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“Laptops don’t change” Really? because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18. And with faster processors, thunderbolt 4 and USB C char

“Laptops don’t change” Really? because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18. And with faster processors, thunderbolt 4 and USB C charging, wifi 6, better screens and lighter. I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. They pay for themselves And these framework laptops are pretty awful. They run hot and are poorly designed. The modular usb addons are a joke and exchangeable GPUs? heavy, power hungry, not for laptops. 3 hour battery life. The main product feature AFAICS is virtue signaling. These products are not open hardware either. Then, there’s this modularity argument. Like this is the last laptop you’ll ever own and forever will be replacing it piece by piece. Disassembling over and over. But that’s not realistic. You’ll have to upgrade to faster processors and the form factor of the mb will change regardless of what they say, and you’re counting on the company being around in a few years which is a poor bet. They can’t compete with Apple or even Lenovo

smoldesu 3y ago
> 3 hour battery life. Maybe if "laptops don't change", sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuw-YpbFkkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuw-YpbFkkM
- redroyal 3y ago
  Using the modular GPU
gremlinunderway 3y ago
If you read the rest of the site, you would see that the argument against not buying a new laptop every year is to find ways to lower the insane amount of electronics waste we're generating any single year. It's not just about lack of features, it's also just ridiculously wasteful even for an industry already known for it. At least my PC, I'm just swapping out parts for upgrades. I'm not dumping my entire PC tower in the garbage every few years. We're so goddamn lucky that PCs haven't become these disposable machines like every other piece of tech out there. Video game consoles, phones and laptops are just the worst for this and while it's cheaper in the short term, the costs are there we just don't see them.
- happymellon 3y ago
  And this is another reason I avoid Nvidia whenever possible. At least with laptops, I have perfectly serviceable Intel and AMD systems, but I have old laptops with Nvidia that are no longer supported and basically can't be used anymore for productive purposes.
Atotalnoob 3y ago
So if framework can let you reuse the "shell" for 2-3 upgrade cycles until they have to change the motherboard, that's a lot better than having to buy an entire new laptop. It's not about keeping the same form factor forever, that's unrealistic. It's about reducing the amount of stuff you have to buy for each upgrade. Opening and closing stuff is realistic, if it's easy. I've opened and upgraded various components of my steam deck half a dozen times in the last 6 months. It's reduce, reuse, recycle. I don't own a framework.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >It's not about keeping the same form factor forever, that's unrealistic. It's not that unrealistic, if we constraint forever to like 10-15 years. In a lot of laptops I'd rather they keep most of the ports (and just e.g. update USB2 to USB3, and add a few new ones) but keep the form factor the shape. Often new keyboards (Apple is notorious, but holds for others) are worse than in the previous form factor. And when they go and "make it thinner", beyond some point, I'd often rather they added more battery, or added a space for an extra use installable SSD, or put bigger speaker cones, or just leave the space inside for better thermal dissipation...
- CraigJPerry 3y ago
  >> So if framework can let you reuse the "shell" for 2-3 upgrade cycles I badly want the framework laptop idea to succeed - the idea of re-using your old laptop battery as a battery bank when you upgrade, that's just brilliant. The idea of taking your old motherboard and sticking it in a slim case that bolts to the vesa mount on the back of your monitor, beautiful. However, it's far more expensive that just buying a MacBook. I bought the base model M1 Air for £999 at launch. I just sold it, what's this, 3 years later, with 90% battery life remaining for £600 plus shipping, after eBay & paypal's cut I'm £537. That's £462 for 3 years of having faster single core / interactive responsiveness than anything else at comparable price on the market. How much more would I have had to pay over a similar time frame for a slower heavier framework with much much less battery life. I considered the framework for this laptop cycle but instead I just traded up to a second hand 16" M1 Pro/16Gb/1Tb with 16 cycles count on the battery - i.e. brand new. Sure it's 25% slower than the equiv £2800 M2 Pro version but this cost me just £1500 delivered in pristine condition. I'm feeling very confident I'm going to come out ahead again in total cost of ownership.
edflsafoiewq 3y ago
That is not what he means by "Laptops don't change". He means > A 2015 research paper discovered that the embodied energy of laptops is static over time. > Improvements in functionality balance the efficiency gains obtained in the manufacturing process. Battery mass, memory, and hard disk drive mass decreased per unit of functionality but showed roughly constant totals per year. > New laptops may be more energy-efficient per computational power, but these gains are offset by more computational power. Jevon’s paradox is nowhere as evident as it is in computing.
- photonerd 3y ago
  So… you can do more, faster, for longer, then? Sounds like a good argument for upgrading
  - dijit 3y ago
