17 ms·

That's what the OEMs get for not being able to put out a laptop that could compete with Apple in all those years, they always managed to introduce some fatal fl

• pcunite 11y ago
  Exactly this ... outside of ThinkPad, many Windows hardware options have been pretty embarrassing.
  • huac 11y ago
    Yes, and while Thinkpad is excellent, it's not really a 'cool' option. The Surface Book's design (and price point) places it solidly as a competitor to Macs.
    • gcb0 11y ago
      i'd take the rubber coated ones over the cold and sharp metal ones you call 'cool' any time. but i guess everyone in SF just use macbooks on their desks at all times.
      • flamedoge 11y ago
        thinkpad just feels like a solid, workhorse.
      • freehunter 11y ago
        As a traveling consultant, the durability of the Thinkpad design is nice, but holy hell does it suck to carry through an airport, or to shove under the seat in front of you. I've had to switch to a backpack for my laptop, since a normal bag puts too much weight on one side of my body. A backpack is so much less professional than a laptop bag. And then I drop it from a table onto a cement floor and the body cracks and the lid won't close anymore. So why do I put up with a laptop that's 50% heavier than a Macbook yet still breaks when I drop it from a table? Or maybe Thinkpads are supposed to be used on desks at all times.
        • dreamfactory2 11y ago
          > A backpack is so much less professional than a laptop bag I wouldn't worry too much about that, backpacks are standard issue for big 5 consultants
        • phaus 11y ago
          It doesn't sound like you are making fair comparisons between Thinkpads and Macbooks. My 15" T550 is just .2 lbs heavier than a 15" Macbook Pro. The charger for my T550 is much lighter than the one I have for my Macbook Pro, so the overall weight might actually favor the Thinkpad. The 13" business-class ultrabooks that Lenovo sells are pretty close in weight to the 13" Macbook Pro and the Macbook Air. It sounds like you are basing your opinion off of an old system or a current model that isn't even in the same class as a Macbook.
          • freehunter 11y ago
            Thinkpad W520. Core i7, like a Macbook. 16GB of RAM, like a Macbook. Spinning hard drive, worse than a Macbook. Has a desktop video card that is required in order to use video out, but you have to reboot and enable the video card, then it won't sleep until you reboot and disable the card... unlike a Macbook. Because Nvidia won't make Linux drivers for Optimus. No, it's not in the same class as a Macbook, that's half my point. It doesn't do anything a Macbook won't do, and it's less than a year old. It has all the downsides of being a Thinkpad with none of the upsides of... being a Thinkpad. Modern Thinkpads are not as durable or reliable as people make them out to be. My company is switching everyone from Thinkpads to Macbooks, and this is a company that was built on Thinkpads. That's how awful modern Thinkpads are compared to basically anything else.
            • andor 11y ago
              The W520 is a workstation-class model from 2011. If you don't need the dedicated graphics for something like CAD, it's probably not the right laptop for you.
            • munchbunny 11y ago
              I'm a bit curious why a traveling consultant is outfitted with what is marketed as a "workstation in a laptop form factor". Seems like a mismatch of use case to product. I travel a lot, sometimes for work, sometimes for leisure, so when I chose my personal computer I went with a Thinkpad X230. Fast enough to compile C++ code for my game programming hobby, fast enough to do my excel stuff for work, and the integrated graphics card can drive two external 1920x1200 screens comfortably. Just don't expect to play any graphically intensive games. With the help of a spare battery I kept around I could get 12-14 hours out of it if, for example, I were flying to Asia. My point being, perhaps your experience had more to do with being given a computer that definitely did not fit your work/life style? Though I'd agree with you that the W520 was not well designed.
    • scholia 11y ago
      There is still a class of business users for whom the ThinkPad is cool (though I expect most of them regret the brand's decline in Lenovo's hands).
    • criddell 11y ago
      My last three laptops have been Thinkpads, but Lenovo seems determined to destroy that brand as well. Microsoft may be the only company selling hardware that is trustworthy.
