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Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

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Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#381

Post by jrmg »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #361
cameldrv wrote: post #306

Regarding the non upgradable battery, one thing a lot of people don’t know is that you can charge your MacBook with a USB power bank. The typical phone power bank only puts out 10W, but this is usually enough to maintain the internal charge while you use it on an Air, and to at least very significantly extend the lifetime on the Pro. This has come in handy for me on a long flight where I unexpectedly didn’t have powe…

15W at 3A 5V actually is the maximum over usb-a. USB-PD powerbanks are a thing these days but it's useful in a pinch.

This is actually enough to power the laptop and trickle charge! I’ve had a M1 Pro and now have an M2 Air plugged into my weirdo USB-C monitor that only provides 15W power(!), and unless I’m heavily compiling all day (like change-compile-change trial-and-error), the laptop does slowly charge. Even on the heavy use days its never actually run all the way down.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#382

Post by smoldesu »

Hippocrates wrote: post #366

Am I crazy? The author writes > It's not as insane of a downgrade as it sounds. And then goes on to describe assembling a Frankenstein laptop that has specs and ergonomics that pale in comparison to the MacBook's. This sounds like a truly awful computer to me, but if your only goal is to spend as little as possible and get user-serviceability then I guess this is one way to go.

On the bright side, he did avoid spending $200 for the 16gb RAM upgrade.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#383

Post by matwood »

unxdfa wrote: post #377
ndiddy wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Lenovo is basically two different companies for their Thinkpad and non-Thinkpad machines. If you have a Thinkpad and have a warranty issue, they'll overnight you a shipping box with an overnight label. I had an issue with mine that needed a motherboard replacement and I was only without my laptop for 3 days. Meanwhile, I had a similar issue with a non-Thinkpad laptop and they emailed me a UPS ground…

Spot on. Comparing to Apple (I run both Lenovo and apple kit) I’ve lost two bits of hardware with apple for multiple days on repairs in the UK. A friend just got told that there’s a 2 month turnaround on his custom M1 MBP 16 which has a logic board problem. That scared the shit out of me enough to throw the money in on a Lenovo T14 gen 3 with NBD on site repairs. If I sell my apple kit I can afford to buy another ide…

It's odd to me that Apple has never offered a 24h turnaround (or cross ship) higher tier support package. This was a hold up for businesses using Apple machines for a long time. I guess enough employees started requesting Apple machines eventually getting businesses to offer them anyway.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#384

Post by bedast »

_justinfunk wrote: post #374
bedast wrote: post #356

> for contrast, a little bit of dust can break an Apple butterfly keyboard I might be wrong, but weren't these discontinued prior to Apple Silicon macbooks being released? If so, why is it noted if he's talking about an M1 Macbook Air?

You know why.

Elaborate.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#385

Post by gen220 »

djtriptych wrote: post #303
gen220 wrote: post #289

I was a ThinkPad maximalist in my personal computing life for the last 5ish years. This year, I needed to interview for jobs without having access to a "work" laptop for the task (i.e. an overspecced MacBook Pro). Faced with the prospects of subjecting my ThinkPad/vim machine to video calls, I more or less immediately decided to fork over the money for an M2 MacBook Air. Unfortunately for my identity as a person inve…

It's such a consistent experience I don't think you even need the YMMV qualifier. Source: I also own an M2 Air and have been blown away by it's performance in "day to day ops" as you call it. It is by a wide margin the best laptop I've ever owned (previous 6-7 laptops were all personal/work macbook pros)

I mainly attached the qualifier to account for the cost of one's "inability to repair when [the MacBook] eventually degrades".

For some people, meditating on this reality causes them a great deal of consternation. As somebody who consternates on that topic myself, I empathize with it deeply.

For people possessing a will more galvanized than my own, no improvement in day to day ops is worth the pain of working on a platform like this. I don't think my experience speaks to them.

For people like you and I, who are willing to seriously consider the trade-offs, and for whom the up-front money isn't an immediate concern, I agree it's almost a no-brainer.

I think it speaks equal volumes on Apple's ability to produce world-class hardware at scale, and on software vendors' collective inabilities or unwillingness to produce quality videoconferencing software that works gracefully on older technology.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#386

Post by yamtaddle »

browningstreet wrote: post #329

Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…

Every single laptop I owned before switching to Apple was a huge piece of shit, in hindsight—like, probably shouldn't have been saleable, just a straight-up lemon by design.

