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I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

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Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#491

Post by Delk »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #485
Delk wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I swapped the HDD for an SSD and just threw Linux Mint on here - I disable the swap file so that it doesn't hammer the drive. If that's for the longevity of the drive, I don't think that's really even necessary on a personal device, based on my limited experience. Unless you're aiming for a lifespan measured in decades or would expect to be swapping heavily if you had swap. I have a basic consumer-grade Samsung 850…

> Unless you're aiming for a lifespan measured in decades or would expect to be swapping heavily if you had swap. This one. My VERTEX3 is running fine, though it's not TLC, of course. And with auto-leveling all you really need (if you care that much) is to.. increase the swap size, so there would be less evictions from the swap => less writes. But anyway, even modern TLC drives would be fine for a decade if this is j…

> And with auto-leveling all you really need (if you care that much) is to.. increase the swap size, so there would be less evictions from the swap => less writes.

How does that work out? To where would data be evicted from swap?

Increased swap size might of course help with wear leveling if that means there's just more unallocated space on the device.

> But anyway, even modern TLC drives would be fine for a decade if this is just a machine used for a couple of hours everyday. You need like a constant 3MB/s 24/7 to even be close for their rated TBW.

Mine hasn't even been just a couple of hours every day. Sure, during a regular work week it might not be used a whole lot, but I've used it for entire days e.g. when I was doing my master's full-time.

Again, not a whole lot of memory intensive work, but not intentionally conservative for a general-purpose laptop either. Running just about any kind of a game often means some of the memory of the umpteen browser processes get swapped out.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#492

Post by Vaslo »

For what it’s worth - I bought one of the “controversial” Alienware laptops in 2015. It won’t play the latest games but it still runs beautifully to everything I need including coding and Excel work.

While a few of these brands are a bit pricey, I’ve bought family members other brands like Dell and Acer laptops, and they’ve got a few good years out at most before they become clunky and close, even with a fresh operating system reinstall.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#493

Post by brailsafe »

gymbeaux wrote: post #481
brailsafe wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I feel bad for most people who ended up with a 4gb macbook, and Apple should feel some shame for continuing to sell them for so long, not terribly unlike the Vista debacle. 4gb was an awful choice already in 2014, and since 16gb was (I think) the max and still kinda mid, that was the obvious choice; 8GB would have still been fine for an average user. I have no idea if 64gb is the obvious choice now, but the…

They finally catered to devs in the last few years but it’s already too late for many of us because macOS is garbage now. The ARM transition makes it worse. I use Linux now.

Very much disagree, there's not a chance in hell I'd choose linux over macos and imo—with a few exceptions—it's better than ever, and gradually becoming a more approachable platform to build things for.

Although I'm fine with linux for server, when something breaks it can be a massive pain in the ass to track down why, until you've spent years day-in-day-out troubleshooting particular software to the point you know immediately what the issue is. This just doesn't happen at all for me personally on macOS in everyday use.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#494

Post by brailsafe »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #490
gymbeaux wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They finally catered to devs in the last few years but it’s already too late for many of us because macOS is garbage now. The ARM transition makes it worse. I use Linux now.

> The ARM transition makes it worse. No idea what you mean. The M1 MacBook Air is the best machine Apple has produced for years and finally convinced me to update my old personal laptop. The battery life is insane despite the performance being better than any of the high end Windows laptop I have used for work during the past decade. Plus it was correctly priced at launch which is very rare for Apple which usually ex…

Ya I'm not sure where people are coming up with this extreme opinion. If they go to linux, maybe they're just trying to follow a path that's been restricted through layers of system protection or something. One of my only gripes with new macbook pros is just that the ram feels insultingly expensive, and to go past 32gb you have to upgrade the CPU (all in it's over $1000 to get there).

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#495

Post by justsomehnguy »

Delk wrote: post #491
justsomehnguy wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you're aiming for a lifespan measured in decades or would expect to be swapping heavily if you had swap. This one. My VERTEX3 is running fine, though it's not TLC, of course. And with auto-leveling all you really need (if you care that much) is to.. increase the swap size, so there would be less evictions from the swap => less writes. But anyway, even modern TLC drives would be fine for a decade if this is j…

> And with auto-leveling all you really need (if you care that much) is to.. increase the swap size, so there would be less evictions from the swap => less writes. How does that work out? To where would data be evicted from swap? Increased swap size might of course help with wear leveling if that means there's just more unallocated space on the device. > But anyway, even modern TLC drives would be fine for a decade i…

> To where would data be evicted from swap?

