Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

25 pointsrhaer108 comments

I imagine many of you use Apple, but I'm also curious to hear what those of you using Windows or Linux have chosen as your daily laptop.

Also, OS of choice (e.g. linux distro)!

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Dell. For years, for thousands of laptops at my company. Mostly due to the "Next Business Day Onsite Service". I won't argue that laptops are not all built the same across all brands, but what's make the difference for me, as a corporate customer, is the associated service/warranty. Knowing that I or my colleagues will have their laptop repaired or replaced within 24h is (almost) priceless. We loose more money when a teammate can't work during a day than purchasing the extended warranty. Also, I am a european customer, so my experience may differ with the services offer in US or Canada.

My work computer was recently upgraded from a Dell Precision 7520 to a Dell Precision 7670 (i7-12850HX, intel graphics, 32GB RAM, 2x 1TB NVMe SSD). We use Dell Precisions for developer laptops and I am happy with them. I personally run Linux on them, and have a Windows VM (on KVM) for Windows-only stuff.

As Linux distro, Debian has been my favorite since forever (Potato). The last couple of years, I used to run Debian Stable, but I went back to Debian Testing on the Dell Precision 7670 for better support for the Alder Lake cpu and graphics.

I am a software engineer and work mainly with .net; mostly cross-platform .net 6 nowadays.

Regarding the 7670:

- love the screen (1920x1200)

- love the look and the weight; thinner and lighter than the previous generations

- I like the big trackpad, allthough I miss the physical buttons (middle click is very difficult in a dim environment, because you have to aim about right in the middle of the bottom of the trackpad)

- I was suspicious about the keyboard, but I'm pleasantly surprised: I like typing on it

- why-oh-why does every laptop vendor always try to be "innovative" with the keyboard?

- I hate the half-size up & down

- I'm happy that the num-lock got a light to indicate whether num lock is on or off

- I hate that "home" and "end" got dual function with "F11" and "F12"

- I hate the position of usb-c + headphone out on the right side of the laptop: that specific usb-c port is the only one that can be used for an external screen; if you want to use those, the cables are right in the position where you would use an external mouse (honestly, no one at Dell noticed this??); this is annoying because I usually use an external mouse (even though the trackpad is decent)

14" MacBook Pro with M1 Pro for "everything". I know the M1 love has been nothing short of annoying at this point, but I am constantly surprised by how good this laptop is. Even with dozens of tabs in Brave, a couple of power-hungry webapps open all the time, a 4K external display plugged in and pretty heavy use I usually get at least 12 hours of battery life. Even the best windows laptops in battery life I'd used before this wouldn't get close to 8 with this setup, with 6 being the average.

You might think: what even is the point of 12 hours of battery life? You can just carry a charger around! And well, at least to me, the point is that I get to treat my laptop as if it's a phone: I charge it for an hour every morning and for the rest of the day I'm charger free. That's incredibly powerful for me.

I also have a Ryzen 5800X machine sitting as a homeserver - it used to be my primary desktop, then I made it in to a jellyfin server for anime and block storage and maybe the occasional x86 thing that just doesn't run on arm. Except... I haven't even sshed into the homeserver in a long time. Constantly surprised by how good this laptop and rosetta are.

Personal life: iPad Pro 3rd Gen. Work: MacBook Air M2

For work I was using the Surface Pro. However, they changed it so that removing the keyboard forces the UI to enter tablet mode. This happens even when using the computer with an external monitor and Mouse Without Borders. That means I have to leave the keyboard attached and can't actually save my desk space. If I'm going to sacrifice the desk space anyway I might as well get the vastly superior performance of the M2, and the useful trackpad.

If someone made a laptop that runs Windows, has a removable keyboard, allows me to have manual control of when tablet mode is enabled, and had performance comparable to the M2, I would buy two of those. One for work, one for home.

Side note. Prior to this M2 I hadn't used OSX/MacOS in over a decade. At that time I hated it. There were many aspects I couldn't tolerate. Using it now there are still a few frustrations and annoyances, but I can live with them. It's come a long way. If not for that, I probably would have sucked it up and continued with the Surface Pro.

I use an Asus Vivobook Pro 16x. It's got a big, beautiful OLED screen, decent keyboard and trackpad, and runs fast enough for most things I do on it. It was also 1/3rd of the cost of the Macbook Pro I had to return.

