8 ms·

This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Than busi

This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Than business laptops like the Z-book, ThinkPad or insert Dell business laptop eg; Latitude 7000 series (Dell XPS isn't a business laptop from my perspective.)

ta988 5y ago
I agree, the Z-book are really amazing, but HP still has a bad reputation so it is hard to make people realize how far they went with this serie (from the old modela to the recent ones).
jlkuester7 5y ago
I agree that the Dell XPS line does not reaaly fit the "business" look-and-feel like a Latitude or Thinkpad. But after several years of doing heavy sofware dev on one, it is has earned my respect. It is nice to have a machine with a non-brick-like form that still does not compromise in performance (and you can bring to a businesses meeting and not look too RBG....). IMHO the XPS line is designed to compete with MBPs as high-end work-capable machines and it does a darn good job of it...
- verst 5y ago
  Except my $3500 XPS 9500 (64GB RAM 2TB, 8 core CPU, Nvidia 1650Ti, 4K Touch Display) that thermal throttles so much that a 3 years older MBP gives much much better performance and I continued using that machine for work. Fortunately by switching teams at work I was then able to get a new Mac and I'm thrilled with my M1! I spoke with a very nice person from Dell via Twitter who out of personal interest went above and beyond to help me calibrate that XPS, but no luck. Booting Windows is enough for fans to reach max speeds and thermal throttling to begin.
  - jlkuester7 5y ago
    Yeah, I will concede that one to you. I have heard that the thermal paste on some of those XPS models was complete trash. Know some folks that had some luck re-applying new paste, but that does not really absolve Dell....
  - robocat 5y ago
    My friend had a Toshiba Satellite that was running the fans at 100% all the time. The fins on the radiator we’re blocked with dust. Easy to fix - unscrew the bottom plate and unscrew the fan and make the airflow path clean again. Low risk fix as they were about to throw it out it was so annoying. Sometimes it is unobvious how to remove the bottom plate - usually there will be a video on YouTube for the model. Yeah, the Dell is not that problem, but just saying for others that other brand/model laptops with the same symptom might be easy to fix.
  - airbreather 5y ago
    Mine, this goes away if I restore windows factory image or boot to linux. The windows refresh joy typically lasts about two weeks and then the jet engine starts again, laggy, some long waits - something in some windows apps/drivers it really does not seem to like and I havent tracked it down yet.
- drewzero1 5y ago
  I had an XPS M1330 about 10 years ago, and if I could figure out the apparent thermal issue I might still use it sometimes. At the time I found it incredibly portable (compared to my iBook and ThinkPad) without being slow, and the design was striking yet professional. Dell still isn't my favorite brand, but they've come a long way from the crappy Dimensions I had in the early 2000s.
  - alrs 5y ago
    Dell ca. 2000 had some great stuff. Optiplex desktops were good, Latitude laptops were good. Anything that they sold out of an insert in the Sunday paper was junk.
    - drewzero1 5y ago
      See, there's my problem. I had a handful of Dells in the mid-2000s that all came out of the cheap end of the catalog, and I skimped on some of the specs to fit them in the budget. I did definitely get my $20 worth out of the optional floppy drive, though.
kofejnik 5y ago
> it's difficult to repair. we don't care really, they are still great. Besides, they don't break much (typing this on mbp 2015 while waiting for m1 16" to happen)
znpy 5y ago
> Latitude 7000 series (Dell XPS isn't a business laptop from my perspective.) I'm writing from a Dell Latitude 7390. If this had the trackpoint, ThinkPads would be dead to me. It's 99% perfect. So much so that I'm thinking of gettin an exact replica as a personal laptop.
ValentineC 5y ago
> This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads, and I think that my UX matters more than repairability. Then again, I'm still using a 2013 MacBook Pro with an upgraded NVMe SSD.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Idk, not being able to get it fixed without data loss in the case of even a minor hw failure seems like pretty bad UX to me...
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    …and all the time you’re not having your MacBook in for repair, its trackpad is still night & day better than its competitors. This was true in 2009 and somehow remains true in 2021 (though it would be a very pleasant surprise to be proven wrong)
    - franga2000 5y ago
      I've heard the latest Surface lineup and the XPS 13 have trackpads that seriously rival Apple's. Up until a few years ago, however, it was true that nothing came close to Apple. Although personally, the lack of a touchscreen on any of Apple's laptops is much more of a dealbreaker for me and despite working remotely, I really don't use a trackpad for work all that often. I imagine RSI would be unavoidable if you used it constantly, wouldn't it?
      - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
        I’ll have to test those out the next time I’m in a store with an electronics department. I don’t have any desire to re-learn Windows as my main OS, but having some hand-on demo would still be more than the approximately zero Windows usage I’ve had in the past 5 years. I never considered the RSI angle about the attraction of touch screens. I still have exactly zero desire to do serious work on a touchscreen where I’d have my fingerprints overlapping the display. Plus, I imagine touchscreens would be less ergonomic than a trackpad in a normal laptop form factor.
yojo 5y ago
Macs are not generally repairable, but some models are incredibly reliable. I’ve been using a 2012 MBPr that still works great/is pristine, other than losing some rubber feet. Having a user friendly OS with *nix-ish tooling in a high build quality package is (debatably) only available from Apple. I will happily upgrade to an M1 MBP once the next gen is released.
- kiba 5y ago