    Until software causes performance improvements not to be worthwhile. Though nobody can argue that battery lives haven't improved.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > more, faster Not in the world de live in: https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html
    - photonerd 3y ago
      Maybe not your world, but mine? Definitely true.
  - croes 3y ago
    The article author is a journalist, I bet his speed depends on his speed of typing and not the speed of his laptop. He could to more, faster and longer but if he doesn't the extra costs are useless.
    - 3y ago
yieldcrv 3y ago
Every year is a lot But I think the article is more about impulse control taken to an extreme because they lacked it in the past
ImPleadThe5th 3y ago
Do you actually buy a new laptop every year? I feel that's a bit delusional. Year to year most upgrades are pretty minor. An argument can be made maybe every 3 years if you're doing some incredibly resource intense stuff.
- gghffguhvc 3y ago
  I do a lot of Android and iOS app compilation (Lots of flavors/schemes of apps). So lately the upgrades in cores has meant a faster upgrade cycle for my work dev machine than for the intel based MacBook Pro era. I’m sure Apple can’t keep up this pace of the last few years though. Back in early 2000s we used distcc for distributed compilation of QT apps and reused old workstations in a server room. But with XCode and Android studio it isn’t pragmatic.
  - pshirshov 3y ago
    Why don't you buy an EPYC/Threadripper workstation then? Even best M2 laptops still can't compete with hackintosh on dated 3970x
    - gghffguhvc 3y ago
      I also have a maxed out Mac Studio when I need the extra cores and don’t need the portability. But I haven’t looked into hackintosh options for a long time. Perhaps I’ll check it out again some time. Thanks for the tip.
    - kiratp 3y ago
      Because it’s not faster. Well at least the 3990x wasn’t. Compilation rapidly drops from parallel to single thread bound for most workloads. https://twitter.com/kiratpandya/status/1457438725680480257 https://twitter.com/kiratpandya/status/1457438725680480257
      - pshirshov 3y ago
        Depends on your workload. For me 3970x is faster in all my workflows.
2h 3y ago
> I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. this is why Apple is a trillion dollar company. because people mindlessly buy any new thing they put out, regardless if it makes sense or not. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ydje1ivynIM https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ydje1ivynIM
- andrekandre 3y ago
  > this is why Apple is a trillion dollar company. because people mindlessly buy any new thing they put out, regardless if it makes sense or not. not to defend apple or anything but whats the complaint here?... that apple is really good at capitalism?
  - 2h 3y ago
    > whats the complaint here Its dont mindlessly buy any new thing Apple puts out
    - andrekandre 3y ago
      why? whats wrong with people buying things that they like?
      - 2h 3y ago
        you seem to keep ignoring this key word: mindlessly
        andrekandre 3y ago
        yes, because you haven't provided any evidence for these "mindless" consumers so i'm not going to try and debate that point (besides calling apple customers mindless and then saying thats why they have 3 trillion dollar market cap is nearing troll territory) my point is: if i (mindlessly perhaps?) concede the point that those consumers are mindlessly spending money on useless things... then so what? its their money, let them do what they want with it. why make value judgments?
marcel_hecko 3y ago
"ThinkPad® X260 will go as long as you do with over 21 hours of continuous battery life". Thats a quote from Lenovo website from 2018. I can confirm this was in practice the case with extended battery pack.
- lwkl 3y ago
  Doing what kind of work? And with what kind of screen brightness? I like Lenovo laptops but I never got that kind of battery life on them I got maybe half or sometimes only a third of what they advertised.
  - sfuller808 3y ago
    [dead]
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
You sound like you've fallen for some marketing. They want you to think that your laptop is "old" and you must upgrade. They want you to chase specs regardless of the benefit to your workflow because specs will improve forever. I don't upgrade unless my computer can't do a thing that I need it to do.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
[flagged]
kibwen 3y ago
> a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18 At what point do battery improvements become completely unnecessary? Who's out here using their laptops for 18 hours continuously? It's like an electric car that can go 2,000 miles on a single charge; YAGNI. The vast majority of people would be perfectly well-served by a smaller, lighter, less expensive laptop that cuts down the battery to just 10 hours.
- stetrain 3y ago
  18 hours advertised is usually running a locally stored video file on loop at medium to low screen brightness and some light web browsing. My 18-hour laptop is more like 8-10 hours of real work usage, which is still fantastic compared to the 2-3 hours I would get at similar tasks 6-7 years ago. Another big change is improvements to sleep and standby time. I can use half the battery, close the lid, and be reasonably confident that the other half will be ready and waiting the next time I need it. EVs may actually be an apt comparison, where an EPA rating of 300 miles is more likely to give you 240 miles at highway speeds, or 150-200mi between charging stops since the optimal charge speeds fall off above a 70% charge.
  - mitchell209 3y ago
    I want my EV to last a month on a single charge and yet some people are arguing against battery improvements. Crazy.
