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Comment by krick | Hacker News Reader

So, really, is there anything left to buy except MacBooks anymore? I'm not a big fan of Apple, and would have to go through all sorts of nuisances to install Linux on it anyway, but the longer I search for solid 13" laptop, the more horrified I become. It cannot be that nobody makes nice laptops, can it?

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I'm constantly frustrated by this. I mean, HP and Lenovo have become the cheap Chinese knock-off companies of themselves, and there's an unwritten rule that every Asus product must be an absolute dream except for one critical deal-breaker frustration per-product that makes you hate it.

Lenovo business laptops. The consumer laptops are shoddy and thin, but the business laptops tend to be rather durable.

I wish companies would follow the car company approach and fully separate their consumer-crap and quality corporate brands into to completely-different brand names. I tend to think that their consumer-end completely sabotages their high-end name. Everybody has a foul memory of a mid-range dell/hp/asus device and that feeds consumers into the "screw it, I'll just buy Apple" response. Make a brand that consumers can trust.

That's actually great idea I think. Would be not only more profitable for them, but also much better for me as a customer, as I wouldn't have to make detective adventure out of search for a computer. I wonder if they never thought of it or there're any problems that disallow them to do that.

Can't stand the clicking trackpad. Loved my $300 consumer grade Lenovo with buttons but my new thinkpad is so awful I've pretty much stopped using it. It never gets better, I haven't gotten used to it, and it's been six months.

I really like the new glass trackpad.

T420 - OK. Pretty durable and robust. Never took to the screen much; the keyboard seemed like heaven or hell depending on my mood; the trackpad was utterly terrible.

S400 - I like it a lot. Took a while to get used to the chicklet keyboard but like it now. Trackpad is good. Screen is fine. Very thin and not robust (screen can bend), and terrible battery life.

Yoga 11e - I quite like. Very robust, nice keyboard and trackpad. Crisp if small screen. Good battery. Screen can bend back but far too heavy to be a tablet replacement.

The Razer Blade 14 is a very nice machine, if you can get over the Matrix-esque green backlit keyboard. Sane keyboard layout (but missing the pgup/dn/home/end column). Beautiful screen and 14 inches, which is my ideal screen size. Amazing gaming performance for the size, if you care about that. Surprisingly good (but not perfect) Linux compatibility too. The three big problems with it are:

1) The choice of Wifi card, the Intel 7260AC, wasn't a good one--it constantly drops wifi connections that work fine on other devices, and sometimes isn't even recognized on boot in both Windows and Linux. Tried this over several Blades so it's a chip issue, not a bad unit. I'd rather have Intel than Broadcom considering Linux compatibility, but the 7260AC is just a nearly unusably buggy card.

2) The screen, while stunning if you can get a perfect unit, is apparently susceptible to dead pixels during manufacture. I ultimately returned all of the Blades I bought--something like 3--because the screens arrived with dead pixels. I even sent a unit back to get a new screen put on, and the replacement screen also came back with dead pixels, and worse, a horrible color shift. It was my dealbreaker. Dead pixels might be acceptable in a $700 laptop, but not in a ~$2,800 laptop. I suspect Apple bought out all of Sharp's grade A screens and Razer got stuck with the B screens.

3) The parts are all proprietary so if and when you need a repair, you have to mail your unit in and it ain't gonna be cheap out of warranty. Razer quoted me $200 when I asked for the cost to get an old battery replaced (as you have to do for aging laptops). Plus, since the unit gets very hot during gaming, I expect Blades will need frequent repair as they age.

If you can deal with these issues, the Blade is a genuinely good machine. Really the only serious competition the MBP has. Razer just has to sort out their screen supplier's QA process, and maybe make replacement parts available for home repair, and they'd be golden.

Similar to the Razer Blade 14, but cheaper, and without the matrix-esque green backlight (just white) is the Aorus XP3+, which is ridiculously powerful and light. The only difference appears to be that it's actually even a little lighter than the blade (1.8kg vs 2.03kg), the screen is not touch based, the processor is a little beefier, it has more memory, and by default comes with 2x 256GB SSD's in RAID0 rather than a single SSD.

And of course it is ENORMOUSLY cheaper. This may differ depending on locality but I bought the Aorus a couple of days ago for 2599 AUD, and the razer with the same storage is 3699 AUD.

I got rid of both my every day carry notebook and my beefy leave it on a desk workstation just from buying the XP3+, very impressed with it so far.

I just did a Google search for "Aorus XP3+" and it literally came up empty. Can you provide some links? It sounds like an intriguing machine.

http://www.aorus.com/x3.aspx

X3 plus was the model number sorry my mistake.

