 Developer Edition to be in the same place as the Windows version. One side affect is that this (well, the internal details of how that's done in our catalog) makes it easier for us to change up the Dev Ed config options. You can use the OS filter drop-down just above the config carousel to narrow down to only the Ubuntu configs.

The Razer Blade has similar unibody metal chassis as Apple laptops and is not coated in stickers. I have the Blade Stealth and its just as sturdy and sleek as the Apple equivalent.

Which Apple equivalent?

MacBook air? Base MacBook pro?

I'm running Fedora on my Razer Blaze Stealth.

The Razer Blades do look amazing. I was looking at getting one, but at the time they didn't have any 16GB models. I ended up getting an MSI instead and using it as a Linux development laptop:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/msi-ws60-running-linux/

I never hear anyone mention the Razer Blade's and yet they seem to be the best looking and spec'd non-Apple notebooks by far.

They are almost too good to be true. What's the catch?

Have you had any issues running Linux on them?

I run Linux as a VM on mine, which works fine for my use cases. I've heard the Wifi/GPU/Webcam can give you trouble in some cases depending on exact laptop model and Linux distro used.

I upgraded to a Razer Blade from a 2013 macbook.

Performance is great.

It is very well built, I would say on almost on par with a Mac, except for thin grills covering the cooling fans on the bottom. Grabbing the laptop in the wrong spot can easily push the grills up against the fan.

Battery life is terrible. Lucky to get 4-5 hours running a nothing but a browser and ssh client. (On windows 10. I haven't tried, but remember reading that power management on linux is even worse)

The trackpad gestures are not as accurate as on a Mac. I don't know how much of that is Windows vs the hardware.

Cooling fans are always on, and they are kind of loud even at low rpm. Not noticeable in a noisy office environment, but annoying in a quiet setting. The black chassis is a fingerprint magnet like no other laptop I've seen. The lit green logo on the lid is a bit obnoxious, and would not fit in at a very corporate environment. The actual display size is somewhat smaller than that of many similarly sized notebooks.

I'm okay with the trade offs (though the battery hurts...) but its definitely not a clear-cut winner compared to the competition.

Edit: the Blade Stealth may fare a little better battery wise, but even it doesn't have a stellar battery life.

The price, they are in Macbook range.

As a gaming laptop they're not great. The reason is that, for example, one model had a GTX 970M, which sounds good but the thermal performance is such that the GPU is near constantly throttled resulting in questionably worse performance than similarly sized and specked machines with a 960M part.

That's just poor thermal design. You know you just don't get that with MacBooks (you don't get a 970M either of course).

Personally I'm passing on this generation of MBPs. Will Apple wait another 2 years to update them? I'm just not convinced that this isn't now an iPod market for Apple.

Instead I ended up getting a Dell XPS 15. Having a Linux subsystem is pretty nice. It's nowhere near as polished as the Apple experience but for $1300 (including upgrades) I got the base machine and put a Samsung 950 Pro and 32GB of RAM into it, so that's nice.

I'm sorry, but you are just wrong on this. I own one of those 970M model Razer Blades and I can tell you personally that throttling is not an issue on my machine. At all.

https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/razer-blade-...

Razer has superb thermal design.

> What's the catch?

What happens when you need hardware support? Lenovo gives you (shitty in my experience) on site service - if you pay. Apple has the Apple Store, superior if you have a store nearby.

What's Razer got? Depot service for my main money making tool? Unacceptable.

Comparing a Macbook and a Lenovo is like saying "My BMW is better than the Ford F-350 Superduty". Want to have style and best design? Take a Macbook. Want to have lots of Ports? Thinkpad. Need Milspec? Thinkpad. Want to have 17 hours battery life and then swap them without shutting down? Thinkpad (ok, not the carbon). Want to have 3G/LTE, smartcards or Cardreader? Thinkpad. Want to be able to repair yourself? Thinkpad. Does not always look fancy, but is just the SUV-way of computing. I, at least, love my x240 like no Laptop before.

The 13.3" Clevo is pretty much an unbranded Macbook Air (Google for Schenker S306 or https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/lafiteII/)

Thanks for the tip. I had never even heard of the brand before. It does seem to be a great laptop!

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-S306-Subnotebook-Revie...

And when it breaks, good luck getting support! My time is worth more to go with a big vendor with ubiquitous support.

