21 ms·

Realistic alternatives to Apple computers

197 points by josephscott 10y ago

TheGorramBatman 10y ago
I'm not convinced by his "need" to have Thunderbolt 3.
- SloopJon 10y ago
  Yeah, the list of "must have" and "avoid" attributes made it clear that this is not a list for me. I'll probably never use my laptop with an external GPU that costs as much as the laptop itself. Maybe I'd feel differently if I used a laptop exclusively.
rufius 10y ago
At least in my opinion, the ThinkPad Carbon X1 is glaringly missing in that lineup.
- whytaka 10y ago
  We really shouldn't support companies that so shamelessly spies on us.
  - xori 10y ago
    If you can pay the premium, then vote with your money. Otherwise succumb and wipe clean.
  - aRationalMoose 10y ago
    You can always powerwash it and slap your favorite linux distro on it, no?
    - user982 10y ago
      Lenovo put a rootkit in its laptops' firmware that reinstalled across system wipes, so no.
  - na85 10y ago
    I'll bet you have an Intel chip and a phone. Both have surveillance capabilities built in: Intel ME and your phone's baseband processor.
- ozi 10y ago
  He lists it at the bottom of the page; 2nd to last place of laptops considered. "No USB-C ports. No Thunderbolt 3 ports. Too many video out ports. Unnecessary SD slot. 6th generation CPU."
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    >No USB-C ports. No Thunderbolt 3 ports. Why would you want or need either of these for a Windows/Linux machine? USB-C is near non-existant and the Carbon uses the Lenovo flat connector for charging. Instead you get 3 USB3.0 ports. > Too many video out ports Who cares? They aren't taking up space. You get HDMI for easy connecting to a TV without any adapters and a mini-displayport for everything else. Seems like a win-win to me. HDMI is the most common and near universal video connector now. The lack of HDMI on Apple laptops is inexcusable. > Unnecessary SD slot Uh, another who cares. Hell, put a second OS on there for kicks, load up photos from your mom's old camera, run a hypervisor on it and use local storage for your VM's, etc. > 6th generation CPU. The i7 model has a i7-6500U from Q3 2015. Its fairly newish and a great performer considering its energy use. The current X1 is in its 4th generation and from early this year, so of course it has a late 2015 processor. More than likely you'll see a 5th generation early next year if getting the newest processor is important to you. Not that intel's yearly offerings differ too greatly from last year's model.
    - bdcravens 10y ago
      > USB-C is near non-existant True, though with it being featured in the Google Pixel, I'm certain it'll become more common.
cobbzilla 10y ago
Any developers out there that truly love their Linux-based, non-Apple laptop? If so, what's your make & model? What do you love about it?
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Dell XPS13 9343. I love that it's super light, long battery life, high res screen, adequate performance. I use Ubuntu 16.04. I usually use chrome with a gazillion tabs open at any time + gnome-terminal running python or C/C++ compiles. Suspend/resume works very well. Caveat: eventually I tired of the occasional wifi problems and I replaced the broadcom wifi module with an intel one (~$25). Flawless wifi since. I think my only regret/disappointment would be the memory -- this one is limited to 4GB and I can't upgrade it.
  - mr337 10y ago
    I second this, I have the 2015 XPS13 with 8GB of ram. It has been a champ, I too had to ditch the broadcom wifi and replace it with an Intel one.
  - elcct 10y ago
    Just replace the motherboard. Sometimes you can score cheap one on eBay and there are manuals with step by step instructions how to replace it on Dell site.
    - wyldfire 10y ago
      It's not a bad idea. I hadn't considered that. But it looks like the going rate for 8GB is > $300 which represents over 30% of what I paid originally. I'll probably consider it as it ages, though.
  - oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
    I wish you could get the hi-res display as a non-touch screen; unless that's an option, my personal search for a MBP replacement will continue.
msane 10y ago
I looked at PC laptops recently for a linux project machine. You're going to be very disappointed in the build quality if you're coming from Apple. They are just-OK, and every little detail is worse.
- rco8786 10y ago
  This is the biggest thing that keeps me from switching. I'd happily swap to some other brand and run Linux, but every time I touch a non-Apple laptop it feels cheap, loose, clunky, plasticy, and just...bad.
  - adamweld 10y ago
    The Chromebook Pixel is the only laptop I've had that matches Apple build quality. It can also run Linux and ChromeOS synchronously on the same kernel, which leads to a really great user experience. The Surface Book I'm on now is very close, but the trackpad isn't quite as good. The Pixel trackpad was, honest to god, better than on a MacBook pro.
    - funkaster 10y ago
      Agreed. The pixel 2015 is my main computer and now with mailine support (since 4.8) it's fairly easy to run linux. I'm using ubuntu stretch and it works great.
    - nazka 10y ago
      Did you try the Dell XPS 13?
      - bittercynic 10y ago
        The 2015 model (non-touch) has been my daily driver for a few months, and I prefer the feel of it over current MacBook Pros. The palm rests are slightly soft/rubbery in a nice way, but they are fingerprint magnets. If you look around you can find it for $600 (refurb). The Dell appears to be more likely to survive getting wet than Apple's laptops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8211HNs4eY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8211HNs4eY So... for 1/2 the price you can get a machine that you might like better than a MBP.
cstejerean 10y ago
I feel like I'm missing something. If you don't need MagSafe, USB-A or SD card slots and all you want is Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C including for charging, then what's wrong with the MacBook Pro?
- wffurr 10y ago
  Only thing I can tell is missing from the author's list of preferences is "7th generation Core i7 CPU" which the 4th pick in the list also lacks.
  - bungle 10y ago
    And that preference is a weird one as those 6th generation processors in Macbook Pro's are a way better than already released 7th generation CPUs. Also the integrated GPU is better.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Reading the earlier post, it seems the extra need is an escape key, which probably wasn't explicitly written since, you know, it's not exactly a differentiator among non-Apple laptops. http://www.onebigfluke.com/2016/10/lamenting-progress.html http://www.onebigfluke.com/2016/10/lamenting-progress.html
  - bslatkin 10y ago
    OP here: For the record I'm a Sublime / Emacs user. From this earlier post: "I philosophically disagree with the idea of looking at your keyboard to comprehend its interface."
    - comex 10y ago
      I generally agree that you shouldn't have to look at the keyboard, but I'm currently hoping that peripheral vision plus muscle memory will be enough to make up for the lack of tactile feedback when it comes to commonly used applications. (I haven't tried out the new MBP yet, and I'm going to do so before ordering, but that's my hope.) In return, I'd get the ability to use slide controls, and have both system controls (volume, brightness) and application-specific ones directly on the bar rather than having to choose Fn for one - which makes for terrible ergonomics. Plus, Touch ID. But then, I don't care about the Esc key because I've had Caps Lock mapped to it for years.
michaelmior 10y ago
I'm surprised that no System76 machines were even considered.
- azatris 10y ago
  To me, many design decisions they have taken with respect to hardware are incomprehensible. It doesn't look like a premium quality laptop. Very few can pull it off like Apple. (I have never owned an Apple laptop.)
- haarts 10y ago
  I'm surprised too. The Lemur (14") just got a CPU upgrade and looks enticing, from a hardware perspective. It's serviceable and can sport 32GB RAM and two disks. Unfortunately it's not a looker. But I'm getting fed up with my Dell XPS 13. HiDPI support is still ... not good in Linux, especially when attaching/detaching screens.
- pimeys 10y ago
  I've been googling about them the moment I heard about such laptops. I don't care about the brutal build, the hardware is interesting. According to this Reddit thread they have serious problems with Linux (even though they have Ubuntu installed by default). https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/48y2db/system76_laptop_reviews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/48y2db/system76_lapt...
chris_7 10y ago
Why do people so deeply need to buy a new laptop, right now? My MacBook Pro from a few years ago is still fine. It's in perfect condition. It's fast.
- throwawayqq 10y ago
  I think a lot of people are thinking ahead, sparked by the circus that new Apple announcements cause.
  - tortilla 10y ago
    Premature optimization? :)
- gcb0 10y ago
  back to school in most universities. everyone see the freshmans with newer models. also apple (thankfully vanishing) reality distortion field passing by
- yacn 10y ago
