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Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

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Re: Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

#51

Post by scarmig »

X220, replacing the stock HDD with a SDD. Clean install of Arch.

Points to note: when it first came out, I had to come up with a patch of tp smapi to get it to work. Not sure if that's still the case. You'll get inferior battery life in Linux, even worse than in Windows 7. I'm typically getting 5-6 hours on wireless doing not particularly intense stuff. Also some oddities with the special ThinkPad keys that's simply a matter of not caring enough to fix. Touchpad a bit funky.

It's a solid alternative, though I think I mostly chose it for a superior GUI, not the system itself.

Re: Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

#53

Post by jarek »

sgt wrote: post #42
blinkingled wrote: post #22

I actually switched from 2010 Air to X220 after the 2011 Airs came out. Needed a Windows machine and did not like where Lion was going - with 2011 MBA I would have no choice but to run Lion and Windows with half baked support (AHCI, other minor annoyances) The X220 fits the bill - 1) Display is good - it's IPS panel with good viewing angles and great brightness (Make sure you opt for Premium HD display) 2) Battery li…

I did a search for X220 and found this: http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x220... Are you serious? This doesn't look like anything that may compete with Macbook Air in my book. Not to seem too negative, but the overall design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year 2001. (Typical for PC laptop designers).

Do you buy your laptops primarily to look at them, or to use them?

Re: Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

#54

Post by sid0 »

mcritz wrote: post #39
sid0 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too windowsey? What does that even mean? Does it mean you don't actually have to choose between working AHCI and working sleep in Windows?

It means they're commodity hardware. They're made of plastic. They're poorly designed, cheaply made, and the general goal is to be almost as good as a MacBook Air. Sometimes second place isn't good enough.

It means they're commodity hardware. They're made of plastic. They're poorly designed, cheaply made

And yet they're much better to run anything that isn't Mac OS X. They allow you to boot Linux or Windows from USB. They don't disable AHCI just because and force you to apply a sleep-breaking MBR hack if you wanted to use it. An Apple laptop is the worst possible laptop you could get if you wanted to run Windows. Trust me, I have one and I really hate it. This is the last Apple laptop I'm ever going to own.

If all other laptops are too Windowsey, then give me a Windowsey laptop over an Apple one any day.

edit: awww, seems like I hurt the delicate sentiments of a poor widdle Apple fanboy.

Re: Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

#56

Post by Argorak »

blinkingled wrote: post #22

I actually switched from 2010 Air to X220 after the 2011 Airs came out. Needed a Windows machine and did not like where Lion was going - with 2011 MBA I would have no choice but to run Lion and Windows with half baked support (AHCI, other minor annoyances) The X220 fits the bill - 1) Display is good - it's IPS panel with good viewing angles and great brightness (Make sure you opt for Premium HD display) 2) Battery li…

The VM/RAM-Problem: We use VMs heavily and have one employee that is really happy with a MacBook AIR with 4GB RAM. On the other hand, we heavily restrict our VMs, so its more usual than not that each only has 512 MB RAM.

Re: Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

#57

Post by natch »

Macbook Pro 13" for $999, then add whatever SSD you're willing to spring for.

This way you get

* the unibody

* the magsafe

* the battery of the MBP

* the flexibility to easily use OSX if you ever need to (without doing the sketchy hackintosh approach)

* the resale value of the MBP

And you get a lot more machine for the money than the MBA. The one cost you have to accept is the weight. But that's giving you a very sturdy machine, something you might value.

The video performance on this generation of 13" MBP is the one weak spot, but it will suffice if you don't need to be on the bleeding edge.

Re: Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

#58

Post by zobzu »

I have a Sony Vaio Z21.

So alright alright, it's not, cheap. It's not in the same ball park as the MBA on the performance side (it annihilates it)

But!

- it's slightly lighter than the MBA

- its just as thin and compact

- it has a gorgeous screen that also doesnt reflects everything instead of showing you content

- it runs linux just fine

- you can plug a lightpeak graphic card if you like

- the SSD's are extremely, extremely fast (750mbyte/s sequential writes, and over the gigbyte/s sequential reads. And no, its not mbit/s) - standard voltage i7

- bunch of options if you like that sort of stuff (fingerprint reader, 3G card, fullhd screen, etc)

- battery sheet if you like 10-12H battery life for a slightly heavier lappy (long courier flights anyone?)

-actual HDMI out, VGA out, ethernet port, no need to carry adapters.

-it still looks pretty cool

Re: Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

#59

Post by zobzu »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #16

I just looked at the link to Samsung 9 series and the googled for the Sony Viao Z series. The Samsung 9 in the link is 1600EUR. I checked the German Apple site. The top end Air is 1499EUR. The low end 13" with a 128GB SSD like in the link is 1249EUR. I looked up the Viao Z series on the Sony German site and this is a bit confusing. It says that it starts at 1754EUR which seems like a really good deal. But at the bott…

Dunno how you got your prices but the MBA starts at around 1000E and ends at around 2000+EUR The Z starts at around 1700 and ends at around 4500EUR Not sure about the samsung.

Of course, you don't get the same between a MBA and a Z.

The MBA is a pretty nice machine in fact, if you're an OSX user and don't need the best-of-the-best (aka the Z, so far, its so much faster than the MBA it's not even funny)

Re: Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?

#60

Post by hexley »

eitland wrote: post #26
cageface wrote: post #24

I haven't found any non-Apple laptop with a trackpad that's even close. Everything I've tried on the Windows/Linux side has been bad enough to be a deal-breaker.

True. However on Linux and Windows I don't need to use the touchpad as often.

Or OS X if you learn the shortcuts.
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