    • MichaelGG 11y ago
      I can only hope that this compels Lenovo to ship a non-16:9, with a great screen, hi-res at low-size with 16GB of RAM. (I've found it hard to find vendors carrying 16GB SODIMMs for the X250.) I wonder what the heat scenario will be like with the Surface Book. If it turns hot like a MacBook, that'll set yet another disappointing precedent. Finally though, it's nice to see MS doing what people have been asking for years.
      • bluecalm 11y ago
        Yeah, 16:9 is disappointing especially with huge bottom bezel on x250, I mean 16:10 would easily fit there.
  • superuser2 11y ago
    ThinkPad is pretty embarrassing; you're supporting a company that decided to MITM all its users traffic to inject advertising using factory-installed malware by trusting the same certificate, whose private key can be extracted from any Lenovo product and trivially used to MITM all the others. Lenovo needs to fail hard and fast. I recognize we'll probably never get those responsible into prison, but at least we can make sure they never work again. If you wouldn't buy or recommend a Volkswagen after dieselgate, you certainly shouldn't buy or recommend a Lenovo product after Superfish.
    • caskance 11y ago
      I support the company that makes the closest thing to a product I want. Reimaging the computer is a lot easier than installing your own pointing stick.
      • superuser2 11y ago
        I don't think people understand the magnitude of this betrayal. When you buy a tool, it should obey you, and any deviations from that expectation should be disclosed upfront. Imagine if you bought a car that detected when you were driving to a particular business, locked out steering, and instead drove you to a competitor that had "partnered" with the manufacturer. You totally own the car, and no one ever told you it had this "feature." Imagine if you bought a gun that would refuse to fire when pointed at people who had purchased protection from the manufacturer. You don't find out about this feature until the guy invading your home has it. Lenovo lied to your face. It sold laptops that claimed to navigate to the websites you entered in the URL bar, but instead displayed a version edited by Lenovo on behalf of its partners. Normalizing this sort of thing is not okay and anyone buying Lenovo post-Superfish shares the moral responsibility when this is our future.
        • hkmurakami 11y ago
          Considering we apparently don't "own" our Kindle ebook purchases, I can see a future where our hardware purchases are on indefinite loans to us rather than outright purchases.
  • nogridbag 11y ago
    I'm relatively unfamiliar with ThinkPads and happened to be looking at them yesterday. Here's my problem with ThinkPads (as well as most other Windows laptop vendors): http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/?menu-id=laptops http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/?menu-id=laptops Which ThinkPad are you talking about? ThinkPad X, ThinkPad T, ThinkPad W, ThinkPad Yoga, ThinkPad E, ThinkPad L, or ThinkPad Helix, or ThinkPad 11E? Let's say we're talking about ThinkPad T.. Which model? T440p, T450, T450s, T540p, or T550? And ThinkPad is just one line of Lenovo's products, they also have: Y Series, Z Series, Yoga Series, 500 Series, Flex, Edge, U Series, Lavie, B Series, 100 Series, S Series, G Series, and finally Chromebook. As a consumer, I have a hard enough time deciding between Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book... or Macbook Air vs Macbook vs Macbook Pro. When presented with so many options from one company I simply close the webpage. After all, how can they possibly make the product as good as MS's offering if they have so many models?
    • kuschku 11y ago
      They can make it better than MS's offering because they are providing you with exactly what you need. Take for example me, compsci student. I wanted to have a sub-600€ laptop with good hardware and good battery life, but did not care much about display. I ordered a thinkpad, replaced the HDD with an SSD, and am now happy with it. The trick is called customization: Being better because they can deliver exactly what you need.
      • mmanfrin 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice
      • Joeri 11y ago
        No, they really do have too many models. The yoga line is nice, but they clearly don't invest much individual resources on the design of each of the other models, which tends to make them generic. I have a work-supplied s540, and it's a decent workhorse laptop, but a macbook it is not. It's too generic for that. I was also pretty disappointed that the coating had blemishes. Even a cursory visual QA check would have detected those, so either they're shipping product sight unseen, or they're deliberately deciding to ship blemished goods.
