Comment by tikhonj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tikhonj | Hacker News Reader

Asus may not have "done it right", but that doesn't mean there aren't good lightweight laptops to rival the air.

I have a Sony Vaio Z. It weighs less than the corresponding 13" Macbook Air (carbon fiber! Like a Ferrari!), has better specs and an innovative design. For one, it does not look like an Air--it does not taper to a point, which is something that annoys me in both the Asus and the Air. It has an actually minimalistic design and looks gorgeous in black.

However, the real innovation is in the "Power Media Dock" which--despite the silly marketing name--is actually a brilliant piece of hardware. The laptop itself does not have a DVD drive and uses an Intel HD 3000 graphics chipset. However, it comes with a dock using Intel's LightPeak protocol that contains a discrete ATI graphics card and DVD drive. This lets you have a meaty graphics card at home and a mobile one on the go--very useful. I can also plug my extra monitor and various peripherals into it so that I only need to plug one thing into my laptop when I come home.

There are a couple of problems: the keyboard is "not brilliant" at best, although I've gotten used to it. I've tried the Air's keyboard and, while it was better, it was also not brilliant. Additionally, the Linux support on the laptop is spotty. However, from what I've heard, this is also true of MacBooks, so it isn't a differentiating factor.

The last issue, of course, is the cost--it is closest to a 15" MacBook pro rather than the Air. However, for this, you get specs equal to a MacBook pro--including either a 1600x900 or 1920x1080 resolution. Even the lower-resolution screen--the one I have--looks fantastic.

Overall, the Vaio Z is exactly what the poster is deriding the Asus for not being--innovative, capable and well-built. It is "radically better" than an Air and the only really significant downside is that it's correspondingly more expensive. It even has a rather good touchpad. Oh, and raid-0 ssds. Oh yeah. I do not regret splurging on it at all.

FWIW, everything works under Linux on this Macbook Pro, so I'm a little dubious that it's not a differentiating factor.

I will give you that the Vaio Z looks like a nice machine, but it costs double what the Air does. I think I'd probably rather have the Air and a desktop at home rather than one laptop and that Dock thing, but each to their own.

I really think that the Z is more comparable to a MacBook Pro that just happens to be lighter than the Air. Living with a 13" screen, particularly one with such a high resolution, is really not an issue at all (especially since external monitors are so cheap now). The overhead of keeping two computers synced would not be worth it, I think.

As for Linux, I suspect it depends a lot on the exact hardware and distro in question. I had issues with OpenSUSE; it worked immediately with Fedora (only after spending a while playing with SUSE :().

As for the MacBook Pro, I have a friend who has been relegated to living almost exclusively in a Linux VM on Mac OS because running it natively caused it to overheat. The only way I see of being sure of not having any Linux issues would have been to buy a computer with Linux installed, but I didn't see any interesting ones in this particular market.

Linux will never work properly on a laptop or any interesting consumer hardware. VM is always the way to go. The stable drivers on uniform virtual hardware solve the problem in a way real hardware driver will never be able to do.

Please stop the FUD. My experience has been that Linux support for most laptops by Lenovo, Dell, HP etc is pretty good. There are couple specific technologies that dont work well with Linux - Nvidia Optimus, any graphics hardware from Imagination Technologies (hardware is good but their driver story is unbelievably convoluted). If you buy a thinkpad and hold it for five years your chances of it being able to competently run the latest and greatest version of linux are far greater than your chances of doing the same with a with osx or windows.

Do you happen to know exactly which MBP your friend has? I'm just a little surprised since mine (13" MBP 7,1) has never actually overheated no matter what I throw at it (gaming, heavy compiles etc) - the worst I've had is that the fan gets louder and the case warms to touch. When running normally it's cool and the fan's practically silent, as you'd expect.

Agree on Linux preinstalled; that's pretty rare full stop. Dell had a few at one point but IIRC it was not across their whole range.

Did you get trackpad, wireless, sound and suspend-and-resume to work under Linux? I've tried a couple of times with mbp5,5 but couldn't get everything to run smoothly, and in the end the constant annoyance of unable to scroll or battery running dry in two hours flat wasn't worth it.

the best non-Mac laptops are the X300 thinkPad series. you probably have at least one friend who is a secret fan of them.