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure you're not ready to pay a premium for that.
    - kibwen 3y ago
      This is a straw man. The argument is not against improving batteries. It's about engineering products for what people actually need, and not over-engineering them for the fantasies that we construct regarding what their needs are. To continue the EV example, the majority of trips by car in the US are less than 3 miles. You could comfortably reduce an EV's range from 300 miles to 30 and sell a car that still suffices for the majority of people, and what you gain from that is decreased costs and increased efficiency, which disproportionately benefits both overall power consumption and charge time (remember the tyranny of the rocket fuel equation). Most people don't need a car that charges once a month, they need a car that lasts just long enough for the time between when it's convenient to charge. The truth is that almost nobody actually needs a computer that can last more than a single eight-hour workday on a single charge. In fact, most people need even less than that; if you're working somewhere with wifi, you're working somewhere with electricity. It's rare that I need my laptop to last more than two hours, let alone eight.
chasil 3y ago
It is well-known that planar transistors are more reliable than FINFET. It is usually agreed that the end of planar transistors was the last process node of 28 nanometers. Everything below this (14, 10, 7, 5, 3, and 2 nanometers so far) is less reliable. The fastest, lowest power, and most reliable CPU in a laptop will be on a 28nm process node. Everything beyond this sacrifices reliability for speed and lower power. (And if you really care about lower power, then you are on ARM.)
- tengbretson 3y ago
  The failure rate of CPUs could go up 10x and it would still be a rounding error when quantifying what causes laptops to be decommissioned.
  - chasil 3y ago
    A quick check of Google shows that TSMC does have a 16nm finfet process that is tested and approved for use in automobiles, which is a much more punishing environment than laptops or phones. As a measure of redundancy, multiple finfet transistors can be wired together to act as one. It would not surprise me if this was heavily exploited in automobile applications. https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/16795/2-automotive-chips-begin-production-on-tsmc-s-16-nm-finfet-process https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/16795/2-automo...
deleted 3y ago
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footlose_3815 3y ago
That sounds like batteries change
benj111 3y ago
So you buy a new laptop every year? What do you do with your old one? Throw it away? Or sell it? If you're selling it who do you think is buying it? You do realise most people don't need the fastest processor, an 18 hour battery life, thunderbolt 4 or WiFi 6 And better screens and lighter weight are relative. If I upgrade my 10 year old laptop to a 5 year old laptop I'm still realising those gains. Next year a better screen will be out. Presumably we can agree that today's best screen is adequate, despite the knowledge that in the future it won't be the best screen, so if it's adequate today, why would it cease to be adequate in 1/3/5 years?
- redroyal 3y ago
  Well in 5 years I expect most dev work will be done in VR collaboratively with remote teams, w multiple virtual screens and AI assistance. Another world. Laptops and cell phones will be gathering dust with the desktops. Things change fast. Remember the world without the iPhone? That was 16 years ago. So when you talk about using a 5 year old laptop to save a few dollars it just doesn’t make sense. You can listen to music on a CD player, sounds great, doesn’t make sense. Using a heavy hot i7 MBP w 6 hours battery life from 2017 also doesn’t make sense, to save what $1200 rather than buying a 15 inch MBA. Not today - this machine is your everything. Spend some money already
  - anthk 3y ago
    VR sucks for work. And multiple virtual screens... FVWM did virtual desktops since... 1994?
  - tmtvl 3y ago
    How about we save that $1,200 and donate it to something like Rainforest Alliance instead?
    - benj111 3y ago
      Tbf the whole point of the the article is to use less stuff. If we all did that then we'd hopefully not be in the situation of having to chop down the rainforest. So logically as it's consumption that's causing that destruction, you should really be donating the $1200 when you buy the new laptop, not when you don't.
sheepscreek 3y ago
For OPs use-case which is mainly writing articles, reading and such - an older laptop will work fine. Especially when powered from A/C. My MacBook Pro 2014 base model can still hold a candle to MacBook Air M1 for general use (even dev work to an extent), and that’s saying something. It’s slower, but doesn’t feel 9-years-old slow - if you know what I mean. It doesn’t drive me nuts to use it and I can be productive on it (my daily driver is a MacBook Pro M1 with 64GB RAM and I own a MacBook Air M1, so I speak from experience). Also, we already do this for cars (used cars market is huge), so why not laptops. In fact, with cars - there are arguably stronger reasons to go with newer tech (safety, automatic cruise control) than with a newer laptop.
- doubled112 3y ago
  Always assumed it was because laptops start at $300 and cars start at $30,000. Don’t call me out on the actual numbers, I am only really paying attention to the zeros.
tyg13 3y ago
> The main product AFAICS is virtue signaling. Friendly reminder that people do care about things you don't care about. Claims of virtue signaling say more about you than them, quite frankly. And really, you should care about the massive amount of e-waste generated every year.
