But I still do wish someone would make a Linux laptop that's as tightly integrated with the hardware as macOS is on a MacBook.
Just from an ACPI perspective, I'd expect the Linux variant to (at a minimum) be built with the Intel compiler and the Windows one with Microsoft's. It is likely that there are far more differences, though.
$1400 for a laptop with 1920x1080 at 60hz in 2024 is a joke. $200 more gets you a 3024x1964 @ 120hz, with an M3 processor and the ability to get warranty service walk-in anywhere around the world.
But I want a Linux laptop, not Windows or OSX. I also want a computer that obeys me, not some megacorp (not unrelated to the previous point.) I also want to not fight it all the time.
Can't comment about XPS, but I feel that it'll be the same.
Other than the pitiful 4 hour battery life, the laptop still runs fine, and mostly does what I need it to do for a permanently-docked daily driver.
(The external "carbon-like" skin texture just disintegrated on it after a few years, and the hinges got loose, but otherwise it is tip-top, still functional!)
I feel that it has nothing to do with manufacturer, though, just not good enough Linux support for laptops.
On the contrary, it's down to the model. As I type this on a fully-functional Thinkpad, I can assure you Linux is fine on laptops.
Windows has these rough edges, too, though. It's actually pretty shocking that here in 2024, PC manufacturers and OS vendors are still struggling with basics like sleep/wakeup. Last job I had with Windows laptops, everyone would walk around the office from meeting to meeting with their laptops propped open because nobody could be sure that their OS would actually wake up when they opened the lid. And when you closed it and went home for the day, would standby actually work or would it be on fire and out of battery the next morning? Somehow, only Apple has seemed to be able to solve this Herculean problem.
Bit of a stab in the dark here but I would assume ARM has at least something to do with this? Tablets, phones, etc. get standby a lot better than x86 systems seem to. My pre-M1 Macbook Pro does not handle standby well but my partner's M2 Macbook Air lasts for forever and handles sleep etc. well. The lower power consumption in "standby mode" on ARM seems like at least part of the picture for why Apple gets this so much better. I bet it's part of why Windows is trying to release their ARM variant and have been working on it for 10+ years
Intel mac on sonoma?
I'm a huge XPS15 advocate at work and really love these machines as a Windows developer. But the standby just doesn't work. If I close the lid and throw it in my bag, then the battery will be empty and the bag will be hot as hell. This is a huge failure and makes me shutdown my XPS15 every evening. Which is just nonsense. I'm a Mac user at home and just never shut these laptops down ever.
Meanwhile, my other machine from work is a Precision workstation running Windows 10 and it gives me all kinds of power issues, more invasive updates, random restarts, random high fan RPMs, etc. Dell has already serviced the machine, twice. What a mess.
Maybe 2025 will finally be the year of Windows on the desktop!
It is causing so many issues, because the common use case for a laptop is to close the lid, and then stuff it into a padded bag. If anything starts up the laptop for whatever reason, all that heat is trapped in there, cooking the device. Some system BIOS are removing the option to even disable modern standby mode (vs traditional standby where just the memory was energized)
1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
The CPU manufacturers have stopped providing support for developing firmware with an S3 (“traditional standby”) function for recent CPU generations, except for a couple of laptop manufacturers receiving special treatment.
Their Modern Standby requirements should have included a clause saying that the machines efficiency core (which I assume is what would be running in standby) should not be able to raise the temperature enough to require a fan.
Pretty much nobody asks for the same feature to be configurable on their iPad because it works well.
Windows finally had suspend working reliably, where memory was frozen, and nothing else on the PC could change the state of memory or the CPU. Modern standby is Intel/Microsoft's effort to hoist that mobile-style of operating system management onto PC's, in an environment that was not expecting it.
They should have slowly rolled it out, with thermal protections from the get go to prevent disaster, and after a generation or two when the hardware + software are working correctly, made it on by default. It seems like they rushed it for Win 10, and then made it the default on Win 11 before it was really stable.
