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The author doesn't care about either the keyboard or the display because external parts are used... Maybe a mini PC is a better option for him?

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Right? This is like doing a car review, but continually pointing out that you are just going to leave it parked in front of your house so you don’t care about how it drives.

I think this is right, but optionality is valuable.

I'm curious if a $500 mini PC plus a bottomed out mb air would suffice (maybe not! Having all your stuff on your laptop can be useful)

For all that, I haven't considered a Mac mini even though I'm probably an ideal user. It doesn't help that it's on the m2 instead of m3, though. (Or m4, which is in iPads?)

I probably should

I have a high-end DIY Linux desktop and a base model M1 Air that I got for $750. I think it’s a good pairing. The laptop works well as sort of a thin client to the desktop for real work. If I didn’t have the desktop I’d definitely want more RAM, and probably a machine with a fan. Despite what many people say, I’ve had no trouble getting it to run OOM or start thermal throttling.

I wanted to try a Linux laptop, but in the end I felt having a ton of battery life was ultimately my top priority when away from my desk. I don’t much care for what Apple is doing with MacOS, but their hardware really is great.

At Google we all had good Linux desktops at our desk and did work via ssh and I rather enjoyed it.

I mostly don't even need a powerful desktop (but the cost curve is so attractive vs laptops)

Yeah we’re kind of between. The M4 just appeared so it’s not there yet.

Rumor is the M3 chips were quite expensive due to the low yields on the new fab process so Apple didn’t seem to want to put them in their less popular computers/devices.

The M4 is on a different fab process. It’s the same feature size, but I don’t think it can run quite as fast. In exchange it’s much cheaper and cooler running. So an M4 sounds worth waiting for.

Also no mention of trackpad, speakers, GPU (although I don't really care much for GPU myself), webcam, mic.

Or the battery :P

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