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Get a Thinkpad. I replaced a 2015 MacBook Pro with a Thinkpad P1 Gen2 and love it. The trackpad isn’t as nice. The keyboard is better. Running WSL2 you have a g

Get a Thinkpad. I replaced a 2015 MacBook Pro with a Thinkpad P1 Gen2 and love it. The trackpad isn’t as nice. The keyboard is better. Running WSL2 you have a great Unixy development environment in Windows. Or just install Linux. As thin and light as a MacBook Pro. Much better thermals, though still not awesome. Other, somewhat larger Thinkpads have better thermals. You can upgrade your RAM, add 2 SSDs and other peripherals like a 4G card etc if you like. Thinkpads come with fantastic service. Next business day on-site repair including for accidental damage and they mean it. Looks: It’s the design Apple copied for their very first laptops and is IMO better looking. They got it right the first time and haven’t changed it materially. Built like a tank. Not quite a tough book but they will take some abuse.

xxz223 6y ago
If I got a Thinkpad I'd switch to Linux. I absolutely can't stand the Windows UI.
- skuthus 6y ago
  My thinkpad works very well with linux, I recommend Zorin or Arch
  - andrei_says_ 6y ago
    How do you run photoshop?
    - Sunspark 6y ago
      People working in Linux will use GIMP, but you can also use Photoshop in a virtual machine, or possibly even natively using WINE. Here is a link for someone who did just that: https://www.archviet.com/how-to-run-photoshop-on-linux-with-wine/ https://www.archviet.com/how-to-run-photoshop-on-linux-with-...
      - boogies 6y ago
        Or Krita, some people have a strong preference for it.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      Photoshop works pretty well in Wine, and Windows runs quickly using KVM. Linux also has native support for hardware pass-through if your machine has an IOMMU, so you can give virtual machines direct access to graphics cards and get GPU acceleration in your VM, along with USB devices, etc. VirtIO is built into the kernel and can provide you with paravirtualized network and storage access, which can speed things up considerably.
  - Sunspark 6y ago
    Arch is only a recommendation for people with a fair bit of experience. I have some experience, and I still needed to check some webpages to find out what I was missing when I tried installing Arch as the official manual doesn't spell out every step that is needed. For "easy" for people who don't have time or experience, I would instead recommend Pop!_OS https://pop.system76.com/ https://pop.system76.com/ flash a liveusb stick and you can try it out on your hardware without needing to install it first.
    - johnday 6y ago
      If the only concern is the install process, I would recommend Manjaro. It has its own installer, but you still get the powerful pacman package manager and the Arch repositories which are the most cutting-edge around.
      - Shared404 6y ago
        I've had Manjaro bork itself a couple of times. I'd recommend against it.
    - bashinator 6y ago
      Arch is neat, and their documentation and forums are amazingly great. However, I have zero desire to be my laptop's sysadmin. Pop! OS runs great on my Thinkpad.
      - nextos 6y ago
        If you have a simple setup and friendly hardware (e.g. all Intel), the sysadmin burden is super low. In this regard, only NixOS compares. Even macOS is much much worse, as you need to go through upgrades. I have used the same Arch install for 8 years.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      I've been using Ubuntu for over a decade because my days of fiddling with my computer to get things to work are over. In general, Ubuntu just works without much configuration on the user's end. I've noticed a trend where people who are new to Linux will jump on Arch because they believe it'll give them more power, or that they'll learn more by using it. Or people will install Kali because they think it is what hackers use, and completely miss the fact that Kali isn't meant to be installed at all. It's all Linux under the hood, and you get the same amount of power no matter which distro you use. And when you use a distro with sane defaults like Ubuntu, you're able to dig into the internals whenever it suits you, and not because an update broke your computer.
