I know expensive laptops are the norm in SF, but does anyone else pay that much for laptops they may drop or looked at any time?
(My current workhorse is a T-series thinkpad I got for free)
So for me the £2000+ I paid for my laptop to max it out to the extreme is money well spent. Did I mention it's a taxable expense?
This is about snappiness only, I have no trouble finding workloads stressing this old i5 (e.g. 2k/4k videos), where an M1 would fly through. Personally, I just think snappiness alone is a bit forced argument to spent 2k$.
When this is your main tool, it’s much more pleasant to use something with a nice build quality.
I guess different people just have different needs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tho, I suspect it will perform much, much better cleaned, repaired and thermal-paste reapplied. But I wont open it, as long as I have no alternative set up.
(Also M1 + Linux, would be a no-brainer for me - best bang for the buck right now. I just fucking hate Apple OSs and the ecosystem. Oh and the keyboard too - feels as pleasant an ATM's number pad... Following Asahi closely, still.)
I try the Macbooks' keyboards every time I see one in the store. Yes, it has been even worse, but the new ones feel clickity-clackity, like an ATM pad, to me too. No travel, and annoying high pitched noises. Feels weird to rest your fingers on those keys. Not even close to a Thinkpad keyboard, old or new. I could get used to it, but it is not a great input device. Not at all. Trackpad rocks of course, but so does the nipple, if you type a lot.
But then again, I would never buy those when just released.
Next machine needs to have hardware transcoding though. That's become so important to me. Needing to give up all of my processing power just to be on a video call is awful, but it served well for years for $400.
Since it's a business expense, it's even cheaper.
I dropped it 4 days after purchase.
My next laptop was $2000.
I dropped it a few months after purchase.
I don't live in SF. So I guess the answer to your question is yes.
My credit card has that and I've used it to replace a phone with a cracked screen. It was literally a 5 minute phone call to make the claim and all of my money was refunded the next day.
- great touchpad (and gestures)
- all day battery
- no noise at all (optional but for me a big plus)
- hinge that stands the test of time
- aluminum (of very resistant) body
i'll buy a laptop that checks these off under $1600, but so far m1 air is the only one I found, and it's cheaper than that
And I don't get the "better productivity" talk either. During the most productive period of my life (by a huge margin, now I understand) I only had a $200 laptop. It was literally sold as "the cheapest laptop you will ever find".
(I give you the noise though, I hate fan noise)
Edit: do hinges ever break? Unless you sit on it, I have never seen this happen even with the cheapest laptops.
> And I don't get the "better productivity" talk either.
Among other reasons some people are concerned with energy use in general.
Like for someone who works in Photoshop/Illustrator/Sketch/Figma even a little will need a great screen and almost without exception you’re not going to be getting that in a $200 laptop. This admittedly can be worked around with a “cheap” $300 IPS external monitor, but at that point you’re spending more on the monitor than your laptop which feels upside-down. (I know this from experience — at one point I had to do PS work on a $500 Gateway laptop and it was miserable because a quarter of the document’s details weren’t even visible).
Or if you’re compiling code a lot, you’re going to want more oomph than a $200 laptop can provide, because otherwise you’re going to be twiddling your thumbs and getting distracted and breaking flow waiting for code to compile. For me this is particularly impactful, and any reduction in compile times is easily felt.
As for hinges, on even a number of “mid tier” laptops, they tend to get loose and wobbly over time. I’ve seen a number of IdeaPads owned by friends and family suffer this fate.
It only costed me 375 euros. It is not a high end model, but a mid range (Lenovo E580) from a few years ago that was specced with the fastest i7 cpu and with as many ram (32GB) as supported. It is not Macbook M1 whatever fast/nice but for me it is still pretty much current. I cringe when people say they cannot work with 1080p screen but the reality is you are perefectly comfortable on them as long as you don't know better. This is something I have learned with different domains, not just computing but also sport equipment, music hardware. You don't necessarily miss the new tech until you tried it and you are not necessarily less productive, comfortable, creative or competitive on older tech, only expectations changes. But once you tested the new drug sure it is hard to come back.
Personal anecdote: at one point in the early 2010s I was cash strapped and needed a reasonably capable machine. First I tried that $500 Gateway I mentioned, which was terrible to use across almost all dimensions. I ended up returning that machine and instead putting it toward a used Dell Precision M4400 workstation laptop, which was expensive when it was new in 2008 but I got it along with a bunch of accessories off of Craigslist for $350. That thing was immensely better than the cheap 4 years newer Gateway in every way, and much much more usable for work. That machine held out for me for several years until I could afford something better.
As far as screens go, resolution is less important to me than panel quality. I’ll take a 1280x800 screen with decent color performance over a 1920x1080 screen with garbage color. In the case of the cheap Gateway, the screen’s unusability had more to do with it being a terrible bottom of the barrel TN display than it having a 1366x768 resolution. While the Precision’s panel was higher rez (1920x1200) it also handled color much much better which is what made the difference for me.