(Unfortunately, Macbooks cause severe eyestrain for me, for some unknown reason.)

This laptop works quite well for my purposes; and I agree with the sentiment from a few other people, that it's almost a relief to not have a "perfect" laptop. It just works -- good enough.

I have an external bluetooth speaker when I want good sound. I have a good webcam, if I want to look professional on video. If I buy a new laptop, these will go with it. Not everything has to be built in, it turns out.

I also have an overpowered desktop, when I need to do serious video editing.

I'm on Windows -- I just don't have the time to fiddle with Linux. Though, I do that sometimes anyways, it tends to be a time sink.

I too highly recommend getting a laptop with an OLED screen, they reduce eye strain, especially at night. I run an ASUS Zenbook and am mostly happy with it, except for trackpad palm rejection which is probably not ASUS's fault. I haven't tried tuning it yet.

I run Linux, which means I made sure the laptop didn't have any Nvidia products inside.

> Unfortunately, Macbooks cause severe eyestrain for me, for some unknown reason

For me it's the reflectiveness of the screen that does it. It's a bummer there's no matte choice.

I used to use ThinkPads exclusively, but Lenovo's priorities for ThinkPads no longer match mine.

I've since moved on to HP Dev One. It's well-rounded for me, was easily upgraded to 64GB of ram, and came with Pop! OS out of the box. I've also used System76 machines in the past with success, but I'm rather attached to having a pointing stick.

My dayjob provides a Dell XPS 13 (factory-loaded with Ubuntu) which is an acceptable machine, but I don't travel with it much.

I always use GNU/Linux. Of late I've been sticking to LTS Ubuntu or Pop! OS releases. I'm a strange case though, because my desktop is LXDE, and all I ever really do is run a browser or two with a pile of terminals, so I'm not running heavy desktop apps like Slack, Discord, or LibreOffice.

Until yesterday I was using a Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 running Ubuntu 22.04. It was an awful combination (microphone didn't work, nubbin stopped working, touchpad had to be replaced, keyboard had dodgy keys, battery life was bad, Chrome wouldn't start unless you added some mystery command-line options, etc, etc, etc.)

Yesterday I got a new ASUS Zenbook running Windows 11 (and I added Ubuntu in WSL2). So far so good, it seems like I can do my coding stuff on the linux subsystem but then have desktop apps and peripherals on the windows side that just work. This is the first time I've had my personal computer be a Windows machine in like 20 years, so we'll see how it goes.

I don’t use laptops anymore, because the attachment of the keyboard to the screen creates an ergonomic disaster: there is no position that works well for the eyes, arms, back, and neck. For portable computing (and most everything else) I’m using a Surface Pro 3 with a wireless keyboard and Debian installed. Being able to independently position the screen and keyboard is nice! (Of course you could do the same with laptop and a wireless keyboard, but you’d be carrying extra dead weight.)

The fact that it’s a tablet with a touchscreen is a bonus: I can take it to the couch to recline while I read PDFs, etc.

Mac at work, but considering switching to a Linux machine (maybe System76/PopOS?) on the next refresh we do.

For my personal machine, and LG Gram 17" - I think about 2 years old at this point - the value/hardware is a pretty great value IMO (and frequently goes on sale at Costco), it's ultralight (important for me), still has a number pad, and a 16x10 display, unusual IMO outside of the Mac world. And the screen is gorgeous. Maybe not Mac/Retina (but I run my Mac screen at highest resolution rather than Retina anyways, so it more similar than you'd expect).

Primary computer is a desktop (since going full remote): ubuntu on repurposed gaming rig. I'm really happy with how well this computer works. As such, it's taken some of the pressure off having a perfect laptop.

Laptops:

Dell XPS 13 with ubuntu (preconfigured with ubuntu from Dell) -- has been an incredibly steady machine for years. I bought the framework laptop, installed ubuntu, but never got around to tweaking it to work as well as the Dell. So even though the framework is new, hardware better in every way it just sits on a shelf.

I also use newer thinkpad for work with windows -- it's fine I guess.

I have an HP EliteBook 850 G8 that I didn't choose, my employer chose it for me. I actually asked for a ThinkPad but they were out and I just got a HP. It's... OK? The keyboard isn't horrible, the touchpad is OK, it has a reasonably decent number of ports and overall it's an OK machine.