  My MacBook Pro from 5 years ago when I started college just died due to a logic board failure a couple of months ago. A new board was ~$600, so I saved up a little more and bought an Intel NUC. I'm missing the portability though and my Dell 11 chromebook is a bit too small to use comfortably. I don't _need_ one right now, but I'm definitely in the market and weighing my options.
- 0xCMP 10y ago
  Cause "everyone and their mother" has been ramming "wait until the new ones come out" in to their heads for 3 years and they want to finally get the new MBP. I know roughly 4-5 people in this exact situation right now.
- kross 10y ago
  Because many bought simultaneously with new Apple releases and have been waiting to see the next major version. In my case our MacBook pros are > 3.5 years old, which is too old for my comfort level; I expect major failures after 3 years that aren't worth even one day of lost productivity.
giarc 10y ago
Great write up, I like the simplicity and the common structure that allows for easy comparison. Would be nice in a chart view, but oh well. The issue I face is that I need XCode and therefore need an Apple product. Currently using a mid 2010 MBP and was hoping for a good upgrade this round but don't have $3000 to spend. So I'll likely be looking at the used market.
- virmundi 10y ago
  Do you need a laptop? I know that I prefer a laptop, but I don't really need a laptop. Could you get a Mac desktop and remote into it? It might be cheaper and more powerful even when including the cost of the other machine.
  - giarc 10y ago
    I was thinking about that actually. I like the portability of a laptop (working on couch, at table, back deck etc). I think I need to test it out a bit as my wife would also like a new laptop. Perhaps an iMac or mac mini in the basement would work well. Is it preferrable to use an apple product to remote into another apple product, or could I get a Windows/Chrome/Linux laptop and still remote in?
- hedgehog 10y ago
  A refurb might work for you, $1700 for a 2015 15". During my consulting years I bought refurbs for my main laptop because then you get a less expensive machine with all of the weird driver and software support issues worked out. http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro/15 http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbo...
flavor8 10y ago
I recently got a new laptop to run Ubuntu on. Initially I bought a Lenovo Yoga 900 - the hardware was great, but I ran into the bios shenanigans which blew up on HN and Reddit a week or so after I'd returned it. (They have since fixed it.) I then bought a Dell Inspiron 13 7000 which is nice. Touch screen, convertible, reasonable resolution, affordable. Ubuntu installed easily (although I had to jump through minor hoops around UEFI) and everything has worked flawlessly.
- desireco42 10y ago
  Sorry for ignorant question, but is touch screen works on Ubuntu? I've been eyeing jumping to linux, whether on a mac or some other laptop...
  - desireco42 10y ago
    To answer my own question, it seems to just work on recent ubuntu releases, which is great.
  - flavor8 10y ago
    Yeah, the touch screen works great (with multi touch in apps that support it, e.g. chrome). The only thing that's not supported is auto inversion of the screen when you fold it over 360 degrees to use it as a tablet. I set up a shortcut key combination to do that, so it's not overly cumbersome.
gcb0 10y ago
external displays are 80% hdmi and 20% vga. for the next five years there will be zero dongles available to you at universities. yes, they are available chained to your employer and mine conference rooms, but that's not the norm when you actually need to project something and forgot your dongle. I will happily give up the 0.0001mm it will gain to have both of those. my Asus has only a raised connector and is the same thinness of the models without. irrelevant thickness > missing ports when you need them. saying otherwise is buying into the thinest-is-better-marketing-pissing-contest and show that you have no idea that support for both those ports are already built into your APU. they just need to run a port with no extra parts. they just leave it out to market it easier to people like you that will pay premium for it.
gchokov 10y ago
That post makes me want a MacBook. They all look cheap with so much plastic. Aluminum unibody in my 2012 rMBP is great, and it absorbed a drop by quite well, although with visible damage.
- mmphosis 10y ago
  I was disappointed with the new MacBook announcement, but also disappointed when looking at alternatives. I am looking for 32G RAM. I liked the author's short descriptions of the various Intel product lines.
  - gchokov 10y ago
    There're rumors from KGI analysts, that early 2017 will give us 32GB and upgraded hardware. I'd hold my horses until then.
oDot 10y ago
Anyone who needs a laptop right now and can wait for CES, should.
mparr4 10y ago
Why avoid HDMI? This is a sincere question.
- jacek 10y ago
  I have no idea why more options for video output is a problem for the author. I would see this as the advantage. Also "Unnecessary SD slot" is con for one laptop. How is this a problem?
  - bslatkin 10y ago
    If I'm doing digital video work, then I'm already lugging around all the camera gear. Having an SD card reader in the camera bag works for me. I'd rather not have to carry around the slot otherwise.
- bslatkin 10y ago
  OP here: There are USB-C to HDMI/DisplayPort male-to-male cables and male-to-female adapters. Strictly speaking, you don't need it to make your devices work together. But if you don't have Thunderbolt 3, then you're stuck without such options.
- StreamBright 10y ago
  Cable price? Not sure.
davidw 10y ago
I've been happily running Dell computers for years. They're not perfect, but I've been using Linux for 20 years, and am not about to switch to Apple. I'm too attached to the freedom Linux gives me, and am mostly satisfied with Dells that run Linux as something that just works out of the box.
- antirez 10y ago
  Hey David, I'm curious about how frequently you upgraded in recent times. Thanks.
  - davidw 10y ago
    I have an XPS 13 at home from several revisions back, and at work I have another XPS 13 that is current_revision - 1. In Padova, we had an Inspiron from ~10 years ago that had been turned into a computer for the kids to use, and was still working well. My wife is using another Dell Latitude laptop I got a while back, before the XPS 13. All with Ubuntu. It's probably time to upgrade my wife's computer, but the others are all working great. I've continued to update Ubuntu on all of them without reinstalling.
    - antirez 10y ago
      Thank you, from your account it looks like this hardware is lasting at least as much as Apple hardware. Recently I had 3 Macbook Air laptops failing in a row... with things that are not easy to fix like motherboard, charging circuit, and so forth. After 2 years the warranty is gone so all they said was, we can change this for a new one for <unreasonable-amount-of-money>. All in all the switch back to Linux looks very interesting.
      - davidw 10y ago
        The thing that most impressed me is when the hard drive failed in the Inspiron when we were living in Austria. I had purchased the computer here in Oregon and brought it over there. I called up the local Dell number, expecting to have some huge hassle where I'd ship the computer to the US or something and wait a month for it to work its way through the system. Instead, a guy showed up at our door the next day with a new drive that he installed. It was definitely within the warranty period, but I was really impressed. They're not perfect computers, and I do tend to be pretty careful with them, but so far so good.
ngcazz 10y ago
If you're a musician, and you're tied to Core Audio, then it would appear you're SOL...
dmayle 10y ago
I've been doing very similar research, but with slightly different constraints, so for those who might be looking for a more powerful laptop: * 15 inch screen, preferably hidpi * ability to power two external 4k@60 displays * 64GB of RAM * M.2 NVMe SSD (preferably Samsung SM961 / 960 Pro) * quad core (this trumps kaby lake vs skylake) * touch screen Other than that, I tend to agree with the opinions expressed in the article. I have found four possibilities: * Dell Precision 7510 paired with TB15 thunderbolt dock (no touch screen) * Lenovo Thinkpad P50 (People seem to have troubles getting 2 external screens at 4k@60, no touch) * Falcon Northwest TLX / System76 Oryx Pro / Clevo (1080p no touch, bad battery, but has GTX 1070, more USB-C ports) There is one more possible contender, which is the as yet unreleased kaby lake XPS 15. Given the XPS 13 refresh, I suspect we'll see the new XPS 15 in the December / January time frame. If I knew for certain that it would support 64GB of RAM, I would wait and get that machine, but at this point I'm leaning towards buying the Precision 7510 in the next week or two.
- jrs95 10y ago
  Software support for hidpi outside of OS X/macOS isn't great. If you can test it out on an existing computer before buying a new one I'd recommend doing that just to be sure that's what you want. Otherwise 1080p would probably be bearable on a 15" screen I would imagine.
  - dmayle 10y ago
