I don't know, buying a prebuilt desktop is just as bad of an experience. Building one piece meal from Newegg shouldn't be as convenient as buying something from Dell, it's damn close some days though.
Building a desktop from parts is easier than some Lego sets these days. I think the only possibly tricky part is making sure you apply the thermal paste and install the heat-sink correctly. Everything else you just screw in, snap in, and plug in.
This sounds like a troll comment, and maybe it is. But I agree, and for me, switching a lot of my usage from a laptop to a desktop was a solution.
After 5-6 years of adoring a series of macbooks, I finally got fed up with Apple slowly locking down OSX. And if you're not willing to run OSX, then even the macbooks lose a lot of their luster.
If you run a desktop, though, then most everything pretty much works great (even with Linux). You can spec up to a giant monitor or multiple monitors, incredibly powerful graphics, CPUs with lots of cores (or even get two), and 64 or even 128GB RAM, or any combination of the above. Or you can build a compact, low-power system. And you can swap components in and out, buy upgrades, and sell/gift parts you don't need, etc.
I still have the laptop, but I only use that whenever I have to move around (and I use syncthing to keep everything synced continuously between them to make smooth transitions between them).
I was thinking the exact same thing. I recently got Intel NUC boxes for every developer at our office. Linux support out of the box. It's 4 inches square ans easy to take different locations provided you can hook up to screen.
Everyone's got a laptop too, but they can now also VNC or SSH to their Linux machine if they need to work remote. Hell you can VNC into them from a chromebook.
I can't bring my desktop to any environment, therefore it's a non-starter.
I _do_ think it's interesting to think "maybe buying 1 (even 2) desktops is actually better for me than buying 1 laptop", but I cannot bring my desktop to the library. I feel like this comment is on the same level as "don't buy a phone, you can do better with a laptop", which is absurd on a similar level without extra context.
My personal solution is a desktop and a 7-inch tablet. Sure the tablet loses some of the power as compared to a laptop, but huge portability gain. And it fits my use case. I don't write code while on the move. I do that at my desk. For all other use cases like consumption of data or even blogging, the tablet works.
Blogging with an onscreen keyboard is painful, and carrying around tablet + bluetooth keyboard is more cumbersome than a 9" or 11" "ultrabook". The ability to run old binary-only windows/x86 programs comes in handy too.
What do you do for a phone? What works for me is: 6"+ phone that does anything I'd use a 7" tablet for (smartwatch means I don't need to take it out my pocket as often), 11" ultrabook for doing things on the go, 18" "desktop replacement"/"gaming laptop"/"luggable" for home and the occasional longer trip or LAN party. (I do have a desktop/"home server" but these days it's pretty much an oversized NAS).
I used to think that. But then i got the hang of it and now I do most of my writings on my tablet
> What do you do for a phone?
I don't have the use case for an expensive phone or even a data plan. I have a low end smart phone ($70) that I use mostly for just texts and calls. Even my whatsapp is on my tablet (needs manual .apk as playstore won't let you do this).
I am at my desk most of the day (office), so all Internet related things I do on desktop. After work hours I have my tablet at home so don't really need my phone for much else. Have a desktop at home as well.
So you leave the tablet at home? Do you keep your phone on you at home? (not criticizing, just curious).
For me it just meant one less thing to carry (you could see it as less getting rid of the tablet and more buying a tablet that does phone calls so that I don't have to carry a phone around). Public transport especially is where a 6-7" device is really handy, but I don't want to be carrying more than I can fit in my pockets.
Not necessarily. My budget is pretty finely calibrated at the moment - my desktop is going to remain pretty broken for a while so that I can get a new laptop.
In which dystopia does it cost you $1000's to fly locally, as many would do? I can cross my goddamn continent for $600 return and that's over 4000km away. Going interstate costs $200 return on a good day.
Sure, but the marginal utility of a given flight is far higher than the marginal utility of a second computer. Moreover, I may be paying for my computer but my company may be paying for my flights.
A desktop does nothing more than marginally better for my work use cases; I have one that's literally strictly for video games, and I don't care in the least about making those portable. But I care about going to my client's office and being able to work. Why would a desktop be "better"? If a desktop was sufficiently "better", why would I buy a good laptop? If I have to buy a good laptop, what delta exists, for me, to incentivize buying a good desktop as well? This is of course not an answerable question for you, because you have no idea what I or the literally hundreds of millions of people on this planet who own laptops do with our computers--so why did you then act like your preferences are so universal?
Past that: it costs me three hundred dollars, round-trip, to fly from Logan to Reagan. Where does "thousands" come into it? Why would somebody who occasionally fly for business necessarily have the cash to burn on redundancies? Why would having that money imply that one should?
Laptops do not make desktops redundant. You will not be able to strap on a 6" tower H/S or better to cool down the highest performance processors, let alone be able to pack a battery to run said processor and a HP GPU into any laptop form factor.
It is true that not every work load needs such a capable machine and you should only spend as much as you need.
That being said, I was working with a friend on a recent project and he told me that his MacBook was "burning up" while running through a build script that put together a a handful of Docker containers. My ~5 y/o Desktop barely even hiccuped on the same thing.
I would have thought, given the thrust of my post, that the "for me" with regards to redundancies was completely and wholly implied, no? Of course desktops can do things laptops can't; I've been careful to say nothing at all to the contrary and that's fortunate because that would be a stupid statement. And laptops can do things that desktops can't, too, and whether or not that matters depends wholly on you and your needs. Which is why the sneering you-don't-need-that of the post I originally replied to rustled my jimmies in the first place.
I really like my Razer laptop. They basically look like black MacBook Pros. Quality seems very high and I have enjoyed using it for several months. Quad core Cpu and 16 GB of RAM provides plenty of power as a dev box.
Yeah, I'd love to get the new Razer[0] that came out this year, but unfortunately they went the way of "thunderbolt3.0 all the things" which is... not going to work with Linux. At all :(
I'm posting from a Razer Blade Stealth QHD/256 right now on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The USB 3.1 ports function fine, the USB-C charger functions fine. Not attempted to attach a Thunderbolt over USB-C peripheral yet, but it would not be the end of the world if it wasn't functioning since everything but suspend and the camera behave fine.
The real downer is Intel's appalling OpenGL support in their Skylake drivers. Games and certain other applications are pretty much hosed if they expect remotely modern shader support, otherwise it is quite the capable chip.
I looked at the 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Skylake variant of the XPS 13. Amazing looking machine, fits my filter criteria of "has service manual available to mortals" except for one problem - Dell won't sell me one, and neither will Microsoft (Signature Edition). They only seem to be available in the US and even if I was willing to spend the nearly $4000AUD to import one they won't ship to a non-US address.
Several of the best Dell laptops are sold here in Australia with a considerable markup, even allowing for exchange rate. I tried to buy an XPS variant which was considered a 'workstation' for Australian Dell and so had an exorbitant markup which I'm not willing to pay.
If you find the right discount code or sales person (over the phone) you can get the price down. Many employers also have deals with Dell that give you 10-15 percent off.
My issue is that the variant isn't available at all.
That's OK, I hate the Force trackpad on the newer Macbooks, too. (and it looks like using the Synaptics driver or Windows 10 1522+ helps with your issue)
I got my XPS 15 from two weeks ago from JB HiFi on Elizabeth street (Melbourne), and $1000 cheaper that what you've been quoted ($2999). It's an awesome machine and everyone in the office is envious - to the point that we'll probably get more soon.
At the moment, the only thing that doesn't work yet in Debian Testing is the wifi... but I'm happy to wait - currently on a Ethernet-to-USB dongle.
Edit: oh, just noticed you were after the 13". It's nice, but I'm pretty damn happy with the 15"
If you would have gotten the Latitude 14 7000 instead of the XPS, then you get the Intel wireless + BT out of the box which always seems to just work.
It also has an option for an insane 10-hour battery; the default is like 6.
Unfortunately Dell never puts the Latitude line front and center on the website, so you have to know to look for them.
Latitude isn't entry-level, it's just the business line. Yes, they have the high end Precision workstation line, but Latitude models typically are built as good as or better than XPS models.
Posting this from an XPS 13. You're right - they look quite nice, and the performance is really there for an ultrabook. Dell has a developer edition that comes with Ubuntu on it out of the box if that's more your style, but Windows 10 is actually not too bad either.
