We Need a Better PC

https://blog.dcpos.ch/someone-please-make-a-decent-pc

by dcposch • 10 years ago

659 686 10 years ago

blog.dcpos.ch

PaulHoule2• 10 years ago

Don't get a a laptop. The pc industry is doomed with phone envy. Desktop machines are one place you can really do better.

dcposch5• 10 years ago

I travel a lot, and I like to work out of cafes and libraries and stuff. Can't be this guy

http://i.imgur.com/j4uWVIT.jpg

Avshalom3• 10 years ago

I don't know, buying a prebuilt desktop is just as bad of an experience. Building one piece meal from Newegg shouldn't be as convenient as buying something from Dell, it's damn close some days though.

douche• 10 years ago

Building a desktop from parts is easier than some Lego sets these days. I think the only possibly tricky part is making sure you apply the thermal paste and install the heat-sink correctly. Everything else you just screw in, snap in, and plug in.

dantillberg• 10 years ago

This sounds like a troll comment, and maybe it is. But I agree, and for me, switching a lot of my usage from a laptop to a desktop was a solution.

After 5-6 years of adoring a series of macbooks, I finally got fed up with Apple slowly locking down OSX. And if you're not willing to run OSX, then even the macbooks lose a lot of their luster.

If you run a desktop, though, then most everything pretty much works great (even with Linux). You can spec up to a giant monitor or multiple monitors, incredibly powerful graphics, CPUs with lots of cores (or even get two), and 64 or even 128GB RAM, or any combination of the above. Or you can build a compact, low-power system. And you can swap components in and out, buy upgrades, and sell/gift parts you don't need, etc.

I still have the laptop, but I only use that whenever I have to move around (and I use syncthing to keep everything synced continuously between them to make smooth transitions between them).

caleblloyd• 10 years ago

I was thinking the exact same thing. I recently got Intel NUC boxes for every developer at our office. Linux support out of the box. It's 4 inches square ans easy to take different locations provided you can hook up to screen.

Everyone's got a laptop too, but they can now also VNC or SSH to their Linux machine if they need to work remote. Hell you can VNC into them from a chromebook.

rtpg• 10 years ago

I can't bring my desktop to any environment, therefore it's a non-starter.

I _do_ think it's interesting to think "maybe buying 1 (even 2) desktops is actually better for me than buying 1 laptop", but I cannot bring my desktop to the library. I feel like this comment is on the same level as "don't buy a phone, you can do better with a laptop", which is absurd on a similar level without extra context.

xerophyte129323• 10 years ago

My personal solution is a desktop and a 7-inch tablet. Sure the tablet loses some of the power as compared to a laptop, but huge portability gain. And it fits my use case. I don't write code while on the move. I do that at my desk. For all other use cases like consumption of data or even blogging, the tablet works.

eropple3• 10 years ago

Can I bring my desktop on a plane? To meetings at my client's offices? No?

Isn't that an interesting bit of nuance that you so blithely elide.

PaulHoule2• 10 years ago

If you have $1000's to spend on airfare you can afford to have a good desktop machine and a good laptop.

collyw2• 10 years ago

There are some pretty small desktops these days. Intels NUC, or Gigabyte Brix. Just the monitor that isn't portable.

akhilcacharya• 10 years ago

After I bought my MBPr 2014 I started looking around at similar machines.

In my mind, the only competition is with the Surface Book, but even that's debatable given the screen size.

dcposch5• 10 years ago

The convertible tablet aspect seems like a gimmick, but other than that it looks v nice.

The part where it will actually have a clean Windows installation with no crapware is pretty excellent.

alpb• 10 years ago

I am kinda frustrated to see no mention of Surface Book in your article though. I really suggest trying out Surface Book hands on in a store near you.

tempestn• 10 years ago

Agreed; the Surface Book seems to fit the bill perfectly. A bit more selection in terms of size would be good, but hopefully that will come.

spo81rty• 10 years ago

I really like my Razer laptop. They basically look like black MacBook Pros. Quality seems very high and I have enjoyed using it for several months. Quad core Cpu and 16 GB of RAM provides plenty of power as a dev box.

archimedespi• 10 years ago

Yeah, I'd love to get the new Razer[0] that came out this year, but unfortunately they went the way of "thunderbolt3.0 all the things" which is... not going to work with Linux. At all :(

[0] http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth

user427348922• 10 years ago

I'm posting from a Razer Blade Stealth QHD/256 right now on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The USB 3.1 ports function fine, the USB-C charger functions fine. Not attempted to attach a Thunderbolt over USB-C peripheral yet, but it would not be the end of the world if it wasn't functioning since everything but suspend and the camera behave fine.

The real downer is Intel's appalling OpenGL support in their Skylake drivers. Games and certain other applications are pretty much hosed if they expect remotely modern shader support, otherwise it is quite the capable chip.

r-w2• 10 years ago

Except what the hell, where’s my desktop-grade GPU!? ;)

jitl• 10 years ago

Did you look at Dell's line of XPS ultrabooks? I don't own one myself, but the ultra narrow bezels and industrial design look quite nice.

voltagex_12• 10 years ago

I looked at the 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Skylake variant of the XPS 13. Amazing looking machine, fits my filter criteria of "has service manual available to mortals" except for one problem - Dell won't sell me one, and neither will Microsoft (Signature Edition). They only seem to be available in the US and even if I was willing to spend the nearly $4000AUD to import one they won't ship to a non-US address.

ank_the_elder• 10 years ago

Several of the best Dell laptops are sold here in Australia with a considerable markup, even allowing for exchange rate. I tried to buy an XPS variant which was considered a 'workstation' for Australian Dell and so had an exorbitant markup which I'm not willing to pay.

Hopefully things have improved now.

dnautics4• 10 years ago

You're dodging a bullet. (See my response to op)

benologist• 10 years ago

Amazon has global shipping that might deliver from US to your door. Not all products on their site are included.

http://www.amazon.com/International-Shipping-Direct/b?node=2...

alfiedotwtf• 10 years ago

I got my XPS 15 from two weeks ago from JB HiFi on Elizabeth street (Melbourne), and $1000 cheaper that what you've been quoted ($2999). It's an awesome machine and everyone in the office is envious - to the point that we'll probably get more soon.

At the moment, the only thing that doesn't work yet in Debian Testing is the wifi... but I'm happy to wait - currently on a Ethernet-to-USB dongle.

Edit: oh, just noticed you were after the 13". It's nice, but I'm pretty damn happy with the 15"

aesthetics1• 10 years ago

Posting this from an XPS 13. You're right - they look quite nice, and the performance is really there for an ultrabook. Dell has a developer edition that comes with Ubuntu on it out of the box if that's more your style, but Windows 10 is actually not too bad either.

coin• 10 years ago

Dell's website is even worse. I can't just navigate to buy laptop, I have to decide upfront if it's "for work" or "for home". Why does it matter? Will picking one eliminate options? Once I choose, I'm presented with 6 lines - Latitude, Vostro, Inspiron, Precision, XPS, and Chromebook. What's the difference? I guess I have to go read the marketing description for all of them. Who has time for this?

gbrown• 10 years ago

The Precision M3800 is also a great 15" laptop for running Linux (but you can't trust them not to screw up the bundled Ubuntu distro, and need to write some systemd wifi-restart scripts).

jolux5• 10 years ago

Honestly if you get a Mac you can install rEFInd on it and boot Linux just fine, or run Linux in a VM. The hardware also almost never breaks and especially if you have AppleCare they frequently replace it for free. Yes, it may be difficult to upgrade yourself. That's entirely true and if it's a deal breaker there's not much else around.

You might do well to look at https://puri.sm if you're a Linux user, they seem to make pretty good machines with free software down to the BIOS. There's also always http://minifree.org but they don't really make modern machines.

whalesalad• 10 years ago

Agreed. All of the points in this article that are against the PC makers are both valid and quite significant. The Apple ones are not practical problems. Sure you aren't encouraged to open it, but you can. I've replaced virtually every part on virtually every generation of Intel Mac just fine. Screens, memory, batteries, disk drives, etc...

If you don't like the OS and the free software that's included, replace it. You weren't gonna stick with the OEM bloatware Windows install on the Thinkpad anyway.

The author is correct, we need more competition, but for the time being a Mac is truly the best piece of kit you can get. It'll run any OS and doesn't ship with an ssl mitm.

dcposch5• 10 years ago

If you don't like the OS and the free software that's included, replace it. You weren't gonna stick with the OEM bloatware Windows install on the Thinkpad anyway.

Fair point. I've heard mixed reviews from people dual booting Linux on a retina MBP because Ubuntu has bad high DPI support.

The author is correct, we need more competition, but for the time being a Mac is truly the best piece of kit you can get. It'll run any OS and doesn't ship with an ssl mitm.

Yeah, I think there's an untapped market for a well built standard laptop (not a tablet crossover, not a Chromebook) that's not a Mac!

ArchD• 10 years ago

Don't you get annoying hardware incompatibility when running Linux on Apple hardware? The Arch Linux wiki on Macbook Pro, for example, doesn't suggest running Linux on it is simple.

rasz_pl• 10 years ago

never brake? :))) Apple hardware is build to fail, 35 years and they still make computers like we are living on Arrakis and moisture doesnt exist.

jolux5• 10 years ago

Well I'll put it this way: I've owned three Windows laptops and one Mac and the Mac has outlasted all three individually, two of them combined, and on track to outlast all three of them combined in the next year.

It also has yet to slow down.

But that's just my anecdotal experience. Think of it what you will.

chadzawistowski• 10 years ago

You might do well to look at https://puri.sm if you're a Linux user, they seem to make pretty good machines with free software down to the BIOS.

Purism must have great marketing, because I keep seeing this fiction repeated. Their BIOS is not open.

The only big difference between a Purism laptop and other laptops (Acer, Asus, Dell, etc.) is that the CPU has been fused to allow running unsigned firmware. Unfortunately, since we still don't have free firmware to run in place of Intel's, Purism has no present advantage over buying most any laptop and installing Linux yourself.

Purism loudly trumpets their roadmaps[0] and plans[1] so as to suggest a trajectory towards totally free software, but until they achieve it their product is not worth a premium compared to installing Linux on an ultrabook of your choice.

[0] https://puri.sm/posts/roadmap-to-a-completely-free-bios/ Here they outline many things that need to be done. But note the language- "Purism’s goal is to publish a Free Software implementation ... as soon as an implementation is available." But who is responsible for implementing it?

[1] https://puri.sm/road-to-fsf-ryf-endorsement-and-beyond/ Note that the FSF hasn't actually endorsed them yet, although this page is supposed to convince you that they're awful close. Why not wait until they're actually endorsed?

I did buy a Libreboot X200 from minifree, and I am quite happy with it.

Alternatively, you can replace a Thinkpad X200's firmware yourself by following these steps (hardware required) http://libreboot.org/docs/install/x200_external.html

kriro• 10 years ago

There's some value over other laptops, notably that it's tested with Linux as the main target and uses recent hardware that is virtualization friendly (+15" which is a personal requirement for me). Configuring a laptop like that takes a nontrivial amount of time from my experience. What interests me is that it will run Qubes OS before the 15" ships if that statement is to be trusted. It is one of the more interesting approaches out there and I'll gladly pay a premium for a Qubes laptop.

The BIOS is not free and the laptop won't be free anytime soon due to Intel ME [1]. Unfortunately the compromise for the foreseeable future seems to be freedom vs. more power or hoping for something awesome non-x86.

[1](PDF): http://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf

ocean3• 10 years ago

" if you have AppleCare they frequently replace it for free" - as long as you have warranty right? I had a issue with motherboard, the official Apple service center near my place quoted a replacement price equal to a new windows laptop with just 6 months additional warranty.

xlayn• 10 years ago

Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot.

Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the machine you are going to buy (unless you also want the website).

HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad.

And last but not least I would like to give this entry the RAGE post award, nomination points for

  What I want is a computer with:

    -Decent build quality
    -Decent performance and battery life
    -A decent website. It doesn't have to be an icon of web
    design, like apple.com. It can be simple and 
    utilitarian, like an Amazon page. It just has to be
    honest and up to date. It should contain pictures,
    text, and a Buy button.
    -A clean OS without crapware or malware factory
    installed

  Is that too much to ask? Make one and you can have my
  money!

Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft and HP make systems like the one you want, you can install your choice of OS and buy it on Amazon or eBay if you want.

Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.

Rage score 9/10.

voltagex_12• 10 years ago

Add me to the rage brigade.

I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image and you buy direct from Microsoft. I just wish they'd sell me the XPS 13 9350 (the highest spec'd one) in Australia.

Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.

wldcordeiro• 10 years ago

That's lame they don't sell those there. I got a 9350 myself and loaded Ubuntu onto it and it's been fantastic. What do they limit you to? Just the basic XPS 13 models?

Also, what if someone in the US bought one and had it shipped to Australia? Is that doable?

dcposch5• 10 years ago

I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image

Yeah that sounds interesting. Looks like they have Lenovo hardware too. I'll check them out.

ashark• 10 years ago

Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.

It's not just OSX—even using Safari instead of Chrome or Firefox adds over an hour to my battery life (god knows there's no other reason to use it). As of ~1 year ago when I worked somewhere that required me to use lots of tablets from both Apple and a variety of top Android manufacturers on a regular basis, battery life (especially idle battery life) on the Apple devices was borderline miraculous while the Android devices seemed to treat the battery like an infinite resource—the difference was not subtle.

I'd love a world in which it seems like any company other than Apple holds battery life as a high priority. My observation has been that we do not live in that world. They're the only hardware manufacturer I've seen that gives more-or-less honest battery life estimates in their marketing, and those figures are not low. It'd be really, really hard for me to jump ship solely for that reason.

radicalbyte2• 10 years ago

Correct, using OSX I still get 7-8hrs battery life from a 2 year old MBP.

Windows 10 via dual-boot empties the battery in around 3hrs.

lmm13• 10 years ago

If Windows gets bad battery life on MacBooks then that's an indictment of Apple's windows drivers.

Just one poorly written driver can ruin your battery life, and that's a place where the MS "hardware manufacturers write the drivers for their hardware" model really falls down - there are Windows laptops where you can nearly double the battery life by fixing the touchpad driver, or the webcam driver, or, .... In theory a manufacturer/integrator should be auditing the drivers they're shipping and making sure the whole thing works together. Maybe the signature edition programme will improve this.

ktRolster• 10 years ago

    > Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.

Plus calling Amazon.com 'simple and utilitarian' is questionable.

Does anyone really care a whole lot about the HP website?

ihartley• 10 years ago

It could really stand to suck a little less. Based on this thread I went to checkout the Elitebook line and the "View all notebook products" link from the Elitebook line page just goes to a promo for some new one that isn't available yet, and when you go to the shop it just takes you to search results with 217 results for "elitebook"

dcposch5• 10 years ago

Rage score 9/10.

LOL. Yes, that's fair. I was frustrated with Lenovo's website for all the reasons I described.

Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.

Apple's website is an icon of web design. It's 100MB not because of needless JS & ad tracker bloat, but because of high res images.

Just look at it. It's gorgeous: http://www.apple.com/macbook/

natch3• 10 years ago

What bothered me was this paragraph:

Apple has great design

Functional design. A lot of haters misunderstand it as style.

but

Uh-oh

they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software.

OK, I guess you read that on the Internet. But you should question it.

When I bought my first Mac the first thing I did before buying it was call Apple support and check whether I could open it and upgrade the hard drive without voiding the warranty. The answer? YES. Same goes for memory, etc.

Was true then, is true today. Although for some models the options are now removed due to technical limitations put in place not because Apple is trying to offend you, but because that's how they get the battery life you like. In my experience Apple is very cool about user upgrades.

What they're not cool about is stuff like putting in third party batteries, which then explode, and then asking Apple to eat the cost for that. Um, no.

On the software side, of course Apple doesn't want to set all its users up with totally vulnerable systems that can lead to all manner of harm. But it doesn't prevent more advanced users like us from doing what we want to on our own systems. Feel free to install Linux, even though it's already a UNIX machine, whatever... So you don't have to let the software factor in to your decision about a machine.

You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts

It's just normal life that some things can be replaced, and some can't. This isn't specific to Apple. If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames. Therefore, they are made, deliberately, to be hard to open. And you being not supposed to open them is a correct thing, not a problem.

