7 ms·

> And that’s why most people buy $500 laptops. Most people is a sketchy expression, but I would venture a guess that "most people" buy cheap laptops because th

• JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  I needed a new laptop last year. I decided to care less about my computer and so I chose not to get another Mac. Got a small Lenovo instead. Runs great with Linux. Does exactly everything I need it to do.
  • jdshaffer 4y ago
    I've been pondering doing something similar myself. If you don't mind my asking, which Lenovo did you get and which Linux variant does it seem to play nice with? :-)
    • harry8 4y ago
      T480s 3.5yrs old, out of warranty, ex-corporate cost me USD$430 running ubu 22.04 on a 4 core 8th gen core i5 & intel gfx is getting me 10 hours of battery life without having replaced the battery. (power settings set to Power Saver in the very obvious gui menu above shutdown). I did shove in more ram and a bigger ssd. Meh, 8G & 250G would have been enough fwiw. Gnome desktop is a thing I now find really polished and lovely to use. In all it's just a beautiful thing I'm very, very happy with. Use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X1_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X1_series & Ebay. But it's also a very reasonable & justifiable decision to buy a new thinkpad imho. When it's a couple of years old the hardware support is usually perfect on first install - but I guess I don't use garbage like fingerprint readers so ymmv on that kind of silliness. Thinkpads, T-Series, X1 carbon are the best laptops on the market by a good margin and have been there in that spot consistently for a long time. Buy apple if you really want/need to run apple software. I'd say just about /any/ distro will place nicely with the kernel-hackers laptop of choice. I'd bet fedora, rhel/centos, debian, arch would all be just terrific if you prefer one of those (and why not?)
      • abrouwers 4y ago
        I mean, x1 carbon (new) isn't much cheaper (in fact, more expensive, at the time of my googling) than a MacBook Air. The linux ecosystem (which I love) has it's own fair share of problems - gnome vs. KDE, deb vs. rpm, X vs. Wayland, pulseaudio vs. pipewire, systemd vs. (the world). Sure, installing ubuntu and not worrying about any of it is a great option, but I think you've painted a slightly too pretty picture :-) (And, on your "kernel-hackers laptop of choice comment," it's curious that Linus released the last kernel from a MacBook device)
        • harry8 4y ago
          Huh? We've been asked for our experience and that was mine. I feel strongly that if I were using fedora or debian that experience would be strikingly similar. Gnome vs kde (and there's /plenty/ of other options) is a choice, make it. Done. No further issues. And as a happy gnome guy I'm very sure KDE is excellent and will serve well. deb vs rpm. That choice is made when you choose your distro, never to be revisited or cared about again. Likewise pulseaudio, systemd are chosen when you chose your desktop and distro respectively and you don't have to think about them on your laptop again. X vs Wayland - whatever comes with your distro you use if you're even aware of it. But yes you can complicate it all as much as suits you if you have the need or want to do so which you basically can't with apple, so... And your knowledge then translates to the pi or other SBC so that's pretty cool too. And to your servers or ones you work with for money. This is not a negative imho. Go to any kernel conference and you'll see all kinds of laptops for sure, some hilariously eccentric. Linus used a mac 15 years ago too (powerpc iirc). Yet you'll see Thinkpads are always, clearly and obviously the most commonly used by a large margin unless things have changed dramatically during pandemic times, which I kind of doubt. Anyway I bought a T480s second hand for peanuts, dumped ubu on it and have been contemplating its beauty and utility since. Apple gear is a _much_ bigger sysadmin headache for me (and it isn't close) but might be less so for you if that's what you know and understand. This is /my/ experience of it. Linux on the laptop in 2022 is flipping great. Shhhhh, don't tell.
          • LoveMortuus 4y ago
    • JustSomeNobody 4y ago
      Ideapad 5 pro with an AMD proc. it's the 14" variant. I am not near it right now, so I can't give you specifically what model. Got it on sale at Costco. Running Pop_os. The newer Linux kernels have support of amd_pastate so battery life is good. Previous Mac was a 13" Macbook Pro if anyone is keeping score. Loved it, but just didn't want or need something that expensive.
  • nibbleshifter 4y ago
    I've been instructing (extended) family members asking about laptops to just get an ex-biz lenovo (x220, x230, etc) and let me configure Linux/do upgrades on it for the last 8-9 years. It serves all their use cases, and most of them are still working fine with no real repair need. The apple branch of the family though (my in-laws) have been having hardware failures almost consistently during that time.
    • ricardobayes 4y ago
      Most people care about design more than realiability
      • herbst 4y ago
        The X2 or T4 series from Lenevo are definitely state of the art in Design. Being so thin that no standard plugs fit anymore wouldn't be 'hot' among humans either.
        • ricardobayes 4y ago
          For me as an engineer yes. But for a normal person, they look too industrial.