Dell's website is even worse. I can't just navigate to buy laptop, I have to decide upfront if it's "for work" or "for home". Why does it matter? Will picking one eliminate options? Once I choose, I'm presented with 6 lines - Latitude, Vostro, Inspiron, Precision, XPS, and Chromebook. What's the difference? I guess I have to go read the marketing description for all of them. Who has time for this?
The Precision M3800 is also a great 15" laptop for running Linux (but you can't trust them not to screw up the bundled Ubuntu distro, and need to write some systemd wifi-restart scripts).
Honestly if you get a Mac you can install rEFInd on it and boot Linux just fine, or run Linux in a VM. The hardware also almost never breaks and especially if you have AppleCare they frequently replace it for free. Yes, it may be difficult to upgrade yourself. That's entirely true and if it's a deal breaker there's not much else around.
You might do well to look at https://puri.sm if you're a Linux user, they seem to make pretty good machines with free software down to the BIOS. There's also always http://minifree.org but they don't really make modern machines.
Agreed. All of the points in this article that are against the PC makers are both valid and quite significant. The Apple ones are not practical problems. Sure you aren't encouraged to open it, but you can. I've replaced virtually every part on virtually every generation of Intel Mac just fine. Screens, memory, batteries, disk drives, etc...
If you don't like the OS and the free software that's included, replace it. You weren't gonna stick with the OEM bloatware Windows install on the Thinkpad anyway.
The author is correct, we need more competition, but for the time being a Mac is truly the best piece of kit you can get. It'll run any OS and doesn't ship with an ssl mitm.
> If you don't like the OS and the free software that's included, replace it. You weren't gonna stick with the OEM bloatware Windows install on the Thinkpad anyway.
Fair point. I've heard mixed reviews from people dual booting Linux on a retina MBP because Ubuntu has bad high DPI support.
> The author is correct, we need more competition, but for the time being a Mac is truly the best piece of kit you can get. It'll run any OS and doesn't ship with an ssl mitm.
Yeah, I think there's an untapped market for a well built standard laptop (not a tablet crossover, not a Chromebook) that's not a Mac!
Don't you get annoying hardware incompatibility when running Linux on Apple hardware? The Arch Linux wiki on Macbook Pro, for example, doesn't suggest running Linux on it is simple.
Well I'll put it this way: I've owned three Windows laptops and one Mac and the Mac has outlasted all three individually, two of them combined, and on track to outlast all three of them combined in the next year.
It also has yet to slow down.
But that's just my anecdotal experience. Think of it what you will.
Same experience here. 1 MBP has outlasted (and is still working like new in most important respects, including battery life) the combined lifetimes of all 3 plastic garbage Windows laptops I've owned before getting this one. That's 5 years and change, still counting.
I'm no Apple fanboy, but the difference in hardware quality is incomparable in my limited experience.
I've had two MBPs since 2007/8 and the first one still works just fine- in fact it works great with upgraded RAM and an SSD. The second is a late 2014... I was on a 2 year cycle with my PC laptops. Batteries, screens, the fact that they were shit to begin with...
I have exactly opposite experience. What I've bought from Apple ended up breaking or revealing hardware issues after the warranty was over and outside of the series that was entitled for free replacements.
I bought Apple Mouse and found that I have to clean it every week and that to do this I have to break it, because it's not meant to be taken apart for cleaning. And to take it apart I had to deal with two tiny connectors and three very small screws and other paths that are rather hard to handle. Compare with my Logitech mouse: I can easily take it apart with a plain screwdriver and over ten years of everyday use I only had to do it twice.
I tried to install new memory into my old Mac Mini myself (there's no Apple service where I live) and while I'm reasonably savvy with this, I ended up breaking one of the plastic holders and probably broke the sound somehow, because now it is silent. All this was in vain though, because it turned out Macs require some very specific memory chips, usually twice as expensive as normal ones.
The only working piece of Mac hardware I still own is an old Mac Mini that is practically unusable since I've had to upgrade the OS to v10.9 or 10, I forgot which. Everything became so slow I could not believe it. Fortunately, all I need from Mac is to compile code for Mac OS X and I can do this via SSH from my Windows laptop. It certainly works faster this way.
I don't think I'll ever buy anything from Apple unless I absolutely need it for business and that is going to be the cheapest option.
> You might do well to look at https://puri.sm if you're a Linux user, they seem to make pretty good machines with free software down to the BIOS.
Purism must have great marketing, because I keep seeing this fiction repeated. Their BIOS is not open.
The only big difference between a Purism laptop and other laptops (Acer, Asus, Dell, etc.) is that the CPU has been fused to allow running unsigned firmware. Unfortunately, since we still don't have free firmware to run in place of Intel's, Purism has no present advantage over buying most any laptop and installing Linux yourself.
Purism loudly trumpets their roadmaps[0] and plans[1] so as to suggest a trajectory towards totally free software, but until they achieve it their product is not worth a premium compared to installing Linux on an ultrabook of your choice.
[0] https://puri.sm/posts/roadmap-to-a-completely-free-bios/ Here they outline many things that need to be done. But note the language- "Purism’s goal is to publish a Free Software implementation ... as soon as an implementation is available." But who is responsible for implementing it?
[1] https://puri.sm/road-to-fsf-ryf-endorsement-and-beyond/ Note that the FSF hasn't actually endorsed them yet, although this page is supposed to convince you that they're awful close. Why not wait until they're actually endorsed?
I did buy a Libreboot X200 from minifree, and I am quite happy with it.
There's some value over other laptops, notably that it's tested with Linux as the main target and uses recent hardware that is virtualization friendly (+15" which is a personal requirement for me). Configuring a laptop like that takes a nontrivial amount of time from my experience.
What interests me is that it will run Qubes OS before the 15" ships if that statement is to be trusted. It is one of the more interesting approaches out there and I'll gladly pay a premium for a Qubes laptop.
The BIOS is not free and the laptop won't be free anytime soon due to Intel ME [1]. Unfortunately the compromise for the foreseeable future seems to be freedom vs. more power or hoping for something awesome non-x86.
" if you have AppleCare they frequently replace it for free" - as long as you have warranty right? I had a issue with motherboard, the official Apple service center near my place quoted a replacement price equal to a new windows laptop with just 6 months additional warranty.
Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot.
Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the machine you are going to buy (unless you also want the website).
HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad.
And last but not least I would like to give this entry the RAGE post award, nomination points for
What I want is a computer with:
-Decent build quality
-Decent performance and battery life
-A decent website. It doesn't have to be an icon of web
design, like apple.com. It can be simple and
utilitarian, like an Amazon page. It just has to be
honest and up to date. It should contain pictures,
text, and a Buy button.
-A clean OS without crapware or malware factory
installed
Is that too much to ask? Make one and you can have my
money!
Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft and HP make systems like the one you want, you can install your choice of OS and buy it on Amazon or eBay if you want.
Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.
I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image and you buy direct from Microsoft. I just wish they'd sell me the XPS 13 9350 (the highest spec'd one) in Australia.
Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.
That's lame they don't sell those there. I got a 9350 myself and loaded Ubuntu onto it and it's been fantastic. What do they limit you to? Just the basic XPS 13 models?
Also, what if someone in the US bought one and had it shipped to Australia? Is that doable?
I shouldn't complain too much, the 8GB / 256GB version is the highest they offer here. It's just that I'd like to run VMs on the thing and 16GB of RAM is needed.
My other constraint is weight, for $REASONS - I don't really want something >1.5KG.
They do. I bought a Lenovo from the Microsoft store. No crapware at all (well, you can debate about some of the driver update software both from Lenovo and Intel, but definitely no added root certificates and such).
> Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.
It's not just OSX—even using Safari instead of Chrome or Firefox adds over an hour to my battery life (god knows there's no other reason to use it). As of ~1 year ago when I worked somewhere that required me to use lots of tablets from both Apple and a variety of top Android manufacturers on a regular basis, battery life (especially idle battery life) on the Apple devices was borderline miraculous while the Android devices seemed to treat the battery like an infinite resource—the difference was not subtle.
I'd love a world in which it seems like any company other than Apple holds battery life as a high priority. My observation has been that we do not live in that world. They're the only hardware manufacturer I've seen that gives more-or-less honest battery life estimates in their marketing, and those figures are not low. It'd be really, really hard for me to jump ship solely for that reason.
If Windows gets bad battery life on MacBooks then that's an indictment of Apple's windows drivers.