  • agumonkey 11y ago
    VAIO had an edge a while back. Toshiba still throw some stuff from time to time. Panasonic too but in the survivor category.
    • bsilvereagle 11y ago
      Somewhat off topic, what're Vaio users migrating to? I look every year or so to see what the current laptop offerings are, and nothing has convinced me to leave my 5+ year old Vaio.
      • jtuente 11y ago
        The new Vaios? Vaio recently announced their newest offerings and they look, to me, like they're still in that high-end business offerings bracket.
        • bsilvereagle 11y ago
          As far as I know (and searching around seems to confirm this) Sony is out of the laptop business and just produces tablets. I should've phrased myself a little better, "what laptops are Vaio owners switching to".
          • vietor 11y ago
            It's it's own thing now, and still has a very nice looking high-end model: https://vaio.com/products/z/ https://vaio.com/products/z/ They just launched their Surface Pro competitor in the US: http://us.vaio.com/ http://us.vaio.com/ (Typing this on the final version of the Sony Vaio Z, eagerly looking for a Skylake based successor...)
      • nogridbag 11y ago
        Sony recently released the Vaio Z Canvas (who comes up with these names???) which you can demo/pre-order in the Microsoft Store. I tried to use it, but I believe the keyboard was dead (I guess since it fully detaches from the display and was not being actively charged). It also seems nearly impossible to use on your lap.
  • ChuckMcM 11y ago
    One of the challenges of being the 'commodity version' is that a lot of value gets squeezed out of the pipeline. One way to look at it is that a laptop is made up of a bunch of parts, sometimes those parts come in subassemblies, and every time someone touches a part, a small bit of margin is taken out to pay for that touch. This is the reason that vertically integrated (from chips to finished product) has a higher profit margin, it collects all of those bits into one chunk. For a long time the windows Laptop market has been all sub-assemblies coming together at the last stage. Not much margin left for the laptop "maker" after they pay for the folks who built the motherboard, the folks who build the disk drive, Intel for making the CPU, Hynix or Samsung for making the memory modules, Sharp or Toshiba for making the display, and then pony up still more cash to Microsoft for an OS. Apple's advantage is that they tightly control the supply line, using their own OS, and by not licensing their software elsewhere can charge a premium price for additional margin. By going into competition with their partners, Microsoft took the the only path possible to compete with Apple, be vertical. Interesting to see what that means long term.
    • petra 11y ago
      How much really is there to "veticalize" ? Microsoft won't build hard-drives, cpu's , memory modules, or display. And i think the big OEM's already design their own motherboards and assemble. So the only thing MS can save is OEM margin, and it's supposed to be razor thin(maybe 10%) . Is this such a big deal ?
  • arsa 11y ago
    I have tried and failed to buy X1 Carbon last month - i needed it to ship in less than a month, and their online ordering has no expedited shipping (not even an option, wtf?) and doesn't tell you when they will deliver it by (wtf??) and they don't sell X1 in any store in the area (wtf???) I truly fail to understand this - the best laptop is not sold in stores, and takes over two weeks online. The other Lenovos are, but not that one. I hope MS is better with this, but I don't have experience yet.
    • ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
      It's hard to find "business class" laptops if you want one for your personal usage, and you want to buy one in person or have it shipped quickly.
  • lifeformed 11y ago
    I use a Razer Blade. It's bafflingly the only laptop that exists that has premium build quality, doesn't weigh a ton, and has actually good graphics. Its form and quality is pretty much equivalent to a black Macbook Pro, but it manages to fit a GTX 970M in there. I recommend it to anyone looking to do portable work that requires a good GPU (like game dev). Cons: - It's a bit pricey - Gamery branding - Not a lot of ports
• joshstrange 11y ago
  I love my MBPr and I couldn't agree more. It will be nice to have some real competition/viable alternative. It will be interesting to see if Apple will release a touch MBPr or just stick to their iPad Pro + keyboard.