I was very surprised after I bought a nice big monitor and great mouse that I ignored them most of the time, so now I just work off the laptop, it works best for me, which I never would have guessed in my desktop years
That said, I've been very productive with a creaky noisy cheap lenovo with ubuntu so in my case it's not just about productivity but also comfort
Re: do hinges ever break? they tend to, when you use the laptop 10 hours per day
- not just a great touchpad, literally the best one in the game undisputed
- all day battery life. And not PC laptops that claim 14 hours of battery but see 5 in reality, I’m talking actually 14 hours of battery in real world use.
My desktop was like $14k new. It has been my daily driver for over 4 years, so less than $300/month (and still going down). That's a rounding error in relation to the money I have earned using it.
My company laptop is 3k$ and I actually carry that around more often. True I care less about it but I still don't feel like I'm dropping devices while I'm moving.
I dropt my Thinkpad primarily at home when it was sitting next to the couch :')
However getting accidental damage protection, like from Lenovo, does help the peace of mind.
I mean, I still use a laptop in the evenings, but for work a desktop is to me a must.
But I agree that working all day on a laptop in laptop mode is right out.
I have a laptop for those rare cases when I need to work where i am not at either of those locations.
With so capable phones in pocket, I rarely find myself needing to pull out a laptop to the point that I don't think I'd buy replacement if this one broke.
But to each his own.
For my work machine, a laptop is preferred because then I can do my work anywhere without fuss even without an internet connection.
Besides, with an M1 Pro, plugging my work laptop into the Thunderbolt hub at my desk provides a near-desktop experience for the overwhelming majority of its usage. For day to day work the difference between my M1 Pro laptop and 5950X desktop isn’t staggering enough to justify giving up portability.
Anyway a laptop becomes a desktop by plugging it's usb-c port to your docking station so there is very little downside appart from being subject to throttling when doing heavy cpu stuff to using one instead of a desktop. Which not everybody is subject too, mostly only people compiling stuff on their laptop.
I personnally spend most of my time in my office at home with dual screen but I like to move to the living room when attending conferences, in my rooftop when it is not to sunny or in the kitchen to have a chat with my gf while grabbing a tea when she is at home and I am waiting for a job/whatever to complete so a laptop is still nice to have even when working 100% from home.
That being said, my expensive 2017 Macbook Pro broke a few weeks ago and I picked up a very nicely discounted Samsung Galaxy book for about 700 Euro because the only macs available were obsolete and the new ones had 4 week delivery times. It's a 16GB, i5 with a surprisingly decent Iris XE graphics system on a chip thing and 512GB ssd. Nothing fancy but good enough for the money and great value at that price actually.
I put Manjaro on it and was up and running in a few hours. I only had 4 hours to configure it in the evening as I had a customer meeting the next morning and needed a working development environment. So, I was pretty pleased all of that worked out fine. That means that laptop earned itself back in under a day. I even managed to revive some of my 32 bit Steam library and get playable fps (with that intel XE graphics!). And unlike the mac, it does not have thermal throttling issues. It was always unusable for gaming.
I'll probably buy one of the new fancy macs when delivery times improve a bit and when we get some clarity on the inevitable early adopter issues (which bits are going to break this time?). But I'm not in a hurry. This thing works well enough and I'm kind of liking Manjaro so far. Lots of rough edges but nothing I can't deal with. Definitely not for users not comfortable using a command line.
I'd totally spend 3000-4000 Euro on a laptop regardless of the OS if it is good value for money. My last mac book pro was 3500 Euro. Money is not the issue for me when I literally spend a lot of my billable time waiting for this thing to do stuff for minutes on end many times a day and interrupting my flow (which is priceless). But I expect performance for that money as well as a decent keyboard (so definitely not my Macbook Pro) and a nice screen. Apple fixed all of those things with their latest iteration but the configuration I'd want puts me close to 4000-5000 Euro this time. I'm actually considering doing that. But it's a lot of money and Apple tax this time. And the build quality of the last one was terrible, which makes me more hesitant. The worst I've ever seen from Apple. Hence, the cheapo emergency replacement.
So, this laptop looks like a great deal. Twice the memory (or more if you upgrade), ssd, and better CPU than what I picked up for just 700 Euro a few weeks ago. Close to good enough for me. I'd like a proper screen though. Not having retina/HDPI feels like going back to the stone age a bit. Yes, Linux needs a bit of work on that front but Wayland seems capable of this at least. But other than that, not bad. If they do a more expensive version with a better screen, I'd consider getting one.
Finding decent laptops is actually a problem. There are not a lot of premium laptops that are nice enough for my criteria. I don't want a gaming laptop monstrosity that sounds like a vacuum cleaner. I don't care for Thinkpads with a nipple and shitty touchpad. Dell has support issues though their XPS is pretty nice. But I want something premium, with a nice screen, keyboard and touchpad that doesn't feel like a huge compromise. This Samsung is quite nice on this front actually considering the price. The touchpad could be a bit bigger. But it does multi touch and it works (after lots of fiddling with settings). The 1080p screen feels like a huge leap backwards after having used a Retina screen for the last few years. Not loving that.