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Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

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Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#61

Post by joelgrus »

Until yesterday I was using a Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 running Ubuntu 22.04. It was an awful combination (microphone didn't work, nubbin stopped working, touchpad had to be replaced, keyboard had dodgy keys, battery life was bad, Chrome wouldn't start unless you added some mystery command-line options, etc, etc, etc.)

Yesterday I got a new ASUS Zenbook running Windows 11 (and I added Ubuntu in WSL2). So far so good, it seems like I can do my coding stuff on the linux subsystem but then have desktop apps and peripherals on the windows side that just work. This is the first time I've had my personal computer be a Windows machine in like 20 years, so we'll see how it goes.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#62

Post by Apreche »

Personal life: iPad Pro 3rd Gen. Work: MacBook Air M2

For work I was using the Surface Pro. However, they changed it so that removing the keyboard forces the UI to enter tablet mode. This happens even when using the computer with an external monitor and Mouse Without Borders. That means I have to leave the keyboard attached and can't actually save my desk space. If I'm going to sacrifice the desk space anyway I might as well get the vastly superior performance of the M2, and the useful trackpad.

If someone made a laptop that runs Windows, has a removable keyboard, allows me to have manual control of when tablet mode is enabled, and had performance comparable to the M2, I would buy two of those. One for work, one for home.

Side note. Prior to this M2 I hadn't used OSX/MacOS in over a decade. At that time I hated it. There were many aspects I couldn't tolerate. Using it now there are still a few frustrations and annoyances, but I can live with them. It's come a long way. If not for that, I probably would have sucked it up and continued with the Surface Pro.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#64

Post by ruune »

HP Elitebook x360 1030 G2 (maybe another order of words) i5 7-something 8GB Aluminium case

I needed a laptop, specifically a convertible for note taking by hand too. Went on ebay, could decide between a Thinkpad and the HP. Actually wanted the Thinkpad, but wasn't available on that day, so I went with the HP

I run both Windows for school and Linux for private stuff on it. Aside from some annoying things like freezes when converting, it works. Definitely not the machine of my dreams and HP annoys me a little bit, but overall decent device for what I need. Also cost only like 300€ or something. Can't understand how people carry their 2k MacBooks around in their backpack without worrying constantly

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#65

Post by sgtnoodle »

My primary work computer is a Thinkpad X1 extreme from 2020. I use it when working from home, as if it were a desktop. I ordered it while I was hyper-irritable from high dose corticosteroids, and to its credit, there's nothing about it that irritates me. It replaced a Razer Stealth from 2017 that was plagued with bios and hardware bugs.

I have another work laptop that I carry around when in the office, a Thinkpad P15s from the IT department. Its touchpad's middle click emulation is frustrating, but is otherwise fine. The touchpad is also polished shiny from my fingers, despite very infrequent use.

Both ThinkPads are currently running Ubuntu 20.04. It works decently well as long as hybrid graphics are disabled.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#66

Post by jzb »

I have an HP EliteBook 850 G8 that I didn't choose, my employer chose it for me. I actually asked for a ThinkPad but they were out and I just got a HP. It's... OK? The keyboard isn't horrible, the touchpad is OK, it has a reasonably decent number of ports and overall it's an OK machine.

For personal use, I have two laptops: A Surface Laptop Studio and an MSI GS66 gaming laptop. So far I really like the Surface's form factor and the ability to work with it as a tablet or laptop. Touchscreen, keyboard and touchpad are all great, and it's fine as a personal computer -- I went for the top of the line model but in retrospect I could've gotten by with a lower-end model. It's not quite powerful enough for a good gaming machine and more powerful than I need for everything else. Not a big fan of their "dock" or whatever, it's overpriced and doesn't even have video output.

The MSI gaming machine is great as long as I don't have to use its keyboard. I have Linux and Windows on it, mostly use Linux and run Stable Diffusion on it quite happily. Takes two NVMe drives and is easy to upgrade.

The keyboard is atrocious though. Mostly this isn't a problem because I use it connected to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. But when I've tried typing on it directly I loathe the action of the keys and the spacing of the keyboard. I think they went for a "cool gamer" layout instead of something functional. If this was going to be a machine I typed on directly with any frequency I'd have sent it back. Have run Pop_OS! and Fedora on it with no issues.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#69

Post by martin_a »

Dell Latitude 5410 at work, Lenovo T460 at home, both with Windows 10.

I've tried using Linux Mate for a year at home (no hardware problems with that), but I didn't like the occasional switching for (better) gaming performance and the Creative Suite applications. Single boot is more comfortable.

Thinking about switching to a MacBook Pro at home, but I can buy 10 used Thinkpads (one every three years or so) for the price of a MBP, so I'm not sure whether I could get more value out of an MBP... Also not sure that I want to buy into the Apple ecosystem. Kind of "happy" with my self-hosted NextCloud, Android + f-Droid etc...

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