Live data from Hacker News

Most expensive laptops

comparelaptopprices.com

61–70 of 111 posts

Re: Most expensive laptops

#61
post #22
post #16

I'm wondering what would be the use case for a laptop with 24TB storage.

Photographers and camera operators. One of my students remarked that his dad saves his pictures in raw format, and that they've grown much bigger in recent years.

Which is strange. You would think the father at least was done growing.

Re: Most expensive laptops

#62
These HP Fury Laptops and many others on that list are such a joke.

A somewhat capable CPU, sometimes just an integrated GPU slapped in a cheap chassis with mediocre build quality. Sold at absurd prices. My employer is "getting scammed" by HP continuously by paying for this absolute crap. The workstations aren't any better.

Nowadays the "business laptops" you get cost the same as a MacBook, have a bad, barely usable, CPU and are made out of flimsy plastic. I do not get how companies like HP keep doing this, what a total embarrassment.

Re: Most expensive laptops

#63

Expensive is relative. I'm the CTO of a small startup and we're leasing our laptops from Apple. We don't have huge budgets. I got my 16" M4 Max, 48GB, 1TB model a few months ago. Costs us 105 euro/month. That includes 3 years of extended warranty. After the lease is over (3 years), we have the option to buy the laptops at a discount typically. The new value of this thing is around 4500 euro, I think. We could have go…

Can the average person lease a laptop or just businesses?

You can almost certainly lease if you really want to but the usual benefit is more enjoyed by a company (no capital expense, only operating expense, defined, and steady).

As an individual, you can get the exact same laptop for $333.25/mo (for 12 months) right now with 3% cash back and 0% interest on the Apple Card. That's only a little over twice the monthly cost, and you're done in 12.

Sometimes you can find pay over 24 or even 36 which would make it even lower. Add in AppleCare and you're probably ahead as an individual.

Business taxes and others change this, or if you KNOW you will need it only for a year, or must have the latest and greatest every time.

(Our OP spends 3780€ over 3 years and doesn't even own it at the end; but the financial tax advantages can be huge and make it worth it, so much so that founders sometimes will make TWO companies, one to buy the capital item and lease it to the actual startup.)

Re: Most expensive laptops

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the average person lease a laptop or just businesses?

I don't think they officially support leasing to individuals directly, but it's very easy to setup a leasing/biz account with them as a business. I think any Apple store has a POC there that can help / see: https://www.apple.com/shop/finance/business-financing You can very easily setup an LLC and obtain an EIN. It's been a minute since I've setup an Apple financing account, so I don't recall what they require on the…

locally, last i checked, an LLC costs ~$20/yr ... so yeah. easy.

Re: Most expensive laptops

#65

Expensive is relative. I'm the CTO of a small startup and we're leasing our laptops from Apple. We don't have huge budgets. I got my 16" M4 Max, 48GB, 1TB model a few months ago. Costs us 105 euro/month. That includes 3 years of extended warranty. After the lease is over (3 years), we have the option to buy the laptops at a discount typically. The new value of this thing is around 4500 euro, I think. We could have go…

> 105 euro per month is a very reasonable cost from a business point of view and not at all expensive. People think nothing of spending the same on LLM tokens, or getting a lease car for their commutes (typically spending >2-3x per month). But when it comes to laptops, people suddenly become irrationally frugal. If you use your laptop to produce things and benefit from having a fast laptop in any way for that, don't be frugal like that.

What's reasonable and what is expensive. "Expensive" and "cheap" are comparative terms, so what are you comparing them with when you say "reasonable cost"?

And comparing them to cars and LLM tokens is just a straw man.

105 vs 70 is a difference of 1/3rd of the price, and if that cheaper device delivers the same performance, then 105 becomes unreasonably expensive.

We're managing 3000 devices and that would be 90000 per month to pay for fluff that doesn't deliver all that much value over the 70$ price tag.

Re: Most expensive laptops

#66
post #16

I'm wondering what would be the use case for a laptop with 24TB storage.

DJs and music producers. I have about 32TB of externally stored samples and have to curate them for my DAW laptop.

That sounds like a lot of samples. Even with 192kHz 32 bit stereo wav that's way over half a year of continuous audio.

With 96kHz 32 bit FLAC it would be around three years.

Re: Most expensive laptops

#67
post #6

It seems like a scam that gaming laptops are marketed with the headline, i.e: GeForce RTX 5090, then in the fine print, read: GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU.

Agreed, but the scam is coming from Nvidia, not the laptop manufacturers. I doubt they're even complicit - Nvidia probably forces them to agree on exact marketing phrasing before selling them GPUs.

The laptop manufacturers like marketing an RTX 5090 instead of the more accurate 5070. It's a simple reality that you can't cool 600W in a laptop case, but Nvidia selling laptop 5090 is complicit.

Re: Most expensive laptops

#68
post #61
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photographers and camera operators. One of my students remarked that his dad saves his pictures in raw format, and that they've grown much bigger in recent years.

Which is strange. You would think the father at least was done growing.

Vertically, sure...

Re: Most expensive laptops

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DJs and music producers. I have about 32TB of externally stored samples and have to curate them for my DAW laptop.

That sounds like a lot of samples. Even with 192kHz 32 bit stereo wav that's way over half a year of continuous audio. With 96kHz 32 bit FLAC it would be around three years.

Reservoirs are not useful if you can only refill the cup a few times.

Also, a bookshelf is not a library.

Re: Most expensive laptops

#70
post #44

I didn't realize Amazon was offering payment plans for laptops. I'd only ever seen that for cars and houses. Which makes me wonder, what do they do when people default on payments? Do they have a kill switch they can throw? Or do they send the repo man to repossess it while you're sleeping?

Amazon offers me payment plans on sub-$100 items.
Post reply on HN