4 ms·

Who exactly sells Windows machines with good hardware?

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
You can get ok hardware for a reasonable price. My LG 'gram' seems fine. $800, very lightweight. Came with Windows home. Upgraded to pro for $6. If you want 'good' some of the Alienware laptops will be more beefy. Or the $5000 desktop PC I got off Newegg had top of the line specs and came with Windows.. Not sure what you're talking about really. You can get crap, medium or best with Windows.
- manicennui 3y ago
  I have an Alienware Ryzen 9 machine. I'm not at all impressed. I only have it for games. The Intel 4790k machine that I built around 2015 with Windows 10 is more responsive. I'm not convinced that any hardware runs Windows 11 well.
  - pokerface_86 3y ago
    my 12600k+3080 has no issues with windows 11
- figassis 3y ago
  Are you suggesting I buy $5k windows desktops when I can get $1000 macs that I know will be easier to use long term. Also, I used to buy top of the line Sony VAIOs, that was my go to brand. They were robust, many were had sturdy aluminum bodies (not unibody but close), and the base models were often very performant (specs, cooling, etc). Usually they all started at roughly $800, I used to buy the $1000 ones, so moving to macs did not start suddenly costing more, same average price, better quality of life.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
    I'm not claiming it's the best bang per buck, just saying you can get good hardware with Windows preinstalled. Or just reformat to Linux if you think Windows is sluggish.
jay_kyburz 3y ago
If you want a fair comparison with Apple laptops, you should compare them to Windows Surface laptops.
- figassis 3y ago
  I moved off of windows long before surfaces, not going back. Funny story, a few months ago we needed to setup an office windows 11 laptop (as part of a software project). It used to be you could just boot the machine, cleanup bloatware, install some antivirus (after figuring out which one has not currently become adware), install basic applications, a copy of office, configure an email client or outlook (which is a nightmare to setup itself, with its weird mail folders that you can create but then can't delete without obscure windows voodoo because they become default windows mail folders or something...what the actual f!). Anyway, so I give this machine to a junior dev to setup, and some time later he comes to me saying he can't even get to the desktop screen because an online windows account is needed. I think, surely this can't be true because a month earlier we had done the same thing on the same windows version, on the same laptop model. So I tried and guess what, I could not. I googled, and there were all these tricks you could try to make the "create offline account" option appear, but it never did, so I had to create a throwaway windows account, with a real email alias, go through all the "confirm your email" steps, in order to access a computer that was just purchased. I even tried removing all network access and restarting, no luck. See related rant by me here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34983448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34983448 If I could not set it up with an offline account, imagine a non techie, buys a laptop, goes somewhere with no network, tries to get work done and finds out it's impossible because of some dark pattern war that Microsoft is waging on it's customers. So no, problem is not just hardware, or how well this one machine runs windows X, Y, or Z. It is the fact that a person can't just walk into a store, buy a windows PC that is being sold (at whatever price point) and trust that it will enable them to do work, consistently, on the short, medium and long term with little to no additional IT effort.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Windows needs a Microsoft account, and that sucks. I completely agree with you on that. The ridiculous workarounds you need to go through to set up Windows can only be described as what you get when you fire your testers for a telemetry collection algorithm. On the other hand, I've never seen someone complain about Android/iOS/macOS requiring an online account, so I can see why Microsoft is so blind to criticism in this regard. That said, the bloatware on professional laptops is absolutely minimal. They do this nasty trick where they add Candy Crush to your start menu, but it's not even installed until you click on it. If you buy Windows Pro (the one you probably want anyway) you won't see this crap. As for the antivirus and Outlook: don't treat modern Windows like Windows XP. Windows Defender and a fully usable Outlook suite have been part of Windows for well over a decade now. You can install Outlook if you really want to, but it's really not necessary. I'll even go as far as say that Outlook Express and its evolutions were also working just fine all the way back in the XP days. All the machines I've seen ship with Windows 11 have come with Office preinstalled (with a trial, because Microsoft is a wallet leech) so I'm surprised you even needed to install a copy. I consider it bloatware myself because of the subscription model attached to it.
jeroenhd 3y ago
My HP laptop came with little more than a driver update utility and an icon with HP support in the task bar. That was all the way back when stuff came out with Windows 8.1. My Lenovo laptop also came with nothing but the necessities to keep my laptop up to date. They added some "click to install" shortcuts for games and crap to the start menu, but they don't come with computers anymore. The trick to buying a clean machine is to buy hardware intended for professionals rather than consumers. I don't think I've ever seen a machine running Windows 11 Pro that came with a McAfee trial since Windows 10 came out.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  I can confirm my recent Win11 Home came with a McAfee trial. Wasn't hard to uninstall and upgrade to Pro though.