    I've got a colleague who had the P50 4k display, who said the only annoying part at the time was that moving Chrome or IntelliJ from a lowdpi to highdpi display meant you had to relaunch those processes (and this was some time ago). While I agree this is annoying, Fedora 25 launches this month with Wayland, which is supposed to fix these issues.
- intrasight 10y ago
  I'm doing same analysis. Am leaning towards P50 since it supports multiple PCIe x4 whereas Dell only supports one. Could you link to references about external screen troubles?
- 10y ago
mixmastamyk 10y ago
I've been eyeing the XPS 13/15 and took them for a spin at recently an MS store, though I'd get the dev/Linux version. Some things the reviews never seem to mention: Nice screen, but it is quite glossy which sucks at my place with lots of windows. There is a matte option, but only with the low resolution screen. Not sure why a developer would ever want to use a glossy screen on ultra portable. Perhaps if you travel from dungeon to dungeon. Second, the super thin keyboards in rage now have very little key travel. The XPS is better than the small macbook, but much worse than last years Pro. It is also a lot worse feeling than my old XPS. It makes a clanking sound when you use it. I was able to avoid that by touching very lightly, so partly my own fault but touching so lightly is less satisfying on some level. Perhaps the new Pro has a better keyboard but the Apple store did not have it in stock yet.
desireco42 10y ago
Man Razer went long way, that laptop looks awesome. Definitely something to distinguish you from others. I am would have to research a lot if people got Ubuntu to work there well. Last time I tried 2 yrs ago on my then old Macbook pro, took 2 days to configure everything. Then battery life simply was not that good and I went back to osx.
doug1001 10y ago
nice one--for the same reason, i'm doing the research and creating a list of options just now. Myy requirements lists, at least for your first two sets of bullets, are the same. My leading contender at the moment is an Alienware 13, which is sold in three different configurations from $1,000, $1,100, and $1,500. (note: i have no affiliation with Alienware nor am i a gamer). it's not ideal for my use cases (which are probably similar to most other dev), eg, i don't need the industrial strength speakers, which is one of the reasons the box depth is a little on thicker than most laptops to say the least. After having a MBP for the past 7-8 years, an Alienware will feel practically cuboid. one additional criterion i have is high build quality which has led me to look closely at ThinkPad and Alienware. I had an Alienware quite a few years ago before the company was purchased by Dell; The build quality was superb; i have no direct experience with the quality of the newer units (post-acquisition).
Throwaway07 10y ago
If anyone needs Linux support, IMO the only horse in the race is Dell's "developer" line: http://www.dell.com/developer http://www.dell.com/developer A couple different Lenovo sales reps have told my team they won't support Linux. We'd have to wipe back to Windows. While it's been a few years, HP said effectively the same thing. The Dell line has options for 4k, up to 64G RAM. 17" screen if you want to lug around a cinder block (ok they're not that heavy). Arch runs with minimal twiddling, like installing Broadcom drivers. We're done fiddling with Linux on "Windows" laptops thanks to the Dell line.
ape4 10y ago
None of these have hardrives. Which is nice in a way. But the "disk" space on all of them is pretty small.
iddqd 10y ago
They all have one thing in common, i7-7500U or slower. That is because the quad-core i7 7th gen processor won't be available until next year, and that's probably the reason Apple stayed at the 6th gen for this refresh. In my list of requirements quad-core is definitely prioritized over which gen the processor is.
- phaed 10y ago
  Processor benchmarks: Intel Core i7-7500U @ 2.70GHz - 5,337 Intel Core i7-6920HQ @ 2.90GHz - 9,588 Intel Core i7-6820HQ @ 2.70GHz - 8,697 Intel Core i7-6700HQ @ 2.60GHz - 8,029
willcodeforfoo 10y ago
Hardware aside, does anyone who was used to OS X and its app ecosystem's polish really find Linux or Windows that much better? I'd miss Photoshop, Lightroom, Sequel Pro, iTerm 2, Homebrew, Sketch, Transmit, Alfred, Reeder, Keynote, Airmail, Spotify... just to name a few. Not to mention every other OS I've used has varying HiDPI support and typography really looks best on OS X. I wonder if some design-minded Linux geeks will rally around making Linux on the desktop a polished enough experience to rival OS X?
- ant6n 10y ago
  I don't think many people find the OS better. It's the main reason people are still (stuck) with apple. I think most people want to jump ship because of the hardware -- despite it having a great polish. Maybe we need a MACE emulator. How hard could it possibly be to run macos apps on linux? ;)
- simonsarris 10y ago
  I don't understand how you'd "miss" some of those. I use Windows (10) and love it and use Photoshop, Lightroom, and Spotify daily. Support for high density displays on Windows is a lot better than it was 2 years ago, thankfully.
- nextos 10y ago
  I think you are looking at this problem from the wrong perspective. I was also making this mistake too in the past. You cannot beat MacOS in its own game, polished object-oriented Apps reminiscent of NeXTStep with a lot of indie offerings. You need to realise polish means something different in Linux. It means classic open-source text-mode keyboard-driven file-configured programs that do one thing, do it well and are easy to compose in the Unix tradition. URxvt, emacs, vim, mutt, mbsync, zathura, irssi, etc. Obviously most of these are portable and thus not exclusive of Linux. But you will get most of them in Linux, running a minimal tiling window manager like XMonad and a good package manager like pacman, nix or guix. This takes time to master, but in my opinion can't be beaten and will not become out of fashion easily.
  - danieldk 10y ago
AndrewNCarr 10y ago
I would like to find a laptop with a touchpad as good as a 2010 MacBook Pro. I'm not aware of any, and this article seems to confirm it: http://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-touchpad-better-than-windows-10-touchpads-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-touchpad-better-than-...
Kenji 10y ago
I am super happy with my Lenovo T450s - it's sturdy, has a super crisp, beautiful IPS display, very long battery life, trackpoint. The only bad thing about it is that the speakers point downwards into the table, but I rarely use them anyway. I run dual-boot Windows 10 and Linux because I need both for my work. The newer Linux kernels support everything and work perfectly with this computer.
foob 10y ago
If you're considering upgrading then you might want to ask yourself whether you really need a laptop instead of a desktop. If you work from home and currently have a laptop that you can use while traveling (or for miscellaneous web browsing, media, etc) then a desktop might actually be a better fit. I recently started feeling like it might be time to upgrade my 1st gen Carbon X1 and after doing some research I found myself really disappointed by how little the laptop landscape has changed over the last four or five years. After giving it some thought though, I realized that I do virtually all of my work at one desk anyway and decided to look into some desktop options. I found that you can put together something in a mini-case with an i7 processor, 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, 2 TB of SSD, a 28" 4k monitor, a mechanical keyboard, and a high quality mouse for less than about $2k dollars. This made a lot more sense to me than spending a similar amount on a laptop that offers only marginal improvements over my current one. The obvious trade-off is portability but I would guess that most of us here already have laptops that are "good enough" for most purposes and which could still be used as necessary.
avisser 10y ago
What's with the desire for a 4k laptop? The 5.1 megapixels on my 15" rMBP are certainly more than I can see (36yo here). Especially as this guy is looking for a 13" screen, and more pixels leads to less battery life, I don't see the draw.
desireco42 10y ago
Apparently Dell still has Ubuntu edition laptops. Based on Reddit comments, they seem to be working really well. For 16Gb ram and this insane resultion, seems great deal for $1800. http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cax13ubuntuh5133&model_id=xps-13-9360-laptop&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04 http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cax13u...
- vladimir-y 10y ago
  You can get HP x360 with the same config for about $1300. And don't forget to check laptop for coil whine (high pitch noise) issue buying Dell XPS laptops, they still do ship laptops with that annoying problem.
  - igravious 10y ago
    You're not comparing like with like, and that coil whine thing I think is exaggerated. I'll post a comparison in a short while.
  - igravious 10y ago