? All Schenker laptops come with a 24 months warranty. Not as convenient as walking in an Apple Store (I see you are an Apple fan), but I'm fine with paying for shipping to get a replacement if it breaks. Only 1 out of my 5 previous laptops (various brands) has ever needed a warranty repair.

This has a magnesium chassis, so it should be stiffer than aluminum. It is also carbon fiber, not plastic.

There are plenty of options, but it really depends on your definition of good. Different people making the same complaint as you on HN have very different and sometimes very particular criteria. If you look at the systems overall the MBP's have good alternatives now.

The X1 is actually really impressive. First gen had a short battery life and the display wasn't high resolution, but they addressed that pretty quickly.

Perhaps from a hardware perspective this is true, but if you have to run commercial software (e.g. Adobe, DAWs, etc.) and do software development in a Unix environment, there really isn't a better option than macOS on a MacBook Pro. Windows sucks, and as much as I love Linux, it just doesn't cut it when I need Illustrator, Photoshop, Studio One, or Logic.

My guess is that most software developers don't use the packages you mentioned as they are for designers primarily.

If you're really a heavy user of DAWs and Adobe's media software, you already have a very different set of needs than most developers. I also fall into that category, except with game dev Windows is pretty much the only viable choice for a primary dev platform.

If you're just using Adobe's software every now and then, you just need a dedicated GPU and enough RAM. Many alternatives to the MacBook Pro have that. And you'd probably want a desktop sized screen anyway.

The most heavy duty stuff today's software devs would commonly use that their own laptops would need to power are VMs. By the time you get to really heavy duty stuff you'll get much closer to your hardware needs for cheaper with actual workstations anyway.

This is the sort of stuff I meant when I was talking about very specific requirements. For most developers having either Linux or OS X is usually plenty for work purposes, but OS X is nicer designed.

The lack of fans and vents on the bottom of MacBooks Pros is seriously a huge benefit. I can actually use it ON MY LAP!

Yeah! But a massive drawback is forgetting that it's metal and that you left it in your trunk last night. I was in my jimjams Christmas morning, went to put on some music, and without thinking, placed this frozen box of death onto my bare legs.

Were you wearing gloves when placing it on your lap?

I'm overthinking this, but it doesn't seem odd. Us in colder climates have our hands adjusted to cold (since they are usually exposed) while areas closer to our chest and groin (such as inner thighs) not as adapted.

I love the feeling of cold MBA on my thighs :) Wim Hof would probably laugh at your comment ;)

I've had the 2015 macbook for over a year now, and you learn reflexes, similar to how you avoid the heat with other laptops in the past.

Too true! Nothing sucks more than Christmas shrinkage.

I've been happy with google's Chromebook Pixel LS running Linux with openbox (for minimal resource consumption) and running windows 8 inside a VM. The construction of this chromebook is at the same level of any Apple device, with the upside of having a better design (in my opinion).

Has high DPI support improved on Linux? The last time I tried this it was impossible to get the desktop and the graphical apps to usable.

+1 to the Chromebook Pixel being amazing hardware. Thinkpad touchpads drive me nuts.

Weird, I have a T530 that I have carried literally everywhere with me for 4 years and the thing just won't die.

I'm pretty happy with this one: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Noteboo...

Especially because it is aluminium an Linux just works on it.

What flavor do you use? any driver trouble?

Just the plain one with max ram, or did you mean distro? Arch Linux. No driver problems at all. In fact i just took the SSD out of my Thinkpad and put it in into this without reinstalling anything everything just worked.

I'd agree four years ago. No decent ultrabook nowadays is made of plastic or has the other build quality issues you mention (the linked Lenovo included).

I have an HP Folio 1040 G1 which is a few years old now and is just as sturdy as a MacBook air, nearly as thin, but has better specs. Also much cheaper. The only place the Apple really outshines it is the tracked (and OS X if that's your thing.. it isn't mine).

In terms of industrial design, Samsung's ultrabooks are excellent, in my opinion: http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows-laptops/12-14/no...

All 3 laptops suggested to me in this thread have foldy complicated hinges. What's the deal with that?

If you can get past the "gamer" aesthetic and you aren't interested in a 2-in-1-- the Razer Blade (and Stealth) are great build quality and specs. Razer itself has terrible (non-existent?) support-- but the products are good.

They're intended to be folded over to be used in a "tablet" mode, or propped up in "tent" mode. All based around the touch screen, basically.

