6 ms·

You do know you're not the typical laptop buyer, right? The majority of people buy a laptop, take it home, and want it to just work. Do you buy a new refrigera

You do know you're not the typical laptop buyer, right? The majority of people buy a laptop, take it home, and want it to just work. Do you buy a new refrigerator expecting to have to clean out the compressor the minute you take it home? I certainly hope not.

dlss 15y ago
If I could make a 100x profit on my time doing it, you bet. To put more forcefully: if I needed to maintain one of those room sized refrigerators, and could save $10,000 for a couple hours of messing with a compressor the decision is a no brainer. I agree that mortals can't/won't do this -- doesn't mean the HN crowd is being intelligent when they say what the guy I replied to was saying :p EDIT: Downvoters, please explain -- For people with high computing requirements who insist on the x220 / Macbook air form factor, this is an accurate picture of the ROI. Look at the performance differences between the macbook air ssd (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...) and the vertex 3 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review...). If your job commonly has you IO bound you will see at least 100 hours of your life saved over the 2,000 hours of a year of 40 hour work weeks (a 5% savings -- not all your time will be spent IO bound). And that's not including the difference between a 2.7 Ghz and a 1.7 Ghz processor...
- cma 15y ago
  Someone with high computing requirements shouldn't be using an ultra light notebook; get a desktop or get an amazon ec2 instance for a few pennies.
  - dlss 15y ago
    That's just it: with a vertex 3 and a maxed out CPU the x220 doesn't perform like a thin and light -- I'm getting the same IO performance as a vertex 3 in a desktop, and although I could get a CPU boost with a desktop processor I'd have to give up on having all my work with me at all times / at conferences. The EC2 option has always interested me, but short of EBS RAID its IO actually isn't better than a vertex 3 -- they're crazy fast; if you haven't tried them I highly recommend you do :)
- pbreit 15y ago
  Because you are missing the point. The discussion is on basic marketing which implies to the general populace, not HNers who are comfortable re-installing their OS. And you preface with "How odd..." either unknowingly or just plain condescendingly describing 95% of the computer buying public. Then you fib that Macs are not ready for use out-of-the-box. Then you put forth the classic defense of exaggerating the value of your work. ps I did not downvote.
  - dlss 15y ago
    Thanks for the reply. It cleared up my misunderstanding -- I think HN readers don't do a good job thinking when it comes to Apple stories. (for those curious here is the breakdown of why pbreit is wrong: 1. The guy I was replying to is by definition an HNer, and was talking about buying an air over a sony SB due to reinstall concerns. My "how odd" was in reply / directly to him. 2. Macs aren't ready to use out of the box. No computer is. You need to, at the very least, install all the apps you use and copy over your data. This takes considerable time. Did it come with Chrome? Did it come with Office? Did it come with (your editor of choice)? Did it come with Little Snitch? 1password? The caps-lock key switched to a control key? Inconsolata installed? No. And that's not a complete list by a long shot. Adding an hour long reinstall to this list isn't a big deal. 3. The x220 and Macbook air do have the same form factor from a functional perspective. They both are quite easy to keep with you at all times, hence both inhabiting the thin and light category used by most review sites. Yes the air is thinner, but it gives up being able to accept good hard drives to do so... making the x220 the smallest you can go and still get good performance. 4. I wasn't exaggerating the value of my work. I don't even think my numbers were above average for engineer pay...)
    - achompas 15y ago
      With #2 you're being disingenuous. All computers need some work, but PCs require much more work to uninstall crapware. As for #3, only one of the laptops you listed fits comfortably in my girlfriend's purse. As for the Air's hard drive? She has zero complaints, and I doubt her (or many others) would notice tiny differences in sequential read times (which is, I think, a measure of app-opening performance).
- Steko 15y ago
  Yeah I downvoted you. You claimed it was odd that people would buy based on X when it's clearly you that are the oddball running extremely performance critical tests that demand specific hardware. It's pretty clear what your purchase decision should be and it's also pretty clear that this doesn't apply to over 99% of everyone else in the market for an ultraportable laptop. This comment continues in that line again and paints your absurd outlier case of 4-10x improvement as "an accurate picture of the return on investment" while again committing the error of thinking these 2 machines have the same form factor.