- quadrifoliate 3y ago
  This. I lose any hope for us as a species being able to reverse climate change if the top comment about an article that goes quite deep into meaningful ways to “reduce, reuse, recycle" is that this is virtue signaling, and that we should buy Macbooks every year instead because they are "expendable tools". Guess what, their impact on the environment is very much noticeable. There is no way we are going to reverse or even meaningfully delay climate change with this kind of collective attitude.
  - redroyal 3y ago
    That issue can’t be solved by reusing laptops or sorting cans from cardboard. The argument that every little helps is totally flawed. Fantasy, make believe. The other 8 billion people simply don’t care and why would they? 50 years from now they’ll all be dead. Since when did people care about future generations and the good of humanity? It’s a very recent western fashion. The only thing that truly motivated the vast majority of people is sex and money or objectives closely descended from that tree. To modify mass human behavior you have to incentivize based on that leverage. But - even modification of the behavior of the crowd won’t be sufficient. The only way to fix this is w new technology
    - flangola7 3y ago
      This is lazy defeatism and an immediate disqualifier I use in the selection of both friends and employees.
      - gotoeleven 3y ago
        How much climate change do you think has been allayed by sorting garbage into 3 kinds of trash cans and drinking from paper straws?
tebruno99 3y ago
I like my framework and the 2 mini pc made from upgrading the internals. The slots are pass through thunderbolt 4 just like laptops with only USB’s ports. Not sure why they offended you. Get 4 usbc inserts and pretend they aren’t changeable if that’ll calm you down. Battery life does suck though I’ll give you that. It’s good overall at the cost though
ripply 3y ago
The framework laptops definitely run hot, I gave up on mine because it would overheat several times a day throttling down to 200Mhz. It sits in a box unused now and I consider it ewaste, I don't have the time or patience to bother with it anymore. I reached out to support maybe 6+ months ago but I haven't finished following their instructions because the laptop was just so bad and I wasted so much time dealing with it that I don't care anymore.
- robocat 3y ago
  > I consider it ewaste Leave it in a box in a cupboard and it is. Give it to somebody who will use it (at the next time you are hanging with geeks) and it isn’t e-waste. Offer it for free pickup next Framework thread - somebody wants it enough to not cost you more time than a drive format.
  - zmk5 3y ago
    Yeah I would suggest you do this instead of keeping it in the cupboard. Lots of people looking to pick one up for cheap.
oliwarner 3y ago
They change, but my 2015 ThinkPad 13 still delivers on performance, battery, screen, etc. I'm a grown up now. I've got better uses for £2k right now. I'll get a new laptop when I need one.
conceptme 3y ago
Just being able to replace the battery is a huge win.
agentultra 3y ago
I had young kids. I took my laptop to conferences and events. Performances. Things happen in these circumstances. Drinks spill. Laptops fall from heights. Cords get pulled. You know what happens when a MBP encounters a liquid? It depends. But one thing almost every device will have in common in such an encounter: they cannot be repaired. You have to replace the entire mainboard. And the cost is enough that you may as well buy a new one. The rest ends up in an unlicensed dump somewhere in the global south where a kid is going to get exposed to cancer causing chemicals when they drag it out and bring it to some back alley disassembly shop. The cost for a laptop is pretty high. Building them to be bench repairable and upgradeable help extend their useful life. As the article points out the best we can do is use them for as long as possible.
- kevinh456 3y ago
  This is part of why Apple is pushing trade in when you buy a new device. They recycle it.
  - agentultra 3y ago
    They claim to. I would love to read an independent audit of their recycling process. I suspect the vast majority of devices they extract the battery, the screen if it’s viable, and the rest ends up in a dump. “Recycled,” in a sense but not really.
DyslexicAtheist 3y ago
>> “Laptops don’t change” > because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18 seconded for linux as well. a few years ago battery life was maybe 4 hours, and now it's 1.
alxmdev 3y ago
> I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. They pay for themselves Yay, another top comment that steamrolls the posted article. I say don't buy the latest Macbook: instead repair, refurbish, and get true lifetime use out of these expensive devices. They're expensive to manufacture, expensive to buy, and expensive for our planet and people to just throw them away every year. They're not expendable at all, here is just one example of the human sacrifice involved in their manufacturing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_Samsung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_Samsung
- robbintt 3y ago
  If you're trading it in then it's going to see more life, refurbished.
HWR_14 3y ago
> buy the newest MacBook, expense it Obviously if the cost (to you, because your company will pay for it) drops to zero, you should consume a new laptop every year. It costs nothing and if nothing else the battery is newer! Of course, that logic applies to almost anything (take free stuff) even if it is objectively stupid. Your company will pay for your laptop but not part of your electric bill for your home office, just buy a new MacBook every two days with a fully charged battery!

