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Comment by petschge | Hacker News Reader

I have a X1 Carbon that is a few years old now. About 2 years ago I dropped it (lid closed) from about 2 feet up (70cm). And it hit the tiled floor, pointy corner first. I thought "welp here go $2000". But no! A 2x3 mm part of the black surface finish chipped of and I see the bare silvery metal now. Oh and the tile cracked.

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Have a similar, but slightly more horrific, story with a Thinkpad X230T. I was working from home after the birth of our first child (so... clearly not in my right mind...), and I decided it would be a good idea to carry my laptop on top of a way too full basket of laundry up the stairs to save an extra trip. I wasn't paying attention... tilted the basket at the very top of the stairs... and my Thinkpad rolls down the stairs along its edges... full steam ... and slams into the wall at the bottom.

I pick up the Thinkpad expecting the worst... and the only damage was a very slight opening along the seam of the external battery... not a scratch on the actual unit itself... no components jarred free... nothing...

Been buying Thinkpads ever since...

the X series and the T series are some of the best laptops ever built

unless your work requires you to use macOS, you have no reason to buy a Macbook

My sanity requires it.

> unless your work requires you to use macOS, you have no reason to buy a Macbook

If hardware is all that matters to you, sure. But some people actually prefer the software experience of macOS to that of Windows, for a variety of reasons.

You can get Linux on those devices too

That's true, and it's really wonderful that you have that option, but it doesn't help if you prefer the software experience of macOS and/or need software that doesn't run on Linux.

I just have to say sometimes you can have it all http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/

Or, perhaps not http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/mojave/

High Sierra (10.13) will continue to receive security updates until nearly the end of this year.

would also like to just leave this here:

https://www.photopea.com/

Please pick that up and deposit it properly in the garbage bin.

I'm running Linux on my X1, works like a charm (and I find myself using my Macbook Pro less and less)

Typing this from FreeBSD on mine.

I used to run OpenBSD on a laptop (not this one) and that was great too.

i'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on my Thinkpad P2 Gen 2 laptop, using the Budgie Desktop. I'd guess my entire workflow is 95% the same coming from my MBP.

There is still the issue of software. Lots of programs that professionals use on a daily basis don't run on Linux and don't have good alternatives that do. Plus, macOS is much better designed and integrated (if that means anything to you), and generally more stable[0].

[0]: This seems to be less true every year, both because desktop Linux is becoming more stable over time, and because macOS seems to get buggier with every release. Still, as someone that uses both operating systems on a regular basis, my MacBook Pro is still marginally more stable than my Linux desktop machine on average.

> and generally more stable

People say this yet still use Adobe software on macOS over windows. Despite the fact adobe software runs horribly on macOS compared to windows.

If you buy a Mac for using adobe software you’re definitely not buying it for workflow.

First, I was talking about software that doesn't run on Linux but does run macOS, for the case where you don't want to use Windows but still need certain programs. For those users, the Windows "workflow" is already a deal-breaker, as is the lack of professional software on Linux, so macOS is the only choice.[0] I also didn't call out any specific software because there is lots of it besides the Adobe suite.

Second, can you elaborate? What makes Adobe run "horribly" on macOS? I admit I haven't used an Adobe product in years, but I used to do some design as part of my job, and I can't say it worked any worse on my Mac than it did on my Windows machine.

[0]: I recognize that this isn't necessarily a huge segment of users, but I for one would be hard-pressed to go back to Windows, even if it saved me a thousand bucks on a laptop.

The only software I could complain about on macOS is adobe software. I can't think of any software that gives a bad experience other than that...

If you deal with large photoshop files, and you only have say 8gb of memory. Windows will just get really slow when you move around the document.

On macOS it will crash randomly, and often. Premier you can be scrubbing the timeline, scrub too much, boom premier just stops working.

Lightroom (this is what I mostly used for editing photography) it generates a history of applying changes and removing them, if you begin toggling boom crash.

This is just personal experience, but I know alot of people who do graphic design and they now just have this natural reflex to constantly save their work allllll the time in fear of the software crashing.

Yet on Windows I don't recall any of that software ever crashing...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/photoshop-cc-2020-c...

There's many more threads on about the software crashing on macOS than Windows.

In any case I'll probably never buy another macbook again. Lenovo + Ubuntu for me now. :)

And, if you use Linux, ThinkPads have a good track record at compatibility.

They even have a page with "certified supported" versions: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd031426

Recently, they've even partnered with Red Hat to ship Fedora on some laptops by default: https://fedoramagazine.org/coming-soon-fedora-on-lenovo-lapt...

I'm switching back to a macbook now, but I used to run a T480s with the WQHD screen and it worked really well. Good battery life, nice HIDPI screen, super durable. I brought it with me when I traveled and everything, never had any issues besides scratching the outside surface.

Why are you switching back to a macbook?

The touchpad, speakers and display are significantly better on the MacBook. Also, Apple sell their hardware products at a single, clearly advertized price point. I hate how Lenovo make you fuss around with discount codes to get a fair price.

Lenovo is mainly a B2B company: their target customers are big corporations, they don't really do a good job when it comes to direct-to-consumers services.