There's this thing called Shut Down. Use it sometimes.
It happens on macbooks too weirdly.
A sleeping laptop, even "modern sleep" should not be doing enough work to create a meaningful amount of heat.
Chances are if the system keeps waking from sleep, they have some third-party app that keeps waking the system.
It has been doing this just fine since Windows 8 came out across multiple Thinkpads, Surface tablets, and other devices.
Even pre-Windows 8, sleep has generally worked perfectly fine for me. I'd have my computer on sleep between classes, open it up and pretty much instantly be right back in OneNote ready to take notes. Cheap Compaq laptops, expensive HP laptops, IBM Thinkpads, Lenovo Thinkpads, Surface tablets, no-name cheap Walmart laptops, all kinds of devices. In the last almost 20 years I've had less than a dozen instances of a hot bag running XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, now 11.
I had issues with sleep on some desktops in the past, where it wouldn't want to stay in sleep. Every time it was some dumb app waking up the machine. Never due to some specific Windows issue, always something I installed.
Why would I want it to do that? OTOH, coming back from pay of on modern hardware is fast enough that I just reenable hibernation and use that instead of sleep, now that MS has made sleep less sleep-ish.
> When Modern Standby-capable systems enter sleep, the system is still in S0 (a fully running state, ready and able to do work). Desktop apps are stopped by the Desktop Activity Moderator (DAM); however, background tasks from Microsoft Store apps are permitted to do work. In connected standby, the network is still active, and users can receive events such as VoIP calls in a Windows store app. While VoIP calls coming in over Wi-Fi wouldn’t be available in disconnected standby, real-time events such as reminders or a Bluetooth device syncing can still happen.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
So, don't buy poorly designed hardware? Even my $300 Walmart (Motile) laptop suspends with Connected Standby enabled without issue.
I've had over a dozen devices since 8.1 came out, none of which had problems with Connected Standby.
As a quick fix I assigned Ctrl-Meta-L to Sleep (Meta-L is screen lock - I'm using KDE btw). It didn't take long for me to automatically press this combo before closing the lid - I got so much used to it that I had stop stop and think when I got a new laptop later and installed linux fresh on it. And of course I just set it up like before, even though this one works :)
I feel like the forces around device driver development conspire to make sure this rarely happens, that is, we can’t have “commodity” hardware that has “cutting edge” device drivers because the time and expense of developing the driver isn’t justified with commodity pricing.
All those computers charge over USB-C with the full force of the port. This is fine. But the second the battery is completely drained, the port cannot revive that computer. You must use the laptop's crappy barrel plug.
Only Apple allows you to use only USB-C as a charger.
There's been no updates on the Virgo project for about a year. I hope they're able to get it to market, but it seems a ways off.
Other than that I have had some good gaming experiences but the drawbacks are too much for me to recommend.
The vast majority of users aren't going to be bothered by those screen specs. For many coming from low-end hardware, it's actually an upgrade. Most work won't be significantly impacted by increasing the refresh rate, and while better resolution can be helpful if you keep multiple windows on the screen, most programs still feel tailored to 1920x1080 screens. Office workers writing emails, reports, purchase orders, and basic spreadsheets aren't likely to notice a better refresh rate and they're more likely to get a positive impact from turning a monitor vertical to fit more of a page on their screens.
Don't get me wrong, I use two 2560x1440p monitors at 144Hz at home, but I honestly get just as much work done on my dual 1080p 60Hz monitors at my desk at work. Saying that a laptop with 1080p@60hz is a waste is elitist and unnecessary in my opinion.
MacOS doesn't run on anything(1) but a Mac and people seem to be okay with that, but good grief, you tell them to pick a machine that is compatible with Linux and they lose their shit.
(1) Please don't be pedantic, I get it.
Then it is really an apple to orange comparison.