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I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

solar.lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#511

Post by RunSet »

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…

> At what point do battery improvements become completely unnecessary?

I find when I can swap in a charged battery I care less about any given battery's life.

Similarly when the battery is soldered to the laptop I would rather it have a life longer than I am likely to ever use just in case.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#512

Post by jacknews »

simonblack wrote: post #503
jacknews wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A portable home dir works if you have the same os and software on all the laptops. When I bought a macbook the first time (ostensibly to develop for iphone), I hated the UI, so ran linux in a virtualbox as my main os. I think that would work really well from an external drive - but an sdcard is way too slow, it should be on a usb c nvme.

but an sdcard is way too slow, it should be on a usb c nvme. Hmm, yes, that would probably be better and faster. And not only that, it could be possible to include a grub boot partition as well. I wonder if that would easily be doable, or would be just another can of worms.

I have tried this, and also using e-sata, though not as a daily driver, and it does work, but as you say it can be a bit wormy to setup; bios vs gpt partition table, efi vs legacy bios support, disk numbers can change depending what other disks are on the machine, etc.

One other problem is that boot-from-usb is usually not enabled by default so you have to fiddle with bios boot order every time.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#513

Post by fomine3 »

kelnos wrote: post #403
scq wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asus and Acer are Taiwanese, not Chinese, and none of them actually manufacture their own laptops in house, that is outsourced to manufacturing partners. Nearly all laptops on the market, regardless of brand, are manufactured by 6 Taiwanese companies: Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Inventec, Pegatron, and Foxconn. And yes, that includes Framework, who use Compal as their manufacturing partner.

To be fair, Wistron actually used to be the manufacturing division of Acer, until it was spun out ~25 years ago. My first job out of college was at a US-based networking hardware company, and I was really surprised to learn that, even though most of the manufacturing & assembly is done in China, most of the electronics OEMs & ODMs are actually Taiwanese.

Also Pegatron was spun out from Asus.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#514

Post by simonblack »

jacknews wrote: post #512
simonblack wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but an sdcard is way too slow, it should be on a usb c nvme. Hmm, yes, that would probably be better and faster. And not only that, it could be possible to include a grub boot partition as well. I wonder if that would easily be doable, or would be just another can of worms.

I have tried this, and also using e-sata, though not as a daily driver, and it does work, but as you say it can be a bit wormy to setup; bios vs gpt partition table, efi vs legacy bios support, disk numbers can change depending what other disks are on the machine, etc. One other problem is that boot-from-usb is usually not enabled by default so you have to fiddle with bios boot order every time.

One other problem is that boot-from-usb is usually not enabled by default so you have to fiddle with bios boot order every time.

No, leave the normal boot order as-is. To boot from the USB, just hit the 'boot-menu' key on boot-up. The 'boot-menu' key varies according to brand of computer. In a Lenovo, it's F12, in an ASUS, IIRC, it's ESC. Just select the correct boot-device and away you go. It's the same method as when you install the OS on the computer from a USB.)

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#515

Post by jacknews »

simonblack wrote: post #514
jacknews wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried this, and also using e-sata, though not as a daily driver, and it does work, but as you say it can be a bit wormy to setup; bios vs gpt partition table, efi vs legacy bios support, disk numbers can change depending what other disks are on the machine, etc. One other problem is that boot-from-usb is usually not enabled by default so you have to fiddle with bios boot order every time.

One other problem is that boot-from-usb is usually not enabled by default so you have to fiddle with bios boot order every time. No, leave the normal boot order as-is. To boot from the USB, just hit the 'boot-menu' key on boot-up. The 'boot-menu' key varies according to brand of computer. In a Lenovo, it's F12, in an ASUS, IIRC, it's ESC. Just select the correct boot-device and away you go. It's the same method as wh…

"The 'boot-menu' key varies according to brand of computer."