We don't know the story behind pentalobe screws But I imagine maybe third party battery replacement businesses were getting out of control, leading to damaged phones and fires, and that little side industry needed a speed bump while it got its batteries up to snuff. Who knows. It's easy to think up legitimate reasons rather than "Apple hates your freedoms." But bashing Apple is just the cool thing to do, right?

and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style.

I would encourage you to think beyond style. I build my own PCs too but the Geniuses are backed by a truly awesome knowledge base with problems, troubleshooting tools, solutions, and discretionary power to make you very, very happy when things go wrong, if you're not a dick about things.

Also, Apple makes beautiful hardware

Functional. I'm sure beauty is also a goal but I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail. But yeah, it's beautiful too.

but their software is getting worse.

You read this on the internet too. Please. Think for yourself. Of course their software has problems. All software has problems. Apple's software is taking on HUGE challenges, basically helping each person manage all their information, and responsibly, which means with security measures in place, which are there to reduce the likelihood of actual harmful real threats to their users. Yes, it's complicated.

All that being said... I agree with one thing, which is that it would be great if there were more fantastic machines out there, from more vendors. But I think to make machines really great, they would inevitably end up including some of the features that you diss when talking about Apple, like security features and tradeoffs on end-user upgradability in return for other benefits.

icebraining4• 10 years ago

Just look at it. It's gorgeous

Meh. The pictures are pretty, but other than that, what's so great about it? The stuff moving up and down as you scroll is just dizzying, and the tech specs page is way too sparse. Frankly, I prefer the ASUS notebooks site.

nommm-nommm• 10 years ago

What the hell is so gorgeous about that site?

It is slow to load, looks like garbage on mobile, is really jumpy on my desktop, and hides useful information within marketing mumbo-jumbo.

Thats is basically the opposite of gorgeous.

SwellJoe• 10 years ago

"HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad."

I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping for). Specs were great, among the highest end available at the time. The quality, on the other hand, has been worse than any computer I've ever owned.

I guess is isn't all that constructive as comments go, but I feel ethically obligated to steer people away from considering HP laptops.

DKnoll• 10 years ago

The HP consumer and enterprise lines are vastly different in terms of quality.

By the way, upon first boot of an HP laptop you will be prompted to burn recovery DVDs. $10 is actually pretty reasonable compared to what others would charge you.

derefr• 10 years ago

HP's consumer and enterprise divisions are effectively separate companies (and, in fact, were acquired from separate sources.) The enterprise "workstation" laptops are some of the best-put-together, simplest-to-repair, most-natively-well-supported-without-needing-drivers, and otherwise most "obvious" in their design machines I've ever had the pleasure of refurbishing.

The EliteBook line is the one laptop where seeing inside actually made me want to own it more. (And I did buy one, and it was an excellent machine that served me well for years and would still be decently competitive today.)

Other neat thing: the EliteBooks I was refurbishing tended to be 2007 models—but they came with fully-working UEFI, hidden under a "this is only a prototype implementation" warning. It was fun playing with 64-bit Windows 8 on them; none of the other machines in the shop could make heads or tails of the W8 install discs.

They also tended to come with fingerprint sensors. I got used to unlocking my laptop with my thumb long before TouchID was a thing.

protomyth3• 10 years ago

We bought 120 HP netbooks and had almost 90% drive failure (Seagate) and their firmware only for service contract customers has really soured me on HP. I find SuperMicro makes better servers, so I am pretty much out of HP now.

xerophyte129323• 10 years ago

My anecdotal evidence points the other way. My own Ho dv6 gave me a good 4 years of running.

- Yes, the crapware is unavoidable. but who doesn't ship with that?

- For me the system restore worked like magic. I tried it a bunch of times on my own machine and those of some friends. The machine was virgin again with just a click of a button.

- It's also very easy to get into. Very helpfully labeled; tons of guides available online. It's like its designed to be opened and hacked around. When it finally died, I scavenged it for parts and ported to my new desktop machine

niutech3• 10 years ago

"Everything is wrong with it"? Name it, one by one. Otherwise it's FUD.

Why didn't you install a clean OS downloaded from the official Microsoft/Ubuntu/Debian website instead of waiting two weeks for a restore Windows restore DVD from HP with crapware pre-installed? The first thing I would do after buying a new laptop is to format it completely and start afresh.

noobermin• 10 years ago

Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot.

Sometimes[0].

P.S., if you're interested in helping, we'd all appreciate it!

[0] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891

debaserab24• 10 years ago

Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.

Huh? My chrome network panel registered 13.3k for apple.com

miahi• 10 years ago

The html part only is 25KB; you got 13k because you had everything cached from previous sessions.

beloch2• 10 years ago

Question for those running Linux on an Apple laptop:

If you had a hardware failure, did having a non-Apple-approved OS cause any problems when you tried to get it fixed?

maccard3• 10 years ago

I had a motherboard fail on a 2011 MacBook Pro running Windows 7 - I just wiped the drive on another Mac and put it back in and have it to them. No questions asked.

jandrese• 10 years ago

Lucky thing he wasn't shopping a couple of years ago when it was near impossible to buy a PC laptop with a screen at any resolution other than 1366x768.

Also, I know they're uncool and all, but the author should really look at the Dell XPS series. They're rather expensive but hit most all of his points.

Here's a review of the XPS 15: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-...

alex_duf• 10 years ago

Except when buying a computer from Apple or Lenovo (or pretty much anyone really), you also pay for the software that is installed on it.

Yes you can change it, but it's the equivalent of buying a car and change the wheels when you get it.

cyphar• 10 years ago

The latest MacBook (2015) doesn't use USB internally for the keyboard and touchpad. As a result, Linux doesn't support it. I was thinking about writing patches to fix it (it does boot) but it looks far too complicated (I'm not even sure if the "protocol" is the same over different serial protocols).

leecarraher• 10 years ago

i have a 2014 x1 carbon. solid build, decent battery under linux(5hrs average load). probably will get an x1 next round too. dont get booged down with specs though. newest is outdated in a year, and if you don't get a new laptop every year, arguing specs is pretty moot. drawbacks - soldered on ram + it's a premium not super modular. positive - its solid and nicely designed with a great keyboard (and this is from an otherwise chicklet style hater, but really nice travel)

neumino• 10 years ago

Same here, the x1 carbon is linux friendly and has a great keyboard. I don't have a retina display, but I don't need that to write code.

vardump3• 10 years ago

My dream laptop:

1) No malware/spyware tainted brand.

2) At least 32 GB ECC RAM, 16 GB is so 2010. ECC, because memory errors do happen and cause instability. 64 GB option wouldn't hurt either.

3) HiDPI (retina) display (IPS or equivalent)

4) Fast PCI-e attached SSD.

5) Ability to run two 4k monitors @60 Hz.

6) Stable USB3 ports (My 2015 RMBP keeps resetting USB3 ports, making it nearly impossible to run VMs on USB3 drives)

7) ~10h+ on battery.

voltagex_12• 10 years ago

2015 RMBP keeps resetting USB3 ports

Do you know who OEMed those ports? I've had a horrible run of luck with crappy USB3 chipsets in desktops - with the same symptoms as you're having. Do you still get the resets in Windows 8.1/10?

vardump3• 10 years ago

Do you know who OEMed those ports?

Looks like Intel:

  PCI Device ID:	0x9cb1 
  PCI Revision ID:	0x0003 
  PCI Vendor ID:	0x8086

> Do you still get the resets in Windows 8.1/10?

Just running latest OSX El Capitan.

sengork• 10 years ago

ThinkPad P50 might be for you: http://www3.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-p-ser...

mcmillion• 10 years ago

Take your RMBP back to Apple, that shouldn't be happening.

greggyb• 10 years ago

Not sure on the battery life, but check out the HP ZBook G3. We have the G2 at work and it's quite nice. It's got a lot of horsepower and I can go 4-6 hours on battery.

The power brick is heavier than my own little 11 inch personal machine. It is a workstation line, not an ultrabook line.

codebook• 10 years ago

2) ECC , IMHO, is useless on personal laptop. Error rate is quite low that "opportunity cost" is too high. Except that, MBPr is proper solution. So, let's hope Apple to solve your USB3 port issue. (you can report, by the way)

protomyth3• 10 years ago

Next laptop I get for hacking will probably be FreeBSD[1] and I'll be running ZFS so ECC would be a bonus. I understand the debate, but ECC should be standard given how much memory we are putting in these things.

1) well, PC-BSD most probably. I am more an OpenBSD person so I might still go that route.

vacri6• 10 years ago

2) At least 32 GB ECC RAM, 16 GB is so 2010

This is the major drawback of lenovo X1s - they only have 8GB of RAM max. In today's world. Crazy.

narrator• 10 years ago

I have a Toshiba p835-z370. It's a few years old but it still runs like a champ and all the hardware is supported on Ubuntu. Toshiba build quality is pretty good.

Here's the teardown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMH0r76zdt0 . It's only upgradeable to 6gb though. Would love it if they had a 16gb upgradeable version.

voltagex_12• 10 years ago

Aha! These seemed comparable with the Asus Zenbooks that came out at the same time. I've only seen one z370 in the wild though - what's the battery life like under Ubuntu?

jsprogrammer3• 10 years ago

https://pcpartpicker.com/

r-w2• 10 years ago

That was a pretty quick dismissal of Lenovo, and a warped portrayal at that. As far as we can tell, Superfish was not intentionally installed by Lenovo, and any money it made didn’t go to them since it wasn’t their software. There’s nothing here to suggest that this is a sign of anything untrustworthy happening at Lenovo, any more than there is at any other major laptop seller. It seems like this was just a case of their software QA being not quite on par with their hardware QA. Also, all websites suck. Just sayin’.

tl;dr: “Picky, picky! wags finger”

Avshalom3• 10 years ago

wait I wasn't paying much attention because I don't have a thinkpad but how would they have accidentally installed superfish?

vardump3• 10 years ago

If Lenovo has unintentional binaries slipping in the production image, the problems are way more serious than sloppy QA.

How can I trust their peripheral chips and firmware? Or BIOS and SMM for that matter?

Maybe some nasty things unintentionally slipped in their SMM code as well?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode

There's no way I could verify all the firmware code contained in the laptop. Heck, not even one chip.

Lenovo has had things not intended happening with their BIOS [1] as well. It's fixed now, but what else there might be lurking under covers?

[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/lenovo...

beatpanda• 10 years ago

I have the first-generation X1 Carbon and a Dell Precision M3800, both running Ubuntu, and I am very satisfied with both.

ripberge• 10 years ago

I have a Lenovo X1 carbon and I re-installed Windows to remove all the Lenovo crapware after I bought it. Windows is easy to download and install now. It will save your license, but blow away everything else. It only takes about 30-45 minutes. But I do agree, this is totally ridiculous that you have to do this.

I did buy an MS Surface and it was by far the best PC experience I ever had, however they don't make a keyboard cover with a touch-stick, that's the only reason I went back to a ThinkPad.

soared2• 10 years ago

Wasn't there ab article about Lenovo getting around this solution? I did the same thing with my y40. Came with an absurd amount of bullshit, but overall its a great laptop.

dnautics4• 10 years ago

Avoid the dell developers edition xps13. There's no end key, the trackpad is unusable. Even worse, avoid getting the windows version and installing Linux on that: the trackpad is even less unusable (resets to lower corner intermittently on clicks), and in order to get the wi-fi working I had to recompile the kernel driver telling it that it was FOSS.

voltagex_12• 10 years ago

Is the Dev edition the same as the Skylake 9350?

timothyb89• 10 years ago

For the most part these issues are all fixed in recent kernel versions (> 4.2). The default trackpad driver (synaptics) is indeed buggy, but the newer libinput driver (available in the Ubuntu repos since 15.10) works perfectly. The WiFi card is a bit annoying if you want to build the driver yourself but it works out of the box on stock Ubuntu 15.10.

Admittedly there were some issues early on, but now that issues have all been patched it's an excellent laptop. Fantastic build quality, great battery life, and the display is the best I've seen on a laptop.

dnautics4• 10 years ago

I've bumped kernels but it still doesn't work for me... I'll put some more effort into it and will see if it works.

soared2• 10 years ago

Why is a decent website relevant at all? Would it make buying a laptop easier? Sure. But 90% of consumers are going to do almost all of their research off-site and enter the lenovo looking for specific products or categories. Not everyone follows the Apple-Disney ethos of design every consumer facing thing to be flawless.

I haven't done the research but I bet you could see lenovo pages ranking higher for long-tail keywords (specific products) than than more general pages.

nottestuser• 10 years ago

Here is the only way to shop Lenovo:

http://psref.lenovo.com/

Every SKU, every option, every detail, in a PDF.

viraptor3• 10 years ago

I'd say there's a better way if you're on a budget:

http://outlet.lenovo.com/outlet_us/

http://dell.com/outlet/

http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals

etc.

btilly• 10 years ago

I just had a https://www.thinkpenguin.com/ arrive and so far it seems good.

See http://www.linux.org/threads/how-great-is-the-korora.5955/ for a sample review.

mingabunga• 10 years ago

I've always found ASUS laptops well built, great screens and very reliable. Their Zen books are nice.

hbosch• 10 years ago

I had to scroll all the way to the bottom to find you.

I have always heard good things about the ASUS ZenBooks.

analog31• 10 years ago

I'm quite happy with my Asus X200M. It's compact, lightweight, and was pretty cheap, though I think it's discontinued now. It's small enough to stuff into a bag, in my bike basket, and cheap enough that I don't worry too much about damaging it.

I try to be platform-independent as much as possible. My "operating system" is Jupyter/Python. Knowing that I could switch to Ubuntu in a jiffy makes Windows seem much less annoying.

orionblastar• 10 years ago

I have an Acer laptop I won from a church basket raffle. It only has a 1.5 Ghz AMD Dual core CPU and 3Gigs of RAM and 250 Gig hard drive. So it runs slow at first and takes a time to load everything.

It upgraded to Windows 10 Pro quite well.

It is one of those cheaper laptops and it has an AMD GPU as well. I don't know how user serviceable it is, but it hasn't needed any work yet.

I used to have Ubuntu on it, but my wife didn't like it so I had to put Windows back with it as we share the laptop. So I know it runs Ubuntu very well, and it runs Ubuntu faster than it does Windows.

But PC quality has gone down since they moved things to China. Motherboards, you are lucky if they last three years now. My son had an ATX custom system with an ATX motherboard for the Intel 1150 socket made by ASUS, and it went out and was replaced with an Intel brand motherboard that we had to buy from eBay because the socket is so old they don't make new motherboards for it anymore. Motherboard lasted maybe two years before it blew out. We got a Datavac to clean up dust from it and would replace the CPU resin every six months or so.

chemmail• 10 years ago

Dell XPS 13/15

nqzero• 10 years ago

for me, aspect ratio is huge - if you want something better than 16:9 in a pure laptop (not a tablet or convertible) your options are really limited

http://blog.nqzero.com/2016/01/1610-or-better-32-43-laptops-...

i don't understand how there can be so little differentiation in this market

BobTheCoder• 10 years ago

This! I guess the panels must be way cheaper or something. I would buy a 16:10 high quality expensive laptop in a second.

virtualwhys• 10 years ago

OP doesn't mention Dell Precision line?

Recently released 5510[1] is looking absolutely awesome, will be picking one up when return to States in April to replace current Precision M4700.

2 X SSD + 32GB memory, high end CPU, decent GPU with 3840 X 2160 screen...will be sorted for next few years. If you NewEgg a couple of 480GB SSDs you're around $2,500 for a beastly machine that weighs under 4 lbs (M4700 is nice but hefty, nearly 7 lbs).

[1] http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=0...

jeswin• 10 years ago

The 5-hr battery life is a huge let down. For most developers, a faster CPU/GPU is just a marginal improvement. But being able to leave home without the charger and not having to look for power sockets is way more compelling.

bluejekyll2• 10 years ago

Which is why I use a Mac, w/OS X. Compared to everything else I've ever tried, it's the only one that I've never had to worry about battery life, literally hours and hours of coding. Also, with two small kids I need to close it and open it all the time, it's practically instant on, and I can pick right back up where I left off, and that's without ever plugging it in.

I also switched back to Safari from Chrome b/c I found Chrome to be a horrendous battery drain.

As much crap as Apple's gotten recently for their software, the attention to battery life is a huge blessing. My MBP is easily worth $ for the time and convenience.

antocv• 10 years ago

Even if my laptop would have 24h batter life, I just do not want the mental hurdle of anyway always thinking "will it end now, when was the last time it charged, how much is left". Fuck that.

