Hacker News Reader

Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

I bought my current MacBook Pro, used, in 2016.

I drove it 54,000 miles around Africa on the worst roads in the world, using it every day in the heat, humidity, dust and sun. I drove it 30,000+ miles around North America using it heavily. I drove it 36,000 miles around Australia, using it at least 30 hours a week in the dust, heat, sun, etc.

It's had many dings and bashes and a few drops.

It still works great, and I've never repaired a thing on it. The charger has duct tape on the worn cables, and battery life is down to about 3 hours with light use and less than an hour editing HD video.

That's what I'm looking for.

View on HN

Exactly. I don't care how it's built I care that it survives some daily use that is not sitting on a desk.

My job many years ago provided me a Lenovo x220. I used to haul that thing from NJ to Arkansas with me twice a year and all over. It was not pretty but it literally took anything I could give it.

My current M1 MacBook Air goes with me on my bicycle daily, goes camping and goes everywhere with no issues.

My Starlabs linux "star lite" laptop had screws back out of it the first time I took it on my bicycle. After replacing screws over and over and eventually taping them in place to avoid the hassle the display stopped working. After fixing the cable for this eventually my keyboard began acting up and now the machine is just a desktop. Mind you this was in about 1.5 years.

Everyone should experience the x220 keyboard. It's probably the best laptop keyboard I've experienced.

The x230 onward is also extremely good.

The trick for me is key travel. I bought a new Thinkpad that had 1.3mm of travel and instantly hated it. 1.5mm feels so so much better (not to mention 1.8mm). No new thinkpads have above 1.3mm I believe (in the pursuit of thinness).

Meanwhile my (new in) 2016 macbook pro overheats if I plug the charging cable in the wrong side, have a bunch of keys that don't register and only moved a total of maybe 300 feet after reaching the office.

Since when is "miles driven around" a good indicator of build quality for a laptop? Your laptop isn't a car. There's no odometer on it.

I was using that to show how beat up it has been, the conditions it has had to endure and the amount of use it has had.

I think it's safe to say a laptop has to be pretty tough to handle what mine has been through, compared to one that sits on a desk, or commutes to/from work in a backpack.

Not all miles are created equal. Surviving the vibrations of some African and Australian roads is testament to a solid build. Of cars too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com