dethac

I love the service manuals from Dell/HP/Lenovo!

Examples:

Lenovo P52 hardware maintenance manual: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/tp_p52_hmm_en...

Dell XPS15 service manual: https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/xps-15-9560-laptop_setup-gui...

HP ZBook 15 G2 maintenance and service guide: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04493862

They're well-written and easy to follow. It's great.

All of these are public and freely available on the website of the manufacturer. They're also in PDF format (or similar) and can be opened easily in full in a browser.

They're a massive company, and they can't justify anything by saying that they're the underdogs.

It is great business sense. It keeps from giving the opposition ammunition in their lawsuit...

It's just a shame that good business sense isn't exactly good for the user.

I had a problem with a MacBook Air (the hinge had an issue)... They asked for $800 to fix it. Never dropped, everything still worked, the hinge just would not stay up.

I'm in Canada :(

I guess Apple gives better service in countries where they dominate mindshare? They dominate the US market and presumably the UK market.

In Canada, they're still fairly strong... but I also see a ton of Surfaces everywhere.

I had a tech come over and install and he was done in like 3 minutes. I asked him how he did it and he lead me through it... so I guess now I can do it myself?

Either way, it's insanely easy.

It honestly feels like choosing a laptop today is trying to make the least bad choice.

MacBook? Piss-poor keyboards and external device support.

XPS? Poor support.

ThinkPad? Windows 10.

<Laptop> with Linux? X software is not available.

2 years OS, 3 years monthly security, 4 years quarterly security. Plus, app updates are not tied to OS updates, so vulnerabilities in the browser and other built-in apps can be more easily patched.

Would 5 years of OS updates be appreciated? Of course! But 4 years of security updates isn't so bad.

Thinness drives sales. Sacrificing reliability drives sales. It's not only Apple: look at Microsoft, for example.

I think this is a bit of a disingenuous comparison. That ThinkPad looks to be around the mid 1990s (maybe early 2000s?). Meanwhile, if you looked at a modern ThinkPad (regardless of your opinion on Lenovo as a company), the keyboard is still category-leading, the weight is almost identical to a MacBook in the same class, and the thickness likewise. Look at, say, the X1 Extreme.

Replaceable RAM and SSD. 4.06 pounds. The MBP 15" is 4.03 pounds.

Now, the keyboard definitely isn't as good as it was (RIP old keyboard, may you rest in peace), but it's definitely still very competitive.

You could get the 970 EVO as well. IIRC it's also MLC.

Except... it's not. We know that larger SSDs are faster... but if we compare a 1TB Apple SSD in the iMac Pro to a 500GB 970 EVO (around $120)... the 970 EVO is at least equal, if not faster in performance.

The 970 EVO performs noticeably better in almost all benchmark categories (latency, sequential read/write, 4K read/write) than Apple SSDs. The 970 EVO uses MLC.

The 970 EVO is $230.

Come again?