That's certainly plausible--I've heard good things about ThinkPads. Most of my friends are Linux users, so I definitely know some ThinkPad fans. However, in the "ultraportable" (horrible marketing terms strike again) category, I think the Z pulls ahead of the Lenovo X1, which I also considered. Unless I'm much mistaken, the X1 is the replacement for the X300.

The best non-mac laptops are Panasonic's Toughbook C1 (inheritor of the T series). They double up as weaponry, too.

Back in my high school robotics days, I did use a Toughbook and it was actually very good. The ergonomics are not compromised on too much, and I suspect there are tools that are less durable than Toughbooks.

However, in my current incarnation as a dainty EECS major, the closest I get to a machine shop is the CS building beside it, so a Toughbook--while indubitably awesome--would be a bit of overkill.

Also, the tacit assumption that macs are the best laptop is, I think, flawed--there's no question that they're good, but there are plenty of cases where there are better options...

> However, in my current incarnation as a dainty EECS major, the closest I get to a machine shop is the CS building beside it, so a Toughbook--while indubitably awesome--would be a bit of overkill.

Beware, Panasonic has a bunch of different toughbooks series. I'd expect what you used for robotics was a "fully rugged" series: looks like a small case and can be rolled over by trucks (basically what they use in combat fields, truck shops and whatnot).

Those are pretty much indestructible short of using explosives (and even then), but they're big and heavy. Panasonic also has lines of wimpier "business-rugged" laptops built merely to withstand being dropped from tables, thrown against walls in fits of fury and having mugs of tea dropped on them.

They're also much more lightweight, and somewhat better looking. The one I was talking about is the C1: http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/business-rugged-... which sports pretty standard laptop look (apart from the trackpad) and while pretty solid (certified for 30" drops, 6 ounce of liquid and 225 pounds of pressure) is nowhere near a fully-rugged MIL-STD-810G-certified Toughbook 19 or Toughbook 31.

The C1 is for carrying your laptop a lot and not really caring if it happens to fall or encounter bad juju.

Ah, you have a good point--the model I used was definitely one of the really tough ones. It definitely had its own charm but was more reminiscent of a tool box than a laptop (not to say that's a bad thing).

I suspect the one you're talking about is one of the few models with that sort of hinge not to fall apart immediately--the others I've seen were very weak.

I don't doubt there are better laptops than the Air I just can't remember them. Most OEMs are tripping over themselves to pump out SKUs that you really have a hard time remembering which is which. You could get the model X32-GS724X or the X32-GS725T. The higher spec'd one is the one reviewed but the lower spec'd version is what is in stores and may be missing the features the reviewers raved about.

I've been burned like this before, ordering a laptop that was reviewed with bluetooth and receiving one without. My mistake was I ordered version B and not version C.

Vaio notebooks are nice, I had one before my MBP, but they lack the little problem called Windows. But when forced to, I would choose a Vaio or a Thinkpad (depends on model). Both know what they do.

For reference, my Vaio does not have Windows. And if I had gone for the Air--I did consider it--it would not have had OS X. The sub-par OSes sold with pretty much all laptops these days can trivially be replaced, so it really isn't an issue.

I've spent significant time on both various versions of Windows and Mac OS (a bit of 9 but mostly 10). I've had the best experience, and been the most productive, on Linux.

If you are not willing to tolerate anything except Mac OS, then obviously the quality of non-Apple hardware is of little importance. (I guess you could go the Hackintosh route, but I think that rarely goes well.) Besides, Windows 7 is really not that bad at all--certainly no worse than Mac OS, just different.

I consider getting a second notebook for Win and Linux because sometimes you have to work with them. I love Thinkpads for having a Zen influence (just like Apples hardware) and it's sturdiness. Vaios look awesome but sometimes they get the details wrong. The WLAN button on the front broke of my Vaio broke, why did they put it on the front, where it has always contact with my belly when sitting in bed?)

But I will always need OS X for my main machine. It's all the little details helping me to get work done. I adjusted my workflow to Exposé and Spaces and it's the most well designed OS, so I love it's consistency, scrolling in windows off focus, CMD not CTRL for shortcuts (so I can use my thumb and don't need to move my hand or use the little finger), taking advantage of more shortcuts in general (but they killed some in Lion) etc.

And many of those little helpers are only possible because of the great trackpad. It's no problem for Win7, because it does not rely on gestures, but it would be great they would include something like that. (do some artful linux devs work on those things?)