For personal use, I have two laptops: A Surface Laptop Studio and an MSI GS66 gaming laptop. So far I really like the Surface's form factor and the ability to work with it as a tablet or laptop. Touchscreen, keyboard and touchpad are all great, and it's fine as a personal computer -- I went for the top of the line model but in retrospect I could've gotten by with a lower-end model. It's not quite powerful enough for a good gaming machine and more powerful than I need for everything else. Not a big fan of their "dock" or whatever, it's overpriced and doesn't even have video output.

The MSI gaming machine is great as long as I don't have to use its keyboard. I have Linux and Windows on it, mostly use Linux and run Stable Diffusion on it quite happily. Takes two NVMe drives and is easy to upgrade.

The keyboard is atrocious though. Mostly this isn't a problem because I use it connected to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. But when I've tried typing on it directly I loathe the action of the keys and the spacing of the keyboard. I think they went for a "cool gamer" layout instead of something functional. If this was going to be a machine I typed on directly with any frequency I'd have sent it back. Have run Pop_OS! and Fedora on it with no issues.

Several Thinkpads ranging from a P50 with 32MB, a T540P (under restoration, broken screen - which is why I got it cheap...), A T42p (single-core Pentium M, 2GB but the 1600x1200 screen and keyboard make it one of my favourite machines), some T23s are in use as terminals. I can use these older machines because I offload heavier jobs to the server-under-the-stairs (DL380g7, 128GB RAM) which is reached through a VPN (Wireguard running on a virtual router on that same machine).

All machines run Debian Sid except for the server which, through Proxmox, offers a variety of operating systems through containers and VMs. While Debian Sid is supposed to be "unstable" it is quite stable in practice, probably also because I shun the more fancy bits given that I run Xmonad on X11 instead of some glitzy/glitchy desktop environment on Wayland...

Arch Linux on Lenovo P51 (since 2019). Topped with 128Gb of RAM, this was promary reason I got this laptop as at the time it was the only option with motherboard supporting that much of RAM. No issues so far :)

I also have a custom-built stationary running Arch - since 2011ish, still in service and in very good shape :)

For work, I use a mac. My employer's choice. No real objections when they work, but 2/4 macs I've had have failed in under 4 years (the screen died on an m1, the keyboard on a 2018).

For personal standard use I use a 12th gen framework. Too new to have a verdict on it for long term use. It runs Linux exclusively (NixOS).

For gaming I also have a i7 7th gen/gtx 1050ti Dell XPS from 2017 or so which I bring when visiting friends where we might do a LAN party (for home gaming I have a desktop). This was primarily my laptop prior to the framework. The wifi drivers for windows had issues with poor signal for the first year, but they eventually fixed that with a driver update. It dual boots Windows 10 and Arch Linux, but the framework has supplanted it for the activities I use Linux for.

For work, HP Zbook 15 with Windows 10. It's a decent laptop. It's bulky and I don't care for the keyboard, but it performs well and I usually have it in a docking station.

At home, Thinkpad x250 running Linux Mint. At one point in time I enjoyed experimenting with many different distros, but now I use Mint because it mostly "just works" out of the box.

I don't know what will replace the Thinkpad. Since I don't currently use it for work, it's fine that it is old - it works and doesn't need to be replaced yet. From many stories I've heard about modern Thinkpad's, I doubt whether I would buy another. Maybe my next personal laptop will just be a tablet with a keyboard case.

My primary work computer is a Thinkpad X1 extreme from 2020. I use it when working from home, as if it were a desktop. I ordered it while I was hyper-irritable from high dose corticosteroids, and to its credit, there's nothing about it that irritates me. It replaced a Razer Stealth from 2017 that was plagued with bios and hardware bugs.

I have another work laptop that I carry around when in the office, a Thinkpad P15s from the IT department. Its touchpad's middle click emulation is frustrating, but is otherwise fine. The touchpad is also polished shiny from my fingers, despite very infrequent use.

Both ThinkPads are currently running Ubuntu 20.04. It works decently well as long as hybrid graphics are disabled.

After getting M1 Macbook Air my Thinkpad T480s with Windows sits mostly unused. I can't imagine going back to not passively cooled and not dead silent laptop now. I probably will get T14 whatever gen eventually for Windows work, but hopefully not yet.