Just one poorly written driver can ruin your battery life, and that's a place where the MS "hardware manufacturers write the drivers for their hardware" model really falls down - there are Windows laptops where you can nearly double the battery life by fixing the touchpad driver, or the webcam driver, or, .... In theory a manufacturer/integrator should be auditing the drivers they're shipping and making sure the whole thing works together. Maybe the signature edition programme will improve this.
It could really stand to suck a little less. Based on this thread I went to checkout the Elitebook line and the "View all notebook products" link from the Elitebook line page just goes to a promo for some new one that isn't available yet, and when you go to the shop it just takes you to search results with 217 results for "elitebook"
Functional design. A lot of haters misunderstand it as style.
>but
Uh-oh
>they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software.
OK, I guess you read that on the Internet. But you should question it.
When I bought my first Mac the first thing I did before buying it was call Apple support and check whether I could open it and upgrade the hard drive without voiding the warranty. The answer? YES. Same goes for memory, etc.
Was true then, is true today. Although for some models the options are now removed due to technical limitations put in place not because Apple is trying to offend you, but because that's how they get the battery life you like. In my experience Apple is very cool about user upgrades.
What they're not cool about is stuff like putting in third party batteries, which then explode, and then asking Apple to eat the cost for that. Um, no.
On the software side, of course Apple doesn't want to set all its users up with totally vulnerable systems that can lead to all manner of harm. But it doesn't prevent more advanced users like us from doing what we want to on our own systems. Feel free to install Linux, even though it's already a UNIX machine, whatever... So you don't have to let the software factor in to your decision about a machine.
>You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts
It's just normal life that some things can be replaced, and some can't. This isn't specific to Apple. If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames. Therefore, they are made, deliberately, to be hard to open. And you being not supposed to open them is a correct thing, not a problem.
We don't know the story behind pentalobe screws But I imagine maybe third party battery replacement businesses were getting out of control, leading to damaged phones and fires, and that little side industry needed a speed bump while it got its batteries up to snuff. Who knows. It's easy to think up legitimate reasons rather than "Apple hates your freedoms." But bashing Apple is just the cool thing to do, right?
> and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style.
I would encourage you to think beyond style. I build my own PCs too but the Geniuses are backed by a truly awesome knowledge base with problems, troubleshooting tools, solutions, and discretionary power to make you very, very happy when things go wrong, if you're not a dick about things.
>Also, Apple makes beautiful hardware
Functional. I'm sure beauty is also a goal but I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail. But yeah, it's beautiful too.
>but their software is getting worse.
You read this on the internet too. Please. Think for yourself. Of course their software has problems. All software has problems. Apple's software is taking on HUGE challenges, basically helping each person manage all their information, and responsibly, which means with security measures in place, which are there to reduce the likelihood of actual harmful real threats to their users. Yes, it's complicated.
All that being said... I agree with one thing, which is that it would be great if there were more fantastic machines out there, from more vendors. But I think to make machines really great, they would inevitably end up including some of the features that you diss when talking about Apple, like security features and tradeoffs on end-user upgradability in return for other benefits.
The lack of buttons below the trackpad makes right clicking in a controlled manner impossible - I cannot feel nor hover my thumb over the button I want. Accidentally touching the "right" part of the trackpad jumps the mouse cursor over there, or activates some multi-touch gimmick.
The power button looks like a regular keyboard ke.
The edges of the case are actually too sharp to rest your wrists on. Rounded edges would solve this problem. So does filing down the case as some have done Youtube.
The keyboard keys lack any concavity. This is on all keyboards made since type-writers because it helps center your finger when you side-strike a key. This stops it slipping to the neighboring key. In the case of the Apple keyboard, it slips towards the gap between keys.
The keyboard has no Home, End, Page Up/Page Down or Delete keys. It is also lacking an Insert (overwrite) key. These aren't unused keys, they're pretty ordinary text editing functions.
Functional? No Apple absolutely made a whole bunch of stylistic choices. Apple wants a very specific line and minimalism to their products. Accomodations for practicality complicate that - otherwise why are we losing 3.5mm jacks on iPhones in the interest of thinness when most everyone agrees they want more battery life?
For right click, configure it as 2-finger click, it's easier (at least for me)
Concavity helps but chiclet keyboards are usually better than regular ones for notebooks
> The keyboard has no Home, End, Page Up/Page Down or Delete keys. It is also lacking an Insert (overwrite) key
True, that sucks. But there are combinations of keys to do that. PgUp = Fn+Up direction key. Home/End for single line entries is Up/Down, etc (google it)
You kind of get used to it until you plug a PC keyboard then hate yourself for a couple of days (but it gets back eventually)
I like how you respond to concerns about not being able to modify the physical hardware with both "apple totally lets you do that!" and "some things in life you just can't do!"
The second comment is more amusing, given you then compare Apple's laptop with a battery case, instead of other vendors' laptops, whmo frequently provide free service manuals with exploded diagrams showing exactly how to open the thing and get inside.
The whole comment reads like apologia, but the funniest part was the assertion that Apple don't design for beauty, it just happens to be a by-product of designing for function. Apple. The company famous for intentionally designing beauty into their hardware products. The company that files design patent after design patent. Ah, well, I guess "you read that somewhere on the internet", but really, you should "think for yourself".
If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames.
Batteries come in cases, whether it's the shell around a single battery cell, or the plastic armature that holds several cells. If you really want to go down this pedantic road of "I didn't mention a case!", then you should have called it a cell.
> Where did you see this "assertion"?
"I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail."
Again, pedantry isn't going to get you anywhere. You were suggesting that Apple was only minorly interested in physical appearance, but were first-and-foremost designing for function. This flies in the face of what Apple (and Jobs) are famous for, and their actions as a company. Their attention to design is not the side-effect you paint it as.
As a clear example: if physical beauty was not their main goal and only functionality was, then "you're holding it wrong" would never have happened. Any radio designer with half a clue knows that human touch changes the tuning of an antenna. This event was an unmitigated disaster for them, both in the short term (Jobs insults his users) and in the long term (users are now trained to hide the beautiful hardware inside crappy plastic holders). It was definitely an event where form took precedence over attention-to-detail function.
> I think you're reading something else into what I said
This (along with the ad hominem part of the rest of your post) is uncharitable. The GP is hardly alone in thinking that Apple software is getting worse; I think it, too, and not just out of conformity—if anything I'm frustrated by not being able to find enough people on the Internet who agree with my longing for the good old days of Snow Leopard.
Meh. The pictures are pretty, but other than that, what's so great about it? The stuff moving up and down as you scroll is just dizzying, and the tech specs page is way too sparse. Frankly, I prefer the ASUS notebooks site.
"HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad."
I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping for). Specs were great, among the highest end available at the time. The quality, on the other hand, has been worse than any computer I've ever owned.
I guess is isn't all that constructive as comments go, but I feel ethically obligated to steer people away from considering HP laptops.
The HP consumer and enterprise lines are vastly different in terms of quality.
By the way, upon first boot of an HP laptop you will be prompted to burn recovery DVDs. $10 is actually pretty reasonable compared to what others would charge you.
HP's consumer and enterprise divisions are effectively separate companies (and, in fact, were acquired from separate sources.) The enterprise "workstation" laptops are some of the best-put-together, simplest-to-repair, most-natively-well-supported-without-needing-drivers, and otherwise most "obvious" in their design machines I've ever had the pleasure of refurbishing.
The EliteBook line is the one laptop where seeing inside actually made me want to own it more. (And I did buy one, and it was an excellent machine that served me well for years and would still be decently competitive today.)
Other neat thing: the EliteBooks I was refurbishing tended to be 2007 models—but they came with fully-working UEFI, hidden under a "this is only a prototype implementation" warning. It was fun playing with 64-bit Windows 8 on them; none of the other machines in the shop could make heads or tails of the W8 install discs.
They also tended to come with fingerprint sensors. I got used to unlocking my laptop with my thumb long before TouchID was a thing.
A 2007 (maybe 2006) HP EliteBook was the last non MacBook Pro laptop I had. I loved that thing and it was incredibly easy to add my own RAM and an SSD to. Pretty sure it maxed out at 8GB.