    There are two versions of the Dell XPS 13" variety. There is the 1080p version and the QHD+ version. The 1080p version is non-touch, the higher res is touch enabled. The 1080p version goes for €1,149.00 (with discounts)[1] from where I'm at right now. I found a HP x360 priced at €1193.00 locally[2]. Interestingly from a developer perspective, the Dell XPS Developer edition comes with Ubuntu 16.04 SP1 out of the box so no Apple or Microsoft or Google tax. Isn't that neat? System76 is the only other well known system builder that I know of that does this. I'm happy to be corrected on this. Let's compare the HP Spectre x360 and the Dell XPS 9360. component HP Dell --- os Windows 10 Home 64bit Ubuntu 16.04 SP1 64bit processor 6th gen i5-6200U (3MB cache, <2.8GHz) 7th Gen i5-7200U (3MB cache, <3.1GHz) memory 8GB LPDDR3 1600MHz 8GB LPDDR3 1866MHz storage 256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD 256GB PCIe SSD graphics Intel® HD Graphics 520 Intel® HD Graphics 620 display (13.3") FHD IPS LED-backlit 13.3” FHD AG (1920 x 1080) InfinityEdge display touch screen (1920 x 1080) ports 1 headphone/microphone combo 1 Headset jack, 1 Noble lock slot 3 USB 3.0 2 USB 3.0 - 1 w/PowerShare 1 HDMI, 1 Mini DisplayPort 1 Thunderbolt™ 3 expansion 1 multi-format SD media card reader 1 SD card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC) So the big plus for HP is that it's a touch screen which opens up possibilities for using it as a tablet which is a very convenient. The minus is that it is Skylake instead of Kabylake and slower memory, last gen integrated graphics, and no thunderbolt 3. A minus for the Dell is, like the new Macbook Pros, that you'll need a dongle to connect to external displays. (But at least you get an SD card reader and regular USB ports which Apple in its infinite wisdom has deemed superfluous to basic requirements now!) :) [1] http://www.dell.com/ie/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?oc=cnx93609&l=en&s=dhs http://www.dell.com/ie/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?oc=cnx93609&l... [2] http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=WCEW8Y31EAABU http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=WCEW8Y31E...
igor_filippov 10y ago
I get that different people have different needs, and someone might say there's a need for 64 Gb RAM laptop. But it's not fair to say that MacBooks are not for developers anymore. I'm really happy with 16 Gb RAM on my MBP, which allows me to run Android Studio, XCode, Rails server, Redis Server, PostgreSQL and dozens of other small things at the same time. I don't see a reason for such reactions.
- igor_filippov 10y ago
  It's almost like everyone was suddenly imagining to see quantum processors in those Macs.
- phaed 10y ago
  It depends on what you do, if you have to juggle multiple VMs or deal with massive projects 16GB will be an issue for you. If you are a creative that works with graphics/video/music, your work machine will most definitely require tons of RAM, and that limit will def become an issue.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Thanks, great writeup - I bookmarked it because my 5 1/2 year old MacBook Air is literally wearing out. I really like Mac laptops but the closest match to my needs now is a MackBook which is probably about as fast as my 5 1/2 year old laptop. Our local non-official Mac store tech guy was telling me that the MacBook is surprisingly fast and since he knows me and my habits (I tend to develop on large memory, multi-core VPSs) he was recommending it highly to me. Still, it seems expensive for what you get.
deleted 10y ago
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cseelus 10y ago
I don't get the amount of grudge towards Apple for the new MBPs. Yeah, they could support 32GB of Ram, more battery would be nice too, and yeah I think almost no one got overwhelmed by he innovation Apple brought to the table with them, but what are the alternatives? The author mentions in another post why he is done with Apple after his 2013 13" MBP and states he has no use for the Touch Bar. Thats fine, just get the Pro without the bar and with physical function keys. The build quality of other laptops just isn't on par with Apples. Greg Koenig and many others have analyzed why Apple has a tremendous edge over other vendors when it comes to building computers and gadgets from aluminum[1]. Also if your are used to macOS, its perfect integration of hardware and software, its polish and many of the very nicely crafted ("made with ︎love") 3rd party applications, it might be very hard to switch to a decent Linux distro, let alone Windows. It may be wise to first try the switch on your current Mac, inside a Virtual Machine … [1] http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-ceramic http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-... (Featured on HN ~ 2 weeks ago)
- vladimir-y 10y ago
  > I don't get the amount of grudge towards Apple for the new MBPs MBP would be a fine laptop for a twice less cost. There are cheaper decent alternatives.
  - NEDM64 10y ago
    Except those alternatives are usually crap and more expensive
    - vladimir-y 10y ago
      That's not true, unless you are talking about Asus/Lenovo products, see larger picture.
      - NEDM64 10y ago
        Which alternative has a 3 gigabyte per second SSD? And four USB-C 3.1 ports with TB 3.0? And a TouchBar? And really last 10 hours on battery (Microsoft advertised 12 for the SurfaceBook and it only lasted 6 on the same test the MBP lasted 10)
vladimir-y 10y ago
Article author forgot to mention Acer TravelMate P648 http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-TravelMate-P648-M-757N-Notebook-Review.167637.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-TravelMate-P648-M-757N-Not...
anotheryou 10y ago
Any recommendations for <1200€, high dpi, matte, i7, 16gb ram, 15"? I don't mind to carry a bit. Best I could find so far: https://www.cyberport.de/?DEEP=1C10-2WN&APID=6 https://www.cyberport.de/?DEEP=1C10-2WN&APID=6 (german, but I guess you can see the specs, goes under the brand name "Clevo" elsewhere. would need to upgrade ram, but there is plenty of space I think)
outworlder 10y ago
The biggest downside for me of this Touch Bar gimmick is not that I have to look at it. I can touch type, but I'd rather have this than a menu bar. You have to look up to the menu bar anyway, and reach for the mouse. Noone is complaining that menu bars are still there. This is like the Office "ribbon" in hardware form. It's fine, stop whining. The problem for me is that my laptop is usually in "clamshell" mode. If I'm at the office, I have an external monitor. If I am at home, I have an external monitor. So the touch bar would be used for Starbucks and Planes? Meh. If at least the external Apple keyboards had it... I too have been considering other alternatives. And that's mostly because I am feeling fed up with having multiple machines. I want a machine with a decent GPU, which you can't have in Apple land, no matter how much money you are willing to throw at Apple. They could have used those speedy thunderbolt connections to power external GPUs, much like Razer and Dell are doing. Even Microsoft is kind of doing it, with the GPU in the Surface Book's keyboard. If there's a company that knows how to do this video card switching thing, it's Apple. I can never tell when the MBP is changing GPUs. The Surface Book not having Thunderbolt was a surprise to me. I guess that's out then.
- msbarnett 10y ago
  > The problem for me is that my laptop is usually in "clamshell" mode. If I'm at the office, I have an external monitor. If I am at home, I have an external monitor. So the touch bar would be used for Starbucks and Planes? I'm sincerely curious (this isn't some veiled criticism or w/e): what do you like about having it in clamshell mode with an external monitor? I use my MBP with an external at work every day, but I always keep it open for the extra screen.
  - outworlder 10y ago
    Usually, desk space. At this very moment, I have 3 monitors in front of me (2 30", 1 27"). Space is at a premium, I don't gain much with the laptop screen. In clamshell, I can tuck it below the monitors. Sometimes I will have the laptop open. But then the screen is not properly positioned vs the other(s) monitor. And then I put it in a stand. Which means I no longer have easy access to the keyboard. This is why, in fact, I bought my first magic trackpad. I caught myself reaching for the laptop's trackpad to use gestures or scroll. Get me an external keyboard with a touch bar and I'm on board! I don't think that's going to happen though, because right now it is what makes the MBPs stand out.
AceJohnny2 10y ago
On the XPS 13: Cons: Expensive. Unnecessary SD card slot I find this amusing and interesting. I've seen lots of complaining about the MBP dropping SD card support ("photographers HATE it!"). It looks like everyone rejects it for not-entirely overlapping reasons. Reminds me of political candidates, where everyone has differing reasons to not vote for them.
bel_marinaio 10y ago
The biggest issue, and it is not even mentioned, is the OS. The Apple computer experience is a lot more than just the hardware.
michaelmior 10y ago
One of the things I have a hard time giving up when looking at alternative laptops is the TrackPoint on my ThinkPad. I've grown to love it and I'm not a fan of most trackpads (although I think Apple got it right with the MacBook). That leaves the ThinkPad P50 as perhaps the only serious contender for me.
vladimir-y 10y ago
Btw 13" MacBook Pro vs. HP Spectre x360 Late 2016 Comparison Smackdown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMrMoT5cb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMrMoT5cb0