... except an IBM (yes, it's that long ago) Thinkpad that was super-underpowered even for the time. Though, it did have the ~2-3hr actual-in-practice battery life that was typical of laptops at the time, no matter what they promised, so like all the rest the battery was really just for hopping from one outlet to the next (I don't know if Apple laptops were like that at the time, but I do know that no subsequent laptop let me feel like I could leave my power brick behind when getting up from my desk until I got a Macbook)

If I ever go back to PC-land, it'll be to an underpowered device from a business-oriented line. Worked once, so, maybe it'll work again...

> Two years ago I bought a Lenovo gaming laptop for my son.

This especially is a big part of your problem. Discrete graphics card in a laptop = 2x the problems—and that holds even for Apple (in the Intel days, anyway). Gaming-marketed on top of that? Add another 1x for 3x the rate of trouble over baseline. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#387

Post by gspencley »

I have to use an M1 for work with 32GB of RAM. While I have no doubt that the hardware is quite powerful, it is the slowest FEELING machine that I have ever used in my life.

Every personal device of mine runs Linux on much older / weaker x86 hardware; one of those systems dual boots Windows 10, and they all provide a snappier user experience than just spinning up a web browser on the M1 that I use for work.

I have no idea why this is, and when I complained about it we ran benchmarks and non-scientific tests (i.e: let's see how long it takes to compile something) to compare my system with my coworkers to rule out something defective - they had the exact same numbers.

I suspect it's software related. The difference between Linux and OS X is night and day, but even Windows 10 on a ~5 year-old desktop (can't remember the CPU off hand but it's an Intel) feels much snappier.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#388

Post by Reason077 »

smoldesu wrote: post #341
seszett wrote: post #26

I'm still not sure why. The section doesn't really answer the actual question. It's cheaper, good enough, replacement parts are cheap, and I understand that argument; I myself use alternatively some kind of very old Thinkpad (that I don't remember the specs of), a 2011 Macbook Air, or a recent Macbook M1 and for what I do with them (little more than running Firefox and ssh) the only difference that matters in practic…

I like Macbook hardware, but I left because MacOS is only getting worse. It's not hard to sympathize with others who feel the same. Nevermind the downward spiral of design trends and wasted screen space, Apple has made no efforts to improve MacOS as a compatible dev platform. UNIX certification means very little when the most popular open source software is broken out-of-box on your OS, and your hardware vendor activ…

It's not made by Apple, but MoltenVK is free, open source, actively developed/maintained and works well on M1/M2 hardware. It's used by many commercial game ports to Mac/iOS devices.

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#389

Post by bsder »

Gigachad wrote: post #229
jeroenhd wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple intentionally used terrible cooling, letting the CPU passively heat up rather than spinning up the fans because they didn't want or couldn't figure out how to deal with fan noise. The chassis got hot because Apple decided that was the better alternative. Intel's approach of "just send more power through the chip to make it faster" is definitely worse than Apple's own chips, but Apple has neutered their laptop C…

I had a 2019 i5 MacBook and the fans would be blasting and the thing still roasting hot. It’s incredible how just one year later they released something revolutionary

I'll scream about Apple's bad practices any day of the week, but I used to go out of my way to configure my Macbook Pro's with max RAM, upgraded SSD, and an i5 specifically because that meant my fans were never audible.

Yeah, everything i7 was a thermal problem, but that wasn't unique to Apple. And the i9 systems were laughable. However, with an i5, I never had noticable thermal issues.

If you're having thermal issues with an i5, something specific to your computer is broken.

Now, my daily driver is a Lenovo Carbon X1 7th Gen. I'm quite happy, but I did the same thing. Big RAM, big SSD, and a reasonable i5. I never hear a fan.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#390

Post by krasin »

abrouwers wrote: post #362
browningstreet wrote: post #329

Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…

I bought a framework just for this sort of peace. I really long for apple hardware, but given the price, I'd be afraid of breaking things.

+1 to Framework. I self-repaired my kid's laptop twice (spills; once I had to swap the keyboard, and another time - motherboard), and it's being straightforward to fix.
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