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Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#461

Post by ska »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #174

You don't say where you are located, but unless you are in one of the few places where Dell doesn't offer on-site next business day support then XPS 13 is a great laptop. Their support is amazing: "We're not sure what is causing it, but we'll send someone to replace the whole motherboard tomorrow." "OH, your currently halfway across the world on a island? No problem, we'll be there tomorrow" I really don't understand…

> so I don't really get why they offer it.

For a long time, their failure rates were pretty high, i don't know if that's still true. The rock solid support made them competitive for big institutional buyers etc. Comparison then wasn't an apple but a thinkbook, which were way more robust.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#462

Post by ska »

eastbound wrote: post #372
klik99 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was your last Dell recent? I remember having horrible experiences with Dell support so I wouldn't buy them. But about 1.5 years ago I saw a great deal on a refurbished beefy machine I needed - and found their support was amazing when it needed some parts replaced. My guess is they did a 180 on support because they had a bad reputation. YMMV because I still hear bad experiences - they partner with local support so it…

Dell has no proven track of good support. You may say it’s an entirely different company since [too short to measure accurately] and you would just look like the rest of their campaign managers. If they truely have changed, they would have made a fuss about it, wouldn’t have they.

Dell has a proven track record of great support for a) "business" products and b) under premium support contract.

They throw in a year of that coverage on (most?) new purchases, but you can add at least 3 years.

For consumer and out-of-contract stuff, it's pretty industry standard. Their cheap stuff breaks a lot, but so does most brands.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#463

Post by smoldesu »

what-imright wrote: post #399
weberer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wow ! It took you 10 years of suffering? This sounds suspicious to me. You'd be amazed by the amount of people still using Windows in 2022, and cursing it every single day while doing so.

Windows is a terrible OS. I don't even consider it an operating system, rather just malware that imitates macOS.

Which is a real shame, since MacOS has been imitating Unix since the beginning of time. And nowadays it doesn't even do that well, seeing how you can't run most containers without a second kernel running in a sidecar VM.

It's true what they say, there is no good operating system under the sun.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#464

Post by xur17 »

shp0ngle wrote: post #340
ktpsns wrote: post #318

Thinkpad X1 (Yoga/Carbon) do great for heavy use developer laptops. I use them since the first generation, with Linux as operating system. Never had serious issues with drivers, even wacom, digitizer and auto display rotation are working nowadays, not to speak of USB-3, fingerprint sensors, etc. The whole device is a no-brainer and just works.

I have looked at Thinkpad x1 carbon, and they are so expensive! People complain about Apple Tax, but the x1 Carbon is so much more expensive for what it does.

Are you comparing based on the base price, or the "discounted" price? (I ask because Thinkpads seem to almost always have a 20 - 50% off sale - right now I believe it's 50% off).

Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#465

Post by specproc »

mszcz wrote: post #278
aerique wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to Lenovo shortages I could pick an MSI gaming laptop (GS66 Stealth) to replace my broken work laptop. It's awesome. Happily been running Guix on it for the past six months. (As expected, since it is Linux on an unsupported machine, I had to put in some time to get it running smoothly but the person after me does not have to do that anymore.)

Did a similar thing about 1.5 years ago. Bought a Lenovo Legion 15 with 4800H Ryzen and 32 GB RAM. Upgraded the drives to 1 TB NVMe and 4 TB SATA SSD. It's super fast, discreet graphics, replaceable storage and still cost less than half of a similarity configed Macbook Pro.

Also a happy Legion user, although the power brick is obscene.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#466

Post by thesuitonym »

packetlost wrote: post #383
thesuitonym wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I work for used to buy XPS's for upper management and C-levels. We stopped because every single one of them had their batteries bulge so bad they popped out the keyboards and trackpads. At first we thought it was a problem of traveling with them in standby, but then it started happening on users' desks. Other Dell laptops don't have such a problem, it has to be something with the XPS design.

It happened fairly often to the 2015-2016ish era XPSs. Afaik they fixed whatever issue was causing it

That's about the time we stopped buying them. Maybe as late as 2018, but I'm not 100% certain on that.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#467

Post by 7speter »

6 year old thinkpads aren’t any good anymore? I really like that the parts are widely available enough and cheap (or were) that you can do repairs yourself. I guess there are people doing more mission critical things around here. I’ve been really impressed by frameworks offering and their insistence to stay true to their word about repairability and upgradability

Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#468

Post by dezzadk »

Nope. Its all buggy and shitty. Dell XPS had coilwhine for several ages despite numerous complaints and other laptops with same chipsets didn't. The cause? Cheaping out on inductors. Lenovo has firmware issues I just returned my laptop which gone black screen due to some suspend/sleep state at random. This is a huge issue btw affecting more than 20-30+ models. Actually Lenovo support guy I asked for his recommendation said he got the M1 Macbook Air lol, the other one I spoke to said the only one he didn't have complaints about was their flagship P1 model. The previous Dell I tried ordering had GPU DOA. Honestly I don't give a shit about the on-site support the other guy mentioned, its just a bandaid on the problem that all laptops suck, but more often than not no matter how many times you replace a motherboard you can't fix these glaring issues! Its the QUALITY of the motherboard that sucks!

Macbooks aren't perfect either despite having better wifi, audio (and lower noise-floor). I would not choose a Macbook unless an employer gave it to me for free, but then I would without a doubt choose one. Will the logic board fail after 1 year warranty or a year after? Or have other quirks? Most likely!

Android is the same btw, ask me why I run iPhone despite being the largest android fanboi previously.. everything was terribly broken and half-baked.. The only android device I own now is my SONY X900H TV and since latest update it has started to reboot itself at random.

I'm fed up with this..

Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?

#469

Post by pengo »

I've had a good run with Dell XPS13 laptops running Linux. The only negative has been the battery swelling when it reaches the end of its life; you need to watch for this to avoid it damaging other components. Thankfully it's easy enough to replace the battery yourself.
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