197 points by josephscott 10y ago

TheGorramBatman 10y ago

I'm not convinced by his "need" to have Thunderbolt 3.

SloopJon 10y ago
Yeah, the list of "must have" and "avoid" attributes made it clear that this is not a list for me. I'll probably never use my laptop with an external GPU that costs as much as the laptop itself. Maybe I'd feel differently if I used a laptop exclusively.

rufius 10y ago

At least in my opinion, the ThinkPad Carbon X1 is glaringly missing in that lineup.

whytaka 10y ago
We really shouldn't support companies that so shamelessly spies on us.
- xori 10y ago
  If you can pay the premium, then vote with your money. Otherwise succumb and wipe clean.
- aRationalMoose 10y ago
  You can always powerwash it and slap your favorite linux distro on it, no?
  - user982 10y ago
    Lenovo put a rootkit in its laptops' firmware that reinstalled across system wipes, so no.
- na85 10y ago
  I'll bet you have an Intel chip and a phone. Both have surveillance capabilities built in: Intel ME and your phone's baseband processor.
ozi 10y ago
He lists it at the bottom of the page; 2nd to last place of laptops considered. "No USB-C ports. No Thunderbolt 3 ports. Too many video out ports. Unnecessary SD slot. 6th generation CPU."
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  >No USB-C ports. No Thunderbolt 3 ports. Why would you want or need either of these for a Windows/Linux machine? USB-C is near non-existant and the Carbon uses the Lenovo flat connector for charging. Instead you get 3 USB3.0 ports. > Too many video out ports Who cares? They aren't taking up space. You get HDMI for easy connecting to a TV without any adapters and a mini-displayport for everything else. Seems like a win-win to me. HDMI is the most common and near universal video connector now. The lack of HDMI on Apple laptops is inexcusable. > Unnecessary SD slot Uh, another who cares. Hell, put a second OS on there for kicks, load up photos from your mom's old camera, run a hypervisor on it and use local storage for your VM's, etc. > 6th generation CPU. The i7 model has a i7-6500U from Q3 2015. Its fairly newish and a great performer considering its energy use. The current X1 is in its 4th generation and from early this year, so of course it has a late 2015 processor. More than likely you'll see a 5th generation early next year if getting the newest processor is important to you. Not that intel's yearly offerings differ too greatly from last year's model.
  - bdcravens 10y ago
    > USB-C is near non-existant True, though with it being featured in the Google Pixel, I'm certain it'll become more common.

cobbzilla 10y ago

Any developers out there that truly love their Linux-based, non-Apple laptop? If so, what's your make & model? What do you love about it?

wyldfire 10y ago
Dell XPS13 9343. I love that it's super light, long battery life, high res screen, adequate performance. I use Ubuntu 16.04. I usually use chrome with a gazillion tabs open at any time + gnome-terminal running python or C/C++ compiles. Suspend/resume works very well. Caveat: eventually I tired of the occasional wifi problems and I replaced the broadcom wifi module with an intel one (~$25). Flawless wifi since. I think my only regret/disappointment would be the memory -- this one is limited to 4GB and I can't upgrade it.
- mr337 10y ago
  I second this, I have the 2015 XPS13 with 8GB of ram. It has been a champ, I too had to ditch the broadcom wifi and replace it with an Intel one.
- elcct 10y ago
  Just replace the motherboard. Sometimes you can score cheap one on eBay and there are manuals with step by step instructions how to replace it on Dell site.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    It's not a bad idea. I hadn't considered that. But it looks like the going rate for 8GB is > $300 which represents over 30% of what I paid originally. I'll probably consider it as it ages, though.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
  I wish you could get the hi-res display as a non-touch screen; unless that's an option, my personal search for a MBP replacement will continue.

msane 10y ago

I looked at PC laptops recently for a linux project machine. You're going to be very disappointed in the build quality if you're coming from Apple. They are just-OK, and every little detail is worse.

rco8786 10y ago
This is the biggest thing that keeps me from switching. I'd happily swap to some other brand and run Linux, but every time I touch a non-Apple laptop it feels cheap, loose, clunky, plasticy, and just...bad.
- adamweld 10y ago
  The Chromebook Pixel is the only laptop I've had that matches Apple build quality. It can also run Linux and ChromeOS synchronously on the same kernel, which leads to a really great user experience. The Surface Book I'm on now is very close, but the trackpad isn't quite as good. The Pixel trackpad was, honest to god, better than on a MacBook pro.
  - funkaster 10y ago
    Agreed. The pixel 2015 is my main computer and now with mailine support (since 4.8) it's fairly easy to run linux. I'm using ubuntu stretch and it works great.
  - nazka 10y ago
    Did you try the Dell XPS 13?
    - bittercynic 10y ago
      The 2015 model (non-touch) has been my daily driver for a few months, and I prefer the feel of it over current MacBook Pros. The palm rests are slightly soft/rubbery in a nice way, but they are fingerprint magnets. If you look around you can find it for $600 (refurb). The Dell appears to be more likely to survive getting wet than Apple's laptops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8211HNs4eY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8211HNs4eY So... for 1/2 the price you can get a machine that you might like better than a MBP.

cstejerean 10y ago

I feel like I'm missing something. If you don't need MagSafe, USB-A or SD card slots and all you want is Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C including for charging, then what's wrong with the MacBook Pro?

wffurr 10y ago
Only thing I can tell is missing from the author's list of preferences is "7th generation Core i7 CPU" which the 4th pick in the list also lacks.
- bungle 10y ago
  And that preference is a weird one as those 6th generation processors in Macbook Pro's are a way better than already released 7th generation CPUs. Also the integrated GPU is better.
icebraining 10y ago
Reading the earlier post, it seems the extra need is an escape key, which probably wasn't explicitly written since, you know, it's not exactly a differentiator among non-Apple laptops. http://www.onebigfluke.com/2016/10/lamenting-progress.html http://www.onebigfluke.com/2016/10/lamenting-progress.html
- bslatkin 10y ago
  OP here: For the record I'm a Sublime / Emacs user. From this earlier post: "I philosophically disagree with the idea of looking at your keyboard to comprehend its interface."
  - comex 10y ago
    I generally agree that you shouldn't have to look at the keyboard, but I'm currently hoping that peripheral vision plus muscle memory will be enough to make up for the lack of tactile feedback when it comes to commonly used applications. (I haven't tried out the new MBP yet, and I'm going to do so before ordering, but that's my hope.) In return, I'd get the ability to use slide controls, and have both system controls (volume, brightness) and application-specific ones directly on the bar rather than having to choose Fn for one - which makes for terrible ergonomics. Plus, Touch ID. But then, I don't care about the Esc key because I've had Caps Lock mapped to it for years.

michaelmior 10y ago

I'm surprised that no System76 machines were even considered.

azatris 10y ago
To me, many design decisions they have taken with respect to hardware are incomprehensible. It doesn't look like a premium quality laptop. Very few can pull it off like Apple. (I have never owned an Apple laptop.)
haarts 10y ago
I'm surprised too. The Lemur (14") just got a CPU upgrade and looks enticing, from a hardware perspective. It's serviceable and can sport 32GB RAM and two disks. Unfortunately it's not a looker. But I'm getting fed up with my Dell XPS 13. HiDPI support is still ... not good in Linux, especially when attaching/detaching screens.
pimeys 10y ago
I've been googling about them the moment I heard about such laptops. I don't care about the brutal build, the hardware is interesting. According to this Reddit thread they have serious problems with Linux (even though they have Ubuntu installed by default). https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/48y2db/system76_laptop_reviews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/48y2db/system76_lapt...

chris_7 10y ago

Why do people so deeply need to buy a new laptop, right now? My MacBook Pro from a few years ago is still fine. It's in perfect condition. It's fast.

