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Comment by willtim | Hacker News Reader

> Apple still seems to have the best hardware overall

The example comparison you gave, an X1 Carbon, has a more reliable keyboard with more travel, a matte-screen option without fragile glass, a user-replaceable battery, a user-replaceable NVMe drive, a variety of ports new and old, a docking solution, security cable lock etc

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As always, the mousepad can't yet be beaten. While it sounds trite - and I've long since switched away from my original Macbook Retina, IMO the height of Mac's hardware dominance - I still pine for it compared to everything I've used since.

I haven't used one, but newer machines use Microsoft's "Precision Touchpad" standard which is supposed to close the gap and support fancy gestures. Personally I just use the ThinkPad nipple and as many shortcut keys as I can memorise :)

I'm another one who much prefers the nib in the middle of the keyboard to the touch pad. I use a Thinkpad keyboard on my desktop machine for this reason. No mouse on my desk at all and I'm not constantly moving my arm back and forth to reach for it.

I thought the same thing but I switched from a MacBook running Bootcamp to the new Surface Laptop and I actually prefer the latter. It's absolutely phenomenal. Microsoft is kicking ass lately and WSL lets me do all the Linux stuff I need to do (build scripts, etc.).

I was right there with you for a long time, but the touchpads on PC flagships have largely caught up. I switch between a Dell XPS 15 and a late-model MBP daily, and while I still give a slight edge to the mac, the Dell works well too and doesn't cause any frustration/pining.

As a counterpoint, the display inverter on my 3433CTO failed after 18 months. It's a $19 part - Lenovo wanted $400 to repair it. I moved to the Dell XPS 9350. The display failed. The wifi card is a $5 part in a $3000 machine and failed.

My X1 Carbon came with a 3 year on-site repair warranty as standard, included in the price (contrast this with AppleCare which is very expensive). Did you buy yours from Lenovo?

Yes, and I'm also covered by the excellent Australian Consumer Law. They ran me around for 6 months, sent invoices and logs with the wrong name on it and I eventually gave up.

All the other ultrabooks are 16:9, right? It's so hard losing that extra screen real estate, you really get used to it after a while. I'd rather even go 3:2, but the options there are only the Surface Pro or Pixelbook.

3:2 is the best. It drives me fucking insane that all the laptop manufacturers have capitulated to the idea that everyone's spending time watching movies on their laptops more than anything else, which strikes me a complete nonsense but I suppose it must be true, otherwise they wouldn't make that decision... I hope.

I'm buying a new computer and keep seeing hints of crosvm (real containers!) for the Pixelbook. If they could even say 'yes, this will be released at some point' I would just buy one, but instead they stay tightlipped and I'll have to buy another MBP.

A wider screen on a laptop has the advantage of allowing a wider keyboard-- so smaller laptops (12"-13" and below) can have full size (or closer to full-size) keyboards, and larger laptops (15" or so) can fit things like a full numeric keypad (15-inch 16:10 doesn't even quite leave room for one, but 15-inch 16:9 does without inflating the screen bezel too much).

It's also probably not coincidental that a wider screen ratio allows the manufacturer to sell less screen (in terms of area or total pixels) at the same diagonal size.

Never thought about the diagonal thing. That's probably the best explanation.

I bought my sister a surface laptop to use for school, and the very first thing she said was “How do I watch Netflix?”

The Surface Laptop is also 3:2 [1] and I absolutely love it. Proper laptop unlike the Pro (tablet).

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-laptop/p/90f...

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