If one is (like I am) looking for a Retina-like screen, there's only one option, the Notebook 9 Pro 15.6'' [1], which is quite bulky and has that cheap plastic look.

[1] http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows-laptops/15-18/no...

Not true. I have the 13.3" which I bought from Best Buy and it is retina.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-notebook-9-spin-13-3-tou...

Thanks. That's a very underpowered machine (dual-core, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, integrated graphics), though. I neglected to say that I'm looking for a MBP 15'' alternative.

Are there any Thinkpads for sale now that don't come with trash-tier displays?

I've been doing research, looking to replace this Macbook some time in the new year, and it looks like the new T470 is keeping the abysmal displays of the T460.

I like to think of ThinkPads (esp. T and X series) as the Tumbler Batmobiles of laptops: they're big, black, chunky, and ugly, but they take a beating and get the job done.

My "plastic" dell latitude laptop feels more solid than my macbook pro 13. Plus is has way more comfortable keyboard compared to mac (at least for me).

Linux runs pretty well on my e7440.

Got an XPS15 9550. metal/magnesium body, 4K screen. Really really nice to look at, and a solid work horse. Weighs a bit, but it's sturdy.

I've been struggling to get Ubuntu working nicely on my 2015 MacBook. Did you follow any guide that you can recommend?

It isn't perfect by any stretch, but I've been liking my XPS 13. The battery is especially noteworthy.

How do you feel about the odd placement of the camera? I'm considering it but a couple of design choices always make me doubt I'll enjoy it as much. Camera is one of them (I use videochat a lot)

The camera placement is bad. I don't use video much at all, but when I need to on my XPS 13, I actually use a separate USB webcam. The built-in camera is just really strange to use - to others it looks like you're looking off into the distance, and if you type, your left fingers will cover up the camera entirely. All that being said, this is an excellent laptop otherwise, and I really enjoy using it daily.

What about a surfacebook?

Apparently Linux is a bit finicky on it?

I use a Surface Book as my main computer and it's absolutely wonderful. I get a PC in tablet form with a pressure-sensitive stylus when I want a tablet and I get a moderately beefy laptop with a dedicated GPU when I want a laptop.

> I use a Surface Book as my main computer

I've heard that it's fantastic hardware but had lots of software and driver teething problem, what's your experience with that?

Mine has been flawless so far, this is the newer one(performance base) with the discrete GPU.

Picked up my SurfaceBook the day they were launched - there were definitely teething issues, sometimes the detaching process would fail, there were sleep issues (not sure if Intel cops the blame for that one).

All of these issues have been resolved with firmware updates by about 3 months after launch - reliability has been rock solid from then on out. Can't recommend it enough.

I picked up a Surface Book on launch day. i7, 16 GB, 512 GB. As others have pointed out, there were several software glitches for a few months after launch. Ultimately, the software problems have been worked out.

For me, the ultimate deficiency is the Surface Book's inability to drive two 4K monitors at 60 Hz. Although not promised in so many words during the launch event (they said "two 4K monitors" without specifying the refresh rate), I had assumed it would support 60 Hz rather than 30 Hz. This limitation convinced me to retire my Surface Book to a purely mobile role and use a proper workstation for 90% of my computing.

I expect that a second-generation Surface Book will resolve that specific hardware limitation.

They worked out the software and driver issues, so now it's pretty much fantastic hardware design with moderately good performance specs.

The only two (small) downsides that I run into regularly:

1. Some important software doesn't handle high DPI mode in Windows 10 well. Specifically Adobe offerings. Visual Studio 2015 has some small issues too.

2. The 3000x2000 pixel screen makes gaming a bit finicky. Games rarely support 3:2 ratios other than the native 3000x2000. The dedicated GPU is pretty capable, but not always 3000x2000 capable, so you're often stuck with 16:10 ratios that approximate 1500x1000.

I'll second the surfacebook love. Was using an Asus ultrabook before this and the surfacebook(i7, discrete GPU) has just a bit more oomph that I needed.

Build quality is outstanding, tablet is great for browsing on the sofa and multi-pressure pen is awesome for photo editing. Chews through heavy compiling/development very well. Decent gaming for what it is.

I feel like Microsoft was trying to do the whole tablet PC back in early 2000s and I think that the surface book is the actual realization of what they were trying to achieve.

Yoga 910? Spectre x360?

microsoft surfacebook is magnesium, no?

You've clearly never used a T series or X1 Carbon before

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