throwawayqq 10y ago
I think a lot of people are thinking ahead, sparked by the circus that new Apple announcements cause.
- tortilla 10y ago
  Premature optimization? :)
gcb0 10y ago
back to school in most universities. everyone see the freshmans with newer models. also apple (thankfully vanishing) reality distortion field passing by
yacn 10y ago
My MacBook Pro from 5 years ago when I started college just died due to a logic board failure a couple of months ago. A new board was ~$600, so I saved up a little more and bought an Intel NUC. I'm missing the portability though and my Dell 11 chromebook is a bit too small to use comfortably. I don't _need_ one right now, but I'm definitely in the market and weighing my options.
0xCMP 10y ago
Cause "everyone and their mother" has been ramming "wait until the new ones come out" in to their heads for 3 years and they want to finally get the new MBP. I know roughly 4-5 people in this exact situation right now.
kross 10y ago
Because many bought simultaneously with new Apple releases and have been waiting to see the next major version. In my case our MacBook pros are > 3.5 years old, which is too old for my comfort level; I expect major failures after 3 years that aren't worth even one day of lost productivity.

giarc 10y ago

Great write up, I like the simplicity and the common structure that allows for easy comparison. Would be nice in a chart view, but oh well. The issue I face is that I need XCode and therefore need an Apple product. Currently using a mid 2010 MBP and was hoping for a good upgrade this round but don't have $3000 to spend. So I'll likely be looking at the used market.

virmundi 10y ago
Do you need a laptop? I know that I prefer a laptop, but I don't really need a laptop. Could you get a Mac desktop and remote into it? It might be cheaper and more powerful even when including the cost of the other machine.
- giarc 10y ago
  I was thinking about that actually. I like the portability of a laptop (working on couch, at table, back deck etc). I think I need to test it out a bit as my wife would also like a new laptop. Perhaps an iMac or mac mini in the basement would work well. Is it preferrable to use an apple product to remote into another apple product, or could I get a Windows/Chrome/Linux laptop and still remote in?
hedgehog 10y ago
A refurb might work for you, $1700 for a 2015 15". During my consulting years I bought refurbs for my main laptop because then you get a less expensive machine with all of the weird driver and software support issues worked out. http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro/15 http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbo...

flavor8 10y ago

I recently got a new laptop to run Ubuntu on. Initially I bought a Lenovo Yoga 900 - the hardware was great, but I ran into the bios shenanigans which blew up on HN and Reddit a week or so after I'd returned it. (They have since fixed it.) I then bought a Dell Inspiron 13 7000 which is nice. Touch screen, convertible, reasonable resolution, affordable. Ubuntu installed easily (although I had to jump through minor hoops around UEFI) and everything has worked flawlessly.

desireco42 10y ago
Sorry for ignorant question, but is touch screen works on Ubuntu? I've been eyeing jumping to linux, whether on a mac or some other laptop...
- desireco42 10y ago
  To answer my own question, it seems to just work on recent ubuntu releases, which is great.
- flavor8 10y ago
  Yeah, the touch screen works great (with multi touch in apps that support it, e.g. chrome). The only thing that's not supported is auto inversion of the screen when you fold it over 360 degrees to use it as a tablet. I set up a shortcut key combination to do that, so it's not overly cumbersome.

gcb0 10y ago

external displays are 80% hdmi and 20% vga. for the next five years there will be zero dongles available to you at universities. yes, they are available chained to your employer and mine conference rooms, but that's not the norm when you actually need to project something and forgot your dongle. I will happily give up the 0.0001mm it will gain to have both of those. my Asus has only a raised connector and is the same thinness of the models without. irrelevant thickness > missing ports when you need them. saying otherwise is buying into the thinest-is-better-marketing-pissing-contest and show that you have no idea that support for both those ports are already built into your APU. they just need to run a port with no extra parts. they just leave it out to market it easier to people like you that will pay premium for it.

gchokov 10y ago

That post makes me want a MacBook. They all look cheap with so much plastic. Aluminum unibody in my 2012 rMBP is great, and it absorbed a drop by quite well, although with visible damage.

mmphosis 10y ago
I was disappointed with the new MacBook announcement, but also disappointed when looking at alternatives. I am looking for 32G RAM. I liked the author's short descriptions of the various Intel product lines.
- gchokov 10y ago
  There're rumors from KGI analysts, that early 2017 will give us 32GB and upgraded hardware. I'd hold my horses until then.

oDot 10y ago

Anyone who needs a laptop right now and can wait for CES, should.

mparr4 10y ago

Why avoid HDMI? This is a sincere question.

jacek 10y ago
I have no idea why more options for video output is a problem for the author. I would see this as the advantage. Also "Unnecessary SD slot" is con for one laptop. How is this a problem?
- bslatkin 10y ago
  If I'm doing digital video work, then I'm already lugging around all the camera gear. Having an SD card reader in the camera bag works for me. I'd rather not have to carry around the slot otherwise.
bslatkin 10y ago
OP here: There are USB-C to HDMI/DisplayPort male-to-male cables and male-to-female adapters. Strictly speaking, you don't need it to make your devices work together. But if you don't have Thunderbolt 3, then you're stuck without such options.
StreamBright 10y ago
Cable price? Not sure.

davidw 10y ago

I've been happily running Dell computers for years. They're not perfect, but I've been using Linux for 20 years, and am not about to switch to Apple. I'm too attached to the freedom Linux gives me, and am mostly satisfied with Dells that run Linux as something that just works out of the box.

antirez 10y ago
Hey David, I'm curious about how frequently you upgraded in recent times. Thanks.
- davidw 10y ago
  I have an XPS 13 at home from several revisions back, and at work I have another XPS 13 that is current_revision - 1. In Padova, we had an Inspiron from ~10 years ago that had been turned into a computer for the kids to use, and was still working well. My wife is using another Dell Latitude laptop I got a while back, before the XPS 13. All with Ubuntu. It's probably time to upgrade my wife's computer, but the others are all working great. I've continued to update Ubuntu on all of them without reinstalling.
  - antirez 10y ago
    Thank you, from your account it looks like this hardware is lasting at least as much as Apple hardware. Recently I had 3 Macbook Air laptops failing in a row... with things that are not easy to fix like motherboard, charging circuit, and so forth. After 2 years the warranty is gone so all they said was, we can change this for a new one for <unreasonable-amount-of-money>. All in all the switch back to Linux looks very interesting.
    - davidw 10y ago
      The thing that most impressed me is when the hard drive failed in the Inspiron when we were living in Austria. I had purchased the computer here in Oregon and brought it over there. I called up the local Dell number, expecting to have some huge hassle where I'd ship the computer to the US or something and wait a month for it to work its way through the system. Instead, a guy showed up at our door the next day with a new drive that he installed. It was definitely within the warranty period, but I was really impressed. They're not perfect computers, and I do tend to be pretty careful with them, but so far so good.

ngcazz 10y ago

If you're a musician, and you're tied to Core Audio, then it would appear you're SOL...

dmayle 10y ago

I've been doing very similar research, but with slightly different constraints, so for those who might be looking for a more powerful laptop: * 15 inch screen, preferably hidpi * ability to power two external 4k@60 displays * 64GB of RAM * M.2 NVMe SSD (preferably Samsung SM961 / 960 Pro) * quad core (this trumps kaby lake vs skylake) * touch screen Other than that, I tend to agree with the opinions expressed in the article. I have found four possibilities: * Dell Precision 7510 paired with TB15 thunderbolt dock (no touch screen) * Lenovo Thinkpad P50 (People seem to have troubles getting 2 external screens at 4k@60, no touch) * Falcon Northwest TLX / System76 Oryx Pro / Clevo (1080p no touch, bad battery, but has GTX 1070, more USB-C ports) There is one more possible contender, which is the as yet unreleased kaby lake XPS 15. Given the XPS 13 refresh, I suspect we'll see the new XPS 15 in the December / January time frame. If I knew for certain that it would support 64GB of RAM, I would wait and get that machine, but at this point I'm leaning towards buying the Precision 7510 in the next week or two.