  • niels_olson 11y ago
    My mobile kit is MBPr with iPad for 4G, a leuchtturm notebook and some pens and pencils. I will get an ipad pro when the day comes that Apple decides to stop supporting my ipad and it becomes painful. At least there's a real shell in there somewhere. Having just experienced the pain of buying a new windows server for my lab (I'm sorry, I need a license to access the server?!), I still have no love for MSFT.
• 20tibbygt06 11y ago
  Take a look at "Building Microsoft Surface Pro 3." [1] Microsoft definitely has set the bar for this type of device. I personally have been waiting for such a device that all the other offerings were just not up to par as each seemed to have some quirk or problem. Bad hinge design, drivers not working, performance was subpar, battery life was lacking. Other manufactures will have to take notice. [1] https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK3302 https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK3302
  • agumonkey 11y ago
    Too bad it was mostly slides. Very nice idea to release this anyway. I hope there will be a SP4 follow-up (somehow mentioned on this video)
  • emerongi 11y ago
    Definitely worth a listen/watch. Just goes to show how seriously Microsoft is taking the quality of their products.
• tomaskafka 11y ago
  Yep - for example, Windows 10, although being rather nice update, changed start menu to XAML (in a separate process), and a result is that when I press the Win button on my i5 with new SSD, either nothing happens (missed keystroke? really??) or I wait up to 5 seconds. Needless to say, all keystrokes before it opens are missed, so Win + type program name + enter turns into Win ... wait ... type program name ... wait some more ... enter. Also, touchpad drivers. They sold more macbooks to PC laptop owners than anyone else. --- Ah, you were talking about third party hardware :).
  • Gravityloss 11y ago
    Wonder how many billion dollars were lost by PC makers for the lack of a normal touchpad? Apple's touchpad is not especially great, it's just normal, like a touchpad should be.
• reitanqild 11y ago
  Yes yes yes. As someone who has used and always thinks of Macbooks but cannot stand them I really look forward to good Windows laptops.
• tmd83 11y ago
  This! At least from the initial look and spec it looks like they did a lot of the things right and put effort in making this nice. Yes there are things that maybe I can get by without but the basics looks fantastic. You don't chip $50 off a premium laptop and make it crappy. OEM just keeps making too many model at every price point .. at every 20 dollars it feels like. While I hate the almost singular choice for OsX .. both for Windows and Android I think there is just too many price points and when you try to reduce by 5-10-20 dollar you skip things that seems not so essentially but the degradation in experience is much more than the money saved. What I really hope from this is that it shows the OEM that there are enough interest in quality product and also let them know what are some of the things that people really care about like the build quality, nice keyboard/touchpad etc. Beyond this particular laptop my real wish is that it motivates and gives confidence to the windows OEM. We really do need some good windows laptop even if to just to run linux :).
  • hkmurakami 11y ago
    This is what I was hopeful for when VAIO was spun off of SONY last year. When I saw the "machined magnesium body" line in their video [1] I was immediately reminded of the VAIO laptops that had beautiful material way back in the 90's. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVfOe5mFbAE&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVfOe5mFbAE&feature=youtu.be
    • cm2187 11y ago
      I still miss the z series... But the z series had ethernet ports. This surface thing is useless to me.
      • soapdog 11y ago
        I use a surface and I have an ethernet to USB adapter, works pretty well.
        • cm2187 11y ago
          But then you loose the USB port. But the main problem of USB adapters is that they don't like being unplugged and plugged back which happens quite frequently with a laptop. With a real port connectivity is pretty much instantaneous. I used USB adapters for a while on a MacBook pro and came to the conclusion that I will never ever buy a laptop without ethernet ports. What I wonder is why they don't come up with a mini-ethernet port format? Ethernet ports aren't exactly high tech.