smoldesu 3y ago

> 3 hour battery life. Maybe if "laptops don't change", sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuw-YpbFkkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuw-YpbFkkM

redroyal 3y ago
Using the modular GPU

gremlinunderway 3y ago

If you read the rest of the site, you would see that the argument against not buying a new laptop every year is to find ways to lower the insane amount of electronics waste we're generating any single year. It's not just about lack of features, it's also just ridiculously wasteful even for an industry already known for it. At least my PC, I'm just swapping out parts for upgrades. I'm not dumping my entire PC tower in the garbage every few years. We're so goddamn lucky that PCs haven't become these disposable machines like every other piece of tech out there. Video game consoles, phones and laptops are just the worst for this and while it's cheaper in the short term, the costs are there we just don't see them.

happymellon 3y ago
And this is another reason I avoid Nvidia whenever possible. At least with laptops, I have perfectly serviceable Intel and AMD systems, but I have old laptops with Nvidia that are no longer supported and basically can't be used anymore for productive purposes.

Atotalnoob 3y ago

So if framework can let you reuse the "shell" for 2-3 upgrade cycles until they have to change the motherboard, that's a lot better than having to buy an entire new laptop. It's not about keeping the same form factor forever, that's unrealistic. It's about reducing the amount of stuff you have to buy for each upgrade. Opening and closing stuff is realistic, if it's easy. I've opened and upgraded various components of my steam deck half a dozen times in the last 6 months. It's reduce, reuse, recycle. I don't own a framework.

coldtea 3y ago
>It's not about keeping the same form factor forever, that's unrealistic. It's not that unrealistic, if we constraint forever to like 10-15 years. In a lot of laptops I'd rather they keep most of the ports (and just e.g. update USB2 to USB3, and add a few new ones) but keep the form factor the shape. Often new keyboards (Apple is notorious, but holds for others) are worse than in the previous form factor. And when they go and "make it thinner", beyond some point, I'd often rather they added more battery, or added a space for an extra use installable SSD, or put bigger speaker cones, or just leave the space inside for better thermal dissipation...
CraigJPerry 3y ago
>> So if framework can let you reuse the "shell" for 2-3 upgrade cycles I badly want the framework laptop idea to succeed - the idea of re-using your old laptop battery as a battery bank when you upgrade, that's just brilliant. The idea of taking your old motherboard and sticking it in a slim case that bolts to the vesa mount on the back of your monitor, beautiful. However, it's far more expensive that just buying a MacBook. I bought the base model M1 Air for £999 at launch. I just sold it, what's this, 3 years later, with 90% battery life remaining for £600 plus shipping, after eBay & paypal's cut I'm £537. That's £462 for 3 years of having faster single core / interactive responsiveness than anything else at comparable price on the market. How much more would I have had to pay over a similar time frame for a slower heavier framework with much much less battery life. I considered the framework for this laptop cycle but instead I just traded up to a second hand 16" M1 Pro/16Gb/1Tb with 16 cycles count on the battery - i.e. brand new. Sure it's 25% slower than the equiv £2800 M2 Pro version but this cost me just £1500 delivered in pristine condition. I'm feeling very confident I'm going to come out ahead again in total cost of ownership.

edflsafoiewq 3y ago

That is not what he means by "Laptops don't change". He means > A 2015 research paper discovered that the embodied energy of laptops is static over time. > Improvements in functionality balance the efficiency gains obtained in the manufacturing process. Battery mass, memory, and hard disk drive mass decreased per unit of functionality but showed roughly constant totals per year. > New laptops may be more energy-efficient per computational power, but these gains are offset by more computational power. Jevon’s paradox is nowhere as evident as it is in computing.

photonerd 3y ago
So… you can do more, faster, for longer, then? Sounds like a good argument for upgrading
- dijit 3y ago
  Until software causes performance improvements not to be worthwhile. Though nobody can argue that battery lives haven't improved.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > more, faster Not in the world de live in: https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html
  - photonerd 3y ago
    Maybe not your world, but mine? Definitely true.
- croes 3y ago
  The article author is a journalist, I bet his speed depends on his speed of typing and not the speed of his laptop. He could to more, faster and longer but if he doesn't the extra costs are useless.
  - 3y ago

yieldcrv 3y ago

Every year is a lot But I think the article is more about impulse control taken to an extreme because they lacked it in the past