I'm sure they're sleeker now but that thing was pretty thick and the batteries on them seemed to wear down and die very fast. Bonus points for having an AWESOME dock that worked near flawlessly in Windows 7 for me, not so much, but not bad with Ubuntu 10 Desktop. Also you could get extended batteries and the batteries swapped easily, so I had a pair that could get me through a day at a client's site with no power if I needed.
I can't imagine I'll go back, I love my MBPs, but I would check out the latest EliteBooks if I was going that way again.
The EliteBooks aren't even close to Macs in engineering. They're probably the closest thing I've found, but there are teething issues with all of them - like poor speakers, or noisy 3.5mm jacks, or poor display, or iffy keyboards, or poor trackpads.
Apple get all of this stuff right almost all the time, in almost every machine they build.
In fact, I only say almost above because it seems like they would have at least one lemon, but I can't think of what it is.
I have to agree 100%. My work computer is an EliteBook and the headphone jack has constant static, the fan runs high even on simple tasks, and the trackpad is downright terrible. I prefer my older MacBook Air's hardware by far.
That's a good point. I forgot how magical the trackpad is on the MBPs compared to every other laptop I've ever touched. I couldn't imagine bringing a travel mouse with me but I used to ALWAYS have one with my PC laptops.
Like around seven years ago, I bought a tablet PC from HP. An Touchsmart TX2. 2h max if batery and usage if plastic, but durable. I don't have any problem with it except the disappointed 3d performance (I expected more from it), AMD stoping of update the graphics drivers, and very very rare freeze on boot (like one time every 3 months). Also, an OS update to Windows 8 was an really improve on performance (even using beta drivers from AMD)
How ever, I know friends with HP's that breaked very easy. One give small electric shocks. Other had an previous version of the same tablet PC that me, and it ended generating smoke (Old touchsmart TXs have a tendency to overheat)
> HP's consumer and enterprise divisions are effectively separate companies
Bingo. This seems to be the pattern across the market. I have heard time and again that Acer laptops are crap. But at the same time i have seen at least one of their enterprise models survive basically decade of use with just the cooling fan needed replacing.
The only thing that makes Macbooks "special" is that they are effectively enterprise grade products sold to consumers.
That the article author balks at getting a Thinkpad because of the Superfish debacle shows a lack of research. No Thinkpad was found to have that installed, it was strictly limited to their Ideapad range.
We bought 120 HP netbooks and had almost 90% drive failure (Seagate) and their firmware only for service contract customers has really soured me on HP. I find SuperMicro makes better servers, so I am pretty much out of HP now.
My anecdotal evidence points the other way. My own Ho dv6 gave me a good 4 years of running.
- Yes, the crapware is unavoidable. but who doesn't ship with that?
- For me the system restore worked like magic. I tried it a bunch of times on my own machine and those of some friends. The machine was virgin again with just a click of a button.
- It's also very easy to get into. Very helpfully labeled; tons of guides available online. It's like its designed to be opened and hacked around. When it finally died, I scavenged it for parts and ported to my new desktop machine
> Yes, the crapware is unavoidable. but who doesn't ship with that?
Well Apple for one (unless you count their superfluous apps, but I find those much less intrusive)
I think the crapware is inexcusable. If almost every car manufacturer places a fresh pile of dog poo on your brand new car seat would you be okay with it just because everyone does it?...
Crapware is usually found on consumer machines, where installing crapware pays for the OS and reduces the price. Pro machines from Dell and HP generally don't have crapware apart from anit-virus), in my experience.
However, they may have "useful" extra software, which I could do without. (Dell Data Safe backup etc. Lenovo is the worst.)
But you can download a crapware-free version of Windows 7 or 10 from Microsoft and do a clean installation.
"Everything is wrong with it"? Name it, one by one. Otherwise it's FUD.
Why didn't you install a clean OS downloaded from the official Microsoft/Ubuntu/Debian website instead of waiting two weeks for a restore Windows restore DVD from HP with crapware pre-installed? The first thing I would do after buying a new laptop is to format it completely and start afresh.
Wow, ok - go ahead and down vote me on that without commenting. I was genuinely curious if there was some part of their site that actually was 100mb (it sounds extremely crazy but sadly feasible).
I had a motherboard fail on a 2011 MacBook Pro running Windows 7 - I just wiped the drive on another Mac and put it back in and have it to them. No questions asked.
I didn't know whether or not it would and for the 10 minutes it took, it was worth it to not have to stand in the Apple Store and explain why I was running Windows and not OS X.
Lucky thing he wasn't shopping a couple of years ago when it was near impossible to buy a PC laptop with a screen at any resolution other than 1366x768.
Also, I know they're uncool and all, but the author should really look at the Dell XPS series. They're rather expensive but hit most all of his points.
The latest MacBook (2015) doesn't use USB internally for the keyboard and touchpad. As a result, Linux doesn't support it. I was thinking about writing patches to fix it (it does boot) but it looks far too complicated (I'm not even sure if the "protocol" is the same over different serial protocols).
i have a 2014 x1 carbon. solid build, decent battery under linux(5hrs average load). probably will get an x1 next round too. dont get booged down with specs though. newest is outdated in a year, and if you don't get a new laptop every year, arguing specs is pretty moot.
drawbacks - soldered on ram + it's a premium
not super modular.
positive - its solid and nicely designed with a great keyboard (and this is from an otherwise chicklet style hater, but really nice travel)
Do you know who OEMed those ports? I've had a horrible run of luck with crappy USB3 chipsets in desktops - with the same symptoms as you're having. Do you still get the resets in Windows 8.1/10?
Well it's very connected with Intel: 8086 -> 80186 + 80286 -> 80386 -> 80486 you know. USB 3.0 problems could also be mechanical problems with the connector. It's a very high bandwidth signal, about the frequency of standard wifi.
Not sure on the battery life, but check out the HP ZBook G3. We have the G2 at work and it's quite nice. It's got a lot of horsepower and I can go 4-6 hours on battery.
The power brick is heavier than my own little 11 inch personal machine. It is a workstation line, not an ultrabook line.
2) ECC , IMHO, is useless on personal laptop. Error rate is quite low that "opportunity cost" is too high.
Except that, MBPr is proper solution. So, let's hope Apple to solve your USB3 port issue. (you can report, by the way)
Next laptop I get for hacking will probably be FreeBSD[1] and I'll be running ZFS so ECC would be a bonus. I understand the debate, but ECC should be standard given how much memory we are putting in these things.
1) well, PC-BSD most probably. I am more an OpenBSD person so I might still go that route.
I have a Toshiba p835-z370. It's a few years old but it still runs like a champ and all the hardware is supported on Ubuntu. Toshiba build quality is pretty good.
Aha! These seemed comparable with the Asus Zenbooks that came out at the same time. I've only seen one z370 in the wild though - what's the battery life like under Ubuntu?
That was a pretty quick dismissal of Lenovo, and a warped portrayal at that. As far as we can tell, Superfish was not intentionally installed by Lenovo, and any money it made didn’t go to them since it wasn’t their software. There’s nothing here to suggest that this is a sign of anything untrustworthy happening at Lenovo, any more than there is at any other major laptop seller. It seems like this was just a case of their software QA being not quite on par with their hardware QA. Also, all websites suck. Just sayin’.
I have a Lenovo X1 carbon and I re-installed Windows to remove all the Lenovo crapware after I bought it. Windows is easy to download and install now. It will save your license, but blow away everything else. It only takes about 30-45 minutes. But I do agree, this is totally ridiculous that you have to do this.
I did buy an MS Surface and it was by far the best PC experience I ever had, however they don't make a keyboard cover with a touch-stick, that's the only reason I went back to a ThinkPad.
Wasn't there ab article about Lenovo getting around this solution? I did the same thing with my y40. Came with an absurd amount of bullshit, but overall its a great laptop.
Avoid the dell developers edition xps13. There's no end key, the trackpad is unusable. Even worse, avoid getting the windows version and installing Linux on that: the trackpad is even less unusable (resets to lower corner intermittently on clicks), and in order to get the wi-fi working I had to recompile the kernel driver telling it that it was FOSS.
For the most part these issues are all fixed in recent kernel versions (> 4.2). The default trackpad driver (synaptics) is indeed buggy, but the newer libinput driver (available in the Ubuntu repos since 15.10) works perfectly. The WiFi card is a bit annoying if you want to build the driver yourself but it works out of the box on stock Ubuntu 15.10.
