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The best laptop ever made

marco.org

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Re: The best laptop ever made

#121

Post by nullc »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #56

For me it's the Lenovo T61 with a 14.4" 4:3 display (or any of the older 4:3 IBMs). Yes, compared to modern laptops it is heavy, slow, bulky and has a shitty display but: i) I can replace every single piece of it with a simple screwdriver and ii) 4:3 is still the best aspect ratio for reading and developing. If I am doing the latter I prefer a screen with a lot of height. A 4:3 aspect ratio gives me a tall screen whi…

I was really surprised to see a macbook named there. I've used that model and hated it -- though I suppose not more than other modern laptops.

In my view there is no comparison to the x61 and x61-tablet with the higher resolution screen. I continued using mine until I couldn't get a replacement screen and backlight dimming and bubbling made the screen unusable.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#122

Post by isoskeles »

sarreph wrote: post #58

I knew what laptop Marco would be talking about before I clicked on the link. Perhaps that says something about Marco, but I have the feeling it's almost certainly about how widely-lauded the old rMBP was, and still clearly is. Apple got so many things right with it, because all the design choices made sense , for exactly the reasons Marco gives. The design choices being made at the top of Apple no longer make sense.…

I thought "DongleGate" refers to that incident at PyCon in 2013 where someone made a bad joke about "dongles" within earshot of a woman who became offended. She took a photo of them, posted it on social media, and got them fired, and then she got fired for getting them fired.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#123

Post by fapjacks »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #56

For me it's the Lenovo T61 with a 14.4" 4:3 display (or any of the older 4:3 IBMs). Yes, compared to modern laptops it is heavy, slow, bulky and has a shitty display but: i) I can replace every single piece of it with a simple screwdriver and ii) 4:3 is still the best aspect ratio for reading and developing. If I am doing the latter I prefer a screen with a lot of height. A 4:3 aspect ratio gives me a tall screen whi…

I'm a big Thinkpad person, too. Had and loved the W530. Now I have and love the P50.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#124

Post by sitharus »

petercooper wrote: post #63

I feel like the odd one out. I buy a new MBP every 12-18 months (have owned all Intel generations), use my MBP for hours every day, and think the latest is by far the best. Being able to charge on either side is a big deal for me as I move around a lot, plus being able to use 30W USB-C power packs and third party chargers (e.g. Anker) without fear of fire.. a massive boon for me, especially as my phone and Nintendo S…

You're not, there's even a relevant XKCD for this: https://www.xkcd.com/1172/

For one subset of users (of which I'm a part) I'd need one dongle - USB-C to DisplayPort - because everything else I need for my software development job is wireless. I'd occasionally need an SD Card reader for my camera, but I'm more likely to use my iPad Pro's dongle.

For others, they've invested in a lot of attached hardware that would need dongles to attach. It's a real pain for them.

Nobody's right or wrong, and to please everyone they'd need to maintain two models of MacBook Pro and that's not Apple's way. They'll either be successful, or like the Mac Pro they'll have to back out and redesign. They might lose users along the way but I'm sure they're aware of the risk. After all the play-it-safe PC laptop brands are nowhere near as successful.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#125

Post by fapjacks »

vvanders wrote: post #115
yoodenvranx wrote: post #56

For me it's the Lenovo T61 with a 14.4" 4:3 display (or any of the older 4:3 IBMs). Yes, compared to modern laptops it is heavy, slow, bulky and has a shitty display but: i) I can replace every single piece of it with a simple screwdriver and ii) 4:3 is still the best aspect ratio for reading and developing. If I am doing the latter I prefer a screen with a lot of height. A 4:3 aspect ratio gives me a tall screen whi…

Those things were also an effing tank, practically indestructible.