Right I have a hard time remembering the bios keys, let alone the boot menu ones too, but yes this is better on foreign machines, and if you can't or don't want to permanently set the boot order.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#516

Post by sundvor »

gymbeaux wrote: post #483
sundvor wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm so glad I paid top dollar for the 8GB version of the OG X1 Carbon back in 2012 - and got the i7 with the biggest NVME, a 256gb. I also have a newer Nano for work, but prefer the keyboard of the old. If I had picked the 4GB model then, it would have been pretty useless today. Today I wouldn't buy a personal laptop with less than 32GB of memory. The X1 Nano was hard locked at 16GB, and I guess I didn't quite a…

The nano looks cool but to me there’s no point if I can’t get 32GB of RAM.

Yep, 16GB today is truly the 4GB of 2012.

(It's super lightweight though, to the point where it's impossible to know if I've packed the laptop in my bag by weight alone. Hopefully it'll see an upgrade soon.)

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#517

Post by mwint »

Reason077 wrote: post #430
lathiat wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch your backlight level, which auto adjusts to the room light level. "When comparing battery life, remember that screen brightness makes a huge difference! On an M1 MacBook Air sitting idle on the KDE desktop, you will get around 7 hours of runtime at 100% brightness, and 23 hours of runtime at the minimum (not zero) brightness. Even keyboard brightness matters! Those numbers are with the keyboard backlight turned…

Yes, I should have mentioned I always have keyboard backlight turned off [1] I’ve suspected something to do with screen brightness in the past also. System log was often full of messages from the brightness adjustment/monitoring daemon, which raised my suspicions, but I think it might just have been normal behaviour at the time. However the mystery power draw seems to happen independent of screen backlight setting. i…

Keyboard brightness - you can put the control into control center and then it’s two clicks to get to a slider for it.

Not awesome, but for the relatively rare times I want to change it manually, it’s been acceptable.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#518

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Gigachad wrote: post #505
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I do wonder how considering the iphone battery on iFixit costs $64AUD which doesn't even include the adhesive to reapply the screen. If you got one of ebay or similar, it's not a new battery, it's one that's been salvaged from a stolen phone and likely preworn.

Not an iphone, Lg G8s thinQ was suprisingly easy to remove the battery cover, just need a blade and a hair dryer. The replacement battery is not original, could not actually find genuine part on sale. But it is a new battery, and they don't need to cost $50

So it was £15 for battery and £5 for adhesive

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#519

Post by bdavbdav »

ornornor wrote: post #389
noirbot wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A cursory search shows that various testing websites have measured battery life to be 7–8h on the framework which is decent I’d think? I have no firsthand experience but 3h in comparison seems low. Also, web browsing can be intensive if you use js heavy sites like linked in or even the GitHub homepage (when not logged in)

We’re seeing other thin&lights get double that nowadays.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#520

Post by solardev »

prmph wrote: post #502
scq wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asus and Acer are Taiwanese, not Chinese, and none of them actually manufacture their own laptops in house, that is outsourced to manufacturing partners. Nearly all laptops on the market, regardless of brand, are manufactured by 6 Taiwanese companies: Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Inventec, Pegatron, and Foxconn. And yes, that includes Framework, who use Compal as their manufacturing partner.

This response does not actually address the thrust of my comment. How is Apple able to put out very high quality hardware, even as it uses the same few factories that others use? It is the customers of these factories that provide the designs and dictate the quality of manufacturing and tolerances that they want, no?

Isn't that because (modern Apple Silicon) Macs are vertically integrated? The Wintel stack is a Frankenstein and nobody has particularly good quality. Dell, HP, Alienware, Razer, Samsung, Sony etc. are generally all crap these days too. The Lenovo X series is quite a bit better than most American lines, but still not particularly impressive in terms of build. Microsoft's Surface Book line looks well designed but had a bunch of heating and power problems. Even my Intel Mac frequently has problems. My M1 one, on the other hand, is amazing, so far ahead of every other computer I've ever had.

On the Wintel side, I've had better luck with small biz machines (ThinkPad, not Lenovo, or Latitude) plus upgrades in home warranty, but honestly those break down too. They're just easier to fix.

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