Bring a cable where ever I go, never think of battery life.

btw, Dell Precision M4800 is a beast, evil mean machine, its the best computer I ever had, macbook pros are trash in comparison. The keys are so soft, so finely grooved, so silent, so evenly spaced, the screen color reproduction is best ever, and its heavy, it doesnt feel like a toy to toss around, it sticks on the desk where I put it. It has 3 mouse buttons, on two places. Who can work on a computer without middle click to paste!? To not speak of the internals, i7, 32GB ram and so on.

Highly recommend Dell Precision M4800.

ishbits• 10 years ago

I'd like Mac OS X but on a Lenovo T or X. That would just be perfect (assuming it ran as well as it does on a MacBook).

spronkey17• 10 years ago

Before Apple started making really amazing machines, I used to be a big fan of the T and X series ThinkPads. But Lenovo haven't impressed me in a long time.

Lots of niggly stupid issues - like terrible audio quality, or poor LCDs, or poor build quality requiring stuff like shims under keyboards to stop them rattling (seriously?!). Crappy touchpads. Dumb experiments with the keyboard and touchpad/trackpoint buttons.

Every time I think I should give one of the newer X's a proper go, I go and have a play with them and realise that they're still full of compromises.

stepvhen2• 10 years ago

I've bought old thinkpad T-series on ebay for ~$300, installed arch, and moved on with my life. I keep most of my relevant data on git repos or a home server. If it dies, which usually happens after a good few years, I just get a new one. Not ideal, and certainly not for everybody, but a reasonable option if it fits your needs.

aback• 10 years ago

That's actually a good idea if you don't need too much extra horsepower. You get a good keyboard, an acceptable display, and a lightweight machine for a don't-care-if-you-drop-it price.

PascLeRasc• 10 years ago

Can you get IPS screens on those?

stepvhen2• 10 years ago

Probably not. You're usually looking at a 2-3-year old laptop already for $300. And for that money, you kind of get what you get.

guelo• 10 years ago

I wish I could buy laptops that are not built in China. The Chinese army has zero scruples with regards to hacking. The hack where they got all US federal employees' info was an act of war as far as I'm concerned. I just don't see any reason why they would not be putting in backdoors into all the computers they manufacture.

TurboHaskal2• 10 years ago

You're probably an US citizen.

You have zero rights to complain about hacking and acts of war.

viraptor3• 10 years ago

They display low ratings for their own products on their own website. What.

How is this a complaint? I'd love other companies to post both good and bad reviews without filtering.

Except that page is deceptive, because that's actually the old X1 Carbon

Don't know about other locations, but here the X1 got a really nice discount once the 2016 model got announced. (also visible in the screenshot) I got it and I'm really happy about it. It has a high res screen (WQHD), so the same as the 2016 model, so that note in the post is also a mistake.

pmarreck4• 10 years ago

Nothing says "my company shoots for Mediocre" more than featuring your own 3/5 star products on your own landing page

Call me crazy but this is why Apple is even a thing

viraptor3• 10 years ago

Sorry, I don't get this. Two companies sell basically the same thing. Both will give you all the usual marketing crap and slightly hidden actual specs. One will also give you actual opinions of people who aren't hired to take your money away. How is the other one better?

I get the whole apple cult idea and buying a status symbol. But if anyone is going to compare the products, they'll just go to another site and see exactly the same ratings. Allowing ratings on your main page even allows you to respond to some specific issues. (wifi 5G disconnects often -> we published a bios update for that here/link)

Steko• 10 years ago

Just a note but while Apple doesn't show ratings for their main lineup of devices (and probably for exactly the reasons mentioned by link) they do show them for accessories and some of them are pretty low rated:

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD818AM/A/lightning-to-usb...

thirdsun2• 10 years ago

And that's exactly why I wouldn't feature reviews on my website / shop. It may work for Amazon, but I'm pretty certain most people bothering to provide a review for something as simple as a lightning cable had a bad experience. Nobody writes rave reviews for a cable that just works.

jasonszhao• 10 years ago

Why not Asus? (Never got one, have a MacBook.)

wangchow• 10 years ago

Honestly I swear by my Surface Pro 3. Maybe learn to hack some device drivers and get Ubuntu running (better) on a device like this. Some people already have it working:

http://www.geek.com/microsoft/linux-users-rejoice-heres-ubun...

In my opinion it's the most well-rounded device out there.

ekianjo15• 10 years ago

Surface are great but you are severely limited in screen size. It's great for portability, but if you need a little more screen surface it's not a good choice anymore.

unsignedint2• 10 years ago

I'm finding $300 Acer laptop (or netbook, one of their Inspire line) loaded with Linux surprisingly usable. (It was preloaded with Linpus, but I've replaced with my own.) At 1.10 GHz Dual-Core, 4GB RAM, it's a bit slow at times, but as long as I'm not running intensive process on it, it's very usable on the go machine. (Mainly, TeX, translations, web stuff, browsing, and occasional spreadsheet, is what I do on the machine.) I do have a desktop machine for things that requires more power.

eximius• 10 years ago

'surprisingly usable' is not what we should have to settle for

unsignedint2• 10 years ago

Well, I did add that I do have a desktop that I use for more demanding tasks. I guess it's the matter of doing the right thing on right machines.

Though, I do understand there are plenty of people out there who requires a laptop with decent capabilities. A $300 machine that "surprisingly usable" can be a good compromise in some use cases.

Iv• 10 years ago

What do you think of the Novena? https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

If you want to make a good laptop, there are people doing that, in an open hardware and open source way.

shaurz2• 10 years ago

It's not really a laptop, really a portable all-in-one desktop with a battery, unless you're talking about that very expensive wood & cork thing. Nice that it's not Intel but you will take a speed hit for that.

dpc_pw• 10 years ago

I'm very happy with my Asus UX305F. I have Linux installed, everything except brightness keys works perfectly. Great build quality, mate screen, battery lasts very long. And it was cheaper than most of what people mention here. For CPU intense task, I just use my desktop.

hmartiniano• 10 years ago

I also own one and can second all you say about it. The only problem is the lack of a backlit keyboard, which might be a show stopper for some people. Other than that it's a very good machine, at a very good price and installing Linux (at least ubuntu, from my experience) is absolutely painless.

SippinLean• 10 years ago

Is Samsung Series 9 still a thing? When I bought mine it was thinner than the MB Air at that point, similar rigid aluminum build quality.

jseliger• 10 years ago

I'm surprised not to see a link to the Librem laptops: https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-13. They're an attempt to solve the problem being posited, AFAICT, though they ship with Linux, not Windows.

I gave $10 to their initial Kickstarter but have never used one.

martey2• 10 years ago

Purism/Librem looks extremely similar to System76 - they are rebranded laptops from an Asian ODM running a variant of Linux.

None of their marketing materials make reference to better build quality, battery life, or support, just "security, privacy, and freedom". I would love for them to hit all of these boxes, but I am unsure that their hardware will be as free/secure as they claim (see https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-p...).

teekert• 10 years ago

Looking forward to the next Linux Action Show which will have a review of the 15" Librem. Meanwhile Chris talks about the Librem on Linux Unplugged, haven't listened to that one yet.

http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/

superobserver• 10 years ago

Why not by a Chromebook Pixel (2015)? Seriously.

martey2• 10 years ago

I think if Google decided to sell the Chromebook Pixel (2015) with Linux instead of ChromeOS, OP, I, and a horde of other developers would all buy it.

In reality, it doesn't seem very easy to install Linux on the 2015 Pixel or any other Chromebook without either remembering to press Ctrl+D on each boot or by going through a significant set of hoops.

executesorder66• 10 years ago

I've never used a Chromebook, but why can't you just wipe the harddrive with something like gparted and then install a Linux OS as you normally would?

lighttower2• 10 years ago

I want the Pixel for its USB C charging capabilities. the biggest reason I don't get one is because while I have no regrets with wiping windows, I have FOMO about wiping ChromeOS.

if the SSD weren't only 64GB... I could put Debian and chrome OS on it.

nvader2• 10 years ago

Agreed. My personal laptop is a Pixel with Crouton to run Linux for development.

neverminder3• 10 years ago

I second that. I've got a 2015 Pixel LS and running vanilla Ubuntu (wiped out ChromeOS) with kernel 4.4 and it's a beast. Best laptop setup I've ever had.

nfoz• 10 years ago

I regret mine. Keyboard is missing so many keys, speakers are garbage, getting Debian to support the hardware was nontrivial and stuff continues to break. So few ports. And if it's plugged in when the battery gets to full charge, it will often emit a high-pitched whine until I unplug it, meaning I can't leave it sitting plugged-in with full battery (perhaps a defective unit? but who knows if that's due to running Linux instead of ChromeOS?).

I'm shopping around for a new laptop to replace it, that will be more linux-hacker friendly (more keyboard keys, touchpad with real buttons, etc.)

pmarreck4• 10 years ago

Well, now you know why I use Macs.

They are closed (unfortunately) but they are not full of bullshit, at least.

knights123• 10 years ago

It seems like you should really just buy a MacBook Pro. Sure the software isn't perfect, but it's an order of magnitude closer to perfect than Windows has been lately. You buy it, boot it up, and it works wonderfully. Of course the one day out of the year that it doesn't you go rage comment on how it sucks and it scares Windows users away from Mac, but the rest of the time you'd never consider going back to a typical PC.

ekianjo15• 10 years ago

For developers OSX will almost always be worse than a Linux distro, if only because of package management.

bluejekyll2• 10 years ago

Homebrew is pretty good.

jordanpg4• 10 years ago

Maybe, but only marginally so. In an age of cheap virtual environments of many flavors, this objection seems minor to me.

jolux5• 10 years ago

This is certainly not true. You can basically get any package with Homebrew that you can on Linux, (assuming it's on GitHub, you can get all of them) in fact there's even a port of it to Linux for people that love it on Mac.

Yaggo• 10 years ago

There are many developers who value high several OS X features, such as well-implemented HiDPI mode with custom resolutions, super-easy backup solution, solid energy saving & suspend & resume functionalities (no conflicts with crappy 3D drivers), etc, etc. Those features wouldn't mean much without the possibility to easily¹ run FOSS on unix-like system.

¹) The differences between various package management systems are not significant in this context.

tlarkworthy• 10 years ago

eh? I have a both and I far prefer developing on the MBP just because the computer is so great and I can use it anywhere hassle free. My ubuntu machine is hard to tab around the windows and generally has a bad UI and the fonts are terrible. I actually had an ubuntu machine before I ever used a mac computer, so if anything I should be bias towards the more familiar linux setup. The MBP totally blew me away. Linux package managers may be superior, but I don't actually spend most of my development time installing system packages thankfully. npm, maven, pip are identical experiences on both.

superuser2• 10 years ago

As a developer I work with text all day, a task made thoroughly more pleasant with good font rendering and proper HiDPI support, neither of which are available on Linux. I'll take my 13 inches of Retina display over a pair of 27-inch externals any day.

SSH and rsync for remote editing work just fine from an rMBP.

manyxcxi6• 10 years ago

BULLSHIT

I live in the command line and use a modern toolchain. Package management has no bearing on my development. mvn, npm, composer, gem, and pip all work just fine. Home brew gets you the OS packages and I've yet to run into an even remotely popular package not in a Homebrew repo somewhere.

On top of all that- with Vagrant and (or even just) Virtualbox you have whatever flavor of Linux you want running on your desktop.

I have found OSX to be the best combination of just works enough OS with all the command line power I need. I can't effing stand Windows anymore and all the Linux desktop distros, though may have some appealing niche characteristics over OS X, there are way more rough edges. I could see one day leaving OS X for a Linux distro, but it won't be any time soon.

pjmlp3• 10 years ago

Which developers?

Not everyone is writing POSIX only code.

Symbiote2• 10 years ago

Is it really only one day a year for you? I was given the latest MBP for my new job, which was the first time I'd used a Mac.

The external keyboard uses a non standard USB port. That's broken.

It's not easy to maximise a window fully. Apparently I'm not supposed to do this, but I don't like being told how I'm supposed to use a computer.

Focus follows mouse can't be done.

There are very few ways the window manager can be customised.

Homebrew lacks many packages. Coming from Debian / Ubuntu, the package repository was always the first place to look when I needed some software.

The window manager plus homebrew pushed me to using Kubuntu after a month. It doesn't yet support using a high dpi display at the same time as a normal, external display, but that's all.

jordanthoms3• 10 years ago

Mostly true, but you may want to look into Divvy (which makes it very easy to maximize and manage windows) and TotalSpaces2.

I'd rather deal with these issues and run a ubuntu VM for some things than deal with the cornucopia of crap that is the PC laptop market but hopefully some day that will change.

pja2• 10 years ago

Homebrew lacks many packages. Coming from Debian / Ubuntu, the package repository was always the first place to look when I needed some software.

MacPorts is more complete in my experience, but tends to lag behind Homebrew for the new and shiny a little.

merb• 10 years ago

Actually I thought that, however in my company we bought 2 MacBook Pro's (Late 2013), we used two different distributors. Actually one (mine) works totally fine, except that the AC Power Adapter is totally shitty (damnit Apple MagSafe cable sucks). However his laptop had some really aweful bugs even that we are running the complete same version of Apple Mac OS X we even installed the image from my computer. At the last month his OS X gave up totally (currently he used Bootcamp so not a big deal), but at the moment he can't even boot os x

jhildings3• 10 years ago

A pity that the WM totally sucks and does not even support themes or configurable behaviour

theyCallMeSwift• 10 years ago

Check out the Dell Developer Edition XPS. It comes with Ubuntu on it and has 100% full driver support out of the box. It's a great machine, we use them for work. Screen is great too and it looks really beautiful. https://sputnik.github.io/

nl• 10 years ago

Is there any chance they'll update the version of Ubuntu? 12.04 is.. old.

bacongobbler2• 10 years ago

12.04 is still under LTS support by Ubuntu for another 4 years (LTS releases are supported for 7 years), so even if it's "old" it's also receiving active support. That being said, there's nothing stopping you from upgrading to 14.04 yourself.

smacktoward• 10 years ago

The current models ship with 14.04: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

jwn2• 10 years ago

I want to like this machine, but it comes stock with 8GB of RAM and only a 256GB drive for the high end model with no options to upgrade (at least on Dell's site).

craftkiller• 10 years ago

Just wait a little longer. If you go to the project sputnik google+ page you'll see Barton George say they're clearing out the old stock before releasing the developer edition of the new skylake XPS 13s.

will_hughes• 10 years ago

I've got an aging Asus Zenbook UX31A ultrabook which is amazingly thin and light, and still pretty decently fast. There was also very little crapware on it (was originally a Win7 machine with Win8 and then Win10 free upgrades).

My one complaint is that the (small, light) power bricks are apparently made of unobtainium. They're near impossible to find, and the ones you can are extraordinarily expensive.

Given my hate for proprietary power adapters - I'm holding out for a USB-C powered replacement.

Asus doesn't appear to be offering anything, but Razer's Blade Stealth[1] looks like it could be a great option.

[1] http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-blade-stealth

lighttower2• 10 years ago

I've been following the USB-C power delivery for some time. HP has one, but they disabled the ability to charge it from another PCs USB port because they can't trust other manufacturers didn't mess up the standard. Google Pixel, obviously perfect compliance with the spec. I am currently on thinkpad X230 with Debian Linux and W8. haven't booted into W8 for more than a year now. I wish the X260 had USB-C

franciscop• 10 years ago

Same thing here, I just got one off ebay that we'll see if it kills my laptop. My complains about the laptop compared to macbook air:

- Battery life: with Ubuntu I'm getting ~2.5h, which really sucks. I'm still in Ivy Bridge though, I've read that newer ones double the life. Still ridiculously small

- The SSD is also proprietary (but I've read the ones from 2 years to now are standard). Same as Macbook

However, it also has some good advantages:

- Normal keyboard

- 1080p screen

- $900, which was around 700€ at the time I bought it

Ifhax• 10 years ago

You should get a dell latitude--woot periodically has excellent deals on "last-year's models", brand-new with 3 years warranty. They are reliable, modifiable, and get excellent battery life. They come pre-installed with Windows Professional, with minimal bloatware--but forget about it. Scrub off the Windoze crap, install Linux, and you will have an awesome little machine.