  2012 model MBP is the most repairable macbook I owned.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Emphasis on some though. My previous Macbook (2013 or 2014?) had a screen delamination issue. My current one (2016) had an issue with the speakers that required the whole top to be replaced - known issue, recall program, etc but still, and currently has another known issue with the ribbon cable to the screen being broken so the colors go all weird. It's impractical and too expensive to fix, but it's the kinda thing that shouldn't need to be fixed. And of course there's the issue some models have with the cruddy keyboard, etc. I mean I want to believe Macs are skookum devices but they're really not the best.
  - yojo 5y ago
    Yeah, there was a bad spell in the mid/late 2010s with the butterfly keyboard failures and the "stage light" display issues. I skipped these on my 2012 personal mac, and somehow work issued devices never ran into them. Assuming Apple has figured out recent design issues, I'll be interested to see the longevity of the current generation. It seems like the thermals on the M1 are fantastic, which should minimize non-mechanical failures. Time will tell I guess.
drstewart 5y ago
> kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Why would I care? If it breaks, I tell my company to pay the repair bill or buy me a new one.
- hutrdvnj 5y ago
  Because it's annoying and will interrupt your work much longer, especially if it's something that could have been easily fixed in e.g. a Thinkpad. Even more so, if it's your own device.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    I have to disagree. One of the reasons I've used Macbooks for work for ages now is if something goes wrong, I can just pop over to the apple store and have a replacement within about 30 minutes. Don't even have to restore, can just target boot my backup and be back working immediately, and can save the restore until the evening. I've had one instance where this saved me 5 figures easily (wasn't even the macbook's fault, I fell on my bike going over rail road tracks). Yeah, you pay a premium in terms of price for that, but it's a no brainer imo. That said, I have a lot of Dell hardware I like too. I still use two 2407wfp wide gamut monitors on my gaming PC and don't see any reason to change them until there's a 4k monitor I really want. They're bulletproof, and I even bought them used off Dell's outlet site.
    - MonaroVXR 5y ago
      That's you, but a lot of people don't live next to the Apple store and with business laptops, people come to you, to replace the device , repair or anything else.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
        Yup. I have coworkers in central America where getting a new apple is both a huge PITA and far more expensive than in the US. One of my other friends had a Dell service business for a couple years, so I'm definitely familiar with how it all works. He uses macbooks these days too. Working with smaller / early stage startups I've never had an IT dept that I could pass it off onto.
renewiltord 5y ago
Repairability is a red herring. As a professional, I care about “time in service” and “maintenance cost”. A completely unrepairable tool that is in service a lot longer for way less maintenance? I take that any day of the week. And here’s the thing, I don’t really care that you can repair your Dell. I wouldn’t be able to do so without putting in a lot of time and it would be a little stressful. Reducing that time requires a significant investment.
- hutrdvnj 5y ago
  I find it less stressful when I know that I could easily swap out a broken RAM module and continue to work, than to wait for the repair of my device.
  - K7PJP 5y ago
    How does RAM break? How often does it fail?
    - hutrdvnj 5y ago
      RAM is just an example. In my Thinkpad (T430) I'm able to swap out the CPU, mainboard, keyboard or screen if necessary, like in an ordinary PC. The question is, how likely is it that some component will break. From my experience it's not very unlikely over a lifespan of a few years. I mean sure you can have luck with all your computers and you never have any hardware failures, but I wouldn't count on that.
    - drewzero1 5y ago
      The failure mode I've seen most often is that one bit of each byte will fail to store or retrieve correctly. Memtest86 will store an FF and read back an EF, for example. Computers with this problem may boot, but crash often. The other failure mode I've seen is that a RAM module will fail to be recognized or cause a POST error, and the computer will not boot until it is replaced. Neither happens often, but I've seen each of these more than I'd like. I could imagine both issues might possibly be less likely with a solid soldered connection vs. a port which can become damaged or dusty, but I don't have enough experience with soldered RAM modules to be able to say anything about its reliability.
aflag 5y ago
Interesting. I've been buying thinkpads throughout most of my career. However, my latest laptop is a XPS 13. I really enjoy it, I use it to develop and it works very well both in docked mode as well as on the go. It's lightweight and super powerful yet quiet. Meanwhile, my business laptop, the one the company provides me, has been macbooks for the most part, recently I've got a dell latitude. The latitude is one of the worst laptops I've had, bulky, heavy, noise. Yet, in terms of performance, I can't say I really see any differences in my day to day usage. On top of it all, the bluetooth is constantly causing issues, which I've never had with any of my previous laptops. What do you like about the dell latitude line?
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  There are differences between Laptop lines from the same manufacturer. (0) I especially mentioned Latitude 7000 series. Anything else may be worse. (0) Same goes for ThinkPads, not every ThinkPad is equal, even if it's the same one.
  - aflag 5y ago
    My work laptop is a dell 7420, my personal one is a dell xps 13. I can't come up with one thing that's better in the latitude laptop. Maybe it has a usb port? But that's irrelevant while docking and on the go, everything is either bluetooth or usb-c these days.
    - MonaroVXR 5y ago
      > I can't come up with one thing that's better in the latitude laptop. Which is totally fair, everything is fair. I'm not a negative person. (I think.)
      - aflag 5y ago
        That's nice. I just wanted to know what makes it a better machine. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Those easily repairable laptops are also significantly thicker than my 11" Macbook Air.