This can't be understated, truly.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#126

Post by mythbuster2001 »

petercooper wrote: post #63

I feel like the odd one out. I buy a new MBP every 12-18 months (have owned all Intel generations), use my MBP for hours every day, and think the latest is by far the best. Being able to charge on either side is a big deal for me as I move around a lot, plus being able to use 30W USB-C power packs and third party chargers (e.g. Anker) without fear of fire.. a massive boon for me, especially as my phone and Nintendo S…

Wait till your Macbook dies and you try to pull some data out of the soldered on SSD. I find dongles annoying, lack of magsafe irritating but the soldered on SSD is what really puts me off.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#127

Post by mrtksn »

femto113 wrote: post #107
mrtksn wrote: post #44

I don't know, I kind of think that the best ever is Macbook Air 2015. I would also argue that Macbook Air was the first laptop ever since it was the first truly portable - not just transportable personal computer ever. For the first time a notebook was light, performant and run long enough on battery to be actually usable out of your office or home. Yep, the screen is not retina but it's also significantly lighter, t…

I tried to like the Air but the aluminum bezel around the screen is a non-starter for me. If there has to be something around the screen it better fade into the background (like the MBP's black glass or a typical desktop monitor's black plastic).

Maybe, but it also looks more humble the way it is. Less serious, let's say.

It's shape also allows more casual usage, there's something magical about being able to pick a laptop with one hand and swing it.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#128

Post by mbakke »

RachelF wrote: post #88
vermaden wrote: post #86

Nope. The best laptop is the one with 7 row keyboard, like ThinkPad T420. While Macbooks have nice aluminium body and are very light and thin they are far from being 'the best'.

and Thinkpads also didn't have a glossy, reflective screen.

I'm typing this from a ThinkPad T420, but was expecting the x200 or (actually) the Titanium Macbook Pro 12" ("TiBook").

Give me a modern-day laptop with 4:3 aspect ratio or even 1:1 and a matte screen and I'll be yours for life. I probably should have gone for the Chromebook Pixel while it was available.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#129

Post by dpkonofa »

petercooper wrote: post #63

I feel like the odd one out. I buy a new MBP every 12-18 months (have owned all Intel generations), use my MBP for hours every day, and think the latest is by far the best. Being able to charge on either side is a big deal for me as I move around a lot, plus being able to use 30W USB-C power packs and third party chargers (e.g. Anker) without fear of fire.. a massive boon for me, especially as my phone and Nintendo S…

You're not the odd one out, at least not to me. I also consider the newest MBP to be the best one, though I will admit that I really, really loved the one Marco's talking about in the OP.

For me, the Touch Bar is awesome and is super useful to me when doing video and audio editing and BetterTouchTool basically makes it useful in absolutely any app I want. The touchpad is almost laughably huge but, to me, it's way more useful than the smaller one, and I'm a big fan of the keyboard. It's a little loud but it has a very solid feel and I never feel like I miss a key accidentally because of the keyboard. It's very, very consistent for me and I really like that.

Overall, I just think it's a better computer for my case. I have 1 dongle that has USB, VGA, HDMI, and ethernet and I've used it twice since I got the laptop.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#130

Post by dpkonofa »

trb8 wrote: post #111
petercooper wrote: post #63

I feel like the odd one out. I buy a new MBP every 12-18 months (have owned all Intel generations), use my MBP for hours every day, and think the latest is by far the best. Being able to charge on either side is a big deal for me as I move around a lot, plus being able to use 30W USB-C power packs and third party chargers (e.g. Anker) without fear of fire.. a massive boon for me, especially as my phone and Nintendo S…

> I feel like the odd one out. You're not. I have the late 2016 model. It replaced my ~2013-2014 model and I consider it an improvement. The Touch Bar / touch-id is a (mostly irrelevant) improvement over a row of keys that I never used. I think my computer would be worse if it dedicated space to a SD card slot reader. I've never used it. I wouldn't mind a USB-A port. But I have only wanted to plug something in twice…

On the USB-A port thing, what reason does anyone have for plugging their phone into their computer anymore, though? Everything about iOS and macOS now supports wireless sync and file transfer. I can't think of a single thing that I'd even need that for...
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