- zelly 6y ago
  Linux UI is far worse than Windows. It's not even close. I use Linux but definitely not for its UI. Windows can out-of-the-box do HiDPI, multiple monitors, multiple desktops, trackpad gestures, hardware accelerated UI rendering, facial recognition logins, and more. It was designed as a desktop OS. On Linux some things are getting better if you stick to the Wayland+GNOME stack, but it's still so bad I can't recommend it to people on technical grounds. Use it if you believe in free software, not because you think it's "better" (it's not).
  - prox 6y ago
    I am seriously wondering why Linux UI development is lagging so much considering it’s at the forefront of many developments, and probably with the worlds best devs using Linux. I can only come up with that it’s console centered approach doesn’t attract a lot of UX designers of caliber to take it to a new level.
    - devdas 6y ago
      Most of the money being thrown at Linux is to make it better on a server. The laptop/desktop market is dominated by Microsoft, with Apple a distant second.
sgerenser 6y ago
I have that exact laptop (work provided) and I’m not a fan. Trackpad is OK but not nearly as good as my Mac. 4K display sometimes looks amazing but the color accuracy is terrible and there’s a weird speckle texture that I assume comes from the touch overlay. I have a thunderbolt dock that supplies 85w of power but the machine refuses to charge from it and requires connecting the huge external power supply. But the worst part is I’ve gone through several incidents where some update occurred (never could narrow it down to one in particular) and I started getting multiple blue screens a day. Edit: forgot one more annoyance. The laptop seems to frequently power off completely overnight even though it should just be sleeping/hibernating.
- syshum 6y ago
  I am still suprised by the number of people that want trackpad's If lenovo would come out with a laptop with no trackpad I would be the first to order it, I normally disable the track pad completely.. Traditional mouse or even a trackball are far far better
  - sgerenser 6y ago
    On my Macs I have always used both mouse and trackpad. When I use a PC like the thinkpad I usually ignore the trackpad.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I am still suprised by the number of people that want trackpad's I occasionally have need to use a laptop in conditions where a mouse is inconvenient, so i prefer to have a trackpad, but I find that even the best trackpad is far inferior to a mouse. (Trackball, at least the kind that gets integrated into a laptop, isn't an improvement, IMO over a trackpad.)
- quantgenius 6y ago
  Never had a blue screen. Haven’t had the power off problem though there is a distinction between regular sleep and deep sleep. When coming out of deep sleep it boots up like normal and restores RAM from disk. Don’t have a touch screen but have the highest end, non-touch 4K screen Lenovo offered. They also offered a very good HD screen and a not so good 4K screen. Display is not as good as on a Mac but this is more a Windows problem than a hardware problem. If color calibration is an issue, you could have had them calibrate it for you for 25 bucks when you ordered it. I believe Lenovo support can send someone to calibrate later on too for a somewhat higher fee.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gentleman11 6y ago
Lenovo was caught 3 times installing spyware on their machines. I don’t know why people forgive that
- stuff4ben 6y ago
  Because any self-respecting developer will reformat and reinstall Windows or ideally Linux and problem solved, no spyware.
  - bastardoperator 6y ago
    Not when they’re doing it at bios level, formatting is useless.
    - KronisLV 6y ago
      Yep, here's a nice summary of that situation that someone made on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SuggestALaptop/comments/3gxoh9/psa_lenovo_rootkits_and_superfish/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SuggestALaptop/comments/3gxoh9/psa_...
    - vetinari 6y ago
      That BIOS level requires the operating system to execute certain ACPI table as a Windows executable.

