I stopped buying new laptops (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#101

Post by rollcat » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

I agree with TFA. Probably the best value for the buck is a 3 year old high-end Thinkpad (T or X series); you can often find one for €250-350, as many businesses will be replacing whatever is at the end of their 3 year cycle.

I've been getting a new one roughly every 3-5 years and they definitely stay good enough for another 5. My latest score is a T495 (replacing an 11 (!) year old X230); it has 4 cores (8 threads), 24GB of memory, two NVMe drives, 4-5 hours of battery (~270 cycles), full HD 400 nits screen, and a GPU that actually handles some games. It's definitely less powerful than my M1 Mac mini, but it's good enough to the point that I'm not missing the extra horsepower all that much, even when doing "Actual Work" (it can get tad hot tho).

Also, developing software on less powerful hardware has another, indirect benefit: your software tends to suck less, because you have less cycles to waste.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#102

Post by zokier » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #40

dbg31415 wrote: post #25

I mean... you can save a few bucks on a laptop. Sure. But the real cost is the downtime. If I have an employee that I value at $100,000 a year, working 1800 hours, that's $55 / hour. Assuming their work doesn't impact anyone else, it would be silly for me to take that employee out of commission for any expense that costs less than $440 / day. Way smarter for me to buy a new laptop, which is less likely to have any is…

It's crazy that you think that actually makes sense in practice. Yeah you can put the numbers out there and it may "seem" correct but in reality that is ridiculous logic.

And that is just one factor in having pre-emptive laptop renewal cycle.

In general it makes IT happier to have more homogenous fleet, makes managing things easier, possible to have spare parts at hand etc etc.

It also removes the need of negotiations if someone "deserves"/needs new laptop or not, which might otherwise be discussion wasting the workers, IT depts, and possibly managers time.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#103

Post by kristopolous » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #64

redroyal wrote: post #37

“Laptops don’t change” Really? because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18. And with faster processors, thunderbolt 4 and USB C charging, wifi 6, better screens and lighter. I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. The…

Do you actually buy a new laptop every year? I feel that's a bit delusional. Year to year most upgrades are pretty minor. An argument can be made maybe every 3 years if you're doing some incredibly resource intense stuff.

> Year to year most upgrades are pretty minor.

Really this depends on the year. We're in a more chunked paradigm now when significant progress is happening more intermittently.

That doesn't mean buy new. Wait it out a year or two and buy used.

Some years matter. Most don't. You can exploit this.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#104

Post by jcpst » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

I have not directly bought a computer in 13 years. I’ve been a programmer for 10.

My daughter uses the one I was issued at coding bootcamp in 2013. My home recording studio uses a 2010 mac mini. My wife uses an out-of-warranty one from my work, as do I for my home dev machine. My son uses a really old cheap laptop that was laying around.

I installed SSDs and maxed out the RAM on all of them.

Maybe people are attracted to the latest shiny thing, or give up early on a computer that would go to scrap without a little TLC.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#105

Post by cj » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #64

redroyal wrote: post #37

“Laptops don’t change” Really? because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18. And with faster processors, thunderbolt 4 and USB C charging, wifi 6, better screens and lighter. I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. The…

Do you actually buy a new laptop every year? I feel that's a bit delusional. Year to year most upgrades are pretty minor. An argument can be made maybe every 3 years if you're doing some incredibly resource intense stuff.

What’s delusional is highly paid engineers not investing money in essential tools to get their work done. A new laptop is 1-2% of the annual salary of many people here.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#106

Post by mgraczyk » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

I just bought a new Macbook Pro and have been using it for ~1 week.

Even compared to my previous 2019 Macbook Pro, it's a huge step up in build quality and speed.

If you spend any time waiting for code to compile, web pages to load, or dependencies install, I'd say buy the fastest laptop you can find. I'd guess this new machine has already saved me around 20 minutes of waiting. At that rate it will pay for itself in around 6 months. If you're just using the laptop to write and browse the web, maybe it's ok to try to save some money.

Even ignoring economics, I spend like 12 hours a day staring at this thing. It's really important to me psychologically that the screen be high quality so I don't loose my mind.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#107

Post by gghffguhvc » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

pshirshov wrote: post #89

gghffguhvc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do a lot of Android and iOS app compilation (Lots of flavors/schemes of apps). So lately the upgrades in cores has meant a faster upgrade cycle for my work dev machine than for the intel based MacBook Pro era. I’m sure Apple can’t keep up this pace of the last few years though. Back in early 2000s we used distcc for distributed compilation of QT apps and reused old workstations in a server room. But with XCode and…

Why don't you buy an EPYC/Threadripper workstation then? Even best M2 laptops still can't compete with hackintosh on dated 3970x

I also have a maxed out Mac Studio when I need the extra cores and don’t need the portability. But I haven’t looked into hackintosh options for a long time. Perhaps I’ll check it out again some time. Thanks for the tip.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#108

Post by stetrain » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #83

redroyal wrote: post #37

“Laptops don’t change” Really? because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18. And with faster processors, thunderbolt 4 and USB C charging, wifi 6, better screens and lighter. I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. The…

> a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18 At what point do battery improvements become completely unnecessary? Who's out here using their laptops for 18 hours continuously? It's like an electric car that can go 2,000 miles on a single charge; YAGNI. The vast majority of people would be perfectly well-served by a smaller, lighter, less expensive laptop that cuts down the battery to just 10 hours…

18 hours advertised is usually running a locally stored video file on loop at medium to low screen brightness and some light web browsing.

My 18-hour laptop is more like 8-10 hours of real work usage, which is still fantastic compared to the 2-3 hours I would get at similar tasks 6-7 years ago.

Another big change is improvements to sleep and standby time. I can use half the battery, close the lid, and be reasonably confident that the other half will be ready and waiting the next time I need it.

EVs may actually be an apt comparison, where an EPA rating of 300 miles is more likely to give you 240 miles at highway speeds, or 150-200mi between charging stops since the optimal charge speeds fall off above a 70% charge.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#109

Post by photonerd » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #56

redroyal wrote: post #37

“Laptops don’t change” Really? because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18. And with faster processors, thunderbolt 4 and USB C charging, wifi 6, better screens and lighter. I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. The…

That is not what he means by "Laptops don't change". He means > A 2015 research paper discovered that the embodied energy of laptops is static over time. > Improvements in functionality balance the efficiency gains obtained in the manufacturing process. Battery mass, memory, and hard disk drive mass decreased per unit of functionality but showed roughly constant totals per year. > New laptops may be more energy-effic…

So… you can do more, faster, for longer, then?

Sounds like a good argument for upgrading

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#110

Post by sheepscreek » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

redroyal wrote: post #37

“Laptops don’t change” Really? because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18. And with faster processors, thunderbolt 4 and USB C charging, wifi 6, better screens and lighter. I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. The…

For OPs use-case which is mainly writing articles, reading and such - an older laptop will work fine. Especially when powered from A/C.

My MacBook Pro 2014 base model can still hold a candle to MacBook Air M1 for general use (even dev work to an extent), and that’s saying something. It’s slower, but doesn’t feel 9-years-old slow - if you know what I mean. It doesn’t drive me nuts to use it and I can be productive on it (my daily driver is a MacBook Pro M1 with 64GB RAM and I own a MacBook Air M1, so I speak from experience).

Also, we already do this for cars (used cars market is huge), so why not laptops. In fact, with cars - there are arguably stronger reasons to go with newer tech (safety, automatic cruise control) than with a newer laptop.