This is actually an interesting question, but this is quite obvious if you know how it works.

Consider this scenario:

Some app loads data (it goes to RAM), sometime later this data is moved to the swap. Now the app is trying to access it, so there are two ways:

there is no free RAM (eg other apps locked the physical memory), so the access is going through the swap

there are free memory blocks so the OS copies the accessed data to the RAM, app is working fast... but till the data is modified, there is no need to mark the data in the swap as a stale, so until it happens the OS can wipe the RAM and redirect the app to the swap.

Now consider another app is pressured to moved to the swap at the same time:

If there is not enough swap space, then the data of the first app, which has [a valid, synced] data both in the RAM and the swap is just left with with the data in the RAM and the swap space is freed to accomodate the data of the second app. If turntables (sic) the process would repeat, just with the both apps trading places.

But if there is enough swap space available, the second app data is just written to the spare swap blocks, and both apps' data could be read from the swap at any time.

Quite simple.

> Increased swap size might of course help with wear leveling if that means there's just more unallocated space on the device.

This is a thing too, ofc, but the main point is having less 'overwrites' per usable space.

> Mine hasn't even been just a couple of hours every day.

It's even 'worse' than that. I've seen a server with 850/860 Evos and LUKS (so the worst case: cheap drives and all writes are new), even after the 3 years they were only 50% of 'ssd health'.

TLC is the worst thing happened to SSDs as a technology, but people are forgetting what 3MB/s * 3600 * 24 is whooping 259GB a day, and you need to write ~259GB a day for 3 years to totally deplete the [official] write endurance (YssdMV).

Wanna hear about 5 WD10JUCT?

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#496

Post by ClumsyPilot »

tmtvl wrote: post #434
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately soldered RAM consumes less energy and space.

And it sells more systems when the user needs to upgrade for more RAM.

And they operate trade-in programms spesifically to destroy second hand market

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#497

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

> They would rather you replace your entire computer when your screen cracks.

The fact that a company dictates things to the customer is proof in itaelf that the market is not competitive

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#498

Post by brailsafe »

shubb wrote: post #449
brailsafe wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I feel bad for most people who ended up with a 4gb macbook, and Apple should feel some shame for continuing to sell them for so long, not terribly unlike the Vista debacle. 4gb was an awful choice already in 2014, and since 16gb was (I think) the max and still kinda mid, that was the obvious choice; 8GB would have still been fine for an average user. I have no idea if 64gb is the obvious choice now, but the…

It's about price detection. If you offer several versions of a product to discover the maximum reach consumer is willing to pay, then the cheapest versions need to be meaningfully worse to drive those who can pay to the me expensive versions.

True, but at a certain point you're just selling a shitty product with no longevity and justifying with behavioral manipulation for profit. Same with the 16gb iPad or meager iCloud drive storage tiers. They were fine I guess when they first came out, whatever, but the legitimacy of that tier shouldn't have lasted more than a small number of years

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#499

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Gigachad wrote: post #363
gtirloni wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often replace phones because the battery starts holding less charge and I find it annoying to charge all the time. I tried a battery replacement service once and didn't like the result on my sealed and hard to open by design phone.

Get the battery replaced at an official repair location rather than a middle of the food court business. Apple has a whole setup of gear that will get a perfect result pretty much every time. And they will just give you a new phone if they break it.

I replaced it myself, perfectly happy with results. Cost me $20.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#500

Post by foo42 »

NovaDudely wrote: post #391
LeFantome wrote: post #341

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 no…

Compute power has never been an issue for me, but I generally try to max out the RAM as much as my budget allows. This is why I still have a 2010 Macbook that is more than fine. Started with 4GB and was barely usable for heavier even when it came out, but dropping 16GB into and it has been smooth sailing for over a decade now. That said my daily runner is now T420 from (2011-ish) that came with 6GB of RAM that is in…

I have a t420 in my drawer I've been considering doing this with. Years ago before it was old I used to dual boot it with mint and the power management wasn't great. How's your experience been? mind you that was with original spinning drive. what spec SSD did you install? sorry for all the questions.
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