HP ZBook series, MS Surface Pro, Dell mobile workstations and top-end Latitude machines. Lenovo used to be in the list, but I'm not sure anymore. Mac trackpads are still the best of all but I personally can't stand OSX (and Windows/Linux is not too entertaining on a Macbook, still). However, it's only a personal preference and I can understand why people end up with buying Macs.

I've been a Linux user for as long as I remember, and most of that has been on a Thinkpad.

However I've just joined CloudFlare and they asked the simple question of whether I wanted a Lenovo or something Apple.

Having looked, I cannot think of a reason I should carry on with Thinkpads. They're just not what they used to be with trackpads which are unsatisfying, battery life that isn't as long as the Apples, non-Retina displays, and so on.

I chose a MacBook Pro, my first ever Apple computer. I picked it up on Friday, and I'm blown away. It's just awesome in every way.

If I can get used to the weird and subtle ways that the keyboard shortcuts and keyboard layout is different I may even be a permanent convert.

I use Karabiner [1] to make my constant jump between OSX/nix/Windows more easy by remaping ^C/^V (amongst others) without having to actually swap control and command keys via OSX's utility. [1]https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

I do the same with control/fn as well. Karabiner is fantastic.

Thanks, that looks perfect. I'll persist with the Apple shortcuts for a while, but am happy that there's a nice way to make the worlds feel similar if it proves too distracting.

I'm curious... Why mention "CloudFlare" at all? Why not, "joined a new company" ? Unless the point was specifically to let all of us know that you now work for CloudFlare?

Most people on HN who know me also know I've been running my own startup and we've been a Linux shop. They'd rightly be quizzical that I was suddenly getting a new Mac. The story of how that ended didn't make a ripple on HN (probably bad timing on my part, it was an Apple launch day), https://medium.com/@buro9/the-journey-of-a-london-startup-wh... , and those same people might like a clue that a change has happened. I mostly mention the company in two-part to say "I'm OK, there's a light beyond startups" and also because I'm fairly proud to be moving on to something I believe in (security and a better internet).

I guess I forget the audience on HN is much larger than it used to be.

I have given up on Windows laptops myself. As a developer the Macbook Air is the best laptop I've ever owned. I sold it recently and am waiting to receive a 13" Macbook Pro because I needed more RAM and space.

The biggest issues I've had with Windows laptops are: a) Trackpad is usually horrible. Some of the laptops use a rubber like texture that feels like I'm scraping my finger along a really rough surface. b) Battery life is never as good as the manufacturer claims. It is usually much much worse. c) Updating to a new version of Windows is a gamble. Sometimes you can find all the drivers, other times you get old ones which kind of work (or not at all). Either way it is frustrating to have to hunt them down. d) Support from manufacturers is AWFUL. The only exception I can think of is Dell. They have been pretty good but I'm not sure if they have worldwide warranty. I can take my Macbook to an Apple store basically anywhere and have it fixed.

There are many other small things that add up over time. It's just not even worth it to save a bit of money. I'm not even a massive OS X fan. It works well enough and the hardware is top notch.

I got a solid Dell, full aluminium, 16GB memory, 1TB SSD, FullHD laptop and all is fine. I never liked Dell laptop because i had some unpleasant experiences years ago with a cheaper model but this one feels great. I used to buy Sony but over they years their quality went down very much (as well as Lenovos/IBM).

What about heating/noise? I heard Dell has problems with that quite constantly. BTW, what's model of your device?

No noise whatsoever, even when gaming. My previous Sony had serious noise problems but now it's just silent.

I have that one: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cai157...

(i exchanged the HDD with a Samsung SSD)

Of course it's possible that no one makes good laptops anymore. All you have to do is take a look at the economics of the business. It's low margin and the PC business isn't growing like it used to. OEMs are rightfully looking at smartphones and tablets to allocate their capital to. Lots of OEMs have exited or are in the process of exiting the PC business (Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, HP).

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/06/sony-vaio-...

http://www.crn.com/news/mobility/300074158/samsung-to-exit-e...

http://online.wsj.com/articles/hewlett-packard-plans-to-brea...

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2014_09/pr1801.htm

The answer is no and I seriously doubt there ever will be.

I am using a ThinkPad T420. I have a brand new ThinkPad T420 in the spare parts cupboard. I am done buying laptops for a very, very long time.

Also, please listen to a Cory Doctorow DRM talk before buying a Mac.

New thinkpads from the older lines are good. The original x1 carbon is glorious if you can find them still. But all the latest thinkpad models are junk - awful trackpad, bizarre keyboard design decisions. Yeah macs don't work too well for me either. I will try to ride my x1 forward and hopefully in a couple of years the google Chromebooks will be strong Linux options.

If Lenovo just took the original X1 Carbon, swapped in a 1440p screen, added a 16 GB RAM option, swapped in a Broadwell chip, and improved the battery life, it would be fantastic. I have the original X1 Carbon, and it's the perfect laptop.