          • ungamedplayer 4y ago
            I think the intent was to look business. If you want to see industrial check out the Panasonic toughbook and toughpad range. Makes the apple gear look and behave like flowers.
    • z9znz 4y ago
      I'm too old and not of the right disposition to provide much tech support for people anymore. I did that for years, and I learned that it truly sucks to have to fk around frequently with stupid stuff (usually Windows stuff). But even Linux, using it as my own development environment, I would periodically have stupid stuff just mysteriously break and than require a lot of fiddling to get fixed. As for Apple reliability, I set my grandfather up with an iMac 11 years ago. It was still functional when I replaced it with a Chrome desktop machine last year. (Of course it was no longer supported for OS upgrades, so that was the final reason to replace it). Likewise, my girlfriend daily drives my 2014 MBP which I used and abused around the world for years. I did an Apple service center battery replacement, and otherwise it performs as new. 8 years with a laptop is pretty great, especially considering it still does everything it's supposed to. Oh, the wifi at my grandfather's house is still the original Airport I setup 11 years ago. It still does its job, without fail. I think I had to provide tech support (unplug, wait, replug) once. For low-tech family, I now recommend Chrome devices. They are about the easiest things to support, and they are fairly low priced.
• comprev 4y ago
  For many people outside of HN demographic $500 is a lot of money for "a computer" A macbook would be like buying a top spec Mercedes when all they need is a no frills base model Ford.
  • ok123456 4y ago
    Except the Mercedes is actually repairable.
    • surfpel 4y ago
      For most people, you'll have to take it to the mechanic and it'll cost you an arm and a leg... wait that sounds familiar...
      • ok123456 4y ago
        You can take it to an independent repair shop. There's a supply chain of repair parts. Mercedes doesn't try to use trademark laws and DRM to stop you from using a third-party water pump.
        • mrexroad 4y ago
          They’ll just void your warranty for tenuously related issues, oh, kinda like…
          • ok123456 4y ago
            If you have a warranty, take to it Mercedes for the warranty work. If you don't have a warranty it doesn't matter.
            • ok123456 4y ago
              Additionally, you can't capriciously tell people that an unrelated repair done by a third party voided their warranty. That's a violation of the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act.
• jasonfarnon 4y ago
  they don't know how to adequately judge which ones are worth more yeah we buy 500$ (150$ in my case) laptops over apple products precisely because we can judge which ones are worth more
  • throwntoday 4y ago
    Guessing power isn't your concern then. The macbooks offer power at a slight premium over the rest.
    • bonestamp2 4y ago
      Apple service is usually very good as well -- I've had several products replaced by overnight fedex with no additional cost. Also time machine backup/restore is a godsend for mission critical workstations when you do need a replacement. But ya, most people aren't doing work where time is worth the slight premium.
• Bayart 4y ago
  I've never spent more than 400 or 500$ on a laptop. Plenty of good enough stuff on the second hand market if you go after business laptops. But it's never my main machine (I can't understand doing anything productive with 14").
  • derekbaker783 4y ago
    I've had good luck with refurb machines also (but never tried an Apple laptop refurb).
  • z9znz 4y ago
    The screen size is the only real limitation for me when using my M1 Air. The keyboard is pretty decent, the trackpad is just right, and the form factor is wonderful. There is a noticeable loss in human productivity by not having a separate large monitor (and sometimes also a nice external keyboard+mouse). However, I find that the small screen constraint can be beneficial sometimes as it forces me to approach my work a bit differently. I would say it's a bit like how changing my scenery or routine temporarily can recharge me.
    • Bayart 4y ago
      > I would say it's a bit like how changing my scenery or routine temporarily can recharge me. Work-wise, the only thing I like about laptops is the ability to quite literally change my scenery (going in a café or in nature for an afternoon). But it's always with the intent of doing the few things I can do on that sort of device : reading or writing some doc and doing some surface level diagnostics through SSH (my job is a mix of Kubernetes administration and miscellaneous production tasks). It's nice to have, but it also can't be the tool of my trade. Putting any significant money into a machine that'll end up 70% of the time as a self-standing Netflix screen in bed isn't worth it. I know a few people who can work exclusively on their laptop, but they also use no UI scaling and have much better eyesight :)
• Const-me 4y ago
  I agree with GP, and I think here on HN the opposite of your comment is true. People buy expensive laptops because they don't know how to adequately judge which ones ain’t worth more. Not just on HN, I’m observing same behavior among friends and co-workers. People buy ultra-thin laptops because marketing sells them as high-end. It’s often impossible to upgrade them to good specs like 32-64 GB RAM and fast 2TB+ SSD. And even CPU performance ain’t great because thermal throttling, hard to dissipate heat from an ultra-thin computer. Similarly, people who never play videogames buy laptops with discrete GPUs like nVidia 3070, paying money, weight, and even battery life for something they don’t need.