• ypcx 11y ago
  Weird keyboard layouts. Shifting the keyboard off-center to include numeric keypad which no one uses anymore. (Gamers? Please stop.) This alone makes one question what exactly they are "smoking". There wasn't a single big Windows laptop on the market that wouldn't fall into this hole of a flaw.
  • kuschku 11y ago
    No one uses numeric keyboard? WTF? How’d you enter numbers then, using the number row? A huge issue with non-standard keyboards are international layouts. German layout is already requiring 2 or 3 keys combined to reach {[]}, but on some laptops you need either 3 or 4 keys combined, or often can’t reach it at all. Equally on most mobile bluetooth keyboards. It’s as if no one thought about languages using more than US keys.
    • tomaskafka 11y ago
      Dell D630: Want to enter numbers? Hold FN, use uiopjkl;m,./ as a numpad. No mode switching. No one replicated this. Sigh.
      • ptaipale 11y ago
        What? I have a HP 735 which has a similar thing. I believe many others do as well. However, if you really are into all that much entering numbers to spreadsheet, you'll probably want one of those USB or Bluetooth number keypads.
    • dpark 11y ago
      > How’d you enter numbers then, using the number row? How could anyone possibly enter numbers using the number keys in the number row? It's almost as if the typical purchaser of laptops isn't entering numbers into spreadsheets endlessly.
    • rifung 11y ago
      I use the number row. Is that weird? I think it's much faster than using the numpad anyway since you have 8 fingers you can use instead of just 3 (or 4?) for the numpad. It also means you can much more easily switch between letters and numbers.
• dade_ 11y ago
  And for those of us early adopters with the Surface Pro 3, I can upgrade my pen and use the new charging doc. Well done. Feels thoughtful, not something I can say about my Asus Windows tablet experience.
  • codeulike 11y ago
    Oh wow, you can use the new pen with the SP3? Interesting.
    • mtgx 11y ago
      Why wouldn't you be able to do that? Seems logical that it would work. Unless Microsoft changed the pen manufacturer (again).
      • mlazaroff 11y ago
        It does work. Microsoft bought n-trig last year.
        • ameen 11y ago
          Ah, I'd been wondering how they had single-handedly managed to take on N-Trig and Wacom with in-house tech. Makes a lot more sense now. I'd missed the acquisition.
      • codeulike 11y ago
        In the presentation they went on about PixelSense and how they had re-engineered everything. Evidently the protocol between the pen and screen remains the same though.
  • sixothree 11y ago
    Can you use the old dock with the Surface Pro 4?
    • MiguelHudnandez 11y ago
• caskance 11y ago
  Not having a Thinkpad-style nub mouse is a fatal flaw.
• rsync 11y ago
  "That's what the OEMs get for not being able to put out a laptop that could compete with Apple in all those years" Exactly. I don't know why it was rocket science, but they had years to clone the MBA (which, imo, is the end of the laptop form factor - it's the platonic ideal of the laptop computer) but they couldn't.
• emsy 11y ago
  Not only that but they bring hardware for people to get things done. Instead of stripping away as much as they can, they strip away as much as they have to (As Apple did in the past).
• blakeyrat 11y ago
  I dunno; My Acer S7 was definitely a competent MacBook Air competitor. They were out there, if you looked.
  • jhasse 11y ago
    No function keys though :(
    • blakeyrat 11y ago
      Not stand-alone, no. I've had the laptop since it was first introduced and I've found I've missed stand-alone function keys exactly... zero times. Your mileage may vary I guess.
      • jhasse 11y ago
        What about key combinations like Alt + F4? And triggering a build? Switching fullscreen with F11? Also I don't have a picture of the keyboard at hand, but what about turning brightness / volume up and down? I remember this being the only flaw I saw in the S7.
• macspoofing 11y ago
  >That's what the OEMs get for not being able to put out a laptop that could compete with Apple in all those years Dell XPS line-up is quite nice, and on par with any Apple laptop.