Admittedly there were some issues early on, but now that issues have all been patched it's an excellent laptop. Fantastic build quality, great battery life, and the display is the best I've seen on a laptop.
Why is a decent website relevant at all? Would it make buying a laptop easier? Sure. But 90% of consumers are going to do almost all of their research off-site and enter the lenovo looking for specific products or categories. Not everyone follows the Apple-Disney ethos of design every consumer facing thing to be flawless.
I haven't done the research but I bet you could see lenovo pages ranking higher for long-tail keywords (specific products) than than more general pages.
I'm quite happy with my Asus X200M. It's compact, lightweight, and was pretty cheap, though I think it's discontinued now. It's small enough to stuff into a bag, in my bike basket, and cheap enough that I don't worry too much about damaging it.
I try to be platform-independent as much as possible. My "operating system" is Jupyter/Python. Knowing that I could switch to Ubuntu in a jiffy makes Windows seem much less annoying.
I have an Acer laptop I won from a church basket raffle. It only has a 1.5 Ghz AMD Dual core CPU and 3Gigs of RAM and 250 Gig hard drive. So it runs slow at first and takes a time to load everything.
It upgraded to Windows 10 Pro quite well.
It is one of those cheaper laptops and it has an AMD GPU as well. I don't know how user serviceable it is, but it hasn't needed any work yet.
I used to have Ubuntu on it, but my wife didn't like it so I had to put Windows back with it as we share the laptop. So I know it runs Ubuntu very well, and it runs Ubuntu faster than it does Windows.
But PC quality has gone down since they moved things to China. Motherboards, you are lucky if they last three years now. My son had an ATX custom system with an ATX motherboard for the Intel 1150 socket made by ASUS, and it went out and was replaced with an Intel brand motherboard that we had to buy from eBay because the socket is so old they don't make new motherboards for it anymore. Motherboard lasted maybe two years before it blew out. We got a Datavac to clean up dust from it and would replace the CPU resin every six months or so.
Recently released 5510[1] is looking absolutely awesome, will be picking one up when return to States in April to replace current Precision M4700.
2 X SSD + 32GB memory, high end CPU, decent GPU with 3840 X 2160 screen...will be sorted for next few years. If you NewEgg a couple of 480GB SSDs you're around $2,500 for a beastly machine that weighs under 4 lbs (M4700 is nice but hefty, nearly 7 lbs).
The 5-hr battery life is a huge let down. For most developers, a faster CPU/GPU is just a marginal improvement. But being able to leave home without the charger and not having to look for power sockets is way more compelling.
Which is why I use a Mac, w/OS X. Compared to everything else I've ever tried, it's the only one that I've never had to worry about battery life, literally hours and hours of coding. Also, with two small kids I need to close it and open it all the time, it's practically instant on, and I can pick right back up where I left off, and that's without ever plugging it in.
I also switched back to Safari from Chrome b/c I found Chrome to be a horrendous battery drain.
As much crap as Apple's gotten recently for their software, the attention to battery life is a huge blessing. My MBP is easily worth $ for the time and convenience.
Even if my laptop would have 24h batter life, I just do not want the mental hurdle of anyway always thinking "will it end now, when was the last time it charged, how much is left". Fuck that.
Bring a cable where ever I go, never think of battery life.
btw, Dell Precision M4800 is a beast, evil mean machine, its the best computer I ever had, macbook pros are trash in comparison. The keys are so soft, so finely grooved, so silent, so evenly spaced, the screen color reproduction is best ever, and its heavy, it doesnt feel like a toy to toss around, it sticks on the desk where I put it. It has 3 mouse buttons, on two places. Who can work on a computer without middle click to paste!? To not speak of the internals, i7, 32GB ram and so on.
Before Apple started making really amazing machines, I used to be a big fan of the T and X series ThinkPads. But Lenovo haven't impressed me in a long time.
Lots of niggly stupid issues - like terrible audio quality, or poor LCDs, or poor build quality requiring stuff like shims under keyboards to stop them rattling (seriously?!). Crappy touchpads. Dumb experiments with the keyboard and touchpad/trackpoint buttons.
Every time I think I should give one of the newer X's a proper go, I go and have a play with them and realise that they're still full of compromises.
I've bought old thinkpad T-series on ebay for ~$300, installed arch, and moved on with my life. I keep most of my relevant data on git repos or a home server. If it dies, which usually happens after a good few years, I just get a new one. Not ideal, and certainly not for everybody, but a reasonable option if it fits your needs.
That's actually a good idea if you don't need too much extra horsepower. You get a good keyboard, an acceptable display, and a lightweight machine for a don't-care-if-you-drop-it price.
I wish I could buy laptops that are not built in China. The Chinese army has zero scruples with regards to hacking. The hack where they got all US federal employees' info was an act of war as far as I'm concerned. I just don't see any reason why they would not be putting in backdoors into all the computers they manufacture.
> They display low ratings for their own products on their own website. What.
How is this a complaint? I'd love other companies to post both good and bad reviews without filtering.
> Except that page is deceptive, because that's actually the old X1 Carbon
Don't know about other locations, but here the X1 got a really nice discount once the 2016 model got announced. (also visible in the screenshot) I got it and I'm really happy about it. It has a high res screen (WQHD), so the same as the 2016 model, so that note in the post is also a mistake.
Sorry, I don't get this. Two companies sell basically the same thing. Both will give you all the usual marketing crap and slightly hidden actual specs. One will also give you actual opinions of people who aren't hired to take your money away. How is the other one better?
I get the whole apple cult idea and buying a status symbol. But if anyone is going to compare the products, they'll just go to another site and see exactly the same ratings. Allowing ratings on your main page even allows you to respond to some specific issues. (wifi 5G disconnects often -> we published a bios update for that here/link)
I don't have an issue with featuring third party reviews of your own product on your own page. But if you're going to show those, and they're only 3/5 star reviews, the assumed law of self-interestedness would seem to indicate that that was the best you could do... 3/5 stars. You're stating publicly that you can only satisfy your customers to 60%. Why are your standards so low, I would ask?
Store.apple.com ALSO shows reviews, but they're almost all at least 4 stars. That's something to be proud of.
... except for things like batteries, cables, and chargers, which have had 1 star reviews for literally years, and Apple has done nothing to change their design. Hrm.
Plenty of them give 1-star reviews for stuff like... lack of strain relief causing premature failures on cables. But yes, agreed (within reason - $19 for the MagSafe->2 converter is a little ridiculous).
Just a note but while Apple doesn't show ratings for their main lineup of devices (and probably for exactly the reasons mentioned by link) they do show them for accessories and some of them are pretty low rated:
And that's exactly why I wouldn't feature reviews on my website / shop. It may work for Amazon, but I'm pretty certain most people bothering to provide a review for something as simple as a lightning cable had a bad experience. Nobody writes rave reviews for a cable that just works.
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After 5-6 years of adoring a series of macbooks, I finally got fed up with Apple slowly locking down OSX. And if you're not willing to run OSX, then even the macbooks lose a lot of their luster.
If you run a desktop, though, then most everything pretty much works great (even with Linux). You can spec up to a giant monitor or multiple monitors, incredibly powerful graphics, CPUs with lots of cores (or even get two), and 64 or even 128GB RAM, or any combination of the above. Or you can build a compact, low-power system. And you can swap components in and out, buy upgrades, and sell/gift parts you don't need, etc.
I still have the laptop, but I only use that whenever I have to move around (and I use syncthing to keep everything synced continuously between them to make smooth transitions between them).
Everyone's got a laptop too, but they can now also VNC or SSH to their Linux machine if they need to work remote. Hell you can VNC into them from a chromebook.
I _do_ think it's interesting to think "maybe buying 1 (even 2) desktops is actually better for me than buying 1 laptop", but I cannot bring my desktop to the library. I feel like this comment is on the same level as "don't buy a phone, you can do better with a laptop", which is absurd on a similar level without extra context.
What do you do for a phone? What works for me is: 6"+ phone that does anything I'd use a 7" tablet for (smartwatch means I don't need to take it out my pocket as often), 11" ultrabook for doing things on the go, 18" "desktop replacement"/"gaming laptop"/"luggable" for home and the occasional longer trip or LAN party. (I do have a desktop/"home server" but these days it's pretty much an oversized NAS).
I used to think that. But then i got the hang of it and now I do most of my writings on my tablet
> What do you do for a phone?