jrs95 10y ago
Software support for hidpi outside of OS X/macOS isn't great. If you can test it out on an existing computer before buying a new one I'd recommend doing that just to be sure that's what you want. Otherwise 1080p would probably be bearable on a 15" screen I would imagine.
- dmayle 10y ago
  I've got a colleague who had the P50 4k display, who said the only annoying part at the time was that moving Chrome or IntelliJ from a lowdpi to highdpi display meant you had to relaunch those processes (and this was some time ago). While I agree this is annoying, Fedora 25 launches this month with Wayland, which is supposed to fix these issues.
intrasight 10y ago
I'm doing same analysis. Am leaning towards P50 since it supports multiple PCIe x4 whereas Dell only supports one. Could you link to references about external screen troubles?
10y ago

mixmastamyk 10y ago

I've been eyeing the XPS 13/15 and took them for a spin at recently an MS store, though I'd get the dev/Linux version. Some things the reviews never seem to mention: Nice screen, but it is quite glossy which sucks at my place with lots of windows. There is a matte option, but only with the low resolution screen. Not sure why a developer would ever want to use a glossy screen on ultra portable. Perhaps if you travel from dungeon to dungeon. Second, the super thin keyboards in rage now have very little key travel. The XPS is better than the small macbook, but much worse than last years Pro. It is also a lot worse feeling than my old XPS. It makes a clanking sound when you use it. I was able to avoid that by touching very lightly, so partly my own fault but touching so lightly is less satisfying on some level. Perhaps the new Pro has a better keyboard but the Apple store did not have it in stock yet.

desireco42 10y ago

Man Razer went long way, that laptop looks awesome. Definitely something to distinguish you from others. I am would have to research a lot if people got Ubuntu to work there well. Last time I tried 2 yrs ago on my then old Macbook pro, took 2 days to configure everything. Then battery life simply was not that good and I went back to osx.

doug1001 10y ago

nice one--for the same reason, i'm doing the research and creating a list of options just now. Myy requirements lists, at least for your first two sets of bullets, are the same. My leading contender at the moment is an Alienware 13, which is sold in three different configurations from $1,000, $1,100, and $1,500. (note: i have no affiliation with Alienware nor am i a gamer). it's not ideal for my use cases (which are probably similar to most other dev), eg, i don't need the industrial strength speakers, which is one of the reasons the box depth is a little on thicker than most laptops to say the least. After having a MBP for the past 7-8 years, an Alienware will feel practically cuboid. one additional criterion i have is high build quality which has led me to look closely at ThinkPad and Alienware. I had an Alienware quite a few years ago before the company was purchased by Dell; The build quality was superb; i have no direct experience with the quality of the newer units (post-acquisition).

Throwaway07 10y ago

If anyone needs Linux support, IMO the only horse in the race is Dell's "developer" line: http://www.dell.com/developer http://www.dell.com/developer A couple different Lenovo sales reps have told my team they won't support Linux. We'd have to wipe back to Windows. While it's been a few years, HP said effectively the same thing. The Dell line has options for 4k, up to 64G RAM. 17" screen if you want to lug around a cinder block (ok they're not that heavy). Arch runs with minimal twiddling, like installing Broadcom drivers. We're done fiddling with Linux on "Windows" laptops thanks to the Dell line.

ape4 10y ago

None of these have hardrives. Which is nice in a way. But the "disk" space on all of them is pretty small.

iddqd 10y ago

They all have one thing in common, i7-7500U or slower. That is because the quad-core i7 7th gen processor won't be available until next year, and that's probably the reason Apple stayed at the 6th gen for this refresh. In my list of requirements quad-core is definitely prioritized over which gen the processor is.

phaed 10y ago
Processor benchmarks: Intel Core i7-7500U @ 2.70GHz - 5,337 Intel Core i7-6920HQ @ 2.90GHz - 9,588 Intel Core i7-6820HQ @ 2.70GHz - 8,697 Intel Core i7-6700HQ @ 2.60GHz - 8,029

willcodeforfoo 10y ago

Hardware aside, does anyone who was used to OS X and its app ecosystem's polish really find Linux or Windows that much better? I'd miss Photoshop, Lightroom, Sequel Pro, iTerm 2, Homebrew, Sketch, Transmit, Alfred, Reeder, Keynote, Airmail, Spotify... just to name a few. Not to mention every other OS I've used has varying HiDPI support and typography really looks best on OS X. I wonder if some design-minded Linux geeks will rally around making Linux on the desktop a polished enough experience to rival OS X?

ant6n 10y ago
I don't think many people find the OS better. It's the main reason people are still (stuck) with apple. I think most people want to jump ship because of the hardware -- despite it having a great polish. Maybe we need a MACE emulator. How hard could it possibly be to run macos apps on linux? ;)
simonsarris 10y ago
I don't understand how you'd "miss" some of those. I use Windows (10) and love it and use Photoshop, Lightroom, and Spotify daily. Support for high density displays on Windows is a lot better than it was 2 years ago, thankfully.
nextos 10y ago
I think you are looking at this problem from the wrong perspective. I was also making this mistake too in the past. You cannot beat MacOS in its own game, polished object-oriented Apps reminiscent of NeXTStep with a lot of indie offerings. You need to realise polish means something different in Linux. It means classic open-source text-mode keyboard-driven file-configured programs that do one thing, do it well and are easy to compose in the Unix tradition. URxvt, emacs, vim, mutt, mbsync, zathura, irssi, etc. Obviously most of these are portable and thus not exclusive of Linux. But you will get most of them in Linux, running a minimal tiling window manager like XMonad and a good package manager like pacman, nix or guix. This takes time to master, but in my opinion can't be beaten and will not become out of fashion easily.
- danieldk 10y ago

AndrewNCarr 10y ago

I would like to find a laptop with a touchpad as good as a 2010 MacBook Pro. I'm not aware of any, and this article seems to confirm it: http://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-touchpad-better-than-windows-10-touchpads-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/macbook-touchpad-better-than-...

Kenji 10y ago

I am super happy with my Lenovo T450s - it's sturdy, has a super crisp, beautiful IPS display, very long battery life, trackpoint. The only bad thing about it is that the speakers point downwards into the table, but I rarely use them anyway. I run dual-boot Windows 10 and Linux because I need both for my work. The newer Linux kernels support everything and work perfectly with this computer.

foob 10y ago

If you're considering upgrading then you might want to ask yourself whether you really need a laptop instead of a desktop. If you work from home and currently have a laptop that you can use while traveling (or for miscellaneous web browsing, media, etc) then a desktop might actually be a better fit. I recently started feeling like it might be time to upgrade my 1st gen Carbon X1 and after doing some research I found myself really disappointed by how little the laptop landscape has changed over the last four or five years. After giving it some thought though, I realized that I do virtually all of my work at one desk anyway and decided to look into some desktop options. I found that you can put together something in a mini-case with an i7 processor, 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, 2 TB of SSD, a 28" 4k monitor, a mechanical keyboard, and a high quality mouse for less than about $2k dollars. This made a lot more sense to me than spending a similar amount on a laptop that offers only marginal improvements over my current one. The obvious trade-off is portability but I would guess that most of us here already have laptops that are "good enough" for most purposes and which could still be used as necessary.

avisser 10y ago

What's with the desire for a 4k laptop? The 5.1 megapixels on my 15" rMBP are certainly more than I can see (36yo here). Especially as this guy is looking for a 13" screen, and more pixels leads to less battery life, I don't see the draw.

desireco42 10y ago

Apparently Dell still has Ubuntu edition laptops. Based on Reddit comments, they seem to be working really well. For 16Gb ram and this insane resultion, seems great deal for $1800. http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cax13ubuntuh5133&model_id=xps-13-9360-laptop&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04 http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=cax13u...

