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I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

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Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#521

Post by solardev »

nukeman wrote: post #326
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.

Is there any way to link up which designer works with which contract manufacturer (or at least the models)? And are there any exceptions? I seem to recall Alienware stuff was made in Florida at some point.

Alienware is just owned by Dell now and seems to put out overpriced poorly built chunky machines that target gamers with too much money. Razer and Falcon NW might be better from the chassis design side, or Sager and Clevo from the OEM value side.

The Alienware laptop I had for a week or two a few years ago was the worst laptop I've ever used. Noisy and hot and expensive and poor ergonomics and just all around unimpressive, poor hardware masked by a once respected brand name.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#522

Post by Reason077 »

mwint wrote: post #517
Reason077 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I do have that, but I usually find it too slow/annoying to have to use the mouse to turn it on and off. It was so much quicker and easier when there was an F-key to instantly do it.

Maybe one day I’ll get around to making an app to map it to an F-key again, which has been on my todo list for a long time…

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#523

Post by Reason077 »

crazygringo wrote: post #468
Reason077 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotlight’s energy use shows up in Activity Monitor, though. Whatever drains my battery is invisible to Activity Monitor (but visible to apps that monitor the power management hardware itself), so presumably it must be some hardware device?

I'm no expert but I definitely can't help but wonder if it's WiFi or Bluetooth. Maybe something like radio interference making it work 50x harder? Around a decade ago I had a MacBook that was super sensitive to interference issues. Although I'm not sure if that results in a big power draw (the way it does with cell phones for example when you're constantly going in and out of service).

I can fairly confidently rule out Bluetooth, as turning it off in control Center doesn’t seem to affect the power drain. Wifi is certainly a possibility though.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#524

Post by robbintt »

alxmdev wrote: post #228
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…

> I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. They pay for themselves Yay, another top comment that steamrolls the posted article. I say don't buy the latest Macbook: instead repair, refurbish, and get true lifetime use out of these expensive devices. They're expensive to manufacture, expensive to buy, and expensive for our planet and people to j…

If you're trading it in then it's going to see more life, refurbished.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#525

Post by Llamamoe »

jwcooper wrote: post #42
rpcope1 wrote: post #12

> Most of the 160-200 million laptops sold each year are replacement purchases. The average laptop is replaced every 3 years (in business) to five years (elsewhere). 3 My 5.7 years per laptop experience is not exceptional. This is one of the many aspects I don't like about how laptops are designed today. Even with OEM desktops like my Dell Precision T1700, it's still serviceable and fixable today without a whole lot…

This is what Framework set out to do (and is pulling it off so far...I'm typing this out on my 12th gen framework). They have an entire marketplace of replacement parts you can buy, including screens. They've even got battery upgrades (increased capacity), better speakers, new screen type (matte) that you can retrofit into your existing Framework. They support upgrading from their first gen laptop (admittedly they ar…

How does it compare cost-wise to just buying normal used or even new laptops?

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#527

Post by gymbeaux »

brailsafe wrote: post #493
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.

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 i…

I was listening to a Python podcast a few months ago where they were hating on macOS/Macs and it really resonated with me. They were saying it was becoming a common sentiment to move away from Macs, and this is after their throttling issues seen in Intel macs.

Anyway they’re just opinions. I can list the reasons macOS makes my life harder, or doesn’t do things it used to do, for example display scaling on 1440p displays, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, because it works for you!

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#528

Post by gymbeaux »

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…

Yeah it’s top-tier hardware, but the software limits it. My main issue has been with Docker, which has been discussed to death here on HN in various threads.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#529

Post by vGPU »

bdavbdav wrote: post #473
rubin55 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I'm a recent owner of a Framework Laptop 13, 13th gen 1370p. I am extremely happy with it. w/regards to battery life, I'm doing ~4.5watts idling/text-editing, screen on, wifi on. That is more efficient that I got out of my 5850u I had before this. I get about 9ish hours of battery life. You do need to run things like thermald, tlp and set the lower tdp setting in the bios (max battery setting lowers the tdp afa…

We’re talking about 9 hours with a lot of faffing here. The M2 MBA hits 15-18 hours real world. The FW feels like a laptop from 7 years ago to me.

Is it running windows?

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#530

Post by Aerbil313 »

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.

Why is macOS garbage now? I am considering buying a Mac, can I reliably use Linux on it without hitting hardware related issues all the time?
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