RealityVoid• 10 years ago

Dell Latitude for the win. I have a E6410 and I am very happy with it. Long battery life, rugged, good build. A little heavy, but that never bothered me. And I get all kinds of curious looks since it looks so different. :)

UncleSlacky• 10 years ago

Yep, just picked up an e6220 for €200 (with a new 6 cell battery) - runs for ~7.5 hours with MX-15 (Debian without systemd) and TLP installed. Military-grade ruggedness and a nice keyboard, too.

nerdy3• 10 years ago

I went through the same thought process in December, never owned an Apple computer but needed a new laptop. Despite trying to fend off the idea of getting a Macbook (due to some combination of price/not wanting to succumb to herd mentality/proprietary nature of Apple) I caved.

It felt silly to spend a lot of time researching and configuring a custom laptop. I've never purchased a pre-built desktop but customizing a laptop seemed too poor a risk/reward proposition for my liking. Even with a great deal of effort it would be difficult to create something comparable to what I could simply purchase.

Apple's hardware is easy to appreciate down to small details. You can open the lid without holding the other half of the laptop (my previous laptop would lift up otherwise) and the screen isn't too loose either (doesn't bounce when you type hard). The speakers sound orders better than any of my previous laptops. Battery life is great. Retina is beautiful & responsive (easy to read text, even while scrolling). The trackpad is unbelievable for a variety of reasons (click anywhere, accuracy to the very edge of the pad, multitouch/gestures). I hadn't previously seen any trackpad worth using let alone nearly as good as a standard mouse, but haven't ever needed to connect a mouse to this one. It's just a great overall experience.

There have been a couple software glitches that required a restart to fix, but other than that and the temps (~90°C) it reaches under load it has been a pleasure (@ 2 months of heavy use). Figuring out OSX took a week or two.

I don't envy anyone who tries to save money while achieving a similar experience.

spronkey17• 10 years ago

So many little things that Apple just do better. I'd add some things to your list as well - the keyboards are nice and snappy, the machines are silent for general tasks, and the fans are generally quiet unless you're going crazy, with no stupid things like electrical noise / coil whine.

Even under heavy load you can sit the thing on your legs and it won't burn you. The machines are very sturdy and don't bend, so they remain level (unlike even the 'sturdy' Thinkpads). The rubber feet are svelte and not blocky and intrusive. There are no stupid panels to catch on clothing, or vents on the underside of the machine to get blocked.

Then there's stuff like MagSafe. And Thunderbolt (sure, USB 3.1 with Type C will do this stuff soon, but TBolt has done it for years already).

nerdy3• 10 years ago

Agree with all of this. Also worth noting that the best part is that these features are all in ONE device, not just a wishlist of things from a variety of laptops.

slantyyz6• 10 years ago

I would say it depends on what you do. Mac laptops definitely have strong features that their PC cousins don't have, but...

The two Mac laptops I have, they get hot and the fan is noisy, especially my Macbook Pro.

The port selection is nice, but the ports are too close together unless you're using all Apple cables. A chunky USB key or mini-display port cable can block other ports. I had to use a knife and shave off the edges of a mini display port cable I had.

jensen1233• 10 years ago

I agree with you that Apple hardware is generally much better than the competition. However, there is one thing that really bugs me about Apple laptops - they don't open 180 degrees, which make them somewhat impractical to use with a stand. And simply using a laptop as-is is not very ergonomic.

nerdy3• 10 years ago

My 2015 MBP opens to 120° which seems like it'd be enough but I haven't purchased a stand yet so I'm not sure. Good to know since I've been looking at the Rain stand, which looks like it's pitched at 30°, so the laptop screen would be perfectly upright at most, as shown in images of the Rain stand: http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/server800/c1529/product_images/u...

Not sure if that'll be okay, it is helpful to be able to angle the screen backward a touch if you're close to it and higher than the screen. That's probably less often the case with a stand since the laptop will be higher but helpful to keep in mind.

imsofuture• 10 years ago

Lenovo doesn't have a great website, but their ThinkPads are nice.

solipsism• 10 years ago

Why isn't there a Linux distribution that's specifically for installing on Macbooks? Given how few Macbook models there are, you could include exactly (and only) the correct drivers. Optimize everything to work perfectly, including things that often require tweaking to get working correctly (WiFi, screen brightness, power settings, etc).

If I knew it would not be an adventure installing Linux on my MBP, I'd pay good money for such a distro!

dkarapetyan• 10 years ago

Dell sputnik. It's great.

mixmastamyk• 10 years ago

2016 Model has not yet shown, has it?

sergiotapia• 10 years ago

True, there should something to rival Apple in the laptop arena.

Unfortunately there isn't. Apple just makes hardware that's so sexy and intuitive to use. Example, Apple TV. I never used one before but I demo'd one at Best Buy the other day and in 10 seconds I knew how to operate it. Apple does this best, their earnings prove that.

Just buy a Macbook Air, sturdy as hell, long battery life, and great Unix-enough-y OS.

wahsd• 10 years ago

Hell, even now the possibly best laptop, the Dell XPS with that sexy edgeless screen, still has a shitty ass touchpad compared to even a 7 year old MBP. And let's not get started on the fact that the best quality control of PCs is so shit that you're almost guaranteed to have regrets. There is simply nothing that even comes close to Apple's build quality. You can use a 5 yo MBP and it still run just as good as a new PC laptop for all the 80% of task you would need it for. It's really pretty damn amazing.

dh9972• 10 years ago

It's still at the mercy of Apple, Intel and all the other opaque firmware vendors and microcode updates. Plus, it's not nearly UNIX enough, the damn linker doesnt do linker scripts so good luck developing non-xnu kernels without compiling under something else. And the sources aren't always released in a timely manner. Why is Apple still not open sourcing more of the OS?

In the future, I'd like to be able to choose a design of laptop or tablet online, modify it, choose an open cpu core and so on and create an entire, beautiful computer at home. Not everyone will want to do that, but I think enough people will realize open source hw is the future especially in terms of supply-chain security and reducing or adding features. (More broadly: How cool would it be to have company-specific devices, designed and built just for them?)

habosa2• 10 years ago

Not disagreeing with the premise, but just want to plug a machine I am very happy with.

I was a lifetime mac owner (since OS 9) and my 2010 Macbook Pro finally broke down this year. It made it that long because I doubled the RAM, replaced the battery, and replaced the HDD with a hybrid drive. Finally the battery puffed up and exploded. I brought it to the Apple Store and they were beyond useless. The new MBPs are not modifiable in any way, and Apple's customer service is not what it used to be. So I decided to get a non-Mac for the first time in my life.

I ended up with an Asus Zenbook UX305LA. It's a 13" 1080p screen, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Core i5 processor. Cost me $749 and I dual-boot WIndows 10 and Ubuntu (spending 95% of my time in Ubuntu). It costs about 50% what a similar specced Macbook would cost and is similar size/weight to the Macbook air. Build quality is fantastic (open with one hand, good keyboard, glass trackpad, etc). The battery life is not quite as good as a 13" MBA but better than a Macbook Pro. Overall I am extremely happy with it.

Considering that my last MBP cost me $2200 up front plus ~$300 in repairs over time and lasted me ~4.5 years. That's about $500 a year. This machine cost $750. If it lasts over a year and a half, the experiment is a success. So far it's been nothing but great.

ekianjo15• 10 years ago

For the Asus Zenbook UX305LA, how flexible is it ? Can you open and change the battery by yourself, for example ?

You mentioned the battery life is not great, can you share some numbers on Ubuntu ? How much time do you get on a full charge?

habosa2• 10 years ago

It's hard to say since I mostly use it for heavy-drain stuff. Streaming movies on Netflix, building apps in Android Studio, etc. Always have Chrome running with a ton of tabs.

I'd say 6h of use in Ubuntu. The reviews I read say that the battery is better using it with Windows 10 (closer to 10h) but I just can't get my work done in Windows.

Overall the battery is not disappointing. Not sure if I can change the battery by myself but for $750 I don't intend to invest much in repairs. I'll just ride it until it dies.

scrollaway2• 10 years ago

I own a UX305LA and have owned two previous models in the UX line. Glad to see it mentioned, I like them all very much.

The battery is proprietary but easily replaced. My main issue with my previous UX31 was with the SSD. It died within a year and was no longer readable. It was a piece of proprietary SanDisk crap. Googling around about it yields various complaints about it (http://www.pcper.com/news/Mobile/Be-careful-which-ASUS-Zenbo...).

Battery life: I run Arch Linux with LXQt and get about 6 hours on a full charge. It's not great but IIRC I was getting better on Windows so it might be a software issue.

emerongi• 10 years ago

I have the UX305LA. I had a clicky trackpad[1], so I opened it up and fixed it. It was too good in other aspects, so I couldn't bother sending it back. Battery is replaceable.

Still though, with Asus you never know whether your laptop will be perfect out of the box or not. That's what sucks about PCs in general - if you want a hassle-free laptop, you either have to pay extra or invest a lot of time into research. I had to send 2 laptops back before I got the Zenbook, but even that had the clicky trackpad problem.

This is why I'm thinking that when I have to buy a new laptop, I'll first be looking at the Apple lines. I've never had a Mac (since they're pricy), but I'm done with doing hours and hours of research. I just need a laptop that works.

The Zenbook is great though. Love it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un6TSK0RCxQ

bkjelden• 10 years ago

+1 to this machine. I bought one for my wife last June and so far it's been great.

As a side note: Asus's naming sure could use some help. If I search the Microsoft Store's website right now, there's a Zenbook UX305FA, 2 UX305CA's, UX303UB, and two Zenbook Pro UX501JW's. I'm sure if I searched Amazon I could find even more unique names. I consider myself a pretty savvy PC shopper and even I find that incredibly confusing.

kyriakos2• 10 years ago

The worst part of their naming conventions is that the larger numbers don't always mean better / faster. And this would be ok if it was consistent but its not.

flurpitude• 10 years ago

Asus also often has many sub-models specified by a suffix to the main model number. And what they show on their many inconsistent marketing websites often won't match what's actually available in your country. Not to mention that it appears on the website months before the product (well, a slightly different, less attractive product with a similar name) becomes available. Asus are bad for this.

SomeCallMeTim4• 10 years ago

I'm really happy with my Toshiba Tecra Z series. The article totally missed Toshiba, which is still a decent manufacturer.

I get 5-6 hours of battery life with real usage, close to 10 hours in "green" mode, I've got a 15.6" screen, a keypad, 16Gb of RAM, an i7 processor, and a 1Tb SSD. And it's just over 4 pounds and pretty thin. I have NVIDIA graphics. The Tecra Z has an available 3K touch display, and its HDMI port can power a 4K monitor at 60Hz (even while its internal monitor is still going, and its USB3 port is powering a third monitor; that's my office development setup).

I've had it over a year and a half already, and it's still going strong.

gcb03• 10 years ago

the article misses everything.

lenovo is not even relevant anymore. Their new keyboards (since 2009!) are complete garbage.

his "research" was probably asking some guy at the water cooler "what's a good PC laptop" "lenovo" "thanks"

tluyben25• 10 years ago

I used to buy only Toshiba, Fujitsu & Panasonic. Panasonic still has great laptops in Japan and Fujitsu (used to) have the best warranty I could get where I live; no questions asked new laptop whatever happened for 5 years. But that time laptops were all expensive if you wanted something good; now these are overpriced last I checked.

pixelcloud• 10 years ago

I laughed when he was talking about the System76 laptop and being "modular" as a bonus. Then complaining about the empty space for the HDD.

Also, didn't compare the Surface Book (only talked about why he didn't use the Surface Pro..). I find that particularly funny

hardwaresofton• 10 years ago

I also relatively recently bought a Zenbook with the mobile fanless processor also (battery life is pretty decent, but of course I can't play many games on it or anything), put Arch Linux on it -- been happily hacking ever since!

hartator• 10 years ago

I think if you are spending more than 10 hours per day on your laptop, price shouldn't matter.

On a side note, you've missed the retina thing, it's making a true difference.

ricksplat• 10 years ago

I've had retina for the last couple of years and while it's a nice bit of fluff I'd take software & service reliability over it any day

stock_toaster2• 10 years ago

But it has a matte screen, which sounds glorious!

I am still using a seemingly ancient macbook pro 15" 2009 model, simply because it has a matte screen, yet still runs the latest OSX. The super glossy screens make my eyes hurt after a while. I have been hoping that some day the glossiness gets down to a level that I can tolerate enough to get a newer macbook. However, if my laptop ends up giving up the ghost along the way though... I may look at using something like the matte screen zenbook discussed by the parent, and running FreeBSD or OpenBSD on it.

threatofrain2• 10 years ago

What does a 'true difference' mean? (retina screen) => (mediating factor) => ( more productivity / better eyes )?

tluyben25• 10 years ago

That depends on your taste. I bought my first retina macbook pro last year and I really don't like it compared to my Air. Actaully it's rotting in a cupboard now because of the ghastly battery life. I agree with the premise; computers are locked down and cheap build quality in general. But for me only battery life matters, so I bought a stack (from a broker; it was very cheap) of Lenovo X220s with a 9 cell batteries and i'm happy as a clam. It costs a fraction of the Macbook Pro (10% actually) and it actualy just chugs along with Ubuntu installed for 12 hours after which I just swap batteries for another 12 hours. I was never that bothered with the whole lock-in thing before but now that i'm back working in Linux (2009 was my first Mac, before that I went from DOS to Unix in the early 90s and after that straight to Linux until 2009) I really don't want to touch anything else. But YMMV.

scholia8• 10 years ago

If you are spending more than 3-4 hours per day on your laptop, you should really be using a desktop, for the sake of your long term health....

Raed667• 10 years ago

The one I found had an Intel Core i7-5500U .. Which is not for power-users.

EDIT: Your guide[0] to intel CPUs

[0] https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/proce...

redthrow• 10 years ago

I was thinking about buying this exact machine. Does Bluetooth work well on Ubuntu out of the box?

chjohasbrouck2• 10 years ago

I have both, and I find the things that Macs have that everything else is missing just aren't articulated on a spec sheet.

The display on the Macbook Pro Retina is just flawless. The colors, the anti-glare, and the picture quality from all angles, it's just really well done. The brushed aluminum chassis makes it very cool and lightweight, great to travel with and keep on your lap. Excellent battery life. It's just a great machine to live with overall.

Most of the PC options are steel and plastic, so they're hot and heavy. They'll burn your legs, they have comparably poor battery life. The screen looks terrible if your viewing angle isn't perpendicular. The hardware I've had has tended to die faster, too.

I do spend most of my time in Linux on this old Dell, though. The OS is more important to me and I prefer Linux. But Macbooks are great, and I wish I could find something as good to install Linux on.

eosrei2• 10 years ago

You seem to have only looked at the older PCs. Have you looked at the Dell XPS 13 or Microsoft Surface Book? They may dispel your complaints. You can even buy the XPS with Ubuntu.

askafriend3• 10 years ago

Not to mention that the entire casing of the MacBook acts as a heatsink, which is really just awesome design.

jahnu3• 10 years ago

Have to agree. It's always the small details that aren't obvious at first blush.

Here's another one that always gets me about PC laptops: Air vents on the bottoms so I can't safely rest it on anything soft that would block them. On my MBP I only have to worry about the very back.

jhildings3• 10 years ago

One thing that sucks about the display is the "glossy glass"-style which makes it very sensitive to sunlight or strong indoor lightning

MrBuddyCasino• 10 years ago

It really is about the details - sometimes you don't notice them until you really need them. Examples:

- MBPs have the best wifi of any notebooks - to my knowledge, they still are the only ones to have 3 MIMO streams. Right now, my TX rate is 585 MBit/s.

- Thunderbolt and I/O: we recently started to stream our tech meetups to Youtube. The two thunderbolt ports are processing two 1080p streams from BlackMagic Mini boxes - other laptops simply don't have the necessary ports or enough PCIe lanes to do this reliably.

- We just got Dell 4k/60Hz monitors. Most of our MBPs can drive them just fine via DisplayPort, others can only do it at 30Hz, if at all.

lmm13• 10 years ago

Macbooks are great, and I wish I could find something as good to install Linux on.

You can install Linux on a Macbook if that's what you want. Despite the marketing a Macbook these days is just an expensive, well-designed PC with particular software.

Most of the PC options are steel and plastic, so they're hot and heavy. They'll burn your legs, they have comparably poor battery life. The screen looks terrible if your viewing angle isn't perpendicular. The hardware I've had has tended to die faster, too.

