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Comment by HumblyTossed | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 14" 14ACN6. Got one at Costco over a year ago for around $700US. Runs Pop_OS! really well.

Weight is very much light enough for me.

Edit: There is one downside I found. I replaced the 512GB SSD with 1TB and nearly needed stitches because the bottom plate was so sharp. Oh and I just looked it up, it's listed at 3.04lbs

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A big factor is how these machines age too, though. 4 years ago the 2020 M1 Macbook Air dropped, and it's still a fantastic computer today. On the other hand, I don't think I would enjoy using a 4 year old Lenovo Ideapad today

Why not? It benchmarks really good:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+5600U&i...

Here's the M1:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+320...

I'm just thinking more in terms of hardware. Trackpad, keyboard, display, hinges, ports, support, battery life-- all of those (in my experience) tend to either be poor out of the box or decay rapidly for many machines. I've used an "enterprise" HP laptop that's just a couple years old recently-- the battery is totally cooked and it feels like it's made out of takeout containers.

I'm a year and a half in and everything is running smooth. I still get a full workday out of the battery - and that's using Linux. That's plenty for me. It opens smooth. The keyboard is good - no deck flex. The screen is fine - even at only 300nits I don't need it brighter as I don't work in bright areas.

I really really don't see how this won't last another 2 and half years or even more.

Eh, I've been using a Dell Inspiron (the ones with aluminum chassis) since 2019. I've been using a 13 inch Dell model of the same type since 2016. They're great quality, great track pad (actual clicking, instead of haptic garbage of the MacBook) and quite reliable. I say this as someone who also owns and uses an M1 Air, and uses a 2019 MBP and a 2023 M1 for work.

Apple isn't the only one making great machines that're nice to hold and nice to use.

A 4 year old Lenovo is an eight core Ryzen with 32gb memory. Battery still lasts a day. I'm not sure there's anything significantly better available yet.

is a day a figure of speech or?

I charge it overnight and usually leave it unplugged for the day. It's rare for the laptop to give out before I do. T14s gen 1.

Ymmv. I got the low power screen instead of a touch screen and it spends most of the day rendering Emacs from a server elsewhere.

Browsers and local compile&run probably comes in around six hours. Some very cheap external monitors bring the runtime down to a couple of hours.

I'm still using this beautiful 12 year old Samsung series 9 laptop. Unlike my 9 year old Macbook it still receives official security updates (Win 10) and can run any new application (Xcode refuses to install on the Macbook, too old).

https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/16/3160289/samsung-series-9-...

can't you install linux on an older mac? (similar to how you installed win 10 on a 12 yr old laptop) for newer m1+ macs we still don't know the max age support

I probably can install Linux, but I'm fairly certain Xcode would still refuse to install... The upgrade from Win 7 to 10 was seamless, replacing MacOS with Linux would be like replacing the computer.

>I don't think I would enjoy using a 4 year old Lenovo Ideapad today

Why not? I have a M1 Max supplied by my employer, and it's awesome. But guess what I use as my daily driver? An old t450s, running Ubuntu. Does everything I need, I can fix and replace anything in it (including the battery), and the keyboard is awesome. I think it's 10 years old.

I mean, for most of the work I do my computer is just a client anyway.

I have a Thinkpad T480 from 2018, bought it last year for $100. Peoples needs in a laptop are far lower than marketers would have you believe. Where as many M1 macs users are finding their laptops a struggle to do basic tasks. I use it for programming, 7 hours battery life with hot swappable battery. My fan spins up less often than the Apple silicon pros in the office which is nice because I hate fan noise.

Dell Latitude 5400, i5-8265U [0], 14" matte screen. Bought refurbished, self-upgraded to 32GB and 1TB M2 PCI SSD with about 10 mins worth of work.

Currently running Firefox (14 tabs), LibreOffice Calc (spreadsheet), LibreOffice Writer (word processor), 3 WebStorm project windows (JetBrains JavaScript IDE), Kitty (terminal emulator), on Arch Linux w/Gnome (Wayland). No fans running, about 6 hrs battery life on WiFi being productive. Around 3.4 lbs, so maybe a little heavy for a 14" machine. But the extra 0.x lbs is worth it.

Total cost under $600, been using as daily driver and dev machine for about 4 years now. Handles VMs, containers, whatever with no fuss. Parts are easy to source, easy to find repair helf for, and not too bad to replace. Spends about half it's life plugged into an external 42" 4K monitor, I get 30 FPS but that is just fine for everything I do. Point being, it handles fancy external display just fine. And that's with integrated graphics.

It's not a fancy computer. Fellow nerds sneer at it. I have people wonder at the fact that I do so much with like the same Dell that their non-tech acquaintances bought at WalMart or Costco or maybe second hand off Facebook, but this thing just works. I don't care if it breaks, or if I drop it, or if I spill something on it. The cost for replacing or upgrading is easily justified by ease of doing so - plus the money that has been saved by not getting a higher-priced machine. It is silent during web browsing and most day-to-day tasks.

Literal skylake processor is not in the same performance class as M3 no matter what you tell yourself. The battery life alone is literally an order of magnitude different.

Just like OP said, this is not really a comparable machine. It’s fine if it meets your needs, but the apple is also a better machine and you shouldn’t dump on people for acknowledging this reality.

> not in the same performance class...it's fine if it meets your needs...the apple is also a better machine

all responses here have been along the lines of 'i have x many tabs open no problem. i develop y no problem. i use z containers no problem.' i tried to mirror that, in my response. sounds like the same class for most people in this thread by real usage, if not same performance class by benchmarking.

> you shouldn't dump on people for acknowledging this reality

sorry if i burst the bubble a little, if you excuse me i'll get back to being as productive as the other people crowing about the machine - possibly more so because I've spent the remaining $700-$2200 on other things that boost my productivity.

> sorry if i burst the bubble a little

Pfft. Okay. I wonder if there’s a name for this kind of reaction, “door slamming”?

Normally it behooves you to be in the right when you do it.

Hello, laptop buddy!! Paid more than $700 in euros for it two years ago though. Can totally relate to the sharpness, but otherwise still very happy with it. Had to patch my ACPI to nuke S0 and get decent S3 suspend though. Did they ever patch that with firmware?

I recall doing this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/zq3tc5/how_to_disab...

And it worked for me.

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