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My experience has been that there is only two reasonable ways to buy a laptop for personal use: 1. Buy an Apple device new. 2. Buy a Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell L
by tristor 4y ago
My experience has been that there is only two reasonable ways to buy a laptop for personal use:
1. Buy an Apple device new.
2. Buy a Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude refurb/used via their outlet stores from their business line-ups
With #2, you know exactly what you're getting, but you're getting it cheap, and the parts are possible to find (e.g. eBay) to fix it yourself.
With #1, you know exactly what you're getting, and you're paying for a premium experience that you'll actually receive and isn't a sham or bait n switch (like it is with "premium" PC products).
I have a stack of laptops on my desk because I physically separate the different types of work that I do (for many various reasons). 2 are Thinkpads, 2 are Apple, and one is a Dell Latitude. All of have been solid for years. My newest laptop in the stack is an M1 Macbook Pro 14" with the M1 Max, and it's FANTASTIC, it's easily the best laptop I've owned since I retired my /IBM/ Thinkpad T60p.
There is no reason anyone should ever subject themselves to the torture that is buying a laptop "intended" for "consumers". There is no reason anyone should ever pay full price for any non-Apple laptop, because they all make annoying trade-offs that are only acceptable when you buy them cut-rate.
- FpUser 4y ago>"There is no reason anyone should ever pay full price for any non-Apple laptop, because they all make annoying trade-offs that are only acceptable when you buy them cut-rate." I buy gaming laptops from ASUS. All are solid, last forever and even though I bought those new were very reasonably priced. Other than not being paper thin I see no trade offs but I will not pay extra for thin laptop anyways. I use those as portable desktops so the size does not matter. What does matter is that they have proper cooling and can work at 100% performance for hours non-stop without thermal throttling.
- softfalcon 4y agoI agree. In my experience, trying to balance "thin" and "gaming power" together in the same device is a recipe for disaster.
- adverbly 4y agoAre you me? I have 3 refurb linux laptops strewn around the house, and my last 3 workplaces have always provided a macbook of some sort. One difference: For gaming/GPU heavy stuff, I still have the good old windows, full-tower desktop kicking around. Repairing/upgrading desktops is honestly easier than ever, so I've been happy to keep one in service for the odd game or two.
- tristor 4y agoI did the same for desktops too. I finally retired the last desktop I built that was 12 years old. It could still do most games, but it was loud, power hungry, and annoying. I've replaced it with a Steam Deck and a Steam Dock, and at some point I might build a proper replacement gaming / workstation, but not any time soon. For personal use, most of what I want to do is possible on a laptop now. I really don't feel as much need for a desktop as I once did. I still use a "dock" and a mechanical keyboard when I'm not on the go, though. With the exception of the Steam Deck, I don't use Linux, though. The reason I have the Thinkpads is they work perfectly in FreeBSD & OpenBSD "out of the box". The Dell is running Windows for doing automotive tuning.