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For an identical price point you can get a brand-new ASUS vivobook[0] which features: - a 15" 1080p (!) screen - 6 hour battery life (vs 18h) - plastic frame

by pkage 3y ago

For an identical price point you can get a brand-new ASUS vivobook[0] which features: - a 15" 1080p (!) screen - 6 hour battery life (vs 18h) - plastic frame (vs aluminum) - inferior cpu performance (Intel Core i7 1255U vs M1) Though it does have some pros: - 16gb of ram (vs 8gb) - 1tb of disk (vs 256gb) Seems like the M1 MBP is a great option and I'm glad it's more accessible. [0]: https://www.walmart.com/ip/ASUS-VivoBook-15-15-6-Touchscreen-FHD-Laptop-Computer-12th-Gen-Intel-10-Core-i7-1255U-24GB-DDR4-RAM-1TB-PCIe-SSD-WiFi-6-Bluetooth-5-1-Backlit-Keyboar/572757538 https://www.walmart.com/ip/ASUS-VivoBook-15-15-6-Touchscreen...

bombcar 3y ago
That has a touchscreen, and isn't a bad deal for $700, depending on your use case. It's so hard to know if it's a good quality device or if it'll feel like a cheap plastic toy, but if it has survived being on the show floor at Walmart it's probably pretty durable.
- robocat 3y ago
  > touchscreen No point on a laptop. Some point if the laptop has a tablet design (removable keyboard or fold-underneath keyboard). I have a touchscreen on my laptop. Pretty useless to be honest when I used a Windows 10 VM (pointer pass-through) and really useless in Ubuntu. Presumably Windows 11 has better support?
- singhrac 3y ago
  Sorry, the only use case I can come up with is if you strictly need a Windows laptop because some software only runs on Windows (e.g. a game or Matlab or something). But for practically everyone else this is a terrible purchase.
the_snooze 3y ago
My view is that unless you're looking to do something really performance-sensitive (e.g., gaming), specs don't matter nearly as much as user experience: nice screen, nice keyboard and touchpad, decent battery life, good build quality. Entry-level CPUs and SSDs are so good these days that you're really not getting much by spending more on bigger numbers, unless you really care about performance-sensitive use cases.

by pkage 3y ago

bombcar 3y ago

That has a touchscreen, and isn't a bad deal for $700, depending on your use case. It's so hard to know if it's a good quality device or if it'll feel like a cheap plastic toy, but if it has survived being on the show floor at Walmart it's probably pretty durable.

robocat 3y ago
> touchscreen No point on a laptop. Some point if the laptop has a tablet design (removable keyboard or fold-underneath keyboard). I have a touchscreen on my laptop. Pretty useless to be honest when I used a Windows 10 VM (pointer pass-through) and really useless in Ubuntu. Presumably Windows 11 has better support?
singhrac 3y ago
Sorry, the only use case I can come up with is if you strictly need a Windows laptop because some software only runs on Windows (e.g. a game or Matlab or something). But for practically everyone else this is a terrible purchase.

the_snooze 3y ago

My view is that unless you're looking to do something really performance-sensitive (e.g., gaming), specs don't matter nearly as much as user experience: nice screen, nice keyboard and touchpad, decent battery life, good build quality. Entry-level CPUs and SSDs are so good these days that you're really not getting much by spending more on bigger numbers, unless you really care about performance-sensitive use cases.