  • nogridbag 11y ago
    That's what all the Dell XPS reviews said 2 or 3 years ago too. So I thought I would surprise my wife with a Dell XPS Signature Edition laptop for Christmas. Everything from the touchpad, to the display, to the flexing keyboard, to the cheap looking hinge was truly awful and no where near the quality of the equivalent Macbook of the time. A few months later she got a Macbook Air from her company and the XPS has been pretty much collecting dust ever since. I'm sure the quality has gone up in the last 2-3 years, but since that experience I'm much less trusting of the reviews online.
    • ladzoppelin 11y ago
      I own a Dell XPS 15 and comparing it to a Macbook air is complete nonsense.
      • macspoofing 11y ago
        I own a Dell XPS 13(2015) and it's a damn good laptop. I would absolutely put it up against any MacBook. (I also like the touch-screen more than I thought I would, and I wouldn't go back).
    • bigger_cheese 11y ago
      I switched from a Macbook Pro to a Dell XPS in mid 2012. I was a long time MacBook Pro user I went though three MBP models from 2006 to 2012. I switched mostly because I was frustrated with short comings of OS X. I wanted to make sure I got a good Laptop with first class Linux support so went with XPS, which had the best specs on market at time. Pretty happy with it. The Trackpad had issues. When I first bought Laptop I had to compile my own custom kernel to get two finger scrolling working(has long since been mainlined). But quality was comparable to Macbook's quality. I have had no issues with either the keyboard or the display certainly nothing like you have mentioned... The fan is starting to die in it now but it has lasted 3 years of heavy use about on par with lifespan of my old Macs. I'll probably pick up a new laptop in post Christmas sales I'll likely go with Dell again.
• jhasse 11y ago
  What's wrong with the lineup of ultrabooks? I've switched from a Macbook Air 11 to a Sony VAIO Pro 13 and couldn't be happier.
• muddi900 11y ago
  Dell XPS 13/15 has been out for about a year.
  • mtw 11y ago
    How is your experience with it?
    • muddi900 11y ago
      I only tried a friend's, and it was cool. Personally speaking, I cannot work on a any keyboard without a Numpad, since a lot of my work requires entry of numerical data. I love the look these high-end 13" laptops, and I am intrigued as a geek, but I can never fit them in my work flow. I use an 2012-ish 17" Asus gaming monstrosity. It's not easy on the eyes, but it works for me and can run Batman Arkham games at 50+ fps.
      • pcunite 11y ago
        Could you use a USB number pad? Would need a heavy one so it does not move around I guess.
        • muddi900 11y ago
          But then it would mean adding yet another thing to my bag when moving around. I hope Surface book succeeds so they come up with 15" model with a numpad.
• megablast 11y ago
  When you don't have to make a profit, you can do stuff liek this.
• kristianp 11y ago
  "weird keyboard layouts" You could argue that Apple's keyboard layout is weird, but they are at least the same across the board. Now other manufacturers are copying Apple's keyboard layout in cargo cult fashion. There should have been agreement between non-apple manufacturers on the layout, including placement of page up, page down, home and end keys. Now we have to suffer them being removed altogether thanks to Apple.
• natmaster 11y ago
  Dell XPS laptops are amazing. What flaw did you find that noone else did? I would even go as far as to say the hardware is better (obviously many here will disagree about software side). I mean, they are carbon-fiber, lighter, smaller, with better build quality.
  • lhl 11y ago
    If he's running Linux, it might be that it tooks 5 months after the release of the Developer Edition (the one w/ Ubuntu preinstalled) to fix the most basic/egregious issues: http://bartongeorge.net/2015/08/28/recent-fixes-for-xps-13-developer-edition/ http://bartongeorge.net/2015/08/28/recent-fixes-for-xps-13-d... Also, that even now, they still ship w/ Broadcom, not Intel wifi. (drivers not in the kernel) I'm curious about the new Skylake XPS models, but you'd have to either be foolish or a masochist to guinea pig their new models...