4 ms·

> I buy 2 or 3 laptops a year; traditionally the case has > been that most laptops were kind of bad but if you looked > hard you could find something good.

> I buy 2 or 3 laptops a year; traditionally the case has > been that most laptops were kind of bad but if you looked > hard you could find something good. Now it has gotten to > the point that the something good no longer seems to exist > at all. Have you looked at MacBooks? There is a significant difference between a $300-$500 box of crap and a $1,000 MacBook. It seems like they would address most of your concerns - great trackpad, screen, no crapware (you bring your own Windows if that's your thing), map your own function keys, reasonable quality keyboard (at least a constant layout), and extremely solid build quality.

marvin 13y ago
I am genuinely surprised that no good Windows laptop seems to exist. I've been using Apple for the last 4 years and I hoped that finally one of the Windows OEMs had managed to cobble together something that can get cloes to the Macbook Pro in build quality and interface. Apparently not?
- chime 13y ago
  Samsung Series 9. Not cheap though.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    No good laptop is cheap. Thinkpads were not cheap (they now have cheap lines, they're crap). Toughbooks are not cheap. Macbooks are not cheap. Design, components and assembly quality come at a price, that's all there's to it.
    - frou_dh 13y ago
      Indeed, but fat margins are welcome too. It's 2014 and doesn't the MacBook Air ship a TN display?
- cabbeer 13y ago
  I don't think you've been looking hard enough. Thinkpads are amazing, you also have high end sony vaios, and the Microsoft surface pro 2 is also a really great portable device.
  - nly 13y ago
    Thinkpads (T series) are great if you want to drop $2,000 on a laptop and wait a month for it to arive from China. Personally I just spent £700 ($1,150) on an Edge series... hasn't arrived yet so I can't determine if it was a foolish buy.
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
    > Thinkpads are amazing You mean were amazing, until they started removing the TrackPoint buttons and messing with the keyboard.
  - marvin 13y ago
    Serious question: Is there anything resembling the Macbook Pro on the PC front with regards to build quality, overall design, lack of clunkiness, weight, size, lack of annoying half-assed internationalized keyboards, trackpad and wake-from-sleep functionality? I've owned a high-end Thinkpad, and it was a good laptop. But it didn't come close. That's what I'm asking here. I don't care if it costs > $2,000. Quality doesn't come cheap, but it's embarrassing if Apple is the only player that can do this.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      Nope. But you can run Windows (or Linux, if you're a masochist) on a Macbook Pro.
      - stefan_kendall 13y ago
        Bootcamp can even install Windows to your macbook pro from an ISO. Works great.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      Take a look at the Asus UX301LA and Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus with i7 (just came out in October, upgrade of the original model by the same name). They are both well-built and very attractive, all-metal/glass with no moving parts, thin-and-light, big ceramic-coated trackpads, and wake from sleep faster than you can fully open the lid with Win8.1. 3200x1800 or 2560x1440 touchscreens. I don't know about their internationalized keyboards, though.
ekianjo 13y ago
And double the price of every other PC laptop out there with the same specs. Hell no.
- nathos 13y ago
  …if you ignore every "spec" other than CPU, RAM, storage and screen size.
- masklinn 13y ago
  jblow seems to find that no OEM laptop is worth using, isn't twice the price kinda worth it for a laptop you can actually use? If you're a cheap fuck, don't be surprised you can only find cheap shit.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    except that there's no real reason for Apple to sell their laptops at that price - they are all made in China with the same cheap parts that everyone else uses, and cheap workers to assemble them. You pay extra for the shiny logo on the top, that's all. I haven't seen anything you could do on a Mac that you couldn't do on the PC, and there are very decent PC laptops out there, way, way cheaper than the Mac alternatives.
    - masklinn 13y ago
      > they are all made in China with the same cheap parts that everyone else uses Yeah… no. Unless you think the parts of a laptop are the CPU and GPU. > I haven't seen anything you could do on a Mac that you couldn't do on the PC Thus missing the point entirely. > and there are very decent PC laptops out there, way, way cheaper than the Mac alternatives. Care to enlighten everybody in this thread about them? There are definitely decent non-Apple laptops out there, but they're not "way, way cheaper" than the Apple version (usually the opposite).
- coin 13y ago
  Read the article
- 13y ago
aragot 13y ago
So many things are broken here. The crapware crumpled to OEM versions of Windows (or the Unity defect if you're using Ubuntu), the lack of trust in the PC hardware, the lack of class when going through the experience of buying a PC, the antivirus-update-adobe-will-restart popup world... 35 years after Bill Gates, the industry is still fighting like phone companies. There's room for a new brand. A leadership brand.

