However, if looking for a laptop Macbooks are just so much better built and the M series have such superior battery life it would be insane to use anything else in my opinion.
However, if looking for a laptop Macbooks are just so much better built and the M series have such superior battery life it would be insane to use anything else in my opinion.
I just can't decide between a macbook air, thinkpad and msi windows machine with a nice NVIDIA card.
The Thinkpad will weigh twice as much, it be about 3x the volume of a Macbook Pro (with the extended battery), the trackpad will half the size (and suck), and finally it will get hot and need to spin up the fans constantly. Oh and the screen and speakers will probably suck compared to the Macs. And you won't have mag-safe. And you'll need to carry around a massive and heavy power adapter.
My Thinkpad weighs approximately 1.2 pounds more than my MacBook Air, or about a half pound more than a 14” MacBook Pro. My MacBook Air doesn’t have MagSafe, so that’s a wash, and the thinkpad uses USB-C to charge, just like the Mac. I usually use the same small 30W charger for both laptops. Screen/speakers are probably marginally worse on the thinkpad. And you’re correct that it’s thicker, though I’d doubt that it’s 3x the volume. In exchange for the above cons, I get:
* The ability to use 64GB of memory and an SSD of my choosing, purchased for reasonable market prices
* The ability to easily run any distribution of Linux that I want
* The ability to replace the battery easily when it wears out by simply buying a new one and snapping it in
* A large ecosystem of parts (aftermarket and OEM) for doing my own repairs and upgrades
I’ve considered my options and find that these tradeoffs are worth it for me a lot of the time. Though these benefits may not be important for other people, I’d encourage you not to say things like “it’d be insane to use anything else.”