Not my experience for machines from the last couple of years, particularly if you look at similar price points.

ilurkedhere• 10 years ago

2015 Macbook user here. Still possible to burn legs.

lqdc13• 10 years ago

Macbook Pro is the first laptop that I've ever owned that was so hot on the bottom that you can't rest it on your lap. If anyone is doubting this, please try to do something that involves all cores for 10 minutes. Any kind of non-trivial parallel task would do that.

marklyon• 10 years ago

The XPS13 may fit what you're looking for, if you want a PC. Amazing screen (touchscreen even). Solid, great build. Not hot and heavy. They even have a special one built for linux.

jpalomaki• 10 years ago

And it is pretty amazing that Apple packs in quad core CPU to the very slim package. Of course the drawback is that you don't get onsite repairs with this construction, but still. Compare this to for example Lenovo quad core models which are quite rare and thick.

On the Wintel side the more powerful machines seem to be more or less targeted to very specific use cases, like CAD and these computers are more like portable workstations than laptops.

natch3• 10 years ago

There are third party batteries that will puff up and explode. I wouldn't blame Apple for that. If it was an Apple battery, I'm curious which Apple store gave you grief about this. Care to tell?

lucaspiller• 10 years ago

I noticed the original battery of my 2006 MacBook was puffed up when I was at my parents over Christmas, so yes Apple batteries do definitely have the same issue.

I asked about a replacement and they said they don't make them anymore, but said if I really want one to get a third party battery from Amazon (the guy even searched on Amazon to show me how much it would be).

Cymen• 10 years ago

If you still want to bring your old MBP back to life, I just replaced the battery on my sister's 2011 MBP with an aftermarket one from Amazon. There were a lot of pro/con reviews and it's only a couple weeks in but so far it's great. I went the one branded by Anker and it came with the correct screwdriver which was a nice touch. Installation was very simple. She also needed a new HDD so I put in an SSD and the machine is surprisingly zippy with the latest OS X.

perlgeek• 10 years ago

... and god help you if you ever need the Asus customer support for repairing that thing. A truely horrible experience.

I can provide details of my "experience" with them, but the Internet is already full of horror stories that cover everything that is to say about that topic.

And no, buying a new laptop after a year and a half simply isn't acceptable to me, even if it makes sense in your economic situation.

osense• 10 years ago

I don't know how things are over in the US, but here in Czech republic, my experience with them was nothing but good. When my SSD broke down after about a month of using the thing, they paid for the shipping to and from the repair shop and replaced the drive in... a week I think. I've been using it for about a year now and I've had no other problems.

collyw2• 10 years ago

I was pleasantly surprised when I needed my Asus repaired under warranty here in Spain. Came and collected at my work, and returned it within 3 days.

rjsw• 10 years ago

I have had good service from Asus in the UK.

bitL2• 10 years ago

Can confirm - ASUS declined my warranty on a keyboard problem people complained about (basically sending thrash instead of pressed keystrokes); I had to order a new one from Asusparts and replace it myself; all within 3 months of purchase of their most expensive Zenbook. They even attempted to sell me a "repair" of motherboard that would cost almost the same as a brand new Zenbook (yet the mobo works fine since I replaced keyboard). Horrible, horrible experience.

kyriakos2• 10 years ago

I had great experience with Asus service in EU. I called them up, they asked for a serial number and what was the problem, they sent UPS to pick it up (from Cyprus), a week later I had it back fixed. Considering how bad support for hardware is in this country and the fact that the service center is overseas I'd say they were one of my best after sales experiences.

johnchristopher• 10 years ago

I join the others in praising ASUS support in Europe. Here in Belgium I had a laptop still under warranty picked up the day after calling support service for a failed motherboard and two weeks later it was back, no questions asked. Picked up by EDP (or something) and probably serviced in The Netherlands.

legulere• 10 years ago

A 13" macbook air with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Core i5 processor costs $1 299.00, so more like 60%. There also seem to be some small things where Asus is saving money: It uses a SATA SSD instead of a NVMe PCIe SSD for instance.

tdsamardzhiev• 10 years ago

True that. MBA also has better connectivity and audio.

On the other hand, MBA's monitor is a complete joke compared to the one on ASUS UX305.

mandelken• 10 years ago

I bought the first Zenbook UX31 when it came out and last year bought a retina MBP. The zenbook was at the time half the price for the comparable mac air and I enjoyed it very much the first year, but since then I had it repaired 3 times costing me more than the purchase price (HDD, ram, power plug) and the power plug still doesnt work well so I can't use it anymore. It served me well, but not sure I would recommend it again. I'm very happy with the MPB so far, never thought I'd buy a mac but there was just no alternative for build quality, as the article suggested. Still haven't put Linux on it, which I thought I'd do immediately, so the OS is not that bad. If the MPB were a little lighter, it would be the perfect machine for me.

nextos• 10 years ago

I think it's not only about build quality. If you use Linux, sadly it's also about compatibility.

I bought a MBA 11' (2012) because it's an all-Intel machine, which was used by Linus for some time and hardware support is almost perfect. It's only lacking ACPI events for battery discharge, something very few machines have.

While Macs are good, I think they are optimised for the looks and not for robustness. Glossy screens are a bit uncomfortable, and aluminium tends to be too rigid, transmitting shocks to the screen as a consequence.

kamaln7• 10 years ago

I had a Thinkpad T440s running Ubuntu and then Arch, and now I have a 13" rMBP. I love the glossy screen, vivid colors, and most importantly, battery life. OS X also has the advantage of everything just working perfectly out of the box so I'm happy.

I don't think I'll go back to Linux any time soon, though I do miss tiling WMs.

rimantas• 10 years ago

Wait till 2022 to compare?

conjectures• 10 years ago

I have a similar Asus machine. Nice build quality. Lasted 3 years of fairly hard use so far. Shiny screen could be improved, that's about it. Would recommend Asus highly.

DanBC• 10 years ago

I love ASUS, and second your recommendation.

Watch out though - some of their cheaper machines are just weird. The X205ta being one example.

crudbug3• 10 years ago

The Zen Pro 15" is not bad [1]

[1] http://store.asus.com/us/item/201511AM230002951/A26128

pdimitar2• 10 years ago

I was so very tempted by this laptop but there's one requirement I will never forego -- the backlit keyboard. If they make a second iteration of that model with a backlit keyboard I'll run to the nearest store and I WILL JUST BUY IT right there and then.

slantyyz6• 10 years ago

Serious question - can someone explain the appeal of the backlit keyboards? I notice it's a big deal whether you're a Mac or PC fan, but I generally don't understand it. Is it for people who can't touch type without looking at the keyboard?

Admittedly, my desktop keyboard is backlit (I had to buy a gaming keyboard to get the macro keys I wanted), but the only purpose of the backlight for me is to know which of the four keyboard profiles I'm using -- and this feature isn't on many laptops at all.

Mister_Snuggles2• 10 years ago

I'm in a similar boat, I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro which I've added RAM and an SSD to. I'm dreading the day it dies because it's such a perfect laptop for me.

The new MacBook Pros are nice, I've got a work-issued one, but whatever configuration you buy is what you're stuck with until you replace it. That sucks.

marincounty• 10 years ago

If what happens to the economy, and Apple sales--I feel comming. I think you might see, a Mac that's easy to upgrade/repair be suddenly available. I just hope they don't wait too long, and their stores look like Sears.

LordKano• 10 years ago

I was a long time Mac aficionado. I loved Apple and their products. It was a heart breaking experience when I felt like it was time to move on.

I paid about $2,300 for a Performa 550 back in 1993. That machine served me well. I added memory, internal and external hard drives, a Zip drive, a 68882 FPU and a bunch of other peripherals. Between 1990 and 2000, I probably spent $6,000 in hardware, software and peripherals for those machines.

They served me well. I still have a G3 and Performa 6400/200 with G3 upgrade under my desk. Every once in a while, I fire one up just to reminisce.

Commodity parts and easy interchange is just so powerful that the community of Apple users just doesn't provide the same kind of benefits to outweigh that. At least, in my humble opinion.

chias• 10 years ago

That laptop looks amazing! Quick question: does it have a backlit keyboard?

smasty2• 10 years ago

I have good experience with Asus as well. Until recently I was still using my early 2011 Asus U36JC. It was probably one of the first ultrabook-like laptops, even though it wasn't branded as one, since it had a second discrete GPU. Reasonably thin at 19 mm and 1.4 kg, with stellar battery life (10h+ under Debian) and great performance. Even though it had 1st generation Core i5, it was still snappier then most of my classmate's laptops with latest i5s. It even had a USB 3.0 port, which was something for a ~700€ 13" laptop at that time. Over the time I upgraded to 8GB RAM and swapped the disk for SSD. Only downside was a pretty crappy glossy screen, but I mostly had it hooked up to an external monitor so I didn't mind so much.

I finally decided to go for a new laptop last December because the battery life was degrading after the years. I was consideing just buying a replacement battery, but I wasn't able to find one under $200 including shipping and I got a really good deal on a top of the line refurbished X220 together with a docking station for 380€.

My sister, a teacher, is now using the Asus laptop and not considering the battery life it still runs smoothly.

vatotemking2• 10 years ago

How about MS Surface Book? Fits all the criteria that OP is looking for.

dit0a• 10 years ago

I had a Surface Book but sent it back as it is plagued with problems still. Just have a quick Google for issues and you will find some real show-stoppers, such a shame as it is a beautiful machine.

jordanpg4• 10 years ago

Relevant: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-PC-equivalent-of-a-MacBook...

jmspring• 10 years ago

Post didn't address - buy apple hardware, run something other than OS X on it.

Seems simple. Sure you are locked to apple hardware issues/resolutions, but Apple today is what the Thinkpad was for years (pre-Lenovo), hardware mostly just works.

Insert arguments of customization, configurability, etc... Most people don't care. Lenovo doesn't deliver as well as IBM did on the Thinkpad line. What's the alternative besides Apple?

atomicfiredoll• 10 years ago

Apple has great design, but they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software. You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts, and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style.

It was addressed in the first full paragraph. He's one of the ones that cares.

SomeCallMeTim4• 10 years ago

Personally, I use far too much mainstream software to be able to run Linux as my only OS, and I hate dual-booting. Sometimes I'll run Linux in a VM for convenience, but Linux is so broken with respect to so much hardware, I'm not interested in running it as the main OS.

And running Apple's OS as the top level OS would drive me insane. So unless you're suggesting I try to run Windows 10 on Apple hardware, I agree with the article that the world needs a better hardware options.

Until then I'll stick with my Toshiba. I'm pretty happy with it, all told. I don't see it as "better" in an engineering sense than Apple, but I get an i7 with 16Gb of RAM and a 1Tb SSD for about 1/2 the cost of the equivalent Apple hardware.

And the control key is in the right place (the bottom left corner of the keyboard) ergonomically. That alone kills all Apple hardware for me.

IanCal• 10 years ago

And the control key is in the right place (the bottom left corner of the keyboard) ergonomically. That alone kills all Apple hardware for me.

Personally I prefer using the caps-lock key as control, which can be set in the system preferences on a mac.

touristtam4• 10 years ago

I have used five (5) post IBM Thinkpad and the build quality has been absolutely fine and they mostly just work as you put it. And all of them have been reinstalled with Ubuntu at some point.

jensen1233• 10 years ago

I recently bought a third generation Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. It had a very annoying fan, which made it unusable for me. It wasn't very loud, but it was a high-frequency sound which made it annoying.

Eventually, I got myself a Lenovo Thinkpad T450 instead. So far this T450 has been very good. The fan almost never comes on. However, it should probably be noted that I got the T450 model with the slowest CPU.

For those of us who are sensitive to noise, I suppose it's a good idea to always choose the slowest CPU, if several options are available. I didn't think about that when buying the X1, and bought one of the faster models.

matthewwiese• 10 years ago

I'm quite happy with my 11" Macbook from 2012, she's quite the lil devil still. I stay on Yosemite and my machine is strong enough for me. If the author requires power, he/she could build a decent Xeon desktop and keep it at home, then just remote into it for intensive development. I keep a backup Core 2 Duo at my appt for work and play and it's still packing enough of a punch to do most of my work (only bottleneck is latency).

To be honest, sometimes I even think my MBA is unnecessary and contemplate a cheap Asus Eee PC netbook because I live in the command line (and consequently don't need to load up heavy IDEs). However, I understand if that approach is too much work for most people who just want a simple solution without all the fuss, but where's the fun in that?

euske• 10 years ago

There are many independent laptop PC manufacturers in Japan. Panasonic Let's Note (cf. http://panasonic.jp/pc/ ) is known to have excellent battery life while being decent. Laptops from Mouse Computer (cf. http://www.mouse-jp.co.jp/ ) have almost no pre-installed crap. Unfortunately, many of them don't sell outside the country. They're probably too small/thin to Western people. People tend to think a 17-inch laptop "giant" here.

SamReidHughes• 10 years ago

Mouse's NB900 model is just a rebranded Clevo P750DM. The other models look pretty Clevo-ey too.

Aoyagi5• 10 years ago

Panasonic makes such great laptops. Too bad it's hard to get them outside of Japan.

partiallypro• 10 years ago

The article ignores the Surface Book (thought it does mention the Surface itself), Razer Blade and Dell XPS lines which are all pretty renowned for their quality. OEMs make some crappy PCs, no doubt...but it has gotten a lot better in the past 2 years. HP's Spectre is also a really nice device.

joshAg2• 10 years ago

For those who don't know much about non-Apple PCs:

The only laptops worth considering are the enterprise lines from dell hp, and lenovo. They are night and day differences from the consumer products, because they are usually entirely separate divisions. Within this, certain lines are better than others. For example, with lenovo I would only really consider a t-series, w-series, or x-series. The p-series looks promising, but that just came out, so maybe don't rush into that if you want to reduce risk.

If the laptop doesn't have the RAM or harddrive soldered on, it's probably cheaper to buy from newegg and install an upgrade yourself than it is to upgrade through the product configurator. This does not void the warranty. The support pages from the website have explicit instruction manuals for doing this yourself as well as full disassembly instructions.

The enterprise laptops have support pages with crapware free drivers. If you don't feel like surgically removing crapware from a new installation, just nuke it from space and install the OS fresh. Heck, most time you don't even need to install those drivers, because the base windows drivers are fine for most things (there's probably a performance bump to using the drivers, and some things, like the fingerprint reader, will need a driver), so you could just skip the driver install.

Since these are enterprise laptops, you can still get 7 and 8 preinstalled (thank god for corporate compliance policies, am i right?! ;). MS call it "downgrade rights". Much like Apple, the best MS OS is the one released in 2009 (windows 7), so splurge for the "downgrade" to it if it's offered for the laptop you want.

If you care inordinately about crapware and don't want to spend time nuking a fresh laptop, then buy a laptop (again only enterprise laptops from lenovo, hp, and dell) from microsoft directly, since those don't come with spyware: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store?SiteID=msusa&Locale=en_U...

You can also get warranties that last much longer than 2 years (some go up to 5), cover accidental damage, or cover the battery, but the specific policies offered depend on which company you go with. I have taken advantage of the lenovo accidental damage warranty a few times, and it was great. The default warranty requires you to ship the laptop off (lenovo overnights me a box with a prepaid overnight shipping label inside it so all I have to do is pack my laptop and drop it at the UPS store) and then they return it within a week, but you can also get an onsite repair warranty where someone will come to you to fix the laptop.

Trust me, it's worth dealing with a website that isn't as shiny as apple's website.

tomsthumb2• 10 years ago

Lenovo T-series and W-series both had trash tier track pads last time I used either of them. Literally un-fucking-usable. For the first time in my life I got a tiny usb mouse to carry with me. My cardiologist wouldn't stop complaining about my blood pressure. Writing haskell should not be easier than right clicking.

Maybe they're different now, but if not, I mean, great scott that's terrible.

The keyboards were about as good as a macbook, which was nice.

touristtam4• 10 years ago

Funny, I always use the nipple instead of the trackpad on any Thinkpad I have ever used.

joshAg2• 10 years ago

they recently redesigned them to include physical buttons again, if that's what you're referring to in the x40x series.

nchudleigh• 10 years ago

It would be really cool if someone could do a clean developer book.

Software: Would love something that comes with a Debian distro installed. Something minimal and clean.

