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Comment by skoskie | Hacker News Reader

Shopping for a 2013 rMBP replacement now. Which of those two do you recommend? Would love to run it as a hackintosh, if possible.

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I have a Dell XPS (2018?), 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, i7 and 3 year on-site warranty. I am running Linux Mint on it for Android development (Windows is much slower for building Android apps, because NTFS is slow at handling lots of small files - http://www.bitsnbites.eu/benchmarking-os-primitives/). I am really satisfied with the notebook and I had a Macbook for about a year before buying the XPS. There basically maybe 2 things I don't like - the camera position is weird, it's in the lower left corner so you get recorded from a weird angle, I think they moved the camera in the latest model? And, typically Linux, sometimes I have echo and mic problems but Zoom seems to be reliable. No issues other than that.

X1 Carbon if you don't need >16GB RAM. Otherwise P52 if you don't mind running Windows or Linux with NVidia binary drivers - 3K USD gets you 6core i7, 4K display, 32GB RAM 2x512GB NVME / 500GB spinning. That's without deals - which there always are.

Hell yes, that P52 sounds great! I only wish I could use AMD graphics so I could run OSX for a while … just to help with the transition.

I moved to Mac in 2001 after frustration with Windows ME and then XP. Now, I’m having frustration with multiple hardware generations on Mac, and it’s clearly time to make a change. To say I’m in the walled garden is an understatement.

Getting out of the Apple ecosystem is going to take time , plenty of money, patience, and I assume lot’s of sacrifice (I really don’t want to give up my trackpad). I don’t even know where to start, but I suppose buying a new laptop and finding a good distro (thinking Deepin) to put on it will be the best starting point.

Edit: And then he saw the P1.

X1 Extreme and P1 fill a void between the X1 and P52. More ram, but lighter.

I think I'd get the most recent XPS 13. It's (so far) been the most compatible with Ubuntu Linux (with all my data science tools on it), performs excellent. Love the screen (dell seems to be really good in the monitor space these days), and... they fixed the camera location. (as someone else mentioned). There are some great deals to be had as well (if you keep your eye out, or have a passport membership).

The Thinkpad feels...older... like a comfortable friend that's been around a long time. Works great, but the Dell feels more modern. The touch stick... awesome if you like them. (pointy device in the center of the keyboard, can't remember the name).

Replaced mbp with a loaded T580. Fantastic keyboard, runs Linux well. Sadly, the Mac trackpad is far superior.

I'm often curious to what everyone (dev types, I'm assuming here) us a lot of trackpad for? I"m typically using "space bar" to scroll web pages, and often option-up/down for paging up and down.

I do love and think my MB Air trackpad is superior, but it's never been a deal breaker when I use my Lenovo at work.

Thinkpad T480

This is the one I have (alongside the XPS 13). I'm loving this keyboard more and more every day, and can no longer stand using the Apple one even the slightest bit. (I now only use the MBP with the older generation bluetooth/wireless keyboard - the one without the numeric keypad, with the older style chiclet keys).

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