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We Need a Better PC

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Re: We Need a Better PC

#121

Post by ekianjo »

habosa wrote: post #113

Not disagreeing with the premise, but just want to plug a machine I am very happy with. I was a lifetime mac owner (since OS 9) and my 2010 Macbook Pro finally broke down this year. It made it that long because I doubled the RAM, replaced the battery, and replaced the HDD with a hybrid drive. Finally the battery puffed up and exploded. I brought it to the Apple Store and they were beyond useless. The new MBPs are not…

For the Asus Zenbook UX305LA, how flexible is it ? Can you open and change the battery by yourself, for example ?

You mentioned the battery life is not great, can you share some numbers on Ubuntu ? How much time do you get on a full charge?

Re: We Need a Better PC

#122

Post by jordanpg »

ekianjo wrote: post #114
knights123 wrote: post #90

It seems like you should really just buy a MacBook Pro. Sure the software isn't perfect, but it's an order of magnitude closer to perfect than Windows has been lately. You buy it, boot it up, and it works wonderfully. Of course the one day out of the year that it doesn't you go rage comment on how it sucks and it scares Windows users away from Mac, but the rest of the time you'd never consider going back to a typical…

For developers OSX will almost always be worse than a Linux distro, if only because of package management.

Maybe, but only marginally so. In an age of cheap virtual environments of many flavors, this objection seems minor to me.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#123

Post by jolux »

ekianjo wrote: post #114
knights123 wrote: post #90

It seems like you should really just buy a MacBook Pro. Sure the software isn't perfect, but it's an order of magnitude closer to perfect than Windows has been lately. You buy it, boot it up, and it works wonderfully. Of course the one day out of the year that it doesn't you go rage comment on how it sucks and it scares Windows users away from Mac, but the rest of the time you'd never consider going back to a typical…

For developers OSX will almost always be worse than a Linux distro, if only because of package management.

This is certainly not true. You can basically get any package with Homebrew that you can on Linux, (assuming it's on GitHub, you can get all of them) in fact there's even a port of it to Linux for people that love it on Mac.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#125

Post by jmspring »

Post didn't address - buy apple hardware, run something other than OS X on it.

Seems simple. Sure you are locked to apple hardware issues/resolutions, but Apple today is what the Thinkpad was for years (pre-Lenovo), hardware mostly just works.

Insert arguments of customization, configurability, etc... Most people don't care. Lenovo doesn't deliver as well as IBM did on the Thinkpad line. What's the alternative besides Apple?

Re: We Need a Better PC

#126

Post by ekianjo »

jolux wrote: post #123
ekianjo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For developers OSX will almost always be worse than a Linux distro, if only because of package management.

This is certainly not true. You can basically get any package with Homebrew that you can on Linux, (assuming it's on GitHub, you can get all of them) in fact there's even a port of it to Linux for people that love it on Mac.

Homebrew is certainly not as good as a regular package manager you get in Linux. I'm not sure how you can argue otherwise.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#127

Post by jolux »

ekianjo wrote: post #126
jolux wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly not true. You can basically get any package with Homebrew that you can on Linux, (assuming it's on GitHub, you can get all of them) in fact there's even a port of it to Linux for people that love it on Mac.

Homebrew is certainly not as good as a regular package manager you get in Linux. I'm not sure how you can argue otherwise.

How is it not as good? I'm genuinely curious because I've used apt on debian derivatives and rpm on red hat and I prefer brew to both of them.

My favorite is actually Nix/Guix but I haven't bothered to set it up on my daily driver.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#128

Post by ekianjo »

wangchow wrote: post #69

Honestly I swear by my Surface Pro 3. Maybe learn to hack some device drivers and get Ubuntu running (better) on a device like this. Some people already have it working: http://www.geek.com/microsoft/linux-users-rejoice-heres-ubun... In my opinion it's the most well-rounded device out there.

Surface are great but you are severely limited in screen size. It's great for portability, but if you need a little more screen surface it's not a good choice anymore.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#129

Post by habosa »

ekianjo wrote: post #121
habosa wrote: post #113

Not disagreeing with the premise, but just want to plug a machine I am very happy with. I was a lifetime mac owner (since OS 9) and my 2010 Macbook Pro finally broke down this year. It made it that long because I doubled the RAM, replaced the battery, and replaced the HDD with a hybrid drive. Finally the battery puffed up and exploded. I brought it to the Apple Store and they were beyond useless. The new MBPs are not…

For the Asus Zenbook UX305LA, how flexible is it ? Can you open and change the battery by yourself, for example ? You mentioned the battery life is not great, can you share some numbers on Ubuntu ? How much time do you get on a full charge?

It's hard to say since I mostly use it for heavy-drain stuff. Streaming movies on Netflix, building apps in Android Studio, etc. Always have Chrome running with a ton of tabs.

I'd say 6h of use in Ubuntu. The reviews I read say that the battery is better using it with Windows 10 (closer to 10h) but I just can't get my work done in Windows.

Overall the battery is not disappointing. Not sure if I can change the battery by myself but for $750 I don't intend to invest much in repairs. I'll just ride it until it dies.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#130

Post by matthewwiese »

I'm quite happy with my 11" Macbook from 2012, she's quite the lil devil still. I stay on Yosemite and my machine is strong enough for me. If the author requires power, he/she could build a decent Xeon desktop and keep it at home, then just remote into it for intensive development. I keep a backup Core 2 Duo at my appt for work and play and it's still packing enough of a punch to do most of my work (only bottleneck is latency).

To be honest, sometimes I even think my MBA is unnecessary and contemplate a cheap Asus Eee PC netbook because I live in the command line (and consequently don't need to load up heavy IDEs). However, I understand if that approach is too much work for most people who just want a simple solution without all the fuss, but where's the fun in that?

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