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Comment by wiseowise | Hacker News Reader

When alternatives are Windows laptops that barely work - it doesn’t seem so expensive.

Case in point. Back in 2018, me and my gf bought new laptops. I’ve opted for MBP and she bought Asus Rog Strix. Both were over 2k euro.

Two years after her laptop has constant issues with Windows updating all the time, WiFi modem dies until you power cycle whole machine, it randomly turns on at night or doesn’t go to sleep at all, fans that sound like jet engines even on lowest of speeds.

My MBP 2018 is still a champ after all these years, I had literally zero issues with it and the only reason why I’m contemplating upgrading is how amazing M processors are.

And seriously? More expensive? MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and M processor starts at 1500 euro. It has far superior build quality, software and battery life than any Linux/Windows machine in any category. And on top of that it runs completely silently. Apple=expensive meme needs to die.

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People who have $1500+ to spend on laptops forget that the vast majority of people don't spend (and can't spend) that much on a laptop. So much of the market is in that $500-$600 price range. You wouldn't be wrong to point out that an M1 or M2 Macbook is a far superior device, but it really doesn't matter.

And in terms of specs, Apple is still not an incredible value for the money. The laptop I'm using now is a last-years model Thinkpad. I bought it refurbished, with a two year warranty included, for $250. It's got a 12 core (edit: 6 core, 12 threads) Ryzen 5000 series, and for less than $150 I've added 32 GB of RAM (total RAM 40 GB), and a 1 TB NVMe disk (the computer has slots for two). That's an absolutely crazy deal for $400, and the build quality on these Thinkpads is miles above cheap Dell Inspirons or whatever.

For most people, this is a much more reasonable choice than spending $1500 on a laptop. My last laptop (Dell XPS) lasted over 12 years; I think the "laptop dies in two years" stories are the exception, not the rule, and Apple's laptops are certainly not lemon-proof, in that regard.

> It's got a 12 core Ryzen 5000 series

AMD's mobile 5000 series topped out at 8 CPU cores and 8 GPU compute units. I'm not aware of any laptops that used AMD's desktop CPUs prior to the 7000 series; there may have been some boutique OEM doing that but almost certainly not Thinkpads.

Sorry, it's 6c12t.

I have asus zephyrus M16-2021 and recently spent 50$ to install new 2tb nvme stick, on top of existing 1tb.

How much MacBook with 3tb storage costs?

You never seen Macbook users with USB drives taped to the lid of their laptops?

Apple=expensive meme will only die if it stops being true. For example, I can get a Thinkpad T14 Gen 4 with the best processor AMD has to offer, 32 GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD for less than the base M2 Air (€1250 vs €1300), which has a pitiful 8 GB/256 GB RAM.

If that's too expensive, an E14 Gen 5 has a previous-generation processor but can be had in a reasonable configuration (Ryzen 5, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) for around €700.

You can knock a fair chunk (€60) off of the price by getting them without Windows as well, which is a nice option when you're gonna install Linux anyway. But the prices I mentioned is before you even do that!

> Thinkpad T14 Gen 4

It would still have a garbage-tier (relative to mac) 1080p screen? Of course upgrade to OLED is only ~$250 which isn’t that bad

The E15 is way too plasticky for it to be a fair comparison also the screen is awful.

> But the prices I mentioned is before you even do that!

While it’s on sale sure. Otherwise the price is much, much higher https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/configurator/cto/index.html?bun...

I picked the upgrade to the low-power screen, which should look much better than the base screen, although probably not as good as a Mac one. OLED would cost an extra €100 compared to that, although it does have some compromises such as higher power draw. Also, current Thinkpads have 1920x1200 screens on most models now, not 1920x1080. And the OLED ones are 2880x1800, which sounds nice but honestly 1200p sounds nicer as it'd be usable without scaling.

Those prices in the French store look absolutely wild to me. In the Dutch store, the base model T14 Gen 4 AMD starts at 999, without any discounts visible!

> with 16GB of RAM

Which is not a lot.

> superior build quality

Is that really true? There are PC laptops with comparable or only slightly inferior build quality.

> And on top of that it runs completely silently.

That great. But it depends on your use case, thermal throttling can certainly be an issue. Also Intel/AMD have mostly caught up performance wise.

PC laptops with similar build quality cost the same or more.

x86 machines only compete when you don’t consider power consumption (which really matters for laptops). It’s so bad that most top end x86 machines won’t even try to hit those peak numbers unless the machine is plugged in and then only for short periods of time.

My M1 beats most x86 machines even after it throttles and it’s over three years old now. My M3 Max machine blows away the x86 machines I run into and it does it while still having good battery life.

> My M1 beats most x86 machines even after it throttles and it’s over three years old now

I doubt that. Last gen Intel/AMD cpus are pretty fast these days.

There are a few points here.

1. Most x86 machines aren't running the fastest CPUs. They are running U-series CPUs and usually aren't even running the best U-series CPUs. H-series laptops are relatively rare.