HP Elitebook x360 1030 G2 (maybe another order of words) i5 7-something 8GB Aluminium case

I needed a laptop, specifically a convertible for note taking by hand too. Went on ebay, could decide between a Thinkpad and the HP. Actually wanted the Thinkpad, but wasn't available on that day, so I went with the HP

I run both Windows for school and Linux for private stuff on it. Aside from some annoying things like freezes when converting, it works. Definitely not the machine of my dreams and HP annoys me a little bit, but overall decent device for what I need. Also cost only like 300€ or something. Can't understand how people carry their 2k MacBooks around in their backpack without worrying constantly

My only functioning laptop right now is a pinebook pro. I only use it to write fiction in bed. It can't really handle more than word processing.

If I play on lichess for example. Every time my opponent makes a move, the entire laptop freezes for a few seconds.

Lenovo G580, Dualbooting between BunsenLabs Linux and Windows 7 (for the odd occasion where I need Windows programs, specifically Photoshop).

The laptop has gone through it's set of upgrades of it's internals in a ship-of-theseus manner, but despite being a decade old now, it still functions really well as my daily driver!

This is a laptop from the time before hardware was completely abstracted away from tinkerers so it's been a joy to ttretch my muscles every few years and breathe new life into this system. Have an upgrade for the battery lined up since the battery-life is ridiculously low right now, but not much I can complain about besides that.

After 13 years on MacBooks, in 2021 I've switched to ThinkPad T14s AMD (1st gen) and I love it. Don't get me wrong, Macs are still very good and reliable machines, but I missed the possibility to run a very minimalistic and very tailored for me OS (especially in terms of GUI choice). Previously, before 'Mac era', I was using FreeBSD, then Gentoo - but now, after 13 years I decided I will use a binary distribution for a while, so I've chosen Void Linux. Now I'm back on Gentoo, but sometimes I think I would like to return to Void - I'm too old and too impatient to compile everything ;-)

Dell Latitude 5410 at work, Lenovo T460 at home, both with Windows 10.

I've tried using Linux Mate for a year at home (no hardware problems with that), but I didn't like the occasional switching for (better) gaming performance and the Creative Suite applications. Single boot is more comfortable.

Thinking about switching to a MacBook Pro at home, but I can buy 10 used Thinkpads (one every three years or so) for the price of a MBP, so I'm not sure whether I could get more value out of an MBP... Also not sure that I want to buy into the Apple ecosystem. Kind of "happy" with my self-hosted NextCloud, Android + f-Droid etc...

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen. 6 with Fedora and Windows 10 Pro.

However, Thinkpads are not what they used to be and always come with some tiny, but annoying issues. For example fingerprint reader is terrible, there are some minor date/time issues between Linux and Windows (partially fixed with BIOS update), etc.

I hope to keep the laptop for a few more years, but if I had to buy now I would consider one of the two:

* TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 - Gen7 (https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-InfinityBook-Pro-1...)

* Framework laptop

My personal machine is a 2012 Macbook Pro, my work-issued machine is a 2014 Macbook Pro. Both are likely to get updated next year.

For my personal machine I've looked at alternatives to Apple but I haven't found anything that's better and cheaper. Music is my hobby and the dealbreaker for me is the state of DAWs on Windows and Linux. For whatever reason I find the latency intolerable when using anything other than GarageBand/Logic Pro on a Mac when using a cheap USB-based audio interface. Using Apple's software on Apple's hardware it just works and works quite well.

I'm using a ThinkPad Yoga 260 with Windows 10.

I absolutely hate this computer.

Originally, I was trying to decide between a Macbook Pro or a ThinkPad T-Series (with Arch Linux), but my partner convinced me that a Yoga has more to offer, since he loved his first gen Yoga.

The Yoga 260 feels fragile, the screen is yellow in some places (and had been from the beginning), the touch panel suffers constant phantom clicks, and the battery life is awful. Customer service at Lenovo is poor.

The main attraction to the Yoga 260 is the pen and the touch, which break each Windows update.

If I didn't need Windows for work, I'd put Arch on it and call it a day.

Home: A 13-inch Asus Zenbook from 2014 (UX32LN) now running Ubuntu (MATE) 22.04. It's still good!

Work: A recent 13-inch Dell XPS that shipped with Ubuntu 22.04. It's also great, but the function key row has been replaced with touch buttons which is not good at all (including the escape and delete keys).