Display always had been the Achilles’ heel on ThinkPad but anyone who use trackpad and speaker heavily on a ThinkPad is a peasant.

Of course these are anecdotal. I got my IdeaPad U430 in 2014. Same year it slid off my bunk bed (6' high), first hitting the corner of my dresser before it fell on the hardwood floor. It cracked its spine in half and got a dent in the back of the screen so deep that part of the screen is bulging out. I was sure I would be buying a new laptop. To my delight, there was no functional damage to it, it's still my daily laptop today. My next one will be a ThinkPad when one of the components fail.

Had thinkpad for years as an office laptop earlier when it was IBM and then a while after it became Lenovo. Have Dropped them many times, no issues. They had a sensor where it will detect motion while you drop and park the hard disk head before it hits the ground, Also configured the sensor to use it like WII once. It was one of the best laptops i've ever used.

> Oh and the tile cracked.

That's what I would call pure satisfaction. Thanks for adding that detail. You made me smile.

I've got multiple laptops -- including multiple ThinkPads -- and my 7-year-old W530 is still my favorite out of all of them.

The W530 was dubbed a "mobile workstation" (by Lenovo) and it really is a beast (hell, it's had 32 GB of RAM since day one, which is still more than what you can put in many laptops even today!).

At my previous job, I primary worked from home but when I did go to $work (the office, a customer's site, or one of our PoPs), I would often ride my Harley-Davidson Street Glide Special (midwest weather permitting). That machine -- which was also a beast, by the way -- vibrates like nothing you've ever seen! The W530 would get shoved into my backpack, which just barely fit in the saddlebags. Then, after arriving at my destination, I'd grab it, flip it open, and get back to work. Not once did I have an issue with it failing to do anything. It even accompanied me, in the saddle bag, on a 2,000 mile round trip!

I've had at least two (and perhaps three) MacBook Pros during the same time period but I would never have been brave enough to take one of them for a ride on the bike. I've got a feeling that many lesser laptops would not have survived.

(My next ThinkPad will almost certainly be whatever the current "mobile workstation" is, whenever the W530 finally gives up the magic smoke.)

A client once brought in a Thinkpad they ran over with a truck and the only damage was the soft copper heatpipes and fins were bent. I bent it back a little so the fan wouldn't scrape and it ran perfectly fine.

I used ThinkPads exclusively since 2000 but had a very bad experience around 2011 when the whole office upgraded to T410s machines and every single one (about a dozen) would die within a year the exact same way. They all got replaced and all died again, the second time out of warranty.

Something wrong with screen or the ribbon cable connecting the LCD screen caused the screen to die in a vertical strip about two inches from the left side. [1] You could press down on the bezel just under the distorted/dead strip to try to bring it back, but eventually even that would stop working. Referred to as MIGR-76367.

I actually haven’t bought a ThinkPad since that one. I switched to a MacBook Air running Bootcamp. I do miss the keyboard.

[1] -https://youtu.be/rM9_ZM_8qkQ

Had an x1 yoga in my backpack, padded backpack. Backpack fell off the desk and fell like 4 feet to the floor. Laptop was totalled - screen totally trashed etc. Was under warranty so got the whole thing replaced so it was back to like new within a week. But anecdotes are still just anecdotes lol.

I've fried two Macbook Airs by spilling drinks on them.

I've spilled more drinks on a single Thinkpad than all the other laptops I've owned combined. Everything just kept working.

Thinkpads are (/used to be) exceptionally well built. Including under-keyboard drainage.

(Typing this on a Pixel Slate with the Brydge keyboard, which leads to an interesting though: If I spill a drink on this keyboard, at worst I'll fry a completely separate bluetooth keyboard.)

My X1 Yoga too survived a fall that would have incapacitated any sane laptop (but Thinkpads are insane like that).

It's a good laptop and its performance remained snappy until recently (for a Gen 1 X1 Yoga). Still, I just switched... to a MacBook 12.

The killer feature for me is its silent operation - with better performance than my X1. Silence is such an overlooked design aspect, though perhaps I'm particularly allergic to fan noise. With current processor gens a fanless design is a must for any ultraportable that doesn't have a dedicated GPU. That's a relatively new development - the 2015 Macbook 12 was under-powered for some daily tasks but the 2017 is more than fine for those. Shame they stopped making them that year.

The screen is also a significant improvement (though I'm guessing Thinkpads screens have advanced since I bought mine) and the trackpad is no competition.

I'm worried about keyboard reliability but the typing experience is fine. I get along with most keyboards, with the strong exception of one pet peeve - mushy keys. The Macbook certainly doesn't have these.

My T530 survived flying off the roof of a car (in my unpadded backpack, to be clear) at 80mph when the straps for the roof bag ripped off cruising through Iowa. There was a small bit of plastic missing in one corner, otherwise nothing! To date that’s been my favorite laptop (aside from the bad screens thinkpads used to have).

I’ve dropped my 2018 MacBook Pro 13 at least 3 times, twice with the lid open, from a height of more than a meter (though onto a vinyl floor). It developed only a hardly noticeable dent.

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