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Speaking of longevity, given the performance of m1 and absence of any moving parts except keyboard — go with Macbook Air M1 and just run Ubuntu there. Would be still more performant than most of intel laptops in 2000$ range.
> go with Macbook Air M1 and just run Ubuntu there. You can’t really do that, yet. Asahi is making good strides so that you can run Linux on the M1, but it’s not there yet for a daily driver.
I'm happy with both my second hand HP Elitebook 840 G6 and the ThinkPad carbon X1 Gen 9 I have for work. I think I like the HP one slightly better: function keys can be set to trigger either F1-F12 or to the actions drawn on them without the Fn key (and the Fn key swaps this). If set to the actions by default, F1-F12 are still automatically used when pressing a modifier key, and no action is on F2, which means I almo…
Do you have any thermal and/or noise problems with the HP? I've had several HPs over the years, including ZBooks, and every single one got very hot and blasts the fans all the feckin time :/ They were all company machines, but it's put me off ever buying one myself.
The 840 G3 was similar in this respect (that's how I discovered the Elitebook, the lab had an agreement with HP at the time), except I had to turn off the secondary HDD I chose to take when tweaking the configuration with hdparm -Y.
Though the ZBook seems more focused on performance than the Elitebook, so maybe the Elitebook will not cut it if you expect similar performance.
The ThinkPad actually spins its fans more easily than the HP I think, but it is also more powerful. The HP's noise when the fan do spin is also less annoying than the ThinkPad, it's a soft blow.
serious question: what is the practical difference between MacOS and Linux? Do you have a habit of modifying your wifi drivers and recompiling the source? I am big on open source but have never felt my life was improved chasing dependencies vs just brew install ... I have never had a satisfactory battery + sleep/standby experience on a linux machine, vs a Mac I can leave unplugged for weeks and it wakes back up where…
My 2018 MBP would lose battery on sleep too. I don't even know what shutdown does because the force trackpad still keeps clicking while "off".
A few years ago I would have said ThinkPads but I think there are better options available now. At the end of last year I wanted to replace my T470, and wanted to upgrade to something with a more powerful (not U-series) CPU. The ThinkPad option that fitted my requirements was on back order for months, so I looked around... The ASUS ROG line of gaming laptops had exactly what I wanted, although they look a bit garish,…
The Realtek WiFi device is a problem with hp laptops too. Works but needs a cold reboot after the hibernate wakes up.
Are you saying the intel WiFi chip is pin compatible with the Realtek? That’s an amazing find.
serious question: what is the practical difference between MacOS and Linux? Do you have a habit of modifying your wifi drivers and recompiling the source? I am big on open source but have never felt my life was improved chasing dependencies vs just brew install ... I have never had a satisfactory battery + sleep/standby experience on a linux machine, vs a Mac I can leave unplugged for weeks and it wakes back up where…
I've been running Ubuntu on an LG Gram 17. Huge screen (true 17"), 18 hour battery and weighs Les than 4 lbs. It also has a metal chassis. Only device that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader.
These are contradicting conditions. (Unless maybe on an M1?)
If you do use the CPU then battery life will drop even for the best laptops to a few hours max, while the fans will spin like crazy emulating a helicopter taking off. All the above mentioned laptops will behave like that.
At my last place I had a Thinkpad P1 which is supposedly for the above mentioned purpose, and still I suffered from heating and noise, and the battery life was abysmal (2 hours of Zoom call would deplete it, for example).
Although I just noticed that you didn't mention portability - in which case buy an older Thinkpad T4xx/5xx which had the dual battery setup, and buy some additional batteries too, and you can swap them on the fly. Sadly AFAIK Lenovo no longer makes these laptops...
Battery life tips: 1. get the simplest screen (FHD instead of 4K, 90Hz...). 2. don't get an integrated 3D card.
I am doing C development, with some Javascript thrown in for the client, quite comfortably on a laptop from 2008 (Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, 320GB spinning rust HDD).
I use WindowMaker, Firefox, Xterm, Vim, Git, Clang and GCC. from login Window to my first xterm opened in the project directory is around 500ms. My build (C only) is currently around 700ms.
My editing is lag-free only as long as Vim's 'cul' option is turned off.
These threads always surprise me with the number of people who buy new thinkpads. Nothing wrong with them I'm sure (well, maybe a few things wrong with them), I just never even considered it as an option. I recently picked up an old 2005-ish (edit: 2011 actually) x220 for a few hundred quid off ebay which seems to be running nicely. Specs aren't anything to shout about but it works fine for what it is. Durability wis…
> I recently picked up an old 2005-ish x220 for a few hundred quid off ebay which seems to be running nicely. The x220 launched in 2011. It's an old machine, but not that old. That said, I ran one myself for years and highly recommend it if you need a barebones, durable laptop for under 200ish.