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As someone with a ThinkPad from 2018, I consider general-purpose compute a problem that was solved by Intel 8th gen i5 (and higher). Bumped the RAM and SSD afte

As someone with a ThinkPad from 2018, I consider general-purpose compute a problem that was solved by Intel 8th gen i5 (and higher). Bumped the RAM and SSD after I got it. Got my battery replaced a few months ago, and I'll happily replace it again if needed. There's virtually no good reason for me personally to replace this laptop. It would be like buying a new phone because 'scroll performance is sluggish' after 6 years of constant use. Yeah, I can live with that.

dragontamer 4y ago
Oh trust me, I know where you're coming from. I'm one of "those guys" who was really hyped up about netbooks in the 2010s. But its performance-per-watt that people want today, which leads to smaller batteries and longer laptop-time per charge. You can't just buy low-power chips from 5 years ago and hope to keep up with today's technology, the process advantage from smaller transistors is just too powerful to keep up with. As today's laptops reach 24+ hours per charge, its less about "compute power" and more about "battery life" for most people. The fact is, today's laptops get you both. -------- This is actually why I'm intrigued by Intel's P+E cores. The E-cores are from the Atom-line, meaning Intel has effectively made all 12th gen / 13th gen laptops Intel Atoms to some extent. So you have the "netbook" portion of your laptop offering incredible battery life, with the P-cores if you need to run Blender, video games, or some other high-compute problem. If you're just gonna surf the web and watch videos, the E-cores are more than sufficient and will last over 24 hours (ex: LG Gram)
- sirius87 4y ago
  > The fact is, today's laptops get you both. And tomorrow's laptops will be even better at that compute-battery ratio! Cycling an Intel 8th gen i5 for a 12th/13th gen i5 is meaningless if 8th gen satisfies your needs. EDIT: I suppose I should mention I use Linux, so I've already accepted performance over battery-life since power management on Linux sucks no matter what shiny new chip comes along.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    In my experience, these laptops have some kind of Windows license embedded into their motherboard, so you can freely reinstall Windows from scratch. So there's no cost-advantage to using Linux, and Windows furthermore just has better sleep behavior + GPU integration than Linux. If I need Linux, I either spin up a VM somewhere for me to VPN / SSH into, or use VMs inside of the laptop, or even use Ubuntu on Windows (which is "good enough" for many commmand-line tasks in my experience. Ex: Shift-right click to open the advanced commands for a directory, select "Open in Ubuntu Terminal" and go from there).

dragontamer 4y ago

Oh trust me, I know where you're coming from. I'm one of "those guys" who was really hyped up about netbooks in the 2010s. But its performance-per-watt that people want today, which leads to smaller batteries and longer laptop-time per charge. You can't just buy low-power chips from 5 years ago and hope to keep up with today's technology, the process advantage from smaller transistors is just too powerful to keep up with. As today's laptops reach 24+ hours per charge, its less about "compute power" and more about "battery life" for most people. The fact is, today's laptops get you both. -------- This is actually why I'm intrigued by Intel's P+E cores. The E-cores are from the Atom-line, meaning Intel has effectively made all 12th gen / 13th gen laptops Intel Atoms to some extent. So you have the "netbook" portion of your laptop offering incredible battery life, with the P-cores if you need to run Blender, video games, or some other high-compute problem. If you're just gonna surf the web and watch videos, the E-cores are more than sufficient and will last over 24 hours (ex: LG Gram)

sirius87 4y ago
> The fact is, today's laptops get you both. And tomorrow's laptops will be even better at that compute-battery ratio! Cycling an Intel 8th gen i5 for a 12th/13th gen i5 is meaningless if 8th gen satisfies your needs. EDIT: I suppose I should mention I use Linux, so I've already accepted performance over battery-life since power management on Linux sucks no matter what shiny new chip comes along.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  In my experience, these laptops have some kind of Windows license embedded into their motherboard, so you can freely reinstall Windows from scratch. So there's no cost-advantage to using Linux, and Windows furthermore just has better sleep behavior + GPU integration than Linux. If I need Linux, I either spin up a VM somewhere for me to VPN / SSH into, or use VMs inside of the laptop, or even use Ubuntu on Windows (which is "good enough" for many commmand-line tasks in my experience. Ex: Shift-right click to open the advanced commands for a directory, select "Open in Ubuntu Terminal" and go from there).