I don't have the use case for an expensive phone or even a data plan. I have a low end smart phone ($70) that I use mostly for just texts and calls. Even my whatsapp is on my tablet (needs manual .apk as playstore won't let you do this).
I am at my desk most of the day (office), so all Internet related things I do on desktop. After work hours I have my tablet at home so don't really need my phone for much else. Have a desktop at home as well.
For me it just meant one less thing to carry (you could see it as less getting rid of the tablet and more buying a tablet that does phone calls so that I don't have to carry a phone around). Public transport especially is where a 6-7" device is really handy, but I don't want to be carrying more than I can fit in my pockets.
Isn't that an interesting bit of nuance that you so blithely elide.
Past that: it costs me three hundred dollars, round-trip, to fly from Logan to Reagan. Where does "thousands" come into it? Why would somebody who occasionally fly for business necessarily have the cash to burn on redundancies? Why would having that money imply that one should?
It is true that not every work load needs such a capable machine and you should only spend as much as you need.
That being said, I was working with a friend on a recent project and he told me that his MacBook was "burning up" while running through a build script that put together a a handful of Docker containers. My ~5 y/o Desktop barely even hiccuped on the same thing.
Desktops can do things laptops can't.
I was mostly responding to:
>Why would somebody who occasionally fly for business necessarily have the cash to burn on redundancies?
It wasn't clear to me that `somebody` was exclusivly referring to you.
In my mind, the only competition is with the Surface Book, but even that's debatable given the screen size.
The part where it will actually have a clean Windows installation with no crapware is pretty excellent.
[0] - http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth
The real downer is Intel's appalling OpenGL support in their Skylake drivers. Games and certain other applications are pretty much hosed if they expect remotely modern shader support, otherwise it is quite the capable chip.
Hopefully things have improved now.
My issue is that the variant isn't available at all.
http://www.amazon.com/International-Shipping-Direct/b?node=2...
At the moment, the only thing that doesn't work yet in Debian Testing is the wifi... but I'm happy to wait - currently on a Ethernet-to-USB dongle.
Edit: oh, just noticed you were after the 13". It's nice, but I'm pretty damn happy with the 15"
Unfortunately Dell never puts the Latitude line front and center on the website, so you have to know to look for them.
There's also Vostro, which is the small/home office line.
I wasn't making a comment on build quality, just on Dell's branding and pricing.
The soho bit was what Jeff Clarke (1) told me, and he runs Dell's PC business. Yes, I have it on tape ;-)
> Optiplex and Precision are desktop brands only
There are Precision desktops and laptops....
(1) http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/vn/bios/jeffrey-clarke
(2) http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/workstations
You might do well to look at https://puri.sm if you're a Linux user, they seem to make pretty good machines with free software down to the BIOS. There's also always http://minifree.org but they don't really make modern machines.
If you don't like the OS and the free software that's included, replace it. You weren't gonna stick with the OEM bloatware Windows install on the Thinkpad anyway.
The author is correct, we need more competition, but for the time being a Mac is truly the best piece of kit you can get. It'll run any OS and doesn't ship with an ssl mitm.
Fair point. I've heard mixed reviews from people dual booting Linux on a retina MBP because Ubuntu has bad high DPI support.
> The author is correct, we need more competition, but for the time being a Mac is truly the best piece of kit you can get. It'll run any OS and doesn't ship with an ssl mitm.
Yeah, I think there's an untapped market for a well built standard laptop (not a tablet crossover, not a Chromebook) that's not a Mac!
It also has yet to slow down.
But that's just my anecdotal experience. Think of it what you will.
I'm no Apple fanboy, but the difference in hardware quality is incomparable in my limited experience.
I bought Apple Mouse and found that I have to clean it every week and that to do this I have to break it, because it's not meant to be taken apart for cleaning. And to take it apart I had to deal with two tiny connectors and three very small screws and other paths that are rather hard to handle. Compare with my Logitech mouse: I can easily take it apart with a plain screwdriver and over ten years of everyday use I only had to do it twice.
I tried to install new memory into my old Mac Mini myself (there's no Apple service where I live) and while I'm reasonably savvy with this, I ended up breaking one of the plastic holders and probably broke the sound somehow, because now it is silent. All this was in vain though, because it turned out Macs require some very specific memory chips, usually twice as expensive as normal ones.
The only working piece of Mac hardware I still own is an old Mac Mini that is practically unusable since I've had to upgrade the OS to v10.9 or 10, I forgot which. Everything became so slow I could not believe it. Fortunately, all I need from Mac is to compile code for Mac OS X and I can do this via SSH from my Windows laptop. It certainly works faster this way.
I don't think I'll ever buy anything from Apple unless I absolutely need it for business and that is going to be the cheapest option.
Purism must have great marketing, because I keep seeing this fiction repeated. Their BIOS is not open.
The only big difference between a Purism laptop and other laptops (Acer, Asus, Dell, etc.) is that the CPU has been fused to allow running unsigned firmware. Unfortunately, since we still don't have free firmware to run in place of Intel's, Purism has no present advantage over buying most any laptop and installing Linux yourself.
Purism loudly trumpets their roadmaps[0] and plans[1] so as to suggest a trajectory towards totally free software, but until they achieve it their product is not worth a premium compared to installing Linux on an ultrabook of your choice.
[0] https://puri.sm/posts/roadmap-to-a-completely-free-bios/ Here they outline many things that need to be done. But note the language- "Purism’s goal is to publish a Free Software implementation ... as soon as an implementation is available." But who is responsible for implementing it?
[1] https://puri.sm/road-to-fsf-ryf-endorsement-and-beyond/ Note that the FSF hasn't actually endorsed them yet, although this page is supposed to convince you that they're awful close. Why not wait until they're actually endorsed?
I did buy a Libreboot X200 from minifree, and I am quite happy with it.
Alternatively, you can replace a Thinkpad X200's firmware yourself by following these steps (hardware required) http://libreboot.org/docs/install/x200_external.html
The BIOS is not free and the laptop won't be free anytime soon due to Intel ME [1]. Unfortunately the compromise for the foreseeable future seems to be freedom vs. more power or hoping for something awesome non-x86.
[1](PDF): http://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf
Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the machine you are going to buy (unless you also want the website).
HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad.
And last but not least I would like to give this entry the RAGE post award, nomination points for
Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft and HP make systems like the one you want, you can install your choice of OS and buy it on Amazon or eBay if you want.Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.
Rage score 9/10.
I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image and you buy direct from Microsoft. I just wish they'd sell me the XPS 13 9350 (the highest spec'd one) in Australia.
Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.
Also, what if someone in the US bought one and had it shipped to Australia? Is that doable?
My other constraint is weight, for $REASONS - I don't really want something >1.5KG.
Yeah that sounds interesting. Looks like they have Lenovo hardware too. I'll check them out.
It's not just OSX—even using Safari instead of Chrome or Firefox adds over an hour to my battery life (god knows there's no other reason to use it). As of ~1 year ago when I worked somewhere that required me to use lots of tablets from both Apple and a variety of top Android manufacturers on a regular basis, battery life (especially idle battery life) on the Apple devices was borderline miraculous while the Android devices seemed to treat the battery like an infinite resource—the difference was not subtle.
I'd love a world in which it seems like any company other than Apple holds battery life as a high priority. My observation has been that we do not live in that world. They're the only hardware manufacturer I've seen that gives more-or-less honest battery life estimates in their marketing, and those figures are not low. It'd be really, really hard for me to jump ship solely for that reason.
Windows 10 via dual-boot empties the battery in around 3hrs.
Just one poorly written driver can ruin your battery life, and that's a place where the MS "hardware manufacturers write the drivers for their hardware" model really falls down - there are Windows laptops where you can nearly double the battery life by fixing the touchpad driver, or the webcam driver, or, .... In theory a manufacturer/integrator should be auditing the drivers they're shipping and making sure the whole thing works together. Maybe the signature edition programme will improve this.
Does anyone really care a whole lot about the HP website?
LOL. Yes, that's fair. I was frustrated with Lenovo's website for all the reasons I described.
> Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb.
Apple's website is an icon of web design. It's 100MB not because of needless JS & ad tracker bloat, but because of high res images.
Just look at it. It's gorgeous: http://www.apple.com/macbook/
>Apple has great design
Functional design. A lot of haters misunderstand it as style.
>but
Uh-oh
>they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software.