Body: Brushed metal exterior, hard rubber for hand rests- no sharp edges either (my wrists hate MBP's edges). Nice big touchpad. Elegant branding (love the lightbar on the chromebook pixels) but perhaps even more subtle (the new macbooks do a good job of this- eliminating the obnoxious glowing apple). Thin would be good.

Hardware: 500GB SSD would be more than enough. Don't need GFX card. 8gb ram is more than enough. Good CPU please. Fan-less would be amazing. USB-C would be interesting, at least need a couple of those. And then a pair of USB-3 ports, and a headphone/mic jack. Maybe an HDMI. It would be good if the internals were simple enough to swap out everything with a small philips head.

MOST IMPORTANT THING: I can buy replacement parts on your site for everything (screen, keyboard, shell, all of the hardware, touchpad, etc.)

Price: I would pay anywhere from 1-2k US for this computer. Honestly just to support some healthy competition in the space- I would even go to 2.5k

hguant3• 10 years ago

I recommend System76. Good laptops, clear website, and you know exactly what you're getting with the OS.

https://system76.com/laptops

underwater• 10 years ago

He spent multiple paragraphs explaining how he has a System76 laptop.

akurilin• 10 years ago

Their desktops are great, we use them for all of our dev boxes. Their laptops are basically branded Clevos, they're plasticky and feel like they were duct taped together. This is pretty typical of most of the "Linux Laptop" vendors.

captn3m0• 10 years ago

As someone who owns and works on the exact same machine mentioned in the article (Galago Ultra Pro), I agree. It's build quality isn't that great and the non-computing hardware is sub-par (battery, fans, bezel, touchpad...).

I just wish there was a real alternative to the 13" Air.

awongh2• 10 years ago

I had a thinkpad running ubuntu for a couple of years, around 2010-2013, but I was forced to switch to a mbp for one simple reason:

About 1/10 of the time when I would be at a coffee shop or something and would try to connect to the wi-fi router, ubuntu simply wouldn't be able to connect. This thinkpad had one of the officially supported wifi chips in it, and it still didn't work.

Lots of forum posts told me to downgrade driver versions or some such thing, I wasted a bunch of time trying many different solutions and nothing ever fixed it.

I'm a web dev, and without internet I can't get anything done- I had to eventually get rid of it. Too bad, because the build quality was nice and it's a much better deal than a mbp, but unreliable internet is a deal-breaker.

(If there had been some way for me to pay someone with driver knowledge to diagnose and patch the driver problem I would have done that!)

unethical_ban• 10 years ago

Or buy another laptop. Could have been a hardware issue. Or install another distro.

awongh2• 10 years ago

I thought that the hardware drivers were independent of the distro? or at least debian? I lazily assumed hardware support on other distros would be crappier.

I think the big issue here is that if a piece of hardware is listed as officially supported and it still doesn't work after you try to fix it with whatever hacks are suggested, it's not a workable situation.

gog• 10 years ago

That takes time and/or money.

Even if the wifi doesn't work on your mac, but it does on your phone or some other device, you can be pretty sure your mac is not working properly.

touristtam4• 10 years ago

I can relate: I have a X230 at home with Ubuntu 14.10 and the wifi has a weird tendency to disconnect and then have a hard time trying to reconnect.

vacri6• 10 years ago

Linux wifi can be a bit of a curious beast, but there is some element of the random number generator playing against people here. Last year I was working for a company in a startup colocation. My computer is a desktop and I run linux... and we moved into the colo only to find there was no wired network. Wifi was the only way. I tried a couple of USB wifi cards (yuck) and then just bought a cheap pci one. After that, it worked perfectly. Over the next few months, there were frequently times that all the macbook users in our company would be complaining and asking each other about the wifi being down, meanwhile my card was going rock solid and never missed a beat.

At a previous workplace, the folks on macbooks often complained of wifi dropouts and the folks on windows laptops never did.

But then there are stories like yours that are the other way around. Wifi is a difficult thing to pinpoint, because you can never be sure just what it is that's causing problems; there are so many factors, and it's difficult to really nail down without a lot of time and alternate parts to swap out.

joesmo• 10 years ago

I'd say upgradability should be added to that list to make a better computer, otherwise it'd at best be equal to one from Apple.

dh9972• 10 years ago

I like and use Apple gear but I dont like untinkerable black boxes or opaque firmwares.

I think we need a beautiful, functional servers,computer, handheld and wearables with opensource desktop lithography and 3d material deposition. It would take about $20 million and the right people to get going, but it could be hw UNIX -> Linux.

justinhj• 10 years ago

I have a Lenova Yoga Pro and it's great. Nice build quality, silent, touch screen. My kid found it plays latest games at medium detail.

mt_caret• 10 years ago

What about Vaios? The specs on it are impressive (WQHD, 16GB memory, 20h+ battery life) with a sleek build. Wondering if it goes along well with linux...

catwell• 10 years ago

I have a Vaio Pro 13, one of the last Sony models. I bought it over two years ago now. It works very well under Linux. Initially there was a small issue with CPU frequency scaling because it was basically the first Haswell ultrabook, and I had to patch and compile my own kernel to work around it, but that was mainlined after one or two months. I got a version without a touchscreen and I consider it one of the best ultrabooks available, even today.

I also have two older Vaios, a P (yes, this one http://www.getitnow.gr/MEDIA/content_CustomProductCatalog/m1...) and an EB (17" laptop), which both work well under Linux.

Reagarding the newer models, I have no feedback yet but I hope they will be fully supported, if not at the time of release then a few months later at most.

TwoBit• 10 years ago

And he didn't even mention the terribly shitty trackpad that every single pc laptop has. And its shitty synaptics software.

melted• 10 years ago

Just get a MacBook Pro and skip the aggravation entirely. You pay more for a reason. That reason is that no one else knows how to make a proper laptop anymore.

chao-• 10 years ago

I have the "old X1 Carbon with a low res screen", except that the article is a little inaccurate: it doesn't have to have a low res screen. You can select a 2560x1440 screen. Even better, it's a non-reflective (matte) screen and even has a non-touch option! I guess I'm not alone in disliking reflective screens.

What sold me more than anything, though, was that I could select the best parts without being forced into a touchscreen. In so many other company's product lineups, if I wanted the 1440p screen (or whatever is highest), they were convinced I absolutely wanted a touchscreen, yes sirree! Thank you, Lenovo, for understanding my needs.

I don't remember which manufacturer it was, but I remember one option page where if I wanted to select the Core i7 option, it required the touchscreen upgrade as well. I don't see any logic behind that at all except "Hey, that i7 means you must be a big spender, guess we'll milk you for all you've got!"

As for OS, I run Linux Mint (Cinnamon) currently and experience no particular hardware or driver issues. Battery life is 5-8 hours depending on load, screen brightness, etc.

dschep• 10 years ago

I actually intentionally got the "900p" lowres version (also matte) because I didn't feel like dealing with HiDPI support. I _love_ the click pad. 3 finger click (for middle click) is a million times more reliable than 3 finger tap in my experience.

julochrobak• 10 years ago

Does anyone have experience with the Tuxedo Computers - http://www.tuxedocomputers.com ? They have just recently released an interesting 13.3" InfinityBook.

lumannnn• 10 years ago

Was about to post the same link. I was just recently introduced to them. Haven't seen or used one. But there is one user review (small one though) at the very bottom of the page.

Roughly translated: "Very good build quality, light and nice design. Everything works out of the box. Great and nice customer service. Thanks again!"

Haven't searched for other reviews yet.

http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebook...

canthonytucci2• 10 years ago

I feel compelled to bring up how cheap, modular and abundant bad-ass second-hand thinkpads are. Not to mention that even the new-generation keyboards are amazing, and put the shallow crap on my macbook pro to shame.

The money you'd spend on even a 'cheap' macbook pro will get you something solidly built with a nice screen that's plenty fast for devlopment work AND money left over for an extra battery or 2 + a brand new fat SSD + 16 GB brand new RAM + a nice dinner (maybe even with a date).

Just be careful not to get one from the awkward phase recently where they didn't have individual clicky-butons and this strange ceramic trackpad.

vortico• 10 years ago

The IBM T60 is great, and its running price is around $50-65. I've been using a similar model for about a year, and with a lightweight Linux distro, my development efficiency is not decreased due to the performance.

spronkey17• 10 years ago

Most Thinkpads have terrible screens. Many used Thinkpads will need shims or otherwise under keyboards to stop them rattling. They also suffer from a number of issues such as electrical noise (i.e. coil whine),

If you're thinking about a Thinkpad to replace a Macbook Pro, consider: - X220, X230 with IPS displays. Most aren't. Check for backlight bleed. - X250 with IPS display, but be mindful that the CPU is actually no faster than the X230 (15W U series vs 28-35W). X240 has weird buttons that don't work, avoid. - X1 Carbon, 1st or 3rd gen. Avoid 2nd gen as split backspace key will drive you insane if you ever use more than one keyboard. Again, be mindful of U series CPUs. - T5xx have better displays than T4xx in general. But if you don't want the extra size, then avoid AU Optronics displays on T420 and T430 series, as they are grainy and poor. I believe the Tx50 series has IPS display options, maybe on the s model?

canthonytucci2• 10 years ago

I can confirm on the screen, I was impatient and did not seek out an ips screen on my x230 - it has awful viewing angles.

My wife has an X1 2nd gen and the split backspace is something I must have repressed, good call there. Total shit.

I would also make sure not to think of a used, "does enough" thinkpad as a replacement for a new Macbook Pro any more than picking up an early 2000s Acura would be a replacement for a new Mercedes. It's an alternative, with its own trade-offs that may suit some people, but by no means a direct replacement.

bnastic• 10 years ago

I am a bit on the compulsive side, so I have (or had) them all - all the Thinkpads, all the Macs... currently X220, X1 Carbon, a Macbook Air and a Macbook/Retina. I use them all regularly, but I have to say that Thinkpads are not what they used to be. When I'm looking for a laptop to put in my bag I will always reach for the Macbook.

joonoro• 10 years ago

The new ThinkPads are indeed awful, get the X220 aka the last good one. That should do you well until something worthwhile comes to replace it (maybe HP?)

- Last old-style ThinkPad with great build quality

- Last one with the classic keyboard

- Small form factor

- Sandy bridge i7, still kicks butt because it's not undervolted (check the benchmarks)

- up to 16 GB memory

- 10 hours of battery with a new 9-cell battery (+ tlp package on linux)

- Linux or Windows works great

wyclif2• 10 years ago

I was a big ThinkPad guy until a few years ago, and I get why you recommend the X220...agree it's "the last good one." But can you explain what the "tlp package" does?

sbuk3• 10 years ago

The declining software quality is nothing more than a meme. None of you you seem to remember the horror that was 10.0. Or 10.1. Or 10.2 Or...

spronkey17• 10 years ago

It's real. Sure, OS X was terrible in the early days. But then we got stuff like Tiger and Snow Leopard. It was clear progress. And now it isn't.

sbuk3• 10 years ago

Extrapolate; in what way?

10.4 took until 10.4.11 to be stable. Snow Leopards wasn't great out of the box either. Marco's original post was nerd rage and the new mDNS solution. Was it annoying? Yes. Is it symptomatic of a larger issue? Hardly. I think, like may others, you are looking at this with extremely rosey glasses, especially given the comparison to Linux desktops, which in my experience (around 15 years) is still not as reliable as OS X out of the box or intuitive; too many desktops trying to do too many things too differently. Of course YMMV, but I'd argue it was likely due to confirmation bias.

I stand by the fact that this is nothing more than a meme.

sreenadh2• 10 years ago

I am surprised that the author did not consider Dell. I T410i user, but I will not be buying another thinkpad based on the current line up. Plus I have many issues with Linux drivers. Windows is no more reliable and I am forced to move on. Mac is great but the inability to modify is bugging me. I have a MBP also.

Of course, nothing beats a PC but its tough while travelling or when you just want to move around while working.

Micheal Dell making the company private will be good if he planning to focus on making quality hardware like Dell Developer Edition XPS + Project Sputnik, which is an interesting project. But still needs to mature.

So if I have to buy a machine today, I am lost. There is a need for quality machine for developers as we spend long time with it. It needs to be durable, light, matte screen(its very tough to get that now a days), low heat, good keyboard (mechanical like old thinkpads), good driver support for Linux, decent battery. PLUS have a higher score on iFixit. I like the rating of XPS 13 @ https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Dell+XPS+13+Teardown/36157

tushar-r• 10 years ago

|Plus I have many issues with Linux drivers.

Which is unfortunate, since Thinkpads used to have the best support for Linux in earlier generations :-(

kenrikm• 10 years ago

I'm not sure I get it? Why not just buy a Macbook and install Ubuntu? you get the nicely designed hardware and don't have to run OSX if you don't want to.

sreenadh2• 10 years ago

I have a rule that a machine has to be with me for atleast 5 years. But around the 3 years, a ram upgrade and hd change is vital to extent the life. My HP Compaq lasted for 8 years before its fell in water. My thinkpad is done 6 yrs and I am current using that. I doubt I get equal life from my soon to be 1 yr mbp without some tweaking and the low score on iFixit is dishearting. iFixit is a great site and I feel it need more attention. I dream is to get a machine with iFixit score of 10.

ne01• 10 years ago

I love my ThinkPad X220 and highly recommend ThinkPad X series.

I remember the day UPS delivered it. I had a flash drive with a Debian 6 image ready to be installed, didn't even boot up the windows to check if everything was OK.

~2.5 years after using it for about 10 hours per day USB ports started to randomly disconnect and reconnect it was very annoying.

I had no idea that ThinkPad X series has 3 years of warranty and still cannot believe that Lenovo sent someone to my house (3 days after I contacted them!) and changed the motherboard it's basically a brand new laptop. FYI, bought it directly from lenove's outlet website for ~$700.

My thinker is ~4 years old and it's still one of my most beloved objects in this world.

trynumber9• 10 years ago

Well, the VAIO Z returns soon after a brief hiatus. Maybe look into those?

[0] http://us.vaio.com/vaio-z/

[1] http://us.vaio.com/vaio-z-flip/

josteink• 10 years ago

So he says there are some good computers out there (like the Lenovo Carbon X1), but due to his bad luck and timing on his part it's a bad choice for another month.

If you just wipe Windows clean on those Lenovos and use them for Linux (Fedora runs great on them!) you wont have to worry about those Superfish issues and everything else plaguing the world of windows-users.

I can see why you would decide not to want to reward Lenovo with your money after those incidents, but it's still some of the best you are going to get.

rmm• 10 years ago

Microsoft Surface Book.

Easily the best device i have used in a very long time. Expensive (especially the i7 dGPU option) but i am amazed at how good this machine is.

Huge battery life, powerful when it needs to be. Connect to a dock and you have a powerful desktop.

Currently use it when im working in the office doing design work (plugged into a couple of Dell U2715H) then when i am out on mine sites use it as a portable machine in the field.

The tablet mode and pen is just a cherry on top. Writing notes in the field, marking up drawings etc. ridiculously easy.

i love it.

KirinDave• 10 years ago

I concur. It's excellent hardware with excellent features and excellent battery life.

chaostheory3• 10 years ago

Agree. I just don't understand why MS has to call it a Surface. It's confusing since there are so many different MS devices that are called Surface.

vatotemking2• 10 years ago

You forgot the "Book" part. I guess its for branding.

touristtam4• 10 years ago

But then you are using Microsoft OS.

zdkl• 10 years ago

I think it's safe to say a lot of people in tech have the same knee jerk reaction (I know I do), but sadly what are the open alternatives?

Closest I can think of would be Android, but you're throwing a lot of flexibility and openness out already. I had high hopes that FxOS would grow into the {reasonably hackable, consumer pricing, works out of the box if needed, higher abstraction (eg. don't make me think about my kernel) system APIs} market. Right now, to have any degree of control beyond "here's a GUI with the 5 settings we thought you'd need", you need to use way too much relatively advanced knowledge (setting a 'nix ARM system up, hardware quality, commitment to maintaining your setup at a fairly low level) for it to be widespread.

I guess I'm asking the smart people on here why can't we have a tablet ecosystem more akin to the mid/high end desktop market? (Emphasis on modularity, _standards_ and interoperability) Do the actors in that area reckon there's not enough interest/commercial opportunities in contrast to the OEM/OS siloing? Or is there a project out there I should start throwing contributions at?