ImPleadThe5th 3y ago

Do you actually buy a new laptop every year? I feel that's a bit delusional. Year to year most upgrades are pretty minor. An argument can be made maybe every 3 years if you're doing some incredibly resource intense stuff.

gghffguhvc 3y ago
I do a lot of Android and iOS app compilation (Lots of flavors/schemes of apps). So lately the upgrades in cores has meant a faster upgrade cycle for my work dev machine than for the intel based MacBook Pro era. I’m sure Apple can’t keep up this pace of the last few years though. Back in early 2000s we used distcc for distributed compilation of QT apps and reused old workstations in a server room. But with XCode and Android studio it isn’t pragmatic.
- pshirshov 3y ago
  Why don't you buy an EPYC/Threadripper workstation then? Even best M2 laptops still can't compete with hackintosh on dated 3970x
  - gghffguhvc 3y ago
    I also have a maxed out Mac Studio when I need the extra cores and don’t need the portability. But I haven’t looked into hackintosh options for a long time. Perhaps I’ll check it out again some time. Thanks for the tip.
  - kiratp 3y ago
    Because it’s not faster. Well at least the 3990x wasn’t. Compilation rapidly drops from parallel to single thread bound for most workloads. https://twitter.com/kiratpandya/status/1457438725680480257 https://twitter.com/kiratpandya/status/1457438725680480257
    - pshirshov 3y ago
      Depends on your workload. For me 3970x is faster in all my workflows.

2h 3y ago

> I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. this is why Apple is a trillion dollar company. because people mindlessly buy any new thing they put out, regardless if it makes sense or not. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ydje1ivynIM https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ydje1ivynIM

andrekandre 3y ago
> this is why Apple is a trillion dollar company. because people mindlessly buy any new thing they put out, regardless if it makes sense or not. not to defend apple or anything but whats the complaint here?... that apple is really good at capitalism?
- 2h 3y ago
  > whats the complaint here Its dont mindlessly buy any new thing Apple puts out
  - andrekandre 3y ago
    why? whats wrong with people buying things that they like?
    - 2h 3y ago
      you seem to keep ignoring this key word: mindlessly
      - andrekandre 3y ago
        yes, because you haven't provided any evidence for these "mindless" consumers so i'm not going to try and debate that point (besides calling apple customers mindless and then saying thats why they have 3 trillion dollar market cap is nearing troll territory) my point is: if i (mindlessly perhaps?) concede the point that those consumers are mindlessly spending money on useless things... then so what? its their money, let them do what they want with it. why make value judgments?

marcel_hecko 3y ago

"ThinkPad® X260 will go as long as you do with over 21 hours of continuous battery life". Thats a quote from Lenovo website from 2018. I can confirm this was in practice the case with extended battery pack.

lwkl 3y ago
Doing what kind of work? And with what kind of screen brightness? I like Lenovo laptops but I never got that kind of battery life on them I got maybe half or sometimes only a third of what they advertised.
- sfuller808 3y ago
  [dead]

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

You sound like you've fallen for some marketing. They want you to think that your laptop is "old" and you must upgrade. They want you to chase specs regardless of the benefit to your workflow because specs will improve forever. I don't upgrade unless my computer can't do a thing that I need it to do.

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

[flagged]

kibwen 3y ago

> a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18 At what point do battery improvements become completely unnecessary? Who's out here using their laptops for 18 hours continuously? It's like an electric car that can go 2,000 miles on a single charge; YAGNI. The vast majority of people would be perfectly well-served by a smaller, lighter, less expensive laptop that cuts down the battery to just 10 hours.

stetrain 3y ago
18 hours advertised is usually running a locally stored video file on loop at medium to low screen brightness and some light web browsing. My 18-hour laptop is more like 8-10 hours of real work usage, which is still fantastic compared to the 2-3 hours I would get at similar tasks 6-7 years ago. Another big change is improvements to sleep and standby time. I can use half the battery, close the lid, and be reasonably confident that the other half will be ready and waiting the next time I need it. EVs may actually be an apt comparison, where an EPA rating of 300 miles is more likely to give you 240 miles at highway speeds, or 150-200mi between charging stops since the optimal charge speeds fall off above a 70% charge.
- mitchell209 3y ago
  I want my EV to last a month on a single charge and yet some people are arguing against battery improvements. Crazy.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure you're not ready to pay a premium for that.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    This is a straw man. The argument is not against improving batteries. It's about engineering products for what people actually need, and not over-engineering them for the fantasies that we construct regarding what their needs are. To continue the EV example, the majority of trips by car in the US are less than 3 miles. You could comfortably reduce an EV's range from 300 miles to 30 and sell a car that still suffices for the majority of people, and what you gain from that is decreased costs and increased efficiency, which disproportionately benefits both overall power consumption and charge time (remember the tyranny of the rocket fuel equation). Most people don't need a car that charges once a month, they need a car that lasts just long enough for the time between when it's convenient to charge. The truth is that almost nobody actually needs a computer that can last more than a single eight-hour workday on a single charge. In fact, most people need even less than that; if you're working somewhere with wifi, you're working somewhere with electricity. It's rare that I need my laptop to last more than two hours, let alone eight.