Work, previously: A 13-inch Dell Latitude from 2017. I originally ran 16.04 on it, then 18.04 until the above replaced it. Worked very well. Had every port you can wish for, including ethernet. Eventually the battery swelled and the keyboard stopped working.

As many people mentioned my work computer is a mac chosen by the employer. My major issues with iMac Pro, which by the way is nice piece of machine overall, rises when I'm using non-commercialized applications, open source mainly, github projects, conda forge etc. My personal laptop is refurbished dell latitude 7470 which I bought for less than 300$ at 2019 despite the fact I replaced many parts does the job and I like the sturdiness.

17" MSI Titan GT77 12U with 4x Samsung 980 Pro 2T, 128G RAM, running Manjaro w/ kernel 6.0 now, with btrfs. The raw power and throughput are unmatched, e.g. I run the script from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33345421 in 32 (3.8) and 18 (3.11rc1) secs respectively.

Asus TUF series (A15). Inexpensive with really good hardware specs and upgradable ram, storage and wifi cards. I usually go AMD on them, and midrange video cards. They're shockingly good as desktop replacements but they suffer a bit on battery life. My 4900H/RTX2060 feels snappier than my work M1 Pro in everything I do and it can play pretty much every modern game smoothly.

Work issued System76/Darter pro, running PopOS 20.04. Have a beefier desktop that I actually use for work, again on PopOS 20.04.

Personal, Framework 11th gen running Manjaro/gnome. It’s pretty great with the exception of some issue with the touchpad which sometimes doesn’t detect left clicks. Not a huge problem, since I’m spending most of my time in the terminal, but still annoying.

Personal laptop is a Macbook Pro (2021, M1 Pro). Work laptop is a Fujitsu Lifebook U Series, running Ubuntu 22.04.

I didn't get to choose much about my work device though. I was told to install whatever OS I want and "most of the team uses either a current Ubuntu LTS or a recent Debian", but I was free to install Windows or something entirely different as well

1. for development: Samsung Galaxy Book Pro (13.3-inch AMOLED, 8GB, i5) with Void Linux

2. mostly for office related stuff & browsing: MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, early 2013, 8GB, i7) with macOS High Sierra

The Galaxy Book Pro is ultralight and thin, perfectly portable. The Mac Book is super durable and reliable.

Although I own a few other (bigger) laptops, I like those two the most.

For work, it's a HP Zbook 15 G4 with Windows 10. Personal, a ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Windows 10) and ThinkPad T420 (OpenBSD). Downstairs, a Surface (Windows 10), if I need to look up something.

Although not being used at the moment. I do have several other ThinkPad T420 laptops (Windows 10, Windows 7, and FreeBSD), if I need one for something.

I'm more comfortable with the Windows OS. But why is there not a single competitor to Mac in terms of build quality??

I feel like I've been asking this question for 15 years.

We can dream

ThinkPad X13s w/ Snapdragon 8cx. Arch (and Windows 11) runs on it perfectly and love it so far. Haven't had too much time to play around with other distros and BSD but will try it next weekend or so. Same price as an M1 Macbook Air which is obviously better but I'd rather got this

System76.

I generally run Fedora, but when I got this box it came with PopOS and I wound up keeping it. So far I've been pretty happy running PopOS. I may still switch one day, just so I'm using the same OS across environments, but I don't really have any particular issue or gripe with Pop.

Framework for the last month or so. Old Thinkpad T460s is still around. Both with NixOS. Framework works fine. On the Thinkpad, fingerprint reader doesn’t work and LTE modem has issues (ModemManager crashes in a loop; not sure what the issue is, and never needed it enough to investigate).

Galago pro, with the current pop os, with some MacBook pro usage on the side. https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/galp5/README.html

Came here to say. Case is better than gazelle. Overall “just works”.

Lenovo Legion 5 (even though I don't play games) with Arch Linux. This is the only working machine at my home, so I have an external monitor and keyboard attached. No complaints whatsoever, works fine with UWHD on external display, etc. Silent, sturdy, sexy.

I've been reading https://usesthis.com for a while now. They interview people with the goal of understanding what tools (hardware, software, etc.) they use.

Last 4 years, work has been MacBooks, running MacOS.