((EDIT: please don't say Canonical: the GUI is nonstarter because of limited resources, and if you're using server editions then we're back to the original low-level problem in this case))

SmellyGeekBoy• 10 years ago

It's standard PC hardware so you can install Linux on it if you'd like. I guess you're paying the "Microsoft Tax" for the OS license that won't be used but you could say the same about installing Linux on a MacBook too.

Also I'm not sure why you're being downvoted - I'm a .NET developer and spend all day in Windows but even I appreciate that others' workflows are built around Linux or OS X. Horses for courses and all that.

bduerst2• 10 years ago

Windows 7 is still alright, but you can always boot linux.

spronkey17• 10 years ago

It's nice, but I have a pretty long list of gripes that pretty much prevent me from buying one.

Mushy keyboard. Average speakers. Lacklustre I/O port selection. Kinda average camera, despite its resolution. Headphone jack in a stupid place for laptop mode. No brightness controls on keyboard. Trackpad might look and feel nice, but it just isn't as good as the Mac's for palm rejection, and scrolling is still stuttery vs butter smooth on a Mac. Power connector has nothing on MagSafe.

Then there's the price. Woooah.

It's also an Ultrabook-esque machine. I'm not really wanting one of those. I'd be happy to take the thin tablet part, but mate it to a thicker base that gave me things like... RAM slots, a gruntier CPU, user serviceable storage, triple external display support.

Infinitesimus• 10 years ago

No brightness controls on keyboard.

Recent discovery from my Surface Pro: You can adjust the brightness with Fn + Backspace and Fn + Del. Works with the Surface Book as well.

Regarding multiple display ports, I think the SB was meant to be used with the dock for the "power user" mode. I quote like the ease of the docking capabilities even though I've had a few display issues with it when the machine resumes from sleep

garyclarke27• 10 years ago

Macbook Pro is best windows pc - runs perfectly via bootcamp. So much better than slower flackier virtual options - i tried all of them - fast reboot so easy to switch. I need windows for 64 bit Excel 2016 much fatser than mac 32 bit only. 2 diplay ports also great- drives 2 32 inch high res monitors perfectly.

pjmlp3• 10 years ago

Not if you care about graphics or GPGPU programming.

vegabook2• 10 years ago

I've been very happy with my Dell Precision M3800 which has outstanding build quality, easily comparable to my previous MacBook, and runs Ubuntu perfectly. In fact I like it better hardware-wise than the macbooks because it has a much more pleasant keyboard-surround surface, which is not freezing cold like my MacBook, nor does it have that unpleasant vertical front leading edge which in my opinion is uncomfortable when touch typing.

On a separate note though, Lenovo has kinda promised to build a 90's-level robust "retro-Thinkpad", the feedback forums for which were wildly successful.

http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/retro-thinkpad-time-to-think

Jedd• 10 years ago

Agreed. The M3800 workstation is what I chose after a similarly frustrating search to the OP's over a year ago.

It's all subjective, but big pros for me was Win7 (as a business machine this was available over a year ago, at a time when most new laptops were Win8 only), really good Debian support (with VMware I rarely need to boot into Win7 now), 16GB RAM option, two drive bays (mSATA and SATA) so 2TB SSD is obtainable, very high resolution screen (3200x1800).

Cons - gloss screen occasionally frustrating, all that space and they relegated page-up/down and home/end into Fn-accessible keys, short battery life, 15" is perhaps too big (but 13" is untenable as a mobile computer), poor touch-screen support in Debian, hideously expensive when properly kitted out (16GB, after-market two x 1TB drives, best display, etc).

In any case, OP has some good points - with Lenovo breaking everyone's trust (and their keyboards going downhill) options for good GNU/Linux mobile workstations are drastically reduced, and it's a painful process to try to work out what hardware support is actually like before you actually have a new machine in front of you.

vegabook2• 10 years ago

yes - I have a fully kitted out one (16GB, 512 ssd, quadro, hidpi etc) and it hit me for around 2000 pounds at the time. Same price as similar MBP. The only issue I've had is that I couldn't get CUDA running properly under any Linux flavour when I also had an external monitor plugged in. Completely frustrating so the quadro 1100 basically goes unused. Other than that, I like the machine a lot. It's superseded now but the new one looks even better. I don't honestly think I'll need to replace this for another couple of years so 4-5 years for this to me makes the initial outlay easy to justify.

kennycox• 10 years ago

How much RAM do you need for gaming? However, I have 8GB RAM but the game hardly takes 4GB for functioning. One of my friends has 32 GB RAM but I think he is more paying for it. Is more than 8GB RAM needed for gaming?

gonader• 10 years ago

Dell XPS 13 is an amazingly good laptop, very well supported in Arch Linux

finishingmove• 10 years ago

If I were getting a new laptop right now, I'd get the Dell XPS 13 (2015). I get the post's sentiment though, but what really sucks IMO is not the PC/laptop market but mobile...

MindTooth• 10 years ago

Amen to that!

hans0l074• 10 years ago

I purchased a System76 Galago UltraPro (this model does not seem to be available anymore) at the end of 2014. I have been observing System76 for a year or more before I caved in and purchased this. I live in Finland - and they shipped it across. I really love this laptop. I'm also a Mac user (Air, Pro etc) and I expected the build quality to be lower, but it was surprisingly solid. Perhaps their build quality has improved? Also, one of the most common complaints was about their keyboard and it seems they have fixed this - I have had no problems. I love having a Ubuntu portable for my day-to-day devops work over VPN and with everything set up (all my tools, IDE's etc), it's been a pleasure. Their new line up looks impressive (I'm tempted to get another one). But yes, the battery life is really bad - 2-3 hour max or even less if you have IntelliJ or a VM running. So I have placed a power adapter at all my usual work locations :) Edit : spelling

001spartan• 10 years ago

I had the UltraPro as my work laptop at my last employer, and I despised it. The keyboard was impossible to work with (typos, keys didn't always register), and it felt flimsy and cheap. Not what I would expect from a system that cost as much as a MacBook. The only benefit was the powerful specs.

mntmn• 10 years ago

I recently got a Thinkpad T450s after using iBook & MacBooks for 10 years and I'm very pleasantly surprised about build quality and feel.

jryan49• 10 years ago

+1 for Thinkpad T450s

agarwalrishi• 10 years ago

Yup. I agree. We need a good PC with the form factor of Mac mini but without Mac OS. Only option I have is to buy a Mac mini and install Ubuntu on that. Or buy Intel mini PC (Intel NUC). Both options are quite expensive, at least in India.

lazyjones• 10 years ago

Or buy Intel mini PC (Intel NUC). Both options are quite expensive, at least in India.

You can always get some China-made Intel Mini-PCs like these: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fanless-i5-Mini-PC-Windows-Ba...

Jeff Atwood seems to like them (as routers): http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/

justaaron• 10 years ago

all these comments to debate what is actually still a standing point:

name a non-mac laptop that' doesn't suck

(is it injection molded plastic with a screen that will eventually flop flop flop? then it sucks!)

then let's find a distro that doesn't suck! (does in include binary blob drivers? then it sucks! is it unity? then it sucks!)

tetheno3• 10 years ago

Lenovo Thinkpad. HP Elitebook. Dell Precision/Latitude.

Also, most of those can be bough on Ebay for a fraction of the cost. I'm very happy with the value offered by 2 year old laptops.

vok5• 10 years ago

I bought a Lafité here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/lafiteII/.

I believe it is a rebranded Clevo, which is custom-built for you. Lately, I changed the WiFi card without any issue. You can also change the SSD if you want, same for the RAM. The best parts are: Build quality, price (you don't pay for the OS, only if you want to and you get to pay for parts you want), keyboard is nice, lightweight and screen is great.

manigandham• 10 years ago

CES revealed a bunch of new laptops that seem promising: LG Gram 15 [1], Samsung Notebook 9 [2], Dell 7000 Series [3]

1. http://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-gram-15Z960-A.AA75U1-ultra-s...

2. http://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-introduces-new-notebo...

3. http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10720212/dell-latitude-13-w...

tempodox• 10 years ago

+1. This article should be at the top of HN.

headmelted2• 10 years ago

Am I missing something? Can't you just boot Ubuntu on a Macbook if that's what you want to do?

(This is a genuine question - I've always found OSX sufferable enough to not need to, and I have a fanless Acer for Ubuntu that travels with me).

suprfnk• 10 years ago

Yes you can. But from the article:

"However, I don't want a Mac.

Apple has great design, but they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software. You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts, and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style."

headmelted2• 10 years ago

I saw that, and it's fair I guess, but isn't that increasingly the direction hardware is moving industry-wide? (thinner, lighter, sleeker).

I was strongly under the impression that other manufacturers' products were becoming less-and-less hackable by design. Am I wrong?

TurboHaskal2• 10 years ago

The author thinks apple.com is the pinnacle of web design, values form over function as he prefers the x1 carbon, gets overwhelmed when having too many choices, dislikes seeing user reviews on a product site and probably lies on the ground on a fetal position at the thought of replacing a hard drive by himself.

He is exactly the kind of person Apple makes products for. Just get a Macbook already.

akerro• 10 years ago

You missed the part about hardware locking and replaceable parts. Because of that, I will never ever buy anything from Apple, it's a big deal for me to replace RAM and HDD whenever I want, for whatever I want. I used to have mac book running Getnoo Linux, until I wanted to add new RAM... I bought new Dell. I have one SSD and one HDD in my laptop (because I don't need cdrom in 2016), I removed it and put HDD there and 4x USBs.

glossyscr2• 10 years ago

Not disagreeing but there is one notebook and this is how the Macbook should have been:

- Same build quality as Apple

- Thin and light as the Macbook

- Pixel density higher than Retina

- Powerful CPU

- Just released

http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth

Aoyagi5• 10 years ago

Razer and built quality or reliability don't go well together.

glossyscr2• 10 years ago

I made different experiences.

And do you have this ultrabook or ever touched it yourself?

imtringued• 10 years ago

We'll find out soon enough if that's the case.

user427348922• 10 years ago

Same build quality as Apple

That's not even remotely true. I am posting on a Razer Blade Stealth QHD/256 right now running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

This thing has only been in my possession since the first of the month and already I have experienced the following:

- The trackpad is poorly constructed and is prone to randomly sticking when clicked. The drivers on both Windows and Linux also do not remotely have the level of work pumped into them that the OS X trackpad drivers had, so there's a lot of false inputs and finicky behavior.

- The chassis is not at all a proper unibody construction and already the bottom plate on the lower right of the machine is starting to separate as it throws a screw I need to keep tightening. The plate wobbles if I squeeze the lower-right corner.

- The fans like to buzz and whine in a very obnoxious way due to poor construction, they rattle against things.

This is a pretty okay laptop and overall I do not regret the purchase yet, but do not kid yourself for a second thinking that Razer builds things on the level quality Apple does.

Thin and light as the Macbook

This also isn't true. The 2015 MacBook I just replaced with the Razer Blade Stealth is both smaller and lighter.

* 2015 MacBook: 11.04" x 7.74" x 0.52" @ 2.03 lbs

* Razer Blade Stealth: 12.6" x 8.1" x 0.52" @ 2.75 lbs

The Stealth actually feels a lot heavier after using the MacBook solidly for a year and I keep thinking it weighs as much as an older MacBook Pro I used to carry.

ALSO: This isn't even going into what a fucking NIGHTMARE it is dealing with the RazerZone store and its almost total absence of support when something goes wrong as they limit the means of contacting them. I'm still waiting for them to refund me for the second Stealth they shipped (and charged me for) by accident.

Matthias247• 10 years ago

I agree with the content, but not necessarily with the headline.

If you need a Desktop PC the options are plenty, you can pick from a large set of components and build pretty much what you want, from decent formfactor to big towers with powerful and good hardware.

For high quality notebooks however I came to the same conclusion as the author. I wanted to buy a new personal notebook last year, and actually did not want to get a Macbook, as I am not that into Apple and OSX. But I could not really find an alternative, even in the same (high) price region, so I got a MBP13 and I'm happy with it. For the windows machines either the build quality is way lower, battery life is lower, screen resolution is lower, input devices suck or the price tag is even higher (X1 Carbon, XPS13. Surface book too, but it wasn't available in germany anyway).

Another thing that influenced my decision heavily was the Touchpad. On the MBP it works beautifully, and in combination gesture features of the OS it makes working on such a small screen and without an external mouse much more pleasant. On the windows machines the touchpad response is mostly somewhere between bad and mediocre, and there's no swipe between workspaces and such stuff.

joefreeman2• 10 years ago

I went through a similar process recently after getting fed up with Apple's direction. I ended up getting a Surface Pro 4. The build quality seems good, battery is ok. The software/drivers are terrible - it rarely wakes up from sleep, and I don't get much delight from using Windows. Hoping Linux support improves in the near future.

elboru• 10 years ago

What do you mean by drivers are terrible? Do some components fail randomly in Windows? Or do you mean they just don't work with Linux? Just asking because I'm planning to buy a Surface Pro

joefreeman2• 10 years ago

There seems to be something up with the display driver in Windows relating to sleep. Sometimes after I login, Windows proudly tells me it's recovered from a display driver problem. Other times the screen just won't turn on (the keyboard lights come on, and the IR light that Hello uses comes on), so I have to keep restarting the machine. I'm guessing this will get fixed eventually though. Only seems to happen after disconnecting from the charger.

raisedbyninjas3• 10 years ago

Issues with drivers have affected display, charging hibernation on surface devices. Other skylake laptops have seen similar problems so they may share the same root cause.

VeejayRampay• 10 years ago

Man, community managers for all the biggest PC manufacturers must be rubbing their hands on posts like this.

Roritharr• 10 years ago

My real issue is finding a decent 13inch laptop that allows 2x4K Monitors at 60hz via simple Docking.

The Surface Book failed in that regard and I haven't gotten confirmation from Dell that the TB 15 Dock will support it.

In the 15 inch Category there is only the HP Zbook with its gorgeous 4 Thunderbolt Ports that allow it. But that's Desktop Replacement, not a portable 13 incher.

Currently I drive 2 2560x1440 Monitors on my Surface Pro 2, one via MiniDp and one via USB3 and am kinda happy with it, I just need more ram... But upgrading and then once again hitting the limits so soon would give me buyers remorse quick.

nhumrich2• 10 years ago

I have a lenovo t450 with Ubuntu and I have 3 monitors working from the dock. Don't know if it supports 4k or not, but it should, the dock has two display ports.

dba7dba• 10 years ago

We need Elon to jump into PC business.

thephilsproject• 10 years ago

I had this same problem almost exactly a year ago. I now have a Surface Pro 3.

I wanted a decent CPU, high res screen, , good build, long battery life and small chassis. Then I chose whichever was cheapest which met those criteria.

I've not been disappointed with my decision!

fsloth• 10 years ago

A good anecdote but I disagree with the notion that Surface is not a laptop but a tablet. I use my Surface Pro 4 i5 as a laptop and it's a pretty good one at that.

laumars• 10 years ago

A year or so ago I was having the same dilemma, but then stumbled across Samsung Chronos. Previously I'd only seen the lower end of Samsung laptops and they were predictably crap. But the higher end Chronos' are something special, sleek design, solid build quality and decent specifications. My only quibble is that Samsung lean a little more towards Apple's design than HPs, so accessing components is a little harder work than I'd have liked. But the upside is my Chronos has excellent compatibility with Linux.

I'm very pleased with my laptop and would recommend the Chronos range to others.

aap_• 10 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm still using a T61 because I don't really like any of the models that succeeded it. The new keyboard, the reduced keyboard layout, the huge touchpad (which I disable anyway) with those reduced buttons, small screen resolutions compared to my 1400x1050 (unless you pay for the ultra expensive display panel or get)...it's just not attractive anymore. And as the author said, thinkpads are still among the best laptops :/ I'd be willing to throw some money at lenovo for a laptop I want to have but it looks like they're no longer producing those :(

Aardwolf• 10 years ago

Personally I interpret the word PC as something like this:

http://bi9he1w7hz8qbnm2zl0hd171.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...

so it's funny that it's about laptops :)

kba• 10 years ago

I still feel like a MacBook Pro would be a good choice for the author. He starts out by talking about being able to replace parts, but later doesn't make that as a requirement when he asks for:

- Decent build quality

- Decent performance and battery life

- A decent website

- A clean OS without crapware or malware factory installed

If you want a laptop that's somewhat thin, light and with decent battery life, you often do have to sacrifice being able to replace anything. By soldering on the RAM and storage, you get more room for batteries. This also especially becomes evident by his System76 Galago that can last 3 hours.