You can get ok hardware for a reasonable price. My LG 'gram' seems fine. $800, very lightweight. Came with Windows home. Upgraded to pro for $6. If you want 'good' some of the Alienware laptops will be more beefy. Or the $5000 desktop PC I got off Newegg had top of the line specs and came with Windows.. Not sure what you're talking about really. You can get crap, medium or best with Windows.

manicennui 3y ago
I have an Alienware Ryzen 9 machine. I'm not at all impressed. I only have it for games. The Intel 4790k machine that I built around 2015 with Windows 10 is more responsive. I'm not convinced that any hardware runs Windows 11 well.
- pokerface_86 3y ago
  my 12600k+3080 has no issues with windows 11
figassis 3y ago
Are you suggesting I buy $5k windows desktops when I can get $1000 macs that I know will be easier to use long term. Also, I used to buy top of the line Sony VAIOs, that was my go to brand. They were robust, many were had sturdy aluminum bodies (not unibody but close), and the base models were often very performant (specs, cooling, etc). Usually they all started at roughly $800, I used to buy the $1000 ones, so moving to macs did not start suddenly costing more, same average price, better quality of life.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  I'm not claiming it's the best bang per buck, just saying you can get good hardware with Windows preinstalled. Or just reformat to Linux if you think Windows is sluggish.

jay_kyburz 3y ago

If you want a fair comparison with Apple laptops, you should compare them to Windows Surface laptops.

figassis 3y ago
I moved off of windows long before surfaces, not going back. Funny story, a few months ago we needed to setup an office windows 11 laptop (as part of a software project). It used to be you could just boot the machine, cleanup bloatware, install some antivirus (after figuring out which one has not currently become adware), install basic applications, a copy of office, configure an email client or outlook (which is a nightmare to setup itself, with its weird mail folders that you can create but then can't delete without obscure windows voodoo because they become default windows mail folders or something...what the actual f!). Anyway, so I give this machine to a junior dev to setup, and some time later he comes to me saying he can't even get to the desktop screen because an online windows account is needed. I think, surely this can't be true because a month earlier we had done the same thing on the same windows version, on the same laptop model. So I tried and guess what, I could not. I googled, and there were all these tricks you could try to make the "create offline account" option appear, but it never did, so I had to create a throwaway windows account, with a real email alias, go through all the "confirm your email" steps, in order to access a computer that was just purchased. I even tried removing all network access and restarting, no luck. See related rant by me here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34983448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34983448 If I could not set it up with an offline account, imagine a non techie, buys a laptop, goes somewhere with no network, tries to get work done and finds out it's impossible because of some dark pattern war that Microsoft is waging on it's customers. So no, problem is not just hardware, or how well this one machine runs windows X, Y, or Z. It is the fact that a person can't just walk into a store, buy a windows PC that is being sold (at whatever price point) and trust that it will enable them to do work, consistently, on the short, medium and long term with little to no additional IT effort.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Windows needs a Microsoft account, and that sucks. I completely agree with you on that. The ridiculous workarounds you need to go through to set up Windows can only be described as what you get when you fire your testers for a telemetry collection algorithm. On the other hand, I've never seen someone complain about Android/iOS/macOS requiring an online account, so I can see why Microsoft is so blind to criticism in this regard. That said, the bloatware on professional laptops is absolutely minimal. They do this nasty trick where they add Candy Crush to your start menu, but it's not even installed until you click on it. If you buy Windows Pro (the one you probably want anyway) you won't see this crap. As for the antivirus and Outlook: don't treat modern Windows like Windows XP. Windows Defender and a fully usable Outlook suite have been part of Windows for well over a decade now. You can install Outlook if you really want to, but it's really not necessary. I'll even go as far as say that Outlook Express and its evolutions were also working just fine all the way back in the XP days. All the machines I've seen ship with Windows 11 have come with Office preinstalled (with a trial, because Microsoft is a wallet leech) so I'm surprised you even needed to install a copy. I consider it bloatware myself because of the subscription model attached to it.

jeroenhd 3y ago

My HP laptop came with little more than a driver update utility and an icon with HP support in the task bar. That was all the way back when stuff came out with Windows 8.1. My Lenovo laptop also came with nothing but the necessities to keep my laptop up to date. They added some "click to install" shortcuts for games and crap to the start menu, but they don't come with computers anymore. The trick to buying a clean machine is to buy hardware intended for professionals rather than consumers. I don't think I've ever seen a machine running Windows 11 Pro that came with a McAfee trial since Windows 10 came out.

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
I can confirm my recent Win11 Home came with a McAfee trial. Wasn't hard to uninstall and upgrade to Pro though.