For the most important use, my personal use, I've had a series of 3 or 4 Dell latitudes running Arch linux. You can get refurbished new ish Dells at a decent price that work well with Linux.

Macbook Pro for work, since it's provided by my employer.

frame.work with Ubuntu for personal. I keep thinking of switching to Mint or something else but switching to a new OS is such a hassle.

I also run Mint on an old Asus gaming laptop as a jellyfin server.

Linux, Fedora on laptop.

That way my servers and laptop's file structure and configuration stays the same. I can test on laptop, and then sync up to the server. Or if something breaks, can always sync down the files and check on laptop.

Which laptop has the best keyboard? This is a huge deciding factor for me.

I've had Thinkpads with beautiful, solid keyboards and they are joy to use. But they tend to be pretty old models and I want to try to update if possible.

Dell Inspiron running Win10. It's about 6 years old now. Only change was a RAM and SSD upgrade. Kinda heavy: I bought it mainly because it has a 17" screen, but in hindsight that was not a great idea.

Work laptop (issued by company): MacBook Pro late 2019 (16", i9, 64 GB of ram)

Personal laptop: Surface Pro X (SQ2, 16 GB of ram)

I use a desktop for most of my work and personal things though, I only use the laptops when I'm not home

Clevo NL51MU, 32GB of RAM, 1TB nvme, 1TB SATA SSD, running Arch Linux. If I were to buy a laptop again, I'd probably pick something with a nicer screen, but overall I've been pretty satisfied.

Now Thinkpad T470, T480 for the 64GB RAM (2x32GB slots). Previously Asus starting with one of the 1st netbooks Eeepc 701 with 7" screen. Loved that little netbook, perfect for the backpack

I use MacBook Pro given to me for work and Thinkpad P52 for personal use where I boot Windows and Linux. I also have MacBook Air for occasional personal use.

If I had to choose only one it would be the Thinkpad.

My last 5 Laptops have been Dell XPS 13's with Ubuntu.

Still no complaints with it at all. Solid specs, all hardware works (with some sounds blips every now and then), decent build quality, decent price.

Lenovo T14 (Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U) with RAM expanded to 24 GB, running Debian Testing. Works like a charm. Previously I had MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, I prefer T14+Linux to both of them.

I have the previous gen (T495s) running Debian testing. Don't you have issues with power usage? That's my only gripe with this laptop. Battery lasts maybe 3 hours max while on Windows it should last 8+.

MacBook Pro 15 as main work machine, Thinkpad T480 for linux, and purchasing a MacBook Air M2 for travel sometime soon because I hate lugging around the 15 inch.

Only ThinkPads for few decades, though I bought in China Lenovo with Thinkpad keyboard and used that for few years. W10 Pro, but if I had to reinstall I'd go for W7 or W8.1

Ubuntu on a Thinkpad X13 with AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U.

Everything works: Bluetooth, fingerprint reader, webcam, suspend etc. Battery life is good: more than seven hours. I'm very happy overall.

Apple MacBook Pro M2 + macOS ventura. I also always had a backup xiaomi (a macbook copy essentially) with ArchLinux, but haven't had a use for that for ages.

Home and Work: Apple Macbook Air (M2, 24GB RAM, 2TB SSD) running MacOS Ventura

I also have a couple Linux PC's as well as several servers.

Thinkpad P14s 2nd gen (AMD) running openSUSE Tumbleweed. Very happy with the setup.

The laptop mostly stays at home, hooked up to a large monitor but it travels well as well.

Macbook Pro (16 inch, 2019, 2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, 32 GB RAM) at work.

Custom-built desktop (AMD Ryzen 7 2700x 8-Core x 16, 32 GB RAM) running Ubuntu for personal use

Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th Gen running Linux (EndeavourOS)

Dell vostro whatever one has the 12 gen i7 and 3050ti

Entroware Apollo (UK company) delivered with Ubuntu 20.04.

https://www.entroware.com

Home laptop is 2016 HP Spectre X360 running LinuxMint.

Work is MBP 14” 2017 model.

At work I am a product manager for business software. At home I dabble in IOT stuff.

FWIW the machine I use most at home is a ReComputer SBC Powered by a J1045. Connects to a LG ultrawide and a Microsoft all in one Keybord. Best desktop I’ve ever had.