ta988 5y ago

I agree, the Z-book are really amazing, but HP still has a bad reputation so it is hard to make people realize how far they went with this serie (from the old modela to the recent ones).

jlkuester7 5y ago

I agree that the Dell XPS line does not reaaly fit the "business" look-and-feel like a Latitude or Thinkpad. But after several years of doing heavy sofware dev on one, it is has earned my respect. It is nice to have a machine with a non-brick-like form that still does not compromise in performance (and you can bring to a businesses meeting and not look too RBG....). IMHO the XPS line is designed to compete with MBPs as high-end work-capable machines and it does a darn good job of it...

verst 5y ago
Except my $3500 XPS 9500 (64GB RAM 2TB, 8 core CPU, Nvidia 1650Ti, 4K Touch Display) that thermal throttles so much that a 3 years older MBP gives much much better performance and I continued using that machine for work. Fortunately by switching teams at work I was then able to get a new Mac and I'm thrilled with my M1! I spoke with a very nice person from Dell via Twitter who out of personal interest went above and beyond to help me calibrate that XPS, but no luck. Booting Windows is enough for fans to reach max speeds and thermal throttling to begin.
- jlkuester7 5y ago
  Yeah, I will concede that one to you. I have heard that the thermal paste on some of those XPS models was complete trash. Know some folks that had some luck re-applying new paste, but that does not really absolve Dell....
- robocat 5y ago
  My friend had a Toshiba Satellite that was running the fans at 100% all the time. The fins on the radiator we’re blocked with dust. Easy to fix - unscrew the bottom plate and unscrew the fan and make the airflow path clean again. Low risk fix as they were about to throw it out it was so annoying. Sometimes it is unobvious how to remove the bottom plate - usually there will be a video on YouTube for the model. Yeah, the Dell is not that problem, but just saying for others that other brand/model laptops with the same symptom might be easy to fix.
- airbreather 5y ago
  Mine, this goes away if I restore windows factory image or boot to linux. The windows refresh joy typically lasts about two weeks and then the jet engine starts again, laggy, some long waits - something in some windows apps/drivers it really does not seem to like and I havent tracked it down yet.
drewzero1 5y ago
I had an XPS M1330 about 10 years ago, and if I could figure out the apparent thermal issue I might still use it sometimes. At the time I found it incredibly portable (compared to my iBook and ThinkPad) without being slow, and the design was striking yet professional. Dell still isn't my favorite brand, but they've come a long way from the crappy Dimensions I had in the early 2000s.
- alrs 5y ago
  Dell ca. 2000 had some great stuff. Optiplex desktops were good, Latitude laptops were good. Anything that they sold out of an insert in the Sunday paper was junk.
  - drewzero1 5y ago
    See, there's my problem. I had a handful of Dells in the mid-2000s that all came out of the cheap end of the catalog, and I skimped on some of the specs to fit them in the budget. I did definitely get my $20 worth out of the optional floppy drive, though.