So in conclusion: Just get a MacBook, it has decent build quality, performance, battery life and website. A good OS? I'm not going to be the judge of that, but installing Ubuntu or Windows on a Mac is luckily very easy.

k_bx• 10 years ago

One very strong point which not that many discuss here is how awful websites of non-Apple manufacturers are. They are a strong indication of how bad things are organized and developed at those companies, if they can't make a nice website answering all your questions in an attractive manner – how can they expect you to buy stuff from them? Always impressed me.

creshal• 10 years ago

HP's website should be discussed in UX curricula as best example how to never, ever, under any circumstances including death threats to design a website. From crazy URLs to crazy design to absurd uptime issues to random slowdowns, the inability to use it for anything made me go away from procuring HP products.

Lenovo's is not quite as bad, but the article already highlighted the worst offences. At least I've memorized what to augment my google searches with to find the specific page I need. (I know, I know.)

From the "enterprise" vendors, Dell is the best, because you only need to navigate through a single poorly worded drop-down menu to find somewhere to enter your service tag. Their shop, on the other hand, is absurd (clunky interface and zero configuration options) and seems to solely exist to make you bother a Dell reseller instead (who have better prices, more options, and are, despite email ping-pong, faster).

raisedbyninjas3• 10 years ago

Dell used to provide abundant configurations. You could get significantly different prices for identical or very similar machines depending on the shop you used, special URLs, promotions or changing components on different models.

Asus was lauded ITT for their website design. I'd disagree because I've been considering a zenbook. I couldn't find the comparison between the models or even the submodels of the UX305. It is pretty though.

buro9• 10 years ago

Even if you know you want to buy from Lenovo... have you ever tried it?

In Europe that means interacting with Digital River. It's extremely common that your first order will just be binned by their fraud squad, and from there if you persevere you'll be welcomed by even more pain and torture until the laptop eventually arrives and your view of Lenovo is already very negative.

ryan-allen• 10 years ago

TLDR: he didn't do much research.

It is true that there is a lot of crap out there for PCs but there are some decent laptops, it's just harder to find them.

Dell XPS' are good. Surface Book is totally equivalent to a Macbook Pro in terms of build quality.

Uptrenda• 10 years ago

Has the quality of laptops really been decreasing or are we just remembering "the old days" with nostalgia? Seems like a perfect question that could be easily answered with proper research.

My guess: if you're prepared to pay several thousand you can still buy quality modern laptops today (like ThinkPad P70.) Or do it the cheap way: buy old hardware that's known for its reliability like used ThinkPads (currently using a ThinkPad T520 myself.) There's a good guide here for choosing a ThinkPad model if you're a fan of solid laptops that will last: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/images/8/8f/Tpg140901.png -- it's a bit memey but has solid advice.

vacri6• 10 years ago

Meh, the author wants a better computer, but isn't willing to spend for it. The author runs linux, so the crapware from lenovo shouldn't matter, and the lenovo thinkpad line have excellent build quality (stay away from the ideapads). But the author complains that the cheap end of X1 town isn't retina. Sure, for the same price, a macbook air does retina, but that low-end X1 carbon has other features that the air does not have.

So by 'better PC', the author really means 'cheap PC filled with top-end gizmos and a top-end build quality'.

pmontra• 10 years ago

I've been happy with the first ZBook. 1080p, SDD or spinning disks, you can add replace the DVD with another disk, up to 32 GB RAM, apparently you can replace the CPU and the NVIDIA card too. The ZBook G2 specs are even better.

The only minus on your list would be the battery. It can reach maybe 4 hours (Linux) but not more. I knew that and it's not a problem, there is always a power plug nearby where I work.

The only minus in my list was the keyboard, because it has a number pad, but the keys are excellent. It's also definitely not a 1 kg laptop and the power brick is as heavy as a brick, but I don't care much.

omphalos• 10 years ago

I wish the author included something about the Intel Management Engine. It runs closed source software with privileged access to your entire machine including support for remote execution, has a history of critical vulnerabilities, and is present on every current Intel chip.

Aoyagi5• 10 years ago

And while we're at it, why don't we have some VA or even OLED matte displays for laptops?

szukai• 10 years ago

Lenovo only inherited the name from IBM. It's not the same as it used to be... I really wish the author of the post looked beyond one or two laptops given the title he used for his writeup.

lhnz• 10 years ago

Sorry in advance for taking the headline and talking about something else.

What I want is a real personal computer that can fit in my pocket. A mobile device that is extremely open and very easy to hack on. I would like it to expose sensory readings in a UI and then provide a simple if-this-then-that UI that would allow me to teach daemons to respond to events that occur during the day and additionally support scripting for more complex automations. And once this device exists I'd like open protocols to exist to help other I/O devices to expose themselves to it.

Simply put I'd like devices to start offering extra senses to us beyond the five we were born with, and for these to be unencumbered from walled gardens.

Does such a thing exist?

walterbell• 10 years ago

Nokia N900 or Nokia N9 running Linux?

flatroze• 10 years ago

Go for gaming PCs/laptops. It's the same with clothes today: you can get the "survival/military" type of outwear which is better in quality and tend to last longer than usual outwear. You will look like a show-off, but in reality it's where the jean companies used to be when they first appeared (they used to be made for gold miners and construction workers). I would get something like Aorus X3 or Razer Blade Stealth, both feature really good screens and great hardware. Also seem to be well-engineered, unlike those plastic toys from Dell, Lenovo and all the others.

beyondcompute• 10 years ago

Thanks for the post. I think, we need more of these. I too have been feeling that the companies in a sense "aren't even trying" to show some care and respect for a customer. We agree to pay money for "hardware", they accustomed to "assemble together" some electronic components. There's no inspiration, no consideration, no ambition to provide experience that lasts (despite that hardware is fast-to-become-obsolete, the brand image and the impression you leave can be relevant for a much longer time). For me personally the only decent machine out there is MacBook Air. It does not make false promises about performance (like other laptops do, only to fail miserably later). My ideal machine would be lightweight plastic with mechanic keyboard. Performance is not really critical. Something like Surface pro with 14 inch display and mechanical keyboard (touch-screen is not necessary; good, macbook-like touchpad is) would do.

hendry• 10 years ago

The Lenovo X1C3 is not that bad. I recommend it & it runs Archlinux beautifully. https://natalian.org/2015/02/18/Archlinux_on_a_Lenovo_X1C3/

Yes, Lenovo sales and support are pretty hopeless. Just got to factor that fact in. Must say Apple are pretty hopeless unless you get Apple care.

Anyway, the real problem in my mind is that there is pretty much no competition to Intel nowadays.

bechampion• 10 years ago

I was in this situation , I've moved away from osx a month ago i couldn't be happier.

I've moved from a macbook pro retina to a Lenovo x250/i5/8GB/HD screen, Running xubuntu 15.10 ... most bits work (DualScreen/VPN/NiceRDPapp(Remmina)/etc etc)

I've had major issues with Webex (need to have a jre 32bit running on a 64 bit os) but other than that all good!

Good luck!

mamcx• 10 years ago

Currently my biggest problem with apple machines is the low amount of storage, and in the case of the news iMacs and Macbooks, how costly and IMPOSSIBLE to replace them are.

I wish apple forget spinning hardrives, go full on SSD and ship with > 512 GB

S_A_P• 10 years ago

Some of the big PC vendors have started catching up. I just bought an HP Envy for my father in law, and the hardware is pretty solid, and it had some features I really like(256GB ssd and 1TB hybrid drive, 16gb ram stock, nice display). It is really snappy, and despite his being non technical and wary of moving from Windows 7 to 10, he got on with it really quickly.

I think there is another issue with PC battery life here. Nothing heats up/drains my macbook pro's battery life quicker than windows 10. I have tried various power settings, but nothing ever quite "fixes" it. I have had to do the following "tweaks" to improve battery performance of Windows 10: 1)Disable Cortana(at least as much as you are able to) 2)remove this "phone companion" app that seems to reinstall with every new update 3)adjust power management which noticeably slows performance and or annoyingly shuts down the screen. 4)randomly go in and kill rogue battery robbing processes

Mac OS seems to seamlessly handle power management regardless of what Im doing- including multitrack audio recording/processing. I never hear the fan while running OSX only. But without fail my laptop heats up and the fan starts cranking while I have Windows running. I am getting closer to not ever needing to run windows, but I still do some .NET work and work with Sql Server. For me, its a huge turn off to hear a laptop constantly fighting to stay cool. In fact this is the major flaw I saw with the HP laptop I got my father in law. It would get hot and crank the fan. In my anecdotal opinion, windows is a poor laptop OS, and I don't see how there could be a better pc/laptop/tablet until Microsoft figures out how to manage power. I don't have a use case for Linux, so things could be better there, but Linux is still relegated to niche users for the most part in laptops.

ebbv• 10 years ago

This idea that laptops should be tinker able is just so weird to me. No laptop is really tinker able. The best you can do is replace RAM and HDD. Motherboards, battery modules, etc. are all proprietary in these things and usually anything beyond those three is non-trivial to replace.

Call me crazy but I'd rather just have a machine that's specced right out of the box, and with a battery module that I never need to replace.

My 2012 15" Retina MacBook is still going strong over 3.5 years later. Not only that but the machine has been a pleasure to use every day.

It's true there should be alternatives to Apple products out there that are similar build quality, but I have yet to find them. Some of my coworkers are hard line anti-Apple and their laptops are all really poorly made, IMHO.

thedaemon• 10 years ago

The headline is misleading. It should say a better laptop. A PC is not equal to a laptop. I was hoping for a in depth article about modern computer design, but instead found a rant about bad websites and lack of well engineered laptops.

crudbug3• 10 years ago

I have both Thinkpad T540 & MBP. The thing I miss the most is the dual mini-display port for support triple monitor (2K) desk work.

crudbug3• 10 years ago

The other thing lacking is Linux multi-monitor support, I see gnome crashing all the time.

tobyhinloopen• 10 years ago

I agree with the article. I switched to Apple because the OS & hardware were superior, but they aren't anymore. Hardware vendors are catching up and Windows 10 is actually not that bad. OS X is actually getting worse.

wprapido• 10 years ago

i'm using a lenovo W540 and am genuinely happy. 32GB RAM, SSD + HDD, old-style keyboard. the only downside is screen resolution of 1920x1080. that's perhaps the only reason why i'm going to replace it

agentgt• 10 years ago

I too came to the same conclusion that the article did quite some time ago. Apple just owns on build quality.

I am Longtime Lenovo + Linux user that recently switched to Mac and as much I really hate OSX UI the build quality of apple is worth it (that and skype sort of works better on mac than Linux).

The thing that shocks me with my new Mac is how incredibly unstable OSX is at times (El Capitan and previous version). You would think given such hardware control my mac would be more stable than my parents Windows 10 Lenovo Yoga or even Linux on crappy hardware but lately it has not been the case for me.

dfar1• 10 years ago

This article covers one computer brand mostly based on their poor website design... and that's it? That's why we need a better pc?

izzydata• 10 years ago

Easy, build a desktop.

AdmiralAsshat• 10 years ago

It's a shame that Samsung apparently doesn't consider the laptop market worth their time anymore. Their Ativ Book 9 was a great little laptop.

shaurz2• 10 years ago

This is why I don't buy laptop computers... they are still overpriced toys. I mean, on a theoretical level, the idea of a mobile computer is appealing, but in practice they all suck very badly.

cowardlydragon• 10 years ago

Not only that, all desktop OSes are regressing. Well, windows 10 is an improvement over the massive shitstorm of Windows 8 where Microsoft apparently tried to commit corporate suicide.

Ubuntu and desktop linux continue to be extremely frustrating. I tried Suse, Ubuntu, and Mint in the last box I built for Xmas, and Ubuntu was the only one that installed cleanly, a marked improvement from the previous couple releases.

OSX is hardware-locked and it has many many problems and frustrations, especially if you are used to key bindings from the PC / Linux realm.

Desktop/laptop is steadily dying. We are all basically waiting on a hybrid of Android to take over desktop.

I continue to be mystified as to why Google does not pursue a desktop Linux operating system that's good. (aka not ChromeOS). It's a gigantic market to take over that Microsoft was begging someone to take from them throughout the Windows 8 debacle. With an unnoticeable hit to their bottom line they could assemble a team that would clean up Crossoffice, merge with Android, make tons of money from Android app store, get search/voice search/services integration at the OS...

ChromeOS could/should be this, but either it's not properly funded to handle the Windows interoperability (put/fund WINE on steroids) more seamlessly or doesn't have very good people on it.

intrasight• 10 years ago

I've been buying Lenovo's for about 6 years and are mostly happy. I always buy a bare-bones version and add my own memory and SSD and do a clean OS install (after updating all firmware). A "new machine" is a 20 hour minimum time commitment so I don't do it more frequently than necessary. I always overlap two machines so I have backup.

I am due for an upgrade and was looking at the T460p. But I just read about the bad decisions Lenovo made regarding internal storage so now I am looking for something else.

IkmoIkmo• 10 years ago

The Surface Book and the Dell XPS 13 were not mentioned, while they're easily both in the top 3.

bduerst2• 10 years ago

I used an X1 Carbon for years - it's a sweet machine. If you get one, make sure you don't order the generation with the touch-pad control bar, because it craps out.

8note• 10 years ago

My acer s7 does pretty well;

I've repaired it from severe rain damage, and it's generally easy to disassemble and replace the parts to.

it's got a reasonably nice screen, nice build quality, and reasonably good performance, though you cant change out the wifi chip, nor the ram The webasite also said about enough to do well, and the windows install it came with just had some acer junk on it.

niutech3• 10 years ago

No offense, but the author has a first world problem. The notebook should be functional - powerful, lightweight, long lasting, not necessarily pretty. It is not an exhibit, it's a tool. Why does he need a good web page to buy it???

That said, he can grab a Chromebook and install a full-blown Linux distro on it.

funkaster• 10 years ago

For me, that better PC is the Chromebook Pixel (2015), of course, running linux instead of the crippled Chrome OS. It's my main dev machine and I use it more than the MBP that I got @ work.

jgeerts• 10 years ago

"they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software"

Well, I can understand the physically part, but fortunately you can solve it with money, you just have to pay for your hardware upfront, it is expensive, but I work on my MacBook Pro > 9hrs a day. It's four years old now and doesn't need replacement yet, it's doing fine, the battery is doing fine.

Most people only look at how much an item costs at the time of purchase, but a fairer comparison would include the span of time that your device is sufficient and you don't need replacement.

I use my laptop for my job, the amount of money I make with a laptop outweighs the cost of a laptop by far. Most professionals in their job invest in good material, why would it be different in IT?

As for the software part, the software that Apple provides is astonishing to me. For example wiping a HD multiple times is just a setting, in windows you can start looking for freeware for doing the same thing. It comes with so many possibilities out of the box, I can't think of anything that I would want to do that I can't do now.

Just yesterday I sat next to a guy running Ubuntu and I couldn't believe what I saw, when he tried to search his hard drive he typed in his search parameters.. but then the first thing that popped up were shopping items, faster than the items present on his hard drive... Really?!?

A MacBook pro isn't perfect and it is costly but it's simply the best option for me now.

richardboegli• 10 years ago

Here it is: RAZER BLADE STEALTH

http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth

Only downside is only 8gb ram, otherwise great machine.

Once a 16/32gb version available, it'll be purchased pretty quickly ;)

dopemath• 10 years ago

The Chromebook Pixel and Surace Pro lines are what I am lookin towards to solve this very issue

Tharkun2• 10 years ago

The Lenovo website is one of the worst websites I've ever visited. For instance, if you try to filter laptops by memory, and tick the 16GB box, you won't find any Thinkpads. Only Yoga crap. Even though the X250 can ship with 16GB... Bunch of wankers are so incompetent it's a miracle they sell any laptops at all.

DiNovi• 10 years ago

While I agree with general sentiment, he only tried two laptops. Why not the Dell XPS?

frik• 10 years ago

I am stuck with Win 7 world. Microsoft turned against consumer by serving them subscription based products Office365 and Windows 10 that also spy on consumers - no thank you! They force others to over only Win10 ready notebooks, with locked down UEFI BIOS and crypto module - try to boot Linux, good luck.

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