OK, I guess you read that on the Internet. But you should question it.
When I bought my first Mac the first thing I did before buying it was call Apple support and check whether I could open it and upgrade the hard drive without voiding the warranty. The answer? YES. Same goes for memory, etc.
Was true then, is true today. Although for some models the options are now removed due to technical limitations put in place not because Apple is trying to offend you, but because that's how they get the battery life you like. In my experience Apple is very cool about user upgrades.
What they're not cool about is stuff like putting in third party batteries, which then explode, and then asking Apple to eat the cost for that. Um, no.
On the software side, of course Apple doesn't want to set all its users up with totally vulnerable systems that can lead to all manner of harm. But it doesn't prevent more advanced users like us from doing what we want to on our own systems. Feel free to install Linux, even though it's already a UNIX machine, whatever... So you don't have to let the software factor in to your decision about a machine.
>You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts
It's just normal life that some things can be replaced, and some can't. This isn't specific to Apple. If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames. Therefore, they are made, deliberately, to be hard to open. And you being not supposed to open them is a correct thing, not a problem.
We don't know the story behind pentalobe screws But I imagine maybe third party battery replacement businesses were getting out of control, leading to damaged phones and fires, and that little side industry needed a speed bump while it got its batteries up to snuff. Who knows. It's easy to think up legitimate reasons rather than "Apple hates your freedoms." But bashing Apple is just the cool thing to do, right?
> and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style.
I would encourage you to think beyond style. I build my own PCs too but the Geniuses are backed by a truly awesome knowledge base with problems, troubleshooting tools, solutions, and discretionary power to make you very, very happy when things go wrong, if you're not a dick about things.
>Also, Apple makes beautiful hardware
Functional. I'm sure beauty is also a goal but I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail. But yeah, it's beautiful too.
>but their software is getting worse.
You read this on the internet too. Please. Think for yourself. Of course their software has problems. All software has problems. Apple's software is taking on HUGE challenges, basically helping each person manage all their information, and responsibly, which means with security measures in place, which are there to reduce the likelihood of actual harmful real threats to their users. Yes, it's complicated.
All that being said... I agree with one thing, which is that it would be great if there were more fantastic machines out there, from more vendors. But I think to make machines really great, they would inevitably end up including some of the features that you diss when talking about Apple, like security features and tradeoffs on end-user upgradability in return for other benefits.
The lack of buttons below the trackpad makes right clicking in a controlled manner impossible - I cannot feel nor hover my thumb over the button I want. Accidentally touching the "right" part of the trackpad jumps the mouse cursor over there, or activates some multi-touch gimmick.
The power button looks like a regular keyboard ke.
The edges of the case are actually too sharp to rest your wrists on. Rounded edges would solve this problem. So does filing down the case as some have done Youtube.
The keyboard keys lack any concavity. This is on all keyboards made since type-writers because it helps center your finger when you side-strike a key. This stops it slipping to the neighboring key. In the case of the Apple keyboard, it slips towards the gap between keys.
The keyboard has no Home, End, Page Up/Page Down or Delete keys. It is also lacking an Insert (overwrite) key. These aren't unused keys, they're pretty ordinary text editing functions.
Functional? No Apple absolutely made a whole bunch of stylistic choices. Apple wants a very specific line and minimalism to their products. Accomodations for practicality complicate that - otherwise why are we losing 3.5mm jacks on iPhones in the interest of thinness when most everyone agrees they want more battery life?
Concavity helps but chiclet keyboards are usually better than regular ones for notebooks
> The keyboard has no Home, End, Page Up/Page Down or Delete keys. It is also lacking an Insert (overwrite) key
True, that sucks. But there are combinations of keys to do that. PgUp = Fn+Up direction key. Home/End for single line entries is Up/Down, etc (google it)
You kind of get used to it until you plug a PC keyboard then hate yourself for a couple of days (but it gets back eventually)
I rarely click buttons with trackpads, only when I drag things. I almost always tap.
The power button is both a keyboard button and a pure hardware button if you keep it pressed for longer. Don't let the look of it scare you off.
The keyboard keys are quite clearly separated for me. I can't really use mechanical keyboards very well.
The home/end/page keys are replaced by cmd+directions. Delete is Fn+Backspace. If you're using emacs or vi, it won't matter either way.
The second comment is more amusing, given you then compare Apple's laptop with a battery case, instead of other vendors' laptops, whmo frequently provide free service manuals with exploded diagrams showing exactly how to open the thing and get inside.
The whole comment reads like apologia, but the funniest part was the assertion that Apple don't design for beauty, it just happens to be a by-product of designing for function. Apple. The company famous for intentionally designing beauty into their hardware products. The company that files design patent after design patent. Ah, well, I guess "you read that somewhere on the internet", but really, you should "think for yourself".
>the funniest part was the assertion that Apple don't design for beauty
Where did you see this "assertion"? I think you're reading something else into what I said.
If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames.
Batteries come in cases, whether it's the shell around a single battery cell, or the plastic armature that holds several cells. If you really want to go down this pedantic road of "I didn't mention a case!", then you should have called it a cell.
> Where did you see this "assertion"?
"I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail."
Again, pedantry isn't going to get you anywhere. You were suggesting that Apple was only minorly interested in physical appearance, but were first-and-foremost designing for function. This flies in the face of what Apple (and Jobs) are famous for, and their actions as a company. Their attention to design is not the side-effect you paint it as.
As a clear example: if physical beauty was not their main goal and only functionality was, then "you're holding it wrong" would never have happened. Any radio designer with half a clue knows that human touch changes the tuning of an antenna. This event was an unmitigated disaster for them, both in the short term (Jobs insults his users) and in the long term (users are now trained to hide the beautiful hardware inside crappy plastic holders). It was definitely an event where form took precedence over attention-to-detail function.
> I think you're reading something else into what I said
Well, I did "read it on the internet"...
> You read this on the internet too. Please.
This (along with the ad hominem part of the rest of your post) is uncharitable. The GP is hardly alone in thinking that Apple software is getting worse; I think it, too, and not just out of conformity—if anything I'm frustrated by not being able to find enough people on the Internet who agree with my longing for the good old days of Snow Leopard.
Meh. The pictures are pretty, but other than that, what's so great about it? The stuff moving up and down as you scroll is just dizzying, and the tech specs page is way too sparse. Frankly, I prefer the ASUS notebooks site.
It is slow to load, looks like garbage on mobile, is really jumpy on my desktop, and hides useful information within marketing mumbo-jumbo.
Thats is basically the opposite of gorgeous.
I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping for). Specs were great, among the highest end available at the time. The quality, on the other hand, has been worse than any computer I've ever owned.
I guess is isn't all that constructive as comments go, but I feel ethically obligated to steer people away from considering HP laptops.
By the way, upon first boot of an HP laptop you will be prompted to burn recovery DVDs. $10 is actually pretty reasonable compared to what others would charge you.
The EliteBook line is the one laptop where seeing inside actually made me want to own it more. (And I did buy one, and it was an excellent machine that served me well for years and would still be decently competitive today.)
Other neat thing: the EliteBooks I was refurbishing tended to be 2007 models—but they came with fully-working UEFI, hidden under a "this is only a prototype implementation" warning. It was fun playing with 64-bit Windows 8 on them; none of the other machines in the shop could make heads or tails of the W8 install discs.
They also tended to come with fingerprint sensors. I got used to unlocking my laptop with my thumb long before TouchID was a thing.
I'm sure they're sleeker now but that thing was pretty thick and the batteries on them seemed to wear down and die very fast. Bonus points for having an AWESOME dock that worked near flawlessly in Windows 7 for me, not so much, but not bad with Ubuntu 10 Desktop. Also you could get extended batteries and the batteries swapped easily, so I had a pair that could get me through a day at a client's site with no power if I needed.
I can't imagine I'll go back, I love my MBPs, but I would check out the latest EliteBooks if I was going that way again.
Apple get all of this stuff right almost all the time, in almost every machine they build.
In fact, I only say almost above because it seems like they would have at least one lemon, but I can't think of what it is.
How ever, I know friends with HP's that breaked very easy. One give small electric shocks. Other had an previous version of the same tablet PC that me, and it ended generating smoke (Old touchsmart TXs have a tendency to overheat)
Bingo. This seems to be the pattern across the market. I have heard time and again that Acer laptops are crap. But at the same time i have seen at least one of their enterprise models survive basically decade of use with just the cooling fan needed replacing.