I don't know about gestures on Linux. I've heard there is a package but never bothered with it. I basically do two things on my computer: I browse the internet and I edit text (programming, writing, homework...). For both of these tasks--and most other things I do less commonly--I can just use the keyboard. All this means that I only use the mouse/trackpad if I really have to--it really slows me down.

In my experience, Mac OS is not the most well-designed OS at all. Whenever I have to use it, it manages to annoy me fairly consistently. It isn't bad, of course, but all modern operating systems--especially Linux--have improved drastically in the last several years.

CMD vs CTRL is not a function of Mac OS/Windows, it's a function of your keyboard layout and both proprietary solutions get it wrong: CTRL is actually the key labelled Caps Lock. Everything else you've mentioned is also present in Linux, at least with KDE--it's well designed, consistent and even lets you scroll windows off focus (I think the scrolling, as well as other window conventions date back to older Unix window managers that predate both KDE and Mac OS). KDE also lets you have some very useful key combinations. Particularly, I like being able to tile a window left or right with a single keystroke, which is trivial with KWin. That said, I'm going to take this idea to the next level and switch over to XMonad soon, which is a nice upgrade for OS X as well (a couple people I know have used it there successfully).

Coincidentally, why would you need to get another notebook for Windows and Linux? As far as I know, you can dual/triple boot with a Mac, or you could just get a virtual machine.

Ultimately though, the qualities of Mac OS are rather tangential here (and we're ignoring the philosophy behind it even more)--if you're not willing to use anything else, you're stuck with Apple. If, on the other hand, you're like me and see no reason to use it, the quality of hardware become important and finding the best lightweight notebook pertinent.

Why another notebook? Well, I feel happier to divide the systems physically. You know what to do on the one system and you know what you do on the other. Those are toys, so main motivation is fun I would guess. :D

When reading your post, I think you are the efficiency guy, and OS X is for ease of use and both things are sometimes conflicting. But I got around using OS X in an efficient way, so I feel happy with it.

Thanks for your infos.

sadly, it is a sony. i have heard far, far too many horror stories about sony computers at this point.

Really? I've heard some, but not enough to dissuade me from getting it. I also got a two-year warranty for free and I live within reasonable distance of a Sony store (they exist, I was surprised to learn), so I think I'll be able to get decent support. I also suspect that they might go to a little bit more trouble supporting the Z because it really is their top-of-the line model, but I really don't know.

I've also heard bad things about Macs, but they all end with happy stories about Apple's support which is definitely a point in their favor.

While I can't say anything about Sony's cheaper offerings, the Z seems well-built and sturdy. The only real issues I've had were to do with Linux drivers, but I ultimately managed to resolve those satisfactorily.

What's battery life like with Linux on that Vaio?

Umm, I honestly have no idea. The battery monitor's estimates are horribly inconsistent, and I haven't used it unplugged for long-enough stretches to drain the battery completely. So, at least for me, we can call it "enough".

I have used it for over 4 hrs of active use interspersed with sleep periods (e.g. with the lid closed) without running out. I plug it in whenever I can, which means it gets a little charged whenever I'm at home, at work or at the library (but not in lecture). My schedule means I rarely need to use it for more than three hours without being able to plug in at some point.

Since it doesn't use the switchable graphics cards that are popular in other laptops, this is not an issue. Unfortunately, I think it still does better on Windows.

That said, if it isn't enough, you can always get an extra sheet battery you could attach to the bottom of the laptop--it's pretty neat.

A bit out of topic, but how good does it fare when upgrading windows? I had a few friends who got stuck on a specific version of windows for driver problems. How future proof would the Sonys be?

Umm, I really, really have no idea (wow, I'm being a useful resource here!)--the first thing I did when I got it home was install Linux, completely overwriting even the backup partition (I had to do that in switching to software raid, I think).

So I've had this laptop for maybe two months (enough time to install the Windows 8 developer preview, granted) and run Linux exclusively. I really can't answer your question.

What I can say, though, is that while Linux tends to have more driver problems than Windows initially, they tend to be much simpler to solve. So if you can't upgrade from Windows, just switch to Linux ;) For every sleepless night I've spent looking for Linux drivers I spent two looking for Windows ones a couple years prior.

I have a 3 yr old Sony Z that upgraded easily to Win7/x64. You have to grab the drivers from newer Z models.

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