Work: Dell XPS 15

Home: Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (the AMD one). Got it on sale last year at Costco. Runs Pop_OS! and it's not bad for a cheap ass laptop.

Still using an old Macbook Pro (late 2017s), randomly using it since I am more active on PC, and I always take it while traveling.

Primary computer is a desktop (i7-10700k, 16GB RAM, 3070 Ti)

Work laptop, given to me by the company, is an HP EliteBook (i7-7700U, 16GB RAM)

Purism Librem 15 with Qubes OS. Originally designed for Linux, so suspend, WiFi etc. are working flawlessly out of the box.

Work: Thinkpad P72, 128GB RAM, Fedora

Personal#1: Lenovo Slim 7i 16", Win10

Personal#2: MBP 17", 2.3Ghz i7, early 2011, High Sierra :-)

Thinkpad t480s with Ubuntu. I'll give the whole experience a 8/10.

Speakers and mic are really bad for the price.

Clevo P17SM as personal laptop with Windows 10 and an Asus Rog Strix G15 as work laptop with Windows 11

Work: Dell XPS13 with Linux Mint Home: Dell XPS13 with Linux Mint, and Intel Mac Mini with Monterey

This might be more interesting/easier to interpret as a poll if you can still edit that.

Macbook pro at work because it’s what all my colleagues use

Thinkpad running mint for my personal machine

slimbook (with Ubuntu 22.10)

Works like a charm.

At work I'm forced to use a MBP and I hate it, battery last 1h is always doing noises is painfully slow, nothing works well with M1, updates requires 1h lost on a black screen. And sometimes release broken things...

Me too.

HP Spectre x360 w/ OLED and has treated me well, just use Win11 and WSL.

MSI + Linux

Thinkpad X270 running 9front.

Thinkpad T410i running Debian.

Edit: Though I much much prefer to work on a desktop.

What's the keyboard on the X270 like?

Personally I like the X200, X220, X230, ... series (as well as T400, T430, ...). One of the primary deciding factors is the quality of the keyboard.

P.S. What's it like to run 9front on a laptop? Is this a practical machine for getting the job done, or do you just want to learn about OS'es and experience the joy of Plan9? (I wanted to run Plan9 in the 1990's but was not yet open source at the time; plus computers were still expensive and finding a spare, compatible computer for a what would essentially be a hobby machine was out of the question.)

It's not bad but I much prefer a desktop keyboard. For me most laptop keyboards feel clunky or cramped.

Running 9front is a pretty bare bones experience but a great OS learning experience. Plan 9 is "unix built on top of a network." I LOVE the simple design which distills everything down to files you read and write data to. Those files can then be shared over a network. Its wild and fun to think of your OS as a host for servers that multiplex resources transparently without machine boundaries. Fun example: IP lives in /net so you dont need NAT on a 9 lan. You simply import the internet facing /net and bind it over your local /net and now you are using the internet facing ip stack. Everything truly is a file.

ThinkPad T480 with 32GB RAM and dual 512GB SSDs running NixOS.

Macbook Pro M1 Ultra (32C / 64GB RAM / 1TB)

Trying to take over the world are we?

ThinkPad X250 and FreeBSD13.1-RELEASE with pkg's

How is the keyboard on the X250 compared to other X200, X220, ... series Thinkpads?

Much worse...

Work: Macbook Pro M1 Max. Personal: Macbook Air M2

LG gram (14", 1 kg, 16:10 display) with Fedora

2 ThinkPads (T460 and X260) running Windows 10

Macbook Air M1 (personal) Macbook Pro M1 (work)

My work laptops have always been Dells...

Linux on Framework i7-1280P

Dell XPS 15, Linux Mint

XMG CORE 14 for me.

Lenovo Yoga for work.

MacBook Pro. Build quality is amazing, but macOS is far far behind Windows.

OSX is certainly far behind - because it's ancient history - but macOS isn't.

Fair, corrected.

please explain how, I have been out of the Windows world for quite a long while.

Windows from my experience is preferable because:

- WLS as a development environment

- better multi monitor support

- better window management

- more configurability

- less likely to crash

- has tons of useful features baked into the file explorer like being able to explore zip files, cast media, et cetera

I love the design and feel of the MacBook Pro, but the OS just doesn’t match the hardware unfortunately

macbook air M1 / surface laptop 3

lenovo T490 with current ubuntu

apple with apple os

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