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Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

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Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#51

Post by knotty66 »

vincentkriek wrote: post #23
xbeta wrote: post #10

After using few Xiaomi products, no thanks. If I want a Linux dev box, there are other options too.

What other options would you recommend?

For a cheap, lightweight development laptop I use a Toshiba Chromebook 2 (2015) with a 240GB SSD fitted. Build quality is not up to Apple standards but is still decent.

Screen is much, much better than Macbook Air screen though. Battery life is very good. I use Arch Linux and With a bit of tweaking, everything works (bluetooth, wifi, keyboard backlight, suspend/resume etc).

I can also dual boot into ChromeOS which is quite nice in it's own right. Lovely machine for the money ...

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#52

Post by mtgx »

anilgulecha wrote: post #4

If the RAM is user-upgradable, this will make for an excellent dev machine. Given it's a chinese laptop, it will surely not be locked, so Ubuntu will run well as well.

The $540 version uses Core M3, which basically has 15% lower performance than the latest iPad, so I doubt it's going to be too great of a dev machine (just because the iPad seems fast with 1 app per screen, doesn't mean the same performance will be enough for 20 tabs and 5 other programs running at the same time):

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-hea...

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#53

Post by digestives »

aoloe wrote: post #24
puranjay wrote: post #8

People shit on Xiaomi here but even imitation requires some level of artistry and finesse. This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.

What are you misssing in a Dell XPS 13?

I have a Samsung Series 9 15" from 2011 - well built, stylish, decent specs and still serving me well!

https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&q=samsung+serie...

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#54

Post by comboy »

aoloe wrote: post #24
puranjay wrote: post #8

People shit on Xiaomi here but even imitation requires some level of artistry and finesse. This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.

What are you misssing in a Dell XPS 13?

I have both air and xps 13 and to me they are not even comparable. Yes, thin bezel looks cool at the first glance but that's about it. Instead of metal under your hand you have this weird something, keyboard works much worse, they did not even make reasonable handle to open the laptop like there is in macbook air. Also the power supply is chunky and you cannot fold it nicely.

Don't get me wrong, it's a really good laptop and I've chosen it over so many others on the market. I would probably still choose it for my linux laptop (lenovo x1 is neat but I'm done with lenovo with all the stuff they've done lately). It just looks poorly to me in a direct comparison.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#55

Post by Trundle »

josteink wrote: post #35
puranjay wrote: post #8

People shit on Xiaomi here but even imitation requires some level of artistry and finesse. This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.

> This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet. Clearly it's not a cheap product, but the Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 is razor thin, high powered, well built, and very good looking. Maybe I'm missing something?

An Air clone to me would have a metal body as that's a pretty defining characteristic.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#56

Post by z92 »

There are laptops which are thinner, faster or has better graphics than MacBooks. But as much as I have checked, every one of them falls flat on battery run time comparison.

If there was anything that comes close to Macbook's 12 hours run time, I would have seriously considered switching.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#57

Post by pcr0 »

im_dario wrote: post #41

I don't trust their battery run-times. I was looking for a laptop and finally settled down for a Lenovo Thinkpad 13. Thinkpad's battery is 42 Wh with a wifi surfing run-time of almost 7 hours [0], although it being sold as a 11 hours run-time. It hasn't a dedicated graphics chip. Xiaomi's battery is 40 Wh and it sports dedicated graphics. Macbook Air's battery is 58 Wh and it has integrated graphics, lasting around 1…

It uses Windows though, which should support Optimus and allow it to switch to integrated graphics.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#58

Post by sievebrain »

Fuxy wrote: post #50
puranjay wrote: post #8

People shit on Xiaomi here but even imitation requires some level of artistry and finesse. This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.

Acer/Lenovo/Dell can't risk getting sued by Apple. Xiaomi is a Chinese company they don't care since if they ever do get sued the Chinese court will always side with the Chinese company. The again if the clone works just as well as the original I don't really care but this would have been a really good chance to copy and improve.

Lenovo is also a Chinese company, no?

And Acer is Taiwanese.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#59

Post by scotu »

josteink wrote: post #35
puranjay wrote: post #8

People shit on Xiaomi here but even imitation requires some level of artistry and finesse. This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.

> This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet. Clearly it's not a cheap product, but the Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 is razor thin, high powered, well built, and very good looking. Maybe I'm missing something?

I cannot trust Lenovo being competent at what they do after superfish, I wonder how can any of the readers of hacker news still think of buying from them... (this doesn't mean that competitors are competent or anything, but being caught like they were undermines my basic trust threshold)

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#60

Post by emp_zealoth »

xorcist wrote: post #33
personjerry wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience nvidia has always been much easier to install than amd (fglrx).

That there even worse alternatives isn't helping. Avoid third party binary modules. Sure, they might work right now but you'll have no guarantees it'll work in the future. You also risk interactions with other subsystems (sleep etc.). It would be like Windows, where your printer might prevent you from upgrading your operating system. If you intend to run Linux on the thing, buy things that Linux supports out of the b…

Go nvidia all the way. Ive got GT460 and it still gets up-to-date drivers (look how old that thing is!)
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