kofejnik 5y ago

> it's difficult to repair. we don't care really, they are still great. Besides, they don't break much (typing this on mbp 2015 while waiting for m1 16" to happen)

znpy 5y ago

> Latitude 7000 series (Dell XPS isn't a business laptop from my perspective.) I'm writing from a Dell Latitude 7390. If this had the trackpoint, ThinkPads would be dead to me. It's 99% perfect. So much so that I'm thinking of gettin an exact replica as a personal laptop.

ValentineC 5y ago

> This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads, and I think that my UX matters more than repairability. Then again, I'm still using a 2013 MacBook Pro with an upgraded NVMe SSD.

franga2000 5y ago
Idk, not being able to get it fixed without data loss in the case of even a minor hw failure seems like pretty bad UX to me...
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  …and all the time you’re not having your MacBook in for repair, its trackpad is still night & day better than its competitors. This was true in 2009 and somehow remains true in 2021 (though it would be a very pleasant surprise to be proven wrong)
  - franga2000 5y ago
    I've heard the latest Surface lineup and the XPS 13 have trackpads that seriously rival Apple's. Up until a few years ago, however, it was true that nothing came close to Apple. Although personally, the lack of a touchscreen on any of Apple's laptops is much more of a dealbreaker for me and despite working remotely, I really don't use a trackpad for work all that often. I imagine RSI would be unavoidable if you used it constantly, wouldn't it?
    - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      I’ll have to test those out the next time I’m in a store with an electronics department. I don’t have any desire to re-learn Windows as my main OS, but having some hand-on demo would still be more than the approximately zero Windows usage I’ve had in the past 5 years. I never considered the RSI angle about the attraction of touch screens. I still have exactly zero desire to do serious work on a touchscreen where I’d have my fingerprints overlapping the display. Plus, I imagine touchscreens would be less ergonomic than a trackpad in a normal laptop form factor.

yojo 5y ago

Macs are not generally repairable, but some models are incredibly reliable. I’ve been using a 2012 MBPr that still works great/is pristine, other than losing some rubber feet. Having a user friendly OS with *nix-ish tooling in a high build quality package is (debatably) only available from Apple. I will happily upgrade to an M1 MBP once the next gen is released.

kiba 5y ago
2012 model MBP is the most repairable macbook I owned.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Emphasis on some though. My previous Macbook (2013 or 2014?) had a screen delamination issue. My current one (2016) had an issue with the speakers that required the whole top to be replaced - known issue, recall program, etc but still, and currently has another known issue with the ribbon cable to the screen being broken so the colors go all weird. It's impractical and too expensive to fix, but it's the kinda thing that shouldn't need to be fixed. And of course there's the issue some models have with the cruddy keyboard, etc. I mean I want to believe Macs are skookum devices but they're really not the best.
- yojo 5y ago
  Yeah, there was a bad spell in the mid/late 2010s with the butterfly keyboard failures and the "stage light" display issues. I skipped these on my 2012 personal mac, and somehow work issued devices never ran into them. Assuming Apple has figured out recent design issues, I'll be interested to see the longevity of the current generation. It seems like the thermals on the M1 are fantastic, which should minimize non-mechanical failures. Time will tell I guess.

drstewart 5y ago

> kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Why would I care? If it breaks, I tell my company to pay the repair bill or buy me a new one.