The trackpad would still be crap, while I have injury issues with the trackpoint. But ya, it would be nice otherwise (I have an X1 Carbon Touch from work, personally use a rMBP).

I don't know anything about the quality of the trackpad, as I've had it disabled since the day I got my X1 Carbon (as I've done with all my ThinkPads), but I've never heard any major complaints about it before this from others.

Almost everyone in our office has X1s (we refreshed at the same time and this was the best available); and it is a universal complaint. The trackpoint really kills the nerves in my thumb tips, so I'd prefer not to use it.

I have the new X1, and I find myself continuously hitting the function keys, because they're on some kind of touch screen... it's probably the only complaint I have with the laptop.

I have an Asus Zenbook running on Ubuntu, and don't have any problems while scrolling. All in all the experience is really nice.

Samsung Series 9, now ATIV. No longer sold in EU.

Apparently Samsung's leaving the non-Chromebook laptop market worldwide in 2015. My ATIV Book 9 Plus has been awesome (besides the horrible bundled drivers and software) but I'm not sure what I could happily replace it with at this point besides a Surface Pro.

Agreed. Also not an Apple enthusiast by any means, but there are a few traits, each of which by itself would make me consider buying a given machine: trackpad, uptime/stability, restore time, *nix under the hood out of the box, and the hardware is built to really last. Nothing even comes close to MBP in these categories.

For a casual/dev (non-gaming, etc.) use machine, it's difficult to see myself ever using something else.

The market is weird about laptops right now. Basically, it seems that Apple is the only one still making a profit off of them. Maybe PCs bet to heavily on netbooks?

They definitely did bet too heavily on netbooks, but that market has long since crashed. Chromebooks picked up a significant chunk of what was left in that segment. The more recent trend has been Intel's push for "ultrabooks", initially spurred by their desire to have a Wintel competitor to the MacBook Air. It hasn't been as disastrous as the netbook fad, but almost everything that superficially appears to be competition cuts corners in big ways and ends up being cheaper but a lot crappier and also basically unprofitable.

No idea how solid it is, but there's always the truly hilariously named HP Envy 14" if you want something that looks like a Macbook with a Windows button.

http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/us/en/mdp/Lapt...

What if you explicitly don't want a clone of a Macbook? When my X220 is too old for a laptop, I don't know what I'll do. Modern ThinkPads are pretty unacceptable now, with the new keyboards and the giant clicky touchpad.

This has been driving me up the wall. I just want a modern replacement for my x61s -- higher res screen and longer battery life. I was thinking about trying to find an x220 to keep in the closet for when this laptop breaks.

It's super frustrating.

No. I don't know about Envy, but I made a mistake of buying Samsung's MBP13 clone (np700z3a) once.

It had awesome specs on paper (same CPU, GPU, RAM, larger HDD, 14" 1600x900 LCD instead of 13" 1280x800 in a same body size, 2/3 price of MBP), but in reality, I'd be better off buying used MBP. Or used Dell Latitude/top line IBM.

Drivers. They suck, and never got updated. Wobbly plastic body that cracked in a few places during normal laptop use. Keyboard backlight that is awesome unless the system doesn't toss a coin on resume from sleep and decide that this time you'll have to type blind. Battery life between 2-3 hrs instead of promised-on-the-box 4-5 hours. Broadcom wifi adapter that slows to crawl on Windows 8.1+, with no fix from the manufacturer (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-...).

And I must't leave out the cooling that is significantly louder than on any MBP I used.

Ugh...

Don't worry - atleast in Europe, Samsung got out of the laptop business, except for models with their own ARM or x86 clone hardware

I have one of these. The trackpad is okay, but not as good as my MacBook Air's. Also, there are a few annoying little things about this laptop that can be get pretty frustrating. For example, there are no separate volume controls for speakers and headphones (at least not by default).

The Razer Blade is supposed to be a dream, but it's targeting a very specific small market - adult gamers with taste.

I have a HP Zbook 15 and I'm happy with it. One of the reasons is the trackpad with physical buttons. The keyboard is good too. Unfortunately it has a number pad, completely useless. I rather have a keyboard centered with the screen instead. Apple got that right. Most PC manufacturers don't.

http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/13372/how-to-...

Notice the mention of the keyboard!

System76 always looks quite good, especially if you don't need windows. https://system76.com/laptops/model/galu1

Has anyone owned one of these and can share their experience?

I've actually heard very bad things. They are a reseller and don't seem to stand behind their products. Here is one example: http://yashchandra.com/2014/05/06/do-not-buy-system76-develo...

Unfortunately, now that Vaios are gone I haven't been able to find a laptop with good specs & a solid chassis other than MBPs.

If you're installing Linux, why does it matter how bad their Windows drivers are?

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