chasil 3y ago

It is well-known that planar transistors are more reliable than FINFET. It is usually agreed that the end of planar transistors was the last process node of 28 nanometers. Everything below this (14, 10, 7, 5, 3, and 2 nanometers so far) is less reliable. The fastest, lowest power, and most reliable CPU in a laptop will be on a 28nm process node. Everything beyond this sacrifices reliability for speed and lower power. (And if you really care about lower power, then you are on ARM.)

tengbretson 3y ago
The failure rate of CPUs could go up 10x and it would still be a rounding error when quantifying what causes laptops to be decommissioned.
- chasil 3y ago
  A quick check of Google shows that TSMC does have a 16nm finfet process that is tested and approved for use in automobiles, which is a much more punishing environment than laptops or phones. As a measure of redundancy, multiple finfet transistors can be wired together to act as one. It would not surprise me if this was heavily exploited in automobile applications. https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/16795/2-automotive-chips-begin-production-on-tsmc-s-16-nm-finfet-process https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/16795/2-automo...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

footlose_3815 3y ago

That sounds like batteries change

benj111 3y ago

So you buy a new laptop every year? What do you do with your old one? Throw it away? Or sell it? If you're selling it who do you think is buying it? You do realise most people don't need the fastest processor, an 18 hour battery life, thunderbolt 4 or WiFi 6 And better screens and lighter weight are relative. If I upgrade my 10 year old laptop to a 5 year old laptop I'm still realising those gains. Next year a better screen will be out. Presumably we can agree that today's best screen is adequate, despite the knowledge that in the future it won't be the best screen, so if it's adequate today, why would it cease to be adequate in 1/3/5 years?

redroyal 3y ago
Well in 5 years I expect most dev work will be done in VR collaboratively with remote teams, w multiple virtual screens and AI assistance. Another world. Laptops and cell phones will be gathering dust with the desktops. Things change fast. Remember the world without the iPhone? That was 16 years ago. So when you talk about using a 5 year old laptop to save a few dollars it just doesn’t make sense. You can listen to music on a CD player, sounds great, doesn’t make sense. Using a heavy hot i7 MBP w 6 hours battery life from 2017 also doesn’t make sense, to save what $1200 rather than buying a 15 inch MBA. Not today - this machine is your everything. Spend some money already
- anthk 3y ago
  VR sucks for work. And multiple virtual screens... FVWM did virtual desktops since... 1994?
- tmtvl 3y ago
  How about we save that $1,200 and donate it to something like Rainforest Alliance instead?
  - benj111 3y ago
    Tbf the whole point of the the article is to use less stuff. If we all did that then we'd hopefully not be in the situation of having to chop down the rainforest. So logically as it's consumption that's causing that destruction, you should really be donating the $1200 when you buy the new laptop, not when you don't.

sheepscreek 3y ago

For OPs use-case which is mainly writing articles, reading and such - an older laptop will work fine. Especially when powered from A/C. My MacBook Pro 2014 base model can still hold a candle to MacBook Air M1 for general use (even dev work to an extent), and that’s saying something. It’s slower, but doesn’t feel 9-years-old slow - if you know what I mean. It doesn’t drive me nuts to use it and I can be productive on it (my daily driver is a MacBook Pro M1 with 64GB RAM and I own a MacBook Air M1, so I speak from experience). Also, we already do this for cars (used cars market is huge), so why not laptops. In fact, with cars - there are arguably stronger reasons to go with newer tech (safety, automatic cruise control) than with a newer laptop.

doubled112 3y ago
Always assumed it was because laptops start at $300 and cars start at $30,000. Don’t call me out on the actual numbers, I am only really paying attention to the zeros.

tyg13 3y ago

> The main product AFAICS is virtue signaling. Friendly reminder that people do care about things you don't care about. Claims of virtue signaling say more about you than them, quite frankly. And really, you should care about the massive amount of e-waste generated every year.