vladimir-y 10y ago
You can get HP x360 with the same config for about $1300. And don't forget to check laptop for coil whine (high pitch noise) issue buying Dell XPS laptops, they still do ship laptops with that annoying problem.
- igravious 10y ago
  You're not comparing like with like, and that coil whine thing I think is exaggerated. I'll post a comparison in a short while.
- igravious 10y ago
  There are two versions of the Dell XPS 13" variety. There is the 1080p version and the QHD+ version. The 1080p version is non-touch, the higher res is touch enabled. The 1080p version goes for €1,149.00 (with discounts)[1] from where I'm at right now. I found a HP x360 priced at €1193.00 locally[2]. Interestingly from a developer perspective, the Dell XPS Developer edition comes with Ubuntu 16.04 SP1 out of the box so no Apple or Microsoft or Google tax. Isn't that neat? System76 is the only other well known system builder that I know of that does this. I'm happy to be corrected on this. Let's compare the HP Spectre x360 and the Dell XPS 9360. component HP Dell --- os Windows 10 Home 64bit Ubuntu 16.04 SP1 64bit processor 6th gen i5-6200U (3MB cache, <2.8GHz) 7th Gen i5-7200U (3MB cache, <3.1GHz) memory 8GB LPDDR3 1600MHz 8GB LPDDR3 1866MHz storage 256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD 256GB PCIe SSD graphics Intel® HD Graphics 520 Intel® HD Graphics 620 display (13.3") FHD IPS LED-backlit 13.3” FHD AG (1920 x 1080) InfinityEdge display touch screen (1920 x 1080) ports 1 headphone/microphone combo 1 Headset jack, 1 Noble lock slot 3 USB 3.0 2 USB 3.0 - 1 w/PowerShare 1 HDMI, 1 Mini DisplayPort 1 Thunderbolt™ 3 expansion 1 multi-format SD media card reader 1 SD card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC) So the big plus for HP is that it's a touch screen which opens up possibilities for using it as a tablet which is a very convenient. The minus is that it is Skylake instead of Kabylake and slower memory, last gen integrated graphics, and no thunderbolt 3. A minus for the Dell is, like the new Macbook Pros, that you'll need a dongle to connect to external displays. (But at least you get an SD card reader and regular USB ports which Apple in its infinite wisdom has deemed superfluous to basic requirements now!) :) [1] http://www.dell.com/ie/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?oc=cnx93609&l=en&s=dhs http://www.dell.com/ie/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?oc=cnx93609&l... [2] http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=WCEW8Y31EAABU http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=WCEW8Y31E...

igor_filippov 10y ago

I get that different people have different needs, and someone might say there's a need for 64 Gb RAM laptop. But it's not fair to say that MacBooks are not for developers anymore. I'm really happy with 16 Gb RAM on my MBP, which allows me to run Android Studio, XCode, Rails server, Redis Server, PostgreSQL and dozens of other small things at the same time. I don't see a reason for such reactions.

igor_filippov 10y ago
It's almost like everyone was suddenly imagining to see quantum processors in those Macs.
phaed 10y ago
It depends on what you do, if you have to juggle multiple VMs or deal with massive projects 16GB will be an issue for you. If you are a creative that works with graphics/video/music, your work machine will most definitely require tons of RAM, and that limit will def become an issue.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Thanks, great writeup - I bookmarked it because my 5 1/2 year old MacBook Air is literally wearing out. I really like Mac laptops but the closest match to my needs now is a MackBook which is probably about as fast as my 5 1/2 year old laptop. Our local non-official Mac store tech guy was telling me that the MacBook is surprisingly fast and since he knows me and my habits (I tend to develop on large memory, multi-core VPSs) he was recommending it highly to me. Still, it seems expensive for what you get.

deleted 10y ago

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cseelus 10y ago

I don't get the amount of grudge towards Apple for the new MBPs. Yeah, they could support 32GB of Ram, more battery would be nice too, and yeah I think almost no one got overwhelmed by he innovation Apple brought to the table with them, but what are the alternatives? The author mentions in another post why he is done with Apple after his 2013 13" MBP and states he has no use for the Touch Bar. Thats fine, just get the Pro without the bar and with physical function keys. The build quality of other laptops just isn't on par with Apples. Greg Koenig and many others have analyzed why Apple has a tremendous edge over other vendors when it comes to building computers and gadgets from aluminum[1]. Also if your are used to macOS, its perfect integration of hardware and software, its polish and many of the very nicely crafted ("made with ︎love") 3rd party applications, it might be very hard to switch to a decent Linux distro, let alone Windows. It may be wise to first try the switch on your current Mac, inside a Virtual Machine … [1] http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-ceramic http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-... (Featured on HN ~ 2 weeks ago)

vladimir-y 10y ago
> I don't get the amount of grudge towards Apple for the new MBPs MBP would be a fine laptop for a twice less cost. There are cheaper decent alternatives.
- NEDM64 10y ago
  Except those alternatives are usually crap and more expensive
  - vladimir-y 10y ago
    That's not true, unless you are talking about Asus/Lenovo products, see larger picture.
    - NEDM64 10y ago
      Which alternative has a 3 gigabyte per second SSD? And four USB-C 3.1 ports with TB 3.0? And a TouchBar? And really last 10 hours on battery (Microsoft advertised 12 for the SurfaceBook and it only lasted 6 on the same test the MBP lasted 10)

vladimir-y 10y ago

Article author forgot to mention Acer TravelMate P648 http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-TravelMate-P648-M-757N-Notebook-Review.167637.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-TravelMate-P648-M-757N-Not...

anotheryou 10y ago

Any recommendations for <1200€, high dpi, matte, i7, 16gb ram, 15"? I don't mind to carry a bit. Best I could find so far: https://www.cyberport.de/?DEEP=1C10-2WN&APID=6 https://www.cyberport.de/?DEEP=1C10-2WN&APID=6 (german, but I guess you can see the specs, goes under the brand name "Clevo" elsewhere. would need to upgrade ram, but there is plenty of space I think)

outworlder 10y ago

The biggest downside for me of this Touch Bar gimmick is not that I have to look at it. I can touch type, but I'd rather have this than a menu bar. You have to look up to the menu bar anyway, and reach for the mouse. Noone is complaining that menu bars are still there. This is like the Office "ribbon" in hardware form. It's fine, stop whining. The problem for me is that my laptop is usually in "clamshell" mode. If I'm at the office, I have an external monitor. If I am at home, I have an external monitor. So the touch bar would be used for Starbucks and Planes? Meh. If at least the external Apple keyboards had it... I too have been considering other alternatives. And that's mostly because I am feeling fed up with having multiple machines. I want a machine with a decent GPU, which you can't have in Apple land, no matter how much money you are willing to throw at Apple. They could have used those speedy thunderbolt connections to power external GPUs, much like Razer and Dell are doing. Even Microsoft is kind of doing it, with the GPU in the Surface Book's keyboard. If there's a company that knows how to do this video card switching thing, it's Apple. I can never tell when the MBP is changing GPUs. The Surface Book not having Thunderbolt was a surprise to me. I guess that's out then.

msbarnett 10y ago
> The problem for me is that my laptop is usually in "clamshell" mode. If I'm at the office, I have an external monitor. If I am at home, I have an external monitor. So the touch bar would be used for Starbucks and Planes? I'm sincerely curious (this isn't some veiled criticism or w/e): what do you like about having it in clamshell mode with an external monitor? I use my MBP with an external at work every day, but I always keep it open for the extra screen.
- outworlder 10y ago
  Usually, desk space. At this very moment, I have 3 monitors in front of me (2 30", 1 27"). Space is at a premium, I don't gain much with the laptop screen. In clamshell, I can tuck it below the monitors. Sometimes I will have the laptop open. But then the screen is not properly positioned vs the other(s) monitor. And then I put it in a stand. Which means I no longer have easy access to the keyboard. This is why, in fact, I bought my first magic trackpad. I caught myself reaching for the laptop's trackpad to use gestures or scroll. Get me an external keyboard with a touch bar and I'm on board! I don't think that's going to happen though, because right now it is what makes the MBPs stand out.

AceJohnny2 10y ago

On the XPS 13: Cons: Expensive. Unnecessary SD card slot I find this amusing and interesting. I've seen lots of complaining about the MBP dropping SD card support ("photographers HATE it!"). It looks like everyone rejects it for not-entirely overlapping reasons. Reminds me of political candidates, where everyone has differing reasons to not vote for them.

bel_marinaio 10y ago

The biggest issue, and it is not even mentioned, is the OS. The Apple computer experience is a lot more than just the hardware.

michaelmior 10y ago

One of the things I have a hard time giving up when looking at alternative laptops is the TrackPoint on my ThinkPad. I've grown to love it and I'm not a fan of most trackpads (although I think Apple got it right with the MacBook). That leaves the ThinkPad P50 as perhaps the only serious contender for me.

vladimir-y 10y ago

Btw 13" MacBook Pro vs. HP Spectre x360 Late 2016 Comparison Smackdown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMrMoT5cb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMrMoT5cb0