Hacker News Reader

Comment by pinkgolem | Hacker News Reader

Is ram and SSD and CPU all you care about?

I mean yeah, you will get a PC a bit cheaper..

But then you just ignored everything else, build quality, webcam, speakers, sound, SSD speed, keyboard, battery runtime, screen quality..

With business line for comparable build quality/durability you are not getting half price anymore, and I have not yet seen any laptop speaker/webcam not on a MacBook with comparable quality.

I do not have access to bulk discounts, but you are more then invited to post some samples.

View on HN

For me personally? Yeah, I care about build quality, webcam, speakers, etc. Which is mostly why I still use a macbook.

But for bulk purchases the business is buying for the average office worker, no, none of those things matter. The only thing that matters is RAM, CPU, and does it have a 3/5 year warranty (whatever the lifecycle of the device is). Otherwise, it's spending 8 hours a day hooked up to a docking station, lid closed, and users use headsets for meetings.

That's largely why it's so hard to find/buy a non-mac laptop with equivalent price to performance & build quality. They largely aren't made for individuals who are choosing their own hardware.

So the initial quote:

>even with the specs doubled.

Was bullshit? Because webcam, sound durability are also specs..

The vast majority of people care more about RAM, SSD and CPU only. Apple charges $200+ for an increment in each of these departments.

Moreover, the speakers, keyboard, battery, webcam are almost caught up in quality with Macbooks when you look at products like LG Gram.

Reg. Screen Quality, some windows machines have better screens actually, and those are the OLED ones.

>vast majority of people care more about RAM, SSD and CPU

The vast majority of people do not know what any of this is, and they do not care at all, they want a fast machine for there usecase.. and for most people that is the equivalent to editing a word doc and listening to Spotify.

After watching a review if the LG gram, yeah, I am not convinced that comes anywhere close in regards of speakers or keyboard.. and the durability seems.. questionable

It also seem to be around the same price point of a MacBook air with more or less the same specs on super duper black Friday sale

>> fast machine for there usecase

Isn't that what RAM, CPU and SSD are all about? The average user doesn't care much, but at the end of the day if your machine cannot keep up several open apps due to low RAM or cannot store a lot of data because you only have 256GB, that's a problem right?

Sure, but that border is for a lot more then 90% of users mostly reached with 16gb and an m1/and equivalent...

From a certain point a faster SSD was more important for program startup and the m1 did blow a normal windows laptop out of the water there

And nowadays is mostly how well does the os it's thing, a word doc will not compute faster because you have more cores

Reply on news.ycombinator.com