quadrifoliate 3y ago
This. I lose any hope for us as a species being able to reverse climate change if the top comment about an article that goes quite deep into meaningful ways to “reduce, reuse, recycle" is that this is virtue signaling, and that we should buy Macbooks every year instead because they are "expendable tools". Guess what, their impact on the environment is very much noticeable. There is no way we are going to reverse or even meaningfully delay climate change with this kind of collective attitude.
- redroyal 3y ago
  That issue can’t be solved by reusing laptops or sorting cans from cardboard. The argument that every little helps is totally flawed. Fantasy, make believe. The other 8 billion people simply don’t care and why would they? 50 years from now they’ll all be dead. Since when did people care about future generations and the good of humanity? It’s a very recent western fashion. The only thing that truly motivated the vast majority of people is sex and money or objectives closely descended from that tree. To modify mass human behavior you have to incentivize based on that leverage. But - even modification of the behavior of the crowd won’t be sufficient. The only way to fix this is w new technology
  - flangola7 3y ago
    This is lazy defeatism and an immediate disqualifier I use in the selection of both friends and employees.
    - gotoeleven 3y ago
      How much climate change do you think has been allayed by sorting garbage into 3 kinds of trash cans and drinking from paper straws?

tebruno99 3y ago

I like my framework and the 2 mini pc made from upgrading the internals. The slots are pass through thunderbolt 4 just like laptops with only USB’s ports. Not sure why they offended you. Get 4 usbc inserts and pretend they aren’t changeable if that’ll calm you down. Battery life does suck though I’ll give you that. It’s good overall at the cost though

ripply 3y ago

The framework laptops definitely run hot, I gave up on mine because it would overheat several times a day throttling down to 200Mhz. It sits in a box unused now and I consider it ewaste, I don't have the time or patience to bother with it anymore. I reached out to support maybe 6+ months ago but I haven't finished following their instructions because the laptop was just so bad and I wasted so much time dealing with it that I don't care anymore.

robocat 3y ago
> I consider it ewaste Leave it in a box in a cupboard and it is. Give it to somebody who will use it (at the next time you are hanging with geeks) and it isn’t e-waste. Offer it for free pickup next Framework thread - somebody wants it enough to not cost you more time than a drive format.
- zmk5 3y ago
  Yeah I would suggest you do this instead of keeping it in the cupboard. Lots of people looking to pick one up for cheap.

oliwarner 3y ago

They change, but my 2015 ThinkPad 13 still delivers on performance, battery, screen, etc. I'm a grown up now. I've got better uses for £2k right now. I'll get a new laptop when I need one.

conceptme 3y ago

Just being able to replace the battery is a huge win.

agentultra 3y ago

I had young kids. I took my laptop to conferences and events. Performances. Things happen in these circumstances. Drinks spill. Laptops fall from heights. Cords get pulled. You know what happens when a MBP encounters a liquid? It depends. But one thing almost every device will have in common in such an encounter: they cannot be repaired. You have to replace the entire mainboard. And the cost is enough that you may as well buy a new one. The rest ends up in an unlicensed dump somewhere in the global south where a kid is going to get exposed to cancer causing chemicals when they drag it out and bring it to some back alley disassembly shop. The cost for a laptop is pretty high. Building them to be bench repairable and upgradeable help extend their useful life. As the article points out the best we can do is use them for as long as possible.

kevinh456 3y ago
This is part of why Apple is pushing trade in when you buy a new device. They recycle it.
- agentultra 3y ago
  They claim to. I would love to read an independent audit of their recycling process. I suspect the vast majority of devices they extract the battery, the screen if it’s viable, and the rest ends up in a dump. “Recycled,” in a sense but not really.

DyslexicAtheist 3y ago

>> “Laptops don’t change” > because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18 seconded for linux as well. a few years ago battery life was maybe 4 hours, and now it's 1.

alxmdev 3y ago

> I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. They pay for themselves Yay, another top comment that steamrolls the posted article. I say don't buy the latest Macbook: instead repair, refurbish, and get true lifetime use out of these expensive devices. They're expensive to manufacture, expensive to buy, and expensive for our planet and people to just throw them away every year. They're not expendable at all, here is just one example of the human sacrifice involved in their manufacturing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_Samsung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_Samsung

robbintt 3y ago
If you're trading it in then it's going to see more life, refurbished.

HWR_14 3y ago

> buy the newest MacBook, expense it Obviously if the cost (to you, because your company will pay for it) drops to zero, you should consume a new laptop every year. It costs nothing and if nothing else the battery is newer! Of course, that logic applies to almost anything (take free stuff) even if it is objectively stupid. Your company will pay for your laptop but not part of your electric bill for your home office, just buy a new MacBook every two days with a fully charged battery!