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Comment by bityard | Hacker News Reader

I used to be a Thinkpad fanatic due to nice build quality and good Linux support.

But in the past few years, I have taken to just buying Dell's midrange business laptops. The build quality can vary by model but they are cheaper, ubiquitous, have great support while in warranty, and Linux always runs just fine on them if you pay attention to the hardware you're buying.

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Oh man fuck Dell. I get through one every 9 months at work. Absolutely the worst laptops I've ever used. Precision series.

What model? I've been pretty happy with Dell machines at work. Happy enough I bought an older model refurb for 200 dollars shipped, which fits the chargers and docks and such I had lying around from work.

Model: Precision 7520 Cpu: i7-6820HQ Memory: 32gb Gpu: Nvidia Quadro M2200 4GB Storage: 500gb SSD Display: 15" 1080p

Pretty good specs for the price. Serviceable for older/lower requirements games. Pretty bulky machine though.

5550 - two complete thermal failures. 7670 has blown up two $400 docks, won't charge half the time, blue screens once a week, weighs a ton, gets hotter than satan's nuts.

Wild! I have not at all had any of those issues, and I've had at this point 9 different Dell machines for work or play in the last ~10 years, all laptops. I'm typing this on a Latitude 5421.

Granted - My work has been heavy on memory but light on CPU, so perhaps I'm not applying enough deadly heat.

Do you live in the arctic circle?

TBF their monitors are good. I have two Dell P2723QE's and they are absolutely great.

Midwest US where it gets both plenty hot and plenty cold.

Tell me about it. Our company was recently acquired and they are swapping out Thinkpad P1's with Dell precision. Protest was no use.

Same. I've got a work Precision 7670 in top spec, literally a £7000(!!!!!) machine, and it overheats within 5 seconds of being under load, the CPU hits 100C and throttles down hard. It's equipped with a 3080Ti but it's the same story - the GPU overheats and throttles down to 200MHz, so anything you play is just a stuttery mess. And it's not surprising - inside it there are 2 heat pipes going to two small fans with only one air outlet. Even my "gaming" MSI laptop with half the spec has much beefier cooling, it can run its 3070Ti under full load indefinitely. Not to mention their £400 thunderbolt docks that work maybe 50% of the time.

Same hardware. Absolute turd. Also the screen on mine is the OLED one which is so reflective I can't see anything on the screen other than my own reflection. Who designed that POS!

The design of T490 was a big "F U, users" from Lenovo.

My magnesium top cased T480 (non-s) with 64 GiB RAM, (4) 72 Whr batteries and the internal one still works and is good enough for the girls I go out with and Windows 11 Enterprise.

I purchase the business version of the ThinkPads and the warranties are fine. In fact, HP, Dell and Lenovo use the same company in my area when they send out technicians to work on them.

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