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I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

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Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#341

Post by LeFantome »

For a lot if what I do, the CPU on an older laptop is just fine. So, I too use really old laptops.

That said, I am upgrading laptops that sold with 2 - 4 GB of RAM to 16 GB, or at least 8 GB. Often I am replacing on old HDD ( maybe as slow as 5400 RPM ) with a faster SSD. That SSD also juices the battery life. So, what I am using is a lot nicer than what the original owner had to deal with.

Many laptops today will not age as well as, in ten years, that soldered on 8 GB is really going to be a bummer.

I use Linux a fair bit which makes a difference. Linux is fantastic on older hardware and the software itself is totally up to date. I use old Mac laptops a fair bit. The version of MacOS they support would be unusable as would the applications that would still run on it. The same is becoming true of Windows.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#342

Post by distortedsignal »

Reason077 wrote: post #339
sb8244 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. My MacBook air easily could go 6+ hours and it feels like the pro goes 2-3. Same workload.

I have an M1 MacBook Air and use an app called CoconutBattery to monitor power usage. What I’ve noticed is that while the laptop is usually super efficient (say, 2.5-4W while web browsing giving 8+ hours battery life), occasionally the power draw climbs up to 6, 7, 8W or more with no obvious explanation, draining the battery in 3 or 4 hours. Activity Monitor will show no apps using unusual energy yet the power is goi…

On my (2020 intel) MBP, SSD IO is VERY power hungry. Usually the culprit is Firefox, but my company is on the MS office suite, so sometimes it’s Outlook or Teams. It’s frustrating.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#343

Post by watersb »

Reason077 wrote: post #339
sb8244 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. My MacBook air easily could go 6+ hours and it feels like the pro goes 2-3. Same workload.

I have an M1 MacBook Air and use an app called CoconutBattery to monitor power usage. What I’ve noticed is that while the laptop is usually super efficient (say, 2.5-4W while web browsing giving 8+ hours battery life), occasionally the power draw climbs up to 6, 7, 8W or more with no obvious explanation, draining the battery in 3 or 4 hours. Activity Monitor will show no apps using unusual energy yet the power is goi…

Metadata indexing for Spotlight?

I've had very stubborn runs of the md* indexer (not at laptop can't recall name -- mdimport?) decide that yes, this coffee shop is a great place to crank it up.

A similar one is a large initial indexing by the Dropbox app. I've had my M1 Air on the desktop Thunderbolt dock for the past month so it's gotten way past that initialization stage.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#344

Post by pjmlp »

tmtvl wrote: post #262
Casteil wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, mobility? M1 / M2 Pro MBPs pack a serious punch... and they don't have to sacrifice battery life to do so - they smoke virtually all other laptops in terms of battery life.

Mobility is such an antifeature. Taking your work home with you is something you really shouldn't have to do. Worse even, taking your computer which potentially holds sensitive data with you could result in it getting stolen, at which point you've got a big problem on your hands. Laptops for work make no sense unless you're a field researcher.

My office is everywhere there is an Internet connection.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#346

Post by pjmlp »

go_prodev wrote: post #45
Casteil wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, mobility? M1 / M2 Pro MBPs pack a serious punch... and they don't have to sacrifice battery life to do so - they smoke virtually all other laptops in terms of battery life.

Battery life gets mentioned quite often with laptops, but is it still really that important? I run my business from an X1 Carbon, but it's more about portability than battery life. Trains, planes, Starbucks all have power available so it's constantly plugged in and I can't remember the last time I used it on battery for more than an hour.

In Europe, nope, only some trains have power available. Never saw it on planes, and I fly regularly.

Even on trains, one must be lucky and even if lucky, it is usually one socket per pair of seats.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#347

Post by kylec »

turdprincess wrote: post #328
eBombzor wrote: post #306

> Laptops don’t change > New laptops may be more energy-efficient per computational power, but these gains are offset by more computational power Guess this was written before the M1 :) I also felt the Zen 2 Laptop chips marked a huge step forward on the Win/Linux side at that time: generationally more power efficient than the best laptop chips from Intel, same core/thread count as the desktop equivalents, and cheap…

Anecdotal, but my M1 MacBook Pro doesn’t have amazing battery life. The other day I went to a coffee shop with 60% charge and only made it about 2.5 hours doing iOS development.

Do you have a 13" MacBook Pro with M1 or a 14+" MacBook Pro with M1 Pro/Max? If the latter, it has decent battery life, but it's nowhere near as efficient as the regular M1 MacBook Pro. If it's the former, I guess I'm surprised, I own one (I'm writing this comment on one) and I've loved how the battery seems to just last forever on mine.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#348

Post by willcipriano »

JCharante wrote: post #338
turdprincess wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but my M1 MacBook Pro doesn’t have amazing battery life. The other day I went to a coffee shop with 60% charge and only made it about 2.5 hours doing iOS development.

I’ve gone 4 work days without charging my M1 MBP

I've never gotten a full day

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#349

Post by noirbot »

chadash wrote: post #319
akmittal wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just upgraded RAM(4 -> 12 GB) and HDD to SSD of a 8 years old laptop and it became a lot more responsive. Laptops now a days are not upgradable and companies claim they are doing so to build lighter laptops but framework is proving all of them wrong

> and companies claim they are doing so to build lighter laptops A framework 13" is 15.9mm thick and weighs 2.9 lbs. A macbook air M1 is 16.1mm thick and weights 2.8 lbs. So it's pretty darn close. I'm sure that thinner and lighter laptops exist, but yeah, the framework is pretty thin. And at a certain point, it stops mattering. Being thinner wouldn't really provide much utility at this point. The fact is that repair…

The tradeoff is that the Framework's battery life is garbage. I had laptops a decade ago with 2x the battery life. I'm lucky to get 3 hours of battery doing web browsing, and standby/hibernate on the Intel processor in it is so bad that it'll fully discharge in less than 12 hours doing literally nothing.

I really want to like it, but my Framework is literally a worse user experience than my old 2016 Macbook Air and it's probably 3x the price at this point. Playing even a lightweight game makes the fans ramp to a frustratingly loud level and I essentially have to keep it plugged in at all times.

It's also hard to express how oddly problematic having a 4x3 display in 2023 is. Almost literally nothing expects that.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#350

Post by kylec »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #317
jrib wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base m1 macbook air sells for 800 bucks routinely. It's a great value in my opinion. I agree it's the best machine I have ever owned.

If you don’t mind wearing out your ssd with the insane swap use. You really need 16+ gb of ram on macs, otherwise you’re damaging your hardware

That depends on what you're doing. If you're running a bunch of bloated garbage like Discord and Slack and whatever then yeah, you'll need a lot of memory. If you're running mostly native apps you might be surprised how much you can run with 8GB. I would still recommend 16GB to people for future headroom, but 8GB is usable.
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