hutrdvnj 5y ago
Because it's annoying and will interrupt your work much longer, especially if it's something that could have been easily fixed in e.g. a Thinkpad. Even more so, if it's your own device.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  I have to disagree. One of the reasons I've used Macbooks for work for ages now is if something goes wrong, I can just pop over to the apple store and have a replacement within about 30 minutes. Don't even have to restore, can just target boot my backup and be back working immediately, and can save the restore until the evening. I've had one instance where this saved me 5 figures easily (wasn't even the macbook's fault, I fell on my bike going over rail road tracks). Yeah, you pay a premium in terms of price for that, but it's a no brainer imo. That said, I have a lot of Dell hardware I like too. I still use two 2407wfp wide gamut monitors on my gaming PC and don't see any reason to change them until there's a 4k monitor I really want. They're bulletproof, and I even bought them used off Dell's outlet site.
  - MonaroVXR 5y ago
    That's you, but a lot of people don't live next to the Apple store and with business laptops, people come to you, to replace the device , repair or anything else.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
      Yup. I have coworkers in central America where getting a new apple is both a huge PITA and far more expensive than in the US. One of my other friends had a Dell service business for a couple years, so I'm definitely familiar with how it all works. He uses macbooks these days too. Working with smaller / early stage startups I've never had an IT dept that I could pass it off onto.

renewiltord 5y ago

Repairability is a red herring. As a professional, I care about “time in service” and “maintenance cost”. A completely unrepairable tool that is in service a lot longer for way less maintenance? I take that any day of the week. And here’s the thing, I don’t really care that you can repair your Dell. I wouldn’t be able to do so without putting in a lot of time and it would be a little stressful. Reducing that time requires a significant investment.

hutrdvnj 5y ago
I find it less stressful when I know that I could easily swap out a broken RAM module and continue to work, than to wait for the repair of my device.
- K7PJP 5y ago
  How does RAM break? How often does it fail?
  - hutrdvnj 5y ago
    RAM is just an example. In my Thinkpad (T430) I'm able to swap out the CPU, mainboard, keyboard or screen if necessary, like in an ordinary PC. The question is, how likely is it that some component will break. From my experience it's not very unlikely over a lifespan of a few years. I mean sure you can have luck with all your computers and you never have any hardware failures, but I wouldn't count on that.
  - drewzero1 5y ago
    The failure mode I've seen most often is that one bit of each byte will fail to store or retrieve correctly. Memtest86 will store an FF and read back an EF, for example. Computers with this problem may boot, but crash often. The other failure mode I've seen is that a RAM module will fail to be recognized or cause a POST error, and the computer will not boot until it is replaced. Neither happens often, but I've seen each of these more than I'd like. I could imagine both issues might possibly be less likely with a solid soldered connection vs. a port which can become damaged or dusty, but I don't have enough experience with soldered RAM modules to be able to say anything about its reliability.

aflag 5y ago

Interesting. I've been buying thinkpads throughout most of my career. However, my latest laptop is a XPS 13. I really enjoy it, I use it to develop and it works very well both in docked mode as well as on the go. It's lightweight and super powerful yet quiet. Meanwhile, my business laptop, the one the company provides me, has been macbooks for the most part, recently I've got a dell latitude. The latitude is one of the worst laptops I've had, bulky, heavy, noise. Yet, in terms of performance, I can't say I really see any differences in my day to day usage. On top of it all, the bluetooth is constantly causing issues, which I've never had with any of my previous laptops. What do you like about the dell latitude line?

MonaroVXR 5y ago
There are differences between Laptop lines from the same manufacturer. (0) I especially mentioned Latitude 7000 series. Anything else may be worse. (0) Same goes for ThinkPads, not every ThinkPad is equal, even if it's the same one.
- aflag 5y ago
  My work laptop is a dell 7420, my personal one is a dell xps 13. I can't come up with one thing that's better in the latitude laptop. Maybe it has a usb port? But that's irrelevant while docking and on the go, everything is either bluetooth or usb-c these days.
  - MonaroVXR 5y ago
    > I can't come up with one thing that's better in the latitude laptop. Which is totally fair, everything is fair. I'm not a negative person. (I think.)
    - aflag 5y ago
      That's nice. I just wanted to know what makes it a better machine. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Those easily repairable laptops are also significantly thicker than my 11" Macbook Air.