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I recently went through the new laptop experience. When it came down to it, I couldn't justify spending the money on an MBP that would meet my needs. My decisi

by hluska 8y ago

I recently went through the new laptop experience. When it came down to it, I couldn't justify spending the money on an MBP that would meet my needs. My decision came down to a few things: 1.) I hate the touch bar and you can pry the function keys out of my cold, dead hands. (I like saying that.) 2.) To get an MBP that will provide enough power for me, I'd need to upgrade to a touch bar only model. 3.) MBPs are seriously expensive. 4.) There are other, really good machines that can run real operating systems and provide all the power for a fraction of the cost. 5.) To get an MBP with similar performance to those other machines, I would have to pay approximately $1,000 more. If I invested that money in an RESP (a registered educational savings plan, it's a Canadian thing), I'm pretty sure my girl could afford an extra semester in University.

Razengan 8y ago
> To get an MBP with similar performance to those other machines, I would have to pay approximately $1,000 more. Examples? MBPs have been reported to have the fastest SSDs on the market since 2016 [0], and I doubt you can get laptops with the same resolution and wide color gamut for much cheaper. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/
- hluska 8y ago
  MBPs do have great SSDs, but I don't particularly care about (or optimize for) resolution or colour. If you remove those from the mix, there are many examples. The Dell XPS series, higher end Zenbooks, and Lenovo Ideapads all beat the MBP.
  - Razengan 8y ago
    So it’s disingenuous to claim “similar performance” by arbitrarily removing metrics from the mix.
    - tortasaur 8y ago
      On the contrary, it's disingenuous to act like resolution or color are metrics of "performance" when the colloquial usage of the word generally refers to processing speed and memory capacity. I/O speed would qualify, but is only one metric; it is correct to say it is outperformed by other machines at lower price points when accounting for the CPU and RAM.
      - Razengan 8y ago
        That's cherry-picking specs and definitions. The ""colloquial usage of the word"" very much includes I/O performance; disk speed has historically been the worst bottleneck, aside from network access. Resolution also affects performance: it's how much information you can view at a time. Most cheaper laptops do not present the same value as a MacBook Pro unless you ignore some of the advantages of the MBP you’re comparing against.
        ElFitz 8y ago
        They do. For him. And thinking this way about what you buy is smart :-)
        Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
        > Resolution also affects performance: it's how much information you can view at a time. Not for me. My 40-something-year-old eyes mean that the amount of text I can view on a monitor is restricted by the text size, not by the resolution of the monitor. Retina displays make not a jot of difference to me. YMMV, of course.
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  That comparison is against consumer laptops with SATA SSDs. The MBP's sequential read/write is average for NVMe SSDs, and a mobile workstation like a ThinkPad can be configured with multiple NVM SSDs in a RAID configuration, giving even higher throughput.

by hluska 8y ago

Razengan 8y ago

> To get an MBP with similar performance to those other machines, I would have to pay approximately $1,000 more. Examples? MBPs have been reported to have the fastest SSDs on the market since 2016 [0], and I doubt you can get laptops with the same resolution and wide color gamut for much cheaper. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/

hluska 8y ago
MBPs do have great SSDs, but I don't particularly care about (or optimize for) resolution or colour. If you remove those from the mix, there are many examples. The Dell XPS series, higher end Zenbooks, and Lenovo Ideapads all beat the MBP.
- Razengan 8y ago
  So it’s disingenuous to claim “similar performance” by arbitrarily removing metrics from the mix.
  - tortasaur 8y ago
    On the contrary, it's disingenuous to act like resolution or color are metrics of "performance" when the colloquial usage of the word generally refers to processing speed and memory capacity. I/O speed would qualify, but is only one metric; it is correct to say it is outperformed by other machines at lower price points when accounting for the CPU and RAM.
    - Razengan 8y ago
      That's cherry-picking specs and definitions. The ""colloquial usage of the word"" very much includes I/O performance; disk speed has historically been the worst bottleneck, aside from network access. Resolution also affects performance: it's how much information you can view at a time. Most cheaper laptops do not present the same value as a MacBook Pro unless you ignore some of the advantages of the MBP you’re comparing against.
      - ElFitz 8y ago
        They do. For him. And thinking this way about what you buy is smart :-)
      - Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
        > Resolution also affects performance: it's how much information you can view at a time. Not for me. My 40-something-year-old eyes mean that the amount of text I can view on a monitor is restricted by the text size, not by the resolution of the monitor. Retina displays make not a jot of difference to me. YMMV, of course.
lern_too_spel 8y ago
That comparison is against consumer laptops with SATA SSDs. The MBP's sequential read/write is average for NVMe SSDs, and a mobile workstation like a ThinkPad can be configured with multiple NVM SSDs in a RAID configuration, giving even higher throughput.