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Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

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Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#81

Post by TeMPOraL »

alpaca128 wrote: post #43
rcarmo wrote: post #22

I have been using a Rev1 Surface Laptop as a development machine for over a year - here are my notes after six months: - https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2019/05/11/2030 Full disclosure: I work at Microsoft. I also still use Macs (and will keep using them regardless-for instance, I use a 5K iMac a lot of the time I work remotely) and have kept a Mac-centric blog for sixteen years, so I think I can be pretty straightfo…

The problem with Surface devices is that they're irrepairable once something goes wrong. I had issues with my Surface Pro and Microsoft support basically said "too bad, buy a new one". That's why I went for a T-series Thinkpad and am still using it. It's not as lightweight or slim but in exchange more powerful than equally priced ultrabooks/convertibles and easy to repair and upgrade. That's a trade-off I'm happy to…

How bad is it really? They do have to issue warranties at least in Europe, right?

I'm thinking about shelling out for a Surface Pro 6, but I don't want to buy a potential cat in the bag.

(We have some mandatory legal protections over at Poland/EU that apply to on-line sales, but I'm not sure if they apply if you buy a product as a business. Need to check up on that.)

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#83

Post by Maro »

I had similar problems. I bought a Razer Blade Stealth 13, but I cannot recommend it. There are hardware bugs, the biggest one being, 1 out of 3 times if you plug/unplug the power, it goes to sleep. Happens on both Win and Linux. It's well known and there's no fix from Razer.

My takeaway: other laptops also have bugs; I'm back to using a MBP & I hope the next-gen MBPs are good again.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#84

Post by kokey »

ypcx wrote: post #11

First, bad apples do happen in both Mac and Windows worlds. I've worked primarily on Macbooks over the last 10 years (while Windows on laptop was still in diapers) and they never failed on me. Now that Windows 10 Pro is getting really good, and the Macs are getting obliterated by horrid design decisions, I see myself switching to Windows. I personally prefer Windows laptops with UHD/QHD screens because I can put much…

Try running something like EasyRes on your Mac, you can then switch to the actual resolution of the monitor. It’s somewhat insane how much stuff fits into the screen of my 13” MacBook.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#86

Post by mkl »

pkalinowski wrote: post #17

I'm looking for a replacement, too. Had Macbook Pro 2015 and 2018. I plan to settle on Windows 10 Pro + Ubuntu WSL. I don't need top specs (i5 and 16GB RAM are enough for me), but build quality (touchpad, screen, robustness) and weight are most important. Playing with Surface Pro 6 in shop I kinda like it, but I can't find XPS or X1 to lay my hands on. How is the build quality between Surface Pro, XPS and X1? Which o…

Maybe look at Surface Book too? Bigger screen, discrete graphics option, two batteries, bigger touchpad. I have one for work. Not sure what the Surface Pro 6 is like physically, but Surface Book 2 beats Surface Pro 4 at almost everything.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#87

Post by arc_of_descent »

I'm using a ThinkPad E480, with 2 monitors attached. Lubuntu 19.10. It's my main dev machine running Postgres, VirtualBox, Elixir, Node, etc. Battery is still amazing after 4 months.

I've always wanted to buy a MacBook Pro, mostly for music production, but the ThinkPad is a fine beast by itself. For music, I use Studio One 4 on Win 10.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#88

Post by oarsinsync »

mherrmann wrote: post #48

I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…

I love this analogy, and it's remarkable at how much sense it makes when I look at the choices I make in my day to day life generally.

Hotel-chic is very clean, very minimal, very sparse. Just enough to have the necessary conveniences that appeal to everyone, with absolutely nothing personalised for any individual.

As of about 10 years ago, I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mobile) experience away from the defaults as much as possible, as I was fed up of having to document and then re-deploy all of my customisations every time I had to reinstall for whatever reason, which was far too frequent for my liking.

At the same time, I'd been moving home roughly every year for the 7 years prior already, and had grown weary of all my physical effects. I started disposing of more and more of my things (inadvertently marie kondo-ing my life before it was a "thing" I was aware of) and decreasing the personalisation of my physical space down more and more.

I now essentially live a hotel-esque lifestyle, with most of my personal customisations fitting in a small corner of the room. Added bonus of this is with the frequent travel I need to do for work, I can take one or two items with me, and the hotel room instantly feels like home.

I guess this explains why I'm relatively happy as an Apple user. The lack of customisation doesn't bother me, as I don't customise anything outside of the bare minimums (wallpaper and privacy settings, thats about it).

It also explains how I'm able to use Windows 10 at work without killing anyone, while my colleagues are all using tiling window managers under Linux and looking at me like I'm crazy for not wanting to spend a week tweaking and customising my environment....

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#89

Post by jamesfmilne »

I like the look of the Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2, but I'd want to know if it is saddled with NVIDIA Optimus GPU switching, and whether that works in CentOS 7.7 or CentOS 8.0 with the NVIDIA drivers. Anyone had any luck with that?

It looks like NVIDIA's drivers support PRIME for sharing between integrated and discrete GPUs these days.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#90

Post by soylentgraham »

amcrouch wrote: post #68

ThinkPads every day of the week. I have a T430 that I have owned for about 6 years and a new P52 which is my daily work machine. Both running Linux with zero issues. I liked the comment below describing Hotels (Mac) Vs home (ThinkPads). It's true that if you can be bothered to tweak and install some stuff then you end up with something of your own. Your way. Never used Macs as old enough to remember the "no one got s…

"Never used macs" maybe you should try them. I'm still using a 2013 MBP, only issue is that I had to finally replace the battery about a year ago. MacBooks used to be good. Can you still buy a 6 year old thinkpad?
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