xxz223 6y ago

If I got a Thinkpad I'd switch to Linux. I absolutely can't stand the Windows UI.

skuthus 6y ago
My thinkpad works very well with linux, I recommend Zorin or Arch
- andrei_says_ 6y ago
  How do you run photoshop?
  - Sunspark 6y ago
    People working in Linux will use GIMP, but you can also use Photoshop in a virtual machine, or possibly even natively using WINE. Here is a link for someone who did just that: https://www.archviet.com/how-to-run-photoshop-on-linux-with-wine/ https://www.archviet.com/how-to-run-photoshop-on-linux-with-...
    - boogies 6y ago
      Or Krita, some people have a strong preference for it.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Photoshop works pretty well in Wine, and Windows runs quickly using KVM. Linux also has native support for hardware pass-through if your machine has an IOMMU, so you can give virtual machines direct access to graphics cards and get GPU acceleration in your VM, along with USB devices, etc. VirtIO is built into the kernel and can provide you with paravirtualized network and storage access, which can speed things up considerably.
- Sunspark 6y ago
  Arch is only a recommendation for people with a fair bit of experience. I have some experience, and I still needed to check some webpages to find out what I was missing when I tried installing Arch as the official manual doesn't spell out every step that is needed. For "easy" for people who don't have time or experience, I would instead recommend Pop!_OS https://pop.system76.com/ https://pop.system76.com/ flash a liveusb stick and you can try it out on your hardware without needing to install it first.
  - johnday 6y ago
    If the only concern is the install process, I would recommend Manjaro. It has its own installer, but you still get the powerful pacman package manager and the Arch repositories which are the most cutting-edge around.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      I've had Manjaro bork itself a couple of times. I'd recommend against it.
  - bashinator 6y ago
    Arch is neat, and their documentation and forums are amazingly great. However, I have zero desire to be my laptop's sysadmin. Pop! OS runs great on my Thinkpad.
    - nextos 6y ago
      If you have a simple setup and friendly hardware (e.g. all Intel), the sysadmin burden is super low. In this regard, only NixOS compares. Even macOS is much much worse, as you need to go through upgrades. I have used the same Arch install for 8 years.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    I've been using Ubuntu for over a decade because my days of fiddling with my computer to get things to work are over. In general, Ubuntu just works without much configuration on the user's end. I've noticed a trend where people who are new to Linux will jump on Arch because they believe it'll give them more power, or that they'll learn more by using it. Or people will install Kali because they think it is what hackers use, and completely miss the fact that Kali isn't meant to be installed at all. It's all Linux under the hood, and you get the same amount of power no matter which distro you use. And when you use a distro with sane defaults like Ubuntu, you're able to dig into the internals whenever it suits you, and not because an update broke your computer.
zelly 6y ago
Linux UI is far worse than Windows. It's not even close. I use Linux but definitely not for its UI. Windows can out-of-the-box do HiDPI, multiple monitors, multiple desktops, trackpad gestures, hardware accelerated UI rendering, facial recognition logins, and more. It was designed as a desktop OS. On Linux some things are getting better if you stick to the Wayland+GNOME stack, but it's still so bad I can't recommend it to people on technical grounds. Use it if you believe in free software, not because you think it's "better" (it's not).
- prox 6y ago
  I am seriously wondering why Linux UI development is lagging so much considering it’s at the forefront of many developments, and probably with the worlds best devs using Linux. I can only come up with that it’s console centered approach doesn’t attract a lot of UX designers of caliber to take it to a new level.
  - devdas 6y ago
    Most of the money being thrown at Linux is to make it better on a server. The laptop/desktop market is dominated by Microsoft, with Apple a distant second.

sgerenser 6y ago

I have that exact laptop (work provided) and I’m not a fan. Trackpad is OK but not nearly as good as my Mac. 4K display sometimes looks amazing but the color accuracy is terrible and there’s a weird speckle texture that I assume comes from the touch overlay. I have a thunderbolt dock that supplies 85w of power but the machine refuses to charge from it and requires connecting the huge external power supply. But the worst part is I’ve gone through several incidents where some update occurred (never could narrow it down to one in particular) and I started getting multiple blue screens a day. Edit: forgot one more annoyance. The laptop seems to frequently power off completely overnight even though it should just be sleeping/hibernating.

syshum 6y ago
I am still suprised by the number of people that want trackpad's If lenovo would come out with a laptop with no trackpad I would be the first to order it, I normally disable the track pad completely.. Traditional mouse or even a trackball are far far better
- sgerenser 6y ago
  On my Macs I have always used both mouse and trackpad. When I use a PC like the thinkpad I usually ignore the trackpad.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I am still suprised by the number of people that want trackpad's I occasionally have need to use a laptop in conditions where a mouse is inconvenient, so i prefer to have a trackpad, but I find that even the best trackpad is far inferior to a mouse. (Trackball, at least the kind that gets integrated into a laptop, isn't an improvement, IMO over a trackpad.)
quantgenius 6y ago
Never had a blue screen. Haven’t had the power off problem though there is a distinction between regular sleep and deep sleep. When coming out of deep sleep it boots up like normal and restores RAM from disk. Don’t have a touch screen but have the highest end, non-touch 4K screen Lenovo offered. They also offered a very good HD screen and a not so good 4K screen. Display is not as good as on a Mac but this is more a Windows problem than a hardware problem. If color calibration is an issue, you could have had them calibrate it for you for 25 bucks when you ordered it. I believe Lenovo support can send someone to calibrate later on too for a somewhat higher fee.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gentleman11 6y ago

Lenovo was caught 3 times installing spyware on their machines. I don’t know why people forgive that

stuff4ben 6y ago
Because any self-respecting developer will reformat and reinstall Windows or ideally Linux and problem solved, no spyware.
- bastardoperator 6y ago
  Not when they’re doing it at bios level, formatting is useless.
  - KronisLV 6y ago
    Yep, here's a nice summary of that situation that someone made on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SuggestALaptop/comments/3gxoh9/psa_lenovo_rootkits_and_superfish/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SuggestALaptop/comments/3gxoh9/psa_...
  - vetinari 6y ago
    That BIOS level requires the operating system to execute certain ACPI table as a Windows executable.