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The laptop that won't die

clivethompson.medium.com

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Re: The laptop that won't die

#101

Post by MichaelRo »

>> I needed a machine that a) could run Logic Pro (the finest music-editing software available to humanity), b) had a high-resolution screen for my lousy eyesight, and c) had a 1-terabyte hard drive. It was the only machine that fit the bill.

For a time, I too fell into the trap of looking for "readily made laptop" with shiny specs, only to eventually notice that getting ripped off is an understatement. Like spot a decent CPU-specc'd machine but with with only 16 Gb RAM in 2023, want 32 Gb? Pay double!

So I took my brother's advice, which I also use for TVs and what else: buy the cheapest brand that offers the specs. All sellers are required to provide 2 years of warranty and at entry level price, worst case you can buy a brand new and better spec'd device if it breaks just after 2 years. But it usually lasts a lot more, by pure statistics: to ensure it lasts 2 years on average, it must me a lot more sturdy than that.

So what I do now? I'm buying "gaming laptops". For several things:

- They have decent specs. Relatively powerful CPU, good cooling so the solder won't melt on the motherboard if I compile a long program (happened to my nephew actually).

- I don't care about laptop's screen and weight. I'm a professional software developer which means 99.9% of the time the laptop sits on my desktop hooked to one or two 27 inch 4k monitors, along with a proper keyboard and mouse. And when it's not, it's just in my bag in transit to another desktop. When you look at LinkedIn pictures, people are being served the fairy tale of the "developer" who programs in bed or on a couch or in a coffee shop sipping a latte ... nothing but corporate bullshit.

- And first and foremost, they are UPGRADEABLE. I can take the laptop WITHOUT LOSING WARRANTY, open it and add more RAM and another SSD. Which means that the price of getting a 32 Gb of RAM machine is now about $30-50$ more and not another time the price I paid for the laptop!

Last laptop I bought was a Lenovo Legion 5, AMD Ryzen 5 6600H, 15.6" Full HD IPS 144 Hz, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 4GB GDDR6 for €500. It's not the main purpose but I don't mind if I can play CS2 at 200 FPS in addition to programming on it :P

Re: The laptop that won't die

#102

Post by hawski »

thot_experiment wrote: post #99

I have a crazy idea that would vastly improve modern laptop design. You would build in some sort of a reversible conduit interrupt device (may be lost tech but I hear rumors that it's possible) that would allow the end user to disconnect the battery. This would solve the #1 problem with laptops which is that sometimes I need to use the laptop and it's out of battery because it decided to turn itself on in my bag.

One thing that would go a long way would be the return of S3.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#103

Post by pmontra »

eigenvalue wrote: post #71

I can’t even bear to look at a low DPI screen for more than a few minutes. Anything under 150dpi just looks so awful to me at this point. Basically ruins all older laptops from my perspective.

A friend of mine works with his laptop connected to some 40+ inches 1080p monitor or probably just a TV screen, I never checked. "But you can see the pixels", I told him. "No, I don't because I have such a bad eyesight", he replied to me.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#104

Post by nirui »

This is another Thinkpad festival post? Let me just cold you down a bit by telling you that a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal.

I have this DELL Studio laptop released back in September, 2009, and it can still kick very well too if I decide to recruit it back to my "workforce". I retired it just 3~4 years ago because I got a T480. Heck, some of my code (old versions) for the same project that I'm currently working on is still on that laptop.

Before it's retirement days, it work 24/7 a day every day all year around, burned through two power supplies, sometimes 90 degrees C on the poor Intel Duo Core CPU etc. But it never dies.

So, me looking these Thinkpad posts, I never really feel quite impressed...

Re: The laptop that won't die

#105

Post by m463 »

MichaelRo wrote: post #101

>> I needed a machine that a) could run Logic Pro (the finest music-editing software available to humanity), b) had a high-resolution screen for my lousy eyesight, and c) had a 1-terabyte hard drive. It was the only machine that fit the bill. For a time, I too fell into the trap of looking for "readily made laptop" with shiny specs, only to eventually notice that getting ripped off is an understatement. Like spot a d…

> I'm buying "gaming laptops".

step 1: disable rgb.

Honestly, I wish the "lunchbox" style laptops existed.

EDIT: I remember dolch lunchbox style laptops from a long time ago (search for "dolch pac")

EDIT2: wow, search for FlexPAC III

Of course, if these were a thing, somebody would bring it to starbucks.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#106

Post by pmontra »

My ZBook 15 will be 10 years old next February. It's still the machine that pays my bills because it can be upgraded and repaired.

I replaced the keyboard myself many times after the keys worn down (arrows or one on the left.) I upgraded the RAM to its max (32 GB) and replaced all its disks (HDD and DVDRW) with SSDs. It was born with 750 GB, it's 3 TB now. Furthermore its software got better along the years. It feels faster and the fan doesn't spin on much. It was born with Windows 7 which I replaced with Ubuntu 12.04 on the very first day. It's Debian 11 now.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#107

Post by wanderingstan »

guestbest wrote: post #51

I have a MacBook 13 inch from 2011 that now plays YouTube videos daily for my daughter when she is eating and Netflix until we canceled the subscription. Still going strong with only a replaced battery and the hard drive replacing the dvd spot. I have an older 2004 Toshiba portage m200 tart also won’t die. The only thing that seems to die on these computers is the battery, which used to be a lot easier to replace.

I had a 2012 MacBook Pro that I used near daily as my non-work computer. Worked fine up to the Day earlier this year I dropped it onto a tile floor…

Re: The laptop that won't die

#110

Post by abdullahkhalids »

paulpauper wrote: post #86
snitzr wrote: post #65

The 420 with Windows 7 is my personal idea of the peak of desktop computing. 2011 was also around the peak of computing in general considering it was right before social media turned hellish psyop and smartphones became distraction / disempowerment devices.

2004 was good too, minus the malware which at the time was really bad.

Was 2004 the peak of the blogger wave?
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