dlss 15y ago

If I could make a 100x profit on my time doing it, you bet. To put more forcefully: if I needed to maintain one of those room sized refrigerators, and could save $10,000 for a couple hours of messing with a compressor the decision is a no brainer. I agree that mortals can't/won't do this -- doesn't mean the HN crowd is being intelligent when they say what the guy I replied to was saying :p EDIT: Downvoters, please explain -- For people with high computing requirements who insist on the x220 / Macbook air form factor, this is an accurate picture of the ROI. Look at the performance differences between the macbook air ssd (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...) and the vertex 3 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review...). If your job commonly has you IO bound you will see at least 100 hours of your life saved over the 2,000 hours of a year of 40 hour work weeks (a 5% savings -- not all your time will be spent IO bound). And that's not including the difference between a 2.7 Ghz and a 1.7 Ghz processor...

cma 15y ago
Someone with high computing requirements shouldn't be using an ultra light notebook; get a desktop or get an amazon ec2 instance for a few pennies.
- dlss 15y ago
  That's just it: with a vertex 3 and a maxed out CPU the x220 doesn't perform like a thin and light -- I'm getting the same IO performance as a vertex 3 in a desktop, and although I could get a CPU boost with a desktop processor I'd have to give up on having all my work with me at all times / at conferences. The EC2 option has always interested me, but short of EBS RAID its IO actually isn't better than a vertex 3 -- they're crazy fast; if you haven't tried them I highly recommend you do :)
pbreit 15y ago
Because you are missing the point. The discussion is on basic marketing which implies to the general populace, not HNers who are comfortable re-installing their OS. And you preface with "How odd..." either unknowingly or just plain condescendingly describing 95% of the computer buying public. Then you fib that Macs are not ready for use out-of-the-box. Then you put forth the classic defense of exaggerating the value of your work. ps I did not downvote.
- dlss 15y ago
  Thanks for the reply. It cleared up my misunderstanding -- I think HN readers don't do a good job thinking when it comes to Apple stories. (for those curious here is the breakdown of why pbreit is wrong: 1. The guy I was replying to is by definition an HNer, and was talking about buying an air over a sony SB due to reinstall concerns. My "how odd" was in reply / directly to him. 2. Macs aren't ready to use out of the box. No computer is. You need to, at the very least, install all the apps you use and copy over your data. This takes considerable time. Did it come with Chrome? Did it come with Office? Did it come with (your editor of choice)? Did it come with Little Snitch? 1password? The caps-lock key switched to a control key? Inconsolata installed? No. And that's not a complete list by a long shot. Adding an hour long reinstall to this list isn't a big deal. 3. The x220 and Macbook air do have the same form factor from a functional perspective. They both are quite easy to keep with you at all times, hence both inhabiting the thin and light category used by most review sites. Yes the air is thinner, but it gives up being able to accept good hard drives to do so... making the x220 the smallest you can go and still get good performance. 4. I wasn't exaggerating the value of my work. I don't even think my numbers were above average for engineer pay...)
  - achompas 15y ago
    With #2 you're being disingenuous. All computers need some work, but PCs require much more work to uninstall crapware. As for #3, only one of the laptops you listed fits comfortably in my girlfriend's purse. As for the Air's hard drive? She has zero complaints, and I doubt her (or many others) would notice tiny differences in sequential read times (which is, I think, a measure of app-opening performance).
Steko 15y ago
Yeah I downvoted you. You claimed it was odd that people would buy based on X when it's clearly you that are the oddball running extremely performance critical tests that demand specific hardware. It's pretty clear what your purchase decision should be and it's also pretty clear that this doesn't apply to over 99% of everyone else in the market for an ultraportable laptop. This comment continues in that line again and paints your absurd outlier case of 4-10x improvement as "an accurate picture of the return on investment" while again committing the error of thinking these 2 machines have the same form factor.