marvin 13y ago

I am genuinely surprised that no good Windows laptop seems to exist. I've been using Apple for the last 4 years and I hoped that finally one of the Windows OEMs had managed to cobble together something that can get cloes to the Macbook Pro in build quality and interface. Apparently not?

chime 13y ago
Samsung Series 9. Not cheap though.
- masklinn 13y ago
  No good laptop is cheap. Thinkpads were not cheap (they now have cheap lines, they're crap). Toughbooks are not cheap. Macbooks are not cheap. Design, components and assembly quality come at a price, that's all there's to it.
  - frou_dh 13y ago
    Indeed, but fat margins are welcome too. It's 2014 and doesn't the MacBook Air ship a TN display?
cabbeer 13y ago
I don't think you've been looking hard enough. Thinkpads are amazing, you also have high end sony vaios, and the Microsoft surface pro 2 is also a really great portable device.
- nly 13y ago
  Thinkpads (T series) are great if you want to drop $2,000 on a laptop and wait a month for it to arive from China. Personally I just spent £700 ($1,150) on an Edge series... hasn't arrived yet so I can't determine if it was a foolish buy.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  > Thinkpads are amazing You mean were amazing, until they started removing the TrackPoint buttons and messing with the keyboard.
- marvin 13y ago
  Serious question: Is there anything resembling the Macbook Pro on the PC front with regards to build quality, overall design, lack of clunkiness, weight, size, lack of annoying half-assed internationalized keyboards, trackpad and wake-from-sleep functionality? I've owned a high-end Thinkpad, and it was a good laptop. But it didn't come close. That's what I'm asking here. I don't care if it costs > $2,000. Quality doesn't come cheap, but it's embarrassing if Apple is the only player that can do this.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Nope. But you can run Windows (or Linux, if you're a masochist) on a Macbook Pro.
    - stefan_kendall 13y ago
      Bootcamp can even install Windows to your macbook pro from an ISO. Works great.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    Take a look at the Asus UX301LA and Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus with i7 (just came out in October, upgrade of the original model by the same name). They are both well-built and very attractive, all-metal/glass with no moving parts, thin-and-light, big ceramic-coated trackpads, and wake from sleep faster than you can fully open the lid with Win8.1. 3200x1800 or 2560x1440 touchscreens. I don't know about their internationalized keyboards, though.

ekianjo 13y ago

And double the price of every other PC laptop out there with the same specs. Hell no.

nathos 13y ago
…if you ignore every "spec" other than CPU, RAM, storage and screen size.
masklinn 13y ago
jblow seems to find that no OEM laptop is worth using, isn't twice the price kinda worth it for a laptop you can actually use? If you're a cheap fuck, don't be surprised you can only find cheap shit.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  except that there's no real reason for Apple to sell their laptops at that price - they are all made in China with the same cheap parts that everyone else uses, and cheap workers to assemble them. You pay extra for the shiny logo on the top, that's all. I haven't seen anything you could do on a Mac that you couldn't do on the PC, and there are very decent PC laptops out there, way, way cheaper than the Mac alternatives.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    > they are all made in China with the same cheap parts that everyone else uses Yeah… no. Unless you think the parts of a laptop are the CPU and GPU. > I haven't seen anything you could do on a Mac that you couldn't do on the PC Thus missing the point entirely. > and there are very decent PC laptops out there, way, way cheaper than the Mac alternatives. Care to enlighten everybody in this thread about them? There are definitely decent non-Apple laptops out there, but they're not "way, way cheaper" than the Apple version (usually the opposite).
coin 13y ago
Read the article
13y ago

aragot 13y ago

So many things are broken here. The crapware crumpled to OEM versions of Windows (or the Unity defect if you're using Ubuntu), the lack of trust in the PC hardware, the lack of class when going through the experience of buying a PC, the antivirus-update-adobe-will-restart popup world... 35 years after Bill Gates, the industry is still fighting like phone companies. There's room for a new brand. A leadership brand.