The only thing that makes Macbooks "special" is that they are effectively enterprise grade products sold to consumers.
That the article author balks at getting a Thinkpad because of the Superfish debacle shows a lack of research. No Thinkpad was found to have that installed, it was strictly limited to their Ideapad range.
- Yes, the crapware is unavoidable. but who doesn't ship with that?
- For me the system restore worked like magic. I tried it a bunch of times on my own machine and those of some friends. The machine was virgin again with just a click of a button.
- It's also very easy to get into. Very helpfully labeled; tons of guides available online. It's like its designed to be opened and hacked around. When it finally died, I scavenged it for parts and ported to my new desktop machine
Well Apple for one (unless you count their superfluous apps, but I find those much less intrusive)
I think the crapware is inexcusable. If almost every car manufacturer places a fresh pile of dog poo on your brand new car seat would you be okay with it just because everyone does it?...
Microsoft's own-brand surface line, for one. Even MS has realised that the crapware situation is out of control.
However, they may have "useful" extra software, which I could do without. (Dell Data Safe backup etc. Lenovo is the worst.)
But you can download a crapware-free version of Windows 7 or 10 from Microsoft and do a clean installation.
Why didn't you install a clean OS downloaded from the official Microsoft/Ubuntu/Debian website instead of waiting two weeks for a restore Windows restore DVD from HP with crapware pre-installed? The first thing I would do after buying a new laptop is to format it completely and start afresh.
Sometimes[0].
P.S., if you're interested in helping, we'd all appreciate it!
[0] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891
Huh? My chrome network panel registered 13.3k for apple.com
Where's the source on that?
If you had a hardware failure, did having a non-Apple-approved OS cause any problems when you tried to get it fixed?
Also, I know they're uncool and all, but the author should really look at the Dell XPS series. They're rather expensive but hit most all of his points.
Here's a review of the XPS 15: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-...
Yes you can change it, but it's the equivalent of buying a car and change the wheels when you get it.
1) No malware/spyware tainted brand.
2) At least 32 GB ECC RAM, 16 GB is so 2010. ECC, because memory errors do happen and cause instability. 64 GB option wouldn't hurt either.
3) HiDPI (retina) display (IPS or equivalent)
4) Fast PCI-e attached SSD.
5) Ability to run two 4k monitors @60 Hz.
6) Stable USB3 ports (My 2015 RMBP keeps resetting USB3 ports, making it nearly impossible to run VMs on USB3 drives)
7) ~10h+ on battery.
Do you know who OEMed those ports? I've had a horrible run of luck with crappy USB3 chipsets in desktops - with the same symptoms as you're having. Do you still get the resets in Windows 8.1/10?
Looks like Intel:
> Do you still get the resets in Windows 8.1/10?Just running latest OSX El Capitan.
That's odd, Intel have been the ones that work the best in my experience (have also tried Renesas and Etron).
The power brick is heavier than my own little 11 inch personal machine. It is a workstation line, not an ultrabook line.
1) well, PC-BSD most probably. I am more an OpenBSD person so I might still go that route.
This is the major drawback of lenovo X1s - they only have 8GB of RAM max. In today's world. Crazy.
Here's the teardown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMH0r76zdt0 . It's only upgradeable to 6gb though. Would love it if they had a 16gb upgradeable version.
tl;dr: “Picky, picky! wags finger”
How can I trust their peripheral chips and firmware? Or BIOS and SMM for that matter?
Maybe some nasty things unintentionally slipped in their SMM code as well?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode
There's no way I could verify all the firmware code contained in the laptop. Heck, not even one chip.
Lenovo has had things not intended happening with their BIOS [1] as well. It's fixed now, but what else there might be lurking under covers?
[1]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/lenovo...
I did buy an MS Surface and it was by far the best PC experience I ever had, however they don't make a keyboard cover with a touch-stick, that's the only reason I went back to a ThinkPad.
Admittedly there were some issues early on, but now that issues have all been patched it's an excellent laptop. Fantastic build quality, great battery life, and the display is the best I've seen on a laptop.
I haven't done the research but I bet you could see lenovo pages ranking higher for long-tail keywords (specific products) than than more general pages.
http://psref.lenovo.com/
Every SKU, every option, every detail, in a PDF.
http://outlet.lenovo.com/outlet_us/
http://dell.com/outlet/
http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals
etc.
See http://www.linux.org/threads/how-great-is-the-korora.5955/ for a sample review.
I have always heard good things about the ASUS ZenBooks.
I try to be platform-independent as much as possible. My "operating system" is Jupyter/Python. Knowing that I could switch to Ubuntu in a jiffy makes Windows seem much less annoying.
It upgraded to Windows 10 Pro quite well.
It is one of those cheaper laptops and it has an AMD GPU as well. I don't know how user serviceable it is, but it hasn't needed any work yet.
I used to have Ubuntu on it, but my wife didn't like it so I had to put Windows back with it as we share the laptop. So I know it runs Ubuntu very well, and it runs Ubuntu faster than it does Windows.
But PC quality has gone down since they moved things to China. Motherboards, you are lucky if they last three years now. My son had an ATX custom system with an ATX motherboard for the Intel 1150 socket made by ASUS, and it went out and was replaced with an Intel brand motherboard that we had to buy from eBay because the socket is so old they don't make new motherboards for it anymore. Motherboard lasted maybe two years before it blew out. We got a Datavac to clean up dust from it and would replace the CPU resin every six months or so.
http://blog.nqzero.com/2016/01/1610-or-better-32-43-laptops-...
i don't understand how there can be so little differentiation in this market
Recently released 5510[1] is looking absolutely awesome, will be picking one up when return to States in April to replace current Precision M4700.
2 X SSD + 32GB memory, high end CPU, decent GPU with 3840 X 2160 screen...will be sorted for next few years. If you NewEgg a couple of 480GB SSDs you're around $2,500 for a beastly machine that weighs under 4 lbs (M4700 is nice but hefty, nearly 7 lbs).
[1] http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=0...
I also switched back to Safari from Chrome b/c I found Chrome to be a horrendous battery drain.
As much crap as Apple's gotten recently for their software, the attention to battery life is a huge blessing. My MBP is easily worth $ for the time and convenience.
Bring a cable where ever I go, never think of battery life.
btw, Dell Precision M4800 is a beast, evil mean machine, its the best computer I ever had, macbook pros are trash in comparison. The keys are so soft, so finely grooved, so silent, so evenly spaced, the screen color reproduction is best ever, and its heavy, it doesnt feel like a toy to toss around, it sticks on the desk where I put it. It has 3 mouse buttons, on two places. Who can work on a computer without middle click to paste!? To not speak of the internals, i7, 32GB ram and so on.
Highly recommend Dell Precision M4800.
Lots of niggly stupid issues - like terrible audio quality, or poor LCDs, or poor build quality requiring stuff like shims under keyboards to stop them rattling (seriously?!). Crappy touchpads. Dumb experiments with the keyboard and touchpad/trackpoint buttons.
Every time I think I should give one of the newer X's a proper go, I go and have a play with them and realise that they're still full of compromises.
You have zero rights to complain about hacking and acts of war.
How is this a complaint? I'd love other companies to post both good and bad reviews without filtering.
> Except that page is deceptive, because that's actually the old X1 Carbon
Don't know about other locations, but here the X1 got a really nice discount once the 2016 model got announced. (also visible in the screenshot) I got it and I'm really happy about it. It has a high res screen (WQHD), so the same as the 2016 model, so that note in the post is also a mistake.
Call me crazy but this is why Apple is even a thing
I get the whole apple cult idea and buying a status symbol. But if anyone is going to compare the products, they'll just go to another site and see exactly the same ratings. Allowing ratings on your main page even allows you to respond to some specific issues. (wifi 5G disconnects often -> we published a bios update for that here/link)
I don't have an issue with featuring third party reviews of your own product on your own page. But if you're going to show those, and they're only 3/5 star reviews, the assumed law of self-interestedness would seem to indicate that that was the best you could do... 3/5 stars. You're stating publicly that you can only satisfy your customers to 60%. Why are your standards so low, I would ask?
Store.apple.com ALSO shows reviews, but they're almost all at least 4 stars. That's something to be proud of.
Reviews should rate quality.
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD818AM/A/lightning-to-usb...