2. Even U-series machine have a peak power consumption north of 50 watts. H-series CPUs peak out at over 3x that (157w for Intel 13/14th gen HX CPUs). There's simply no way to disperse that much energy with the small heatsinks available (even in a gaming laptop).

3. Most of these machines downclock massively when not plugged in.

4. The laptop size required for an H-series CPU is massive.

Putting all of that together, an M1 machine is simply faster than most x86 laptops because they contain low-binned, U-series CPUs. For the small fraction that contain H-series CPUs, My M1 is still generally faster if both machines are being used as laptops rather than bad desktops. This performance delta gets even bigger if the workload sustains enough that the x86 machines begin to throttle because they can't sustain the insane peak power draw.

You are comparing the SW, not the HW. Windows 10, by default, sucks on any HW. You can make it to behave a little but you need special tools and knowledge (Ooshutup10 and advanced power modes).

>When alternatives are Windows laptops that barely work - it doesn’t seem so expensive. Case in point.

Yeah there are some junky laptops out there, but case in point I've only had sub-1000 Euro Windows notebooks from Acer, HP and Lenovo, and all worked fine and lasted no matter how hard I abused them. Maybe I'm just super lucky. Or maybe I was an informed consumer with a trained eye to spot the good from the junk. Or both.

>And seriously? More expensive? MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and M processor starts at 1500 euro

16GB ram and how much storage?

Yeah, that's pretty expensive for the specs and EU purchasing power. Case in point, for Christmas I bought myself a new Lenovo with the new 4nm Ryzen 7840HS, 32GB RAM and 1TB NVME, for ~800 Euros sticker price, no special promotion or sale. That seemed like a good deal to me.

Now how much does Apple charge for 32GB RAM and 1TB storage? 2500+ Euros for 24GB RAM. Damn son! Apple are only price competitive at the bare minimum base models(8GB RAM on a "Pro" device?! Give me break Apple). When you start adding cores, RAM and storage, the price skyrockets.

Each to his own if the price is worth it, I don't judge. My friend who does a lot of video editing gets his money's worth, but for my uses cases(Windows, Linux, gaming, coding), that 800 Euro laptop will be more than enough, no need to spend way more on Apple for less functionality. Battery life on those Macs is tight tough. If you're on the road a lot, and don't need windows/linux stuff, I'd definitely get one.

> ~800 Euros sticker price, no special promotion or sale. That seemed like a good deal to me.

Sure but at that level you usually get poor build quality and/or thick plasticky chasis and a horrible screen

Mine doesn't have any of those issues. I think some people are stuck with the impression that all Windows laptops are stuck in 2006 and haven't kept up in terms of quality. Mine is slim, full metal build, 2.5k 16:10 IPS screen.

So what am I compromising on compared to spending over 3x more on a Macbook? Is the Mac display, trackpad and build quality a bit better? Most likely. Is it over 3x better? Definitely not.

> is slim, full metal build, 2.5k 16:10 IPS screen

I’m not sure you can get something like that for $800?

> some people are stuck with the impression that all Windows laptops are stuck in 2006

No, you can can certainly get very nice Windows laptops for 30% less than equivalent mac or so. I was only doubting the price

> I’ve opted for MBP and she bought Asus Rog Strix. Both were over 2k euro.

She bought a gaming brand. There's no such a thing as a good gaming brand and the issue isn't with PCs but buying something targeted at people who don't even use laptops as /laptops/ so the build quality is horrendous (particularly on the hinges, it's common for gaming laptops to have failed hinges but the consumer target doesn't care because the PC never leaves their desk).

There's no issue with Lenovo ThinkPad or Dell Latitude. There's a wide range of PC manufacturers out there, many of which make classes of computers Apple will never make, like the Panasonic Toughbook which are water, dust and shock resistant to the point where you can use them as weapons to bash someone's head and the computer will still run fine.

By the way, if you're unlucky enough to get a lemon, Dell and Lenovo offer /on site/ warranty service on their business class hardware (another perk of buying latitude rather than consumer targeted garbage like inspiron). You don't have to ship your computer back or go to a specific store like with Apple. They come to fix it.

> And on top of that it runs completely silently

Most PC laptops are quite silent, you can't get silence from a device that was made to push dedicated GPUs to their limits like a gaming laptop.

As for Apple's legendary build quality, the last macbook I've owned before ditching the Apple ecosystem entirely was one that was affected by both the keyboard dust issue and the short display cable that bends too much whenever you open the monitor.

https://www.ifixit.com/News/12903/flexgate

https://support.apple.com/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-n...

Yeah, great build quality. I think it's the first time in my entire life I saw a keyboard fail so quickly and hard. And that display cable.. who designs things like this? It should have been obvious to anyone who designs computers that putting that much tension on the cable was going to make it rip. I can never rid myself of the suspicion Apple makes hardware designed to fail after warranty/Apple care period after this.

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