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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?

#191

Post by derekp7 »

mduerksen wrote: post #168

Any serious contender should have an answer to the MBPs extraordinary touchpad. It is key to working without a mouse, and therefore being truly mobile and comfortable at the same time. So please post at least some information for this aspect, which is one of the things the OP explicitly listed. Some examples: - Would you be able to do some solid Photoshop/Sketch/Gimp/Inkscape/Blender work with the touchpad/knob of yo…

That's why I like my Thinkpad X1 Yoga. Depending on the operation, I will use the touchpad, the trackpoint, or the touchscreen.

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

#192

Post by dotancohen »

readingnews wrote: post #157
Aperocky wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: how’s the transition trackpad wise

I moved from a MBP to a Dell XPS 13. This transition made me appreciate just how nice the trackpad on the mac is. I am no apple fanboy by any means, after my MBP died out of warranty. They wanted $700 to fix... but after some use, the XPS trackpad is a real aggravation machine. In laymen terms, it is like the MBP knows when I am typing and reduces the sensitivity of the trackpad. On the Dell, it surely seems like the…

There is some tool I've forgotten that disables the touchpad when the keyboard is in use. You can set the timeout period, I think that my sweetspot was 1.5 seconds.

If you can't find it then let me know, I'll google it.

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

#193

Post by tjpnz »

dotancohen wrote: post #186
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 compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home This is very apt. If we've all grown out of our parents' basements when we left /., then let me share my own analogy. When SSHing into different servers I used to bring my .vimrc and .bashrc along with me, because how could you live without them? Likewise for switching computers, you bring along your config files. When a new job required me to be at l…

Why the downvotes?

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

#194

Post by FpUser »

As a laptop I have HP omen 15", i7 6 Cores, 32GB Ram, nVidia 1070 GPU and 2 SSDs (500GB and 1TB). I paid $1800 Canadian Pesos for it. Has Windows and Linux Mint on it. Works like a charm. I can only imagine what would Mac with the same power cost. Sure it is not as thin as Mac but what do I care.

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

#195

Post by iamsb »

If you are mostly working from one location (home-office or office), I recommend building a PC with linux running on it. Far more powerful and much lesser cost. You can use any cheap laptop for computing on the go, preferably one which is SSD only, and it fairly lightweight.

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

#196

Post by SiVal »

tom_mellior wrote: post #116
Un1corn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils. The camera is no longer placed at the bottom of the screen in the newest model (9380), they moved it up top

Huh, weird. I used to have an XPS 15 (from 2015 or so) with the camera placed on top, but my newer one (2018) has it at the bottom. Weird and unwelcome.

It's back on top in the 2019 XPS 15

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

#197

Post by pm7 »

ants_a wrote: post #122
andreareina wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately even the T-series has gone 100% on the integrated battery now, which IME is the thing most likely to need to be fixed. Aside from that, agreed.

Swapping the integrated battery is a 5 minute job, so if you are not planning on hauling around multiple batteries, it's not a major issue. I haven't really used the hot swap capability my T440s has, even though I have multiple. Maybe if they had a separate charging dock for the batteries...

Did you try to open T470/T480 (maybe T490)? There are awful latches which are integrated in case, so quite expensive to replace.

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

#198

Post by faizshah »

mduerksen wrote: post #168

Any serious contender should have an answer to the MBPs extraordinary touchpad. It is key to working without a mouse, and therefore being truly mobile and comfortable at the same time. So please post at least some information for this aspect, which is one of the things the OP explicitly listed. Some examples: - Would you be able to do some solid Photoshop/Sketch/Gimp/Inkscape/Blender work with the touchpad/knob of yo…

Has anyone tried magic touchpad on linux? Theres a driver but I wonder if its as smooth as a MBP trackpad on linux.

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

#200

Post by frogperson »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #5

Slightly OT however for what it’s worth the new 16inch MBP with a redesigned non-butterfly keyboard is supposed to be available soon. I would suggest you hold off any laptop decision until then.

the rumors suggest that it will initially ship with the old keyboard, to get upgraded sometime in 2020.
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