X1 Carbons are mOdErN Apple-inspired slimslop. If a T-series or thiccy X-series had those kind of battery issues I'd be worried.
Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
71–80 of 215 posts
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#72> I'd prefer a "low-end" workstation with 32GB memory, but because of the price point I can only afford a 16GB non-workstation one. I don't do gaming any more but I still prefer a good integrated video card.
I started buying 4x4 mini PCs. They're exactly what you describe. For $600 I got an 8 core AMD Ryzen 7 8745H with 96GB of RAM from Minisforum. The graphics aren't half bad and the overall system has been really good. It's even got better thermal performance than the Intel 4x4 I had previously and generally runs 10C cooler for the same workloads.
If you don't absolutely need a "backpack portable" computer I can only highly recommend them.
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#73Fuck yes. Our 2022 Latitude 5420s have the worst lithium ever -- and Dell is actually offering to get you good batteries for twice the price, as an 'extended service life battery'. This, and literally all of them have paint chipping off the chassis at the slightest provocation. I have like 50 at work. edit: we have now a mix of MacBook Airs/Pros (most of workforce), Frameworks (specialized tech roles running Linux an…
I work in the refurb division of an ewaste recycling company. Those silver Dell laptops are impossible to keep looking good. A coworker once peeled off all the silver and sold a few in black. He said that someone told him that those models never came in black, and had a laugh after explaining that all of them are, because it's under the silver.
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Power management on Macbooks is unbeatable in my experience, both Windows and Linux have really serious issues dealing with sleep and low power modes. I've been dealing with this recently. Linux won't hibernate if you have Secure Boot enabled, even if your swap is encrypted. So I either have to leave my laptop plugged in all the time or remember to shut it down before unplugging it so it doesn't completely drain it…
this just sounds absolutely horrendous. I could not operate like this. Is this a general linux on laptop thing or just a specific to your situation thing?
I think it's specific to their machine? I've got an old Skylake (6600u) machine with Secure Boot disabled that will last a weekend with the lid closed.
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#75It seems to be a general phenomenon with most brands that their quality is reduced with time.
There seems to be a lot of profit in buying brands with a reputation for high quality and then replacing it with lower quality and reaping the profits.
It shouldn't be legal if you ask me, it has elements of fraud, the brand should be consistent, Apple implies quality for example, if Apple where to release a cheap badly made product at an expensive price, they would be breaking the brand-contract.
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#76I got my first Dell laptop, the XPS15, 5 years ago. Prior to that I had a good 25 years as a Thinkpad die-hard. The XPS has been ... ok. I've had some issues with it resetting for no apparent reason over its life. Frequency varies, but sometimes it'll just blank the screens and then the BIOS comes up on the display, a few times a week, then it'll be good for a month or more.
I had one issue where I needed to ship it back: it would reset and then it was running off the battery, and no matter what port I plugged a charger/docking station into it wouldn't charge until I powered it off and back on again. I got them to do a replacement under warranty a couple years ago.
Around a month ago it was doing the reset fairly frequently and then wouldn't power on sometimes, and I noticed the wrist rest was a little bowed. I replaced the battery pack (kind of a pain, but not the worst I've done), and it was good for around a month, but now it has that "won't charge the battery" issue again. I believe when they did the previous repair they replaced the motherboard, but now I'm out of warranty.
For my next laptop I kind of want a Framework, so I can replace the mobo if I need to. My work likes us to replace hardware no more frequently than every 5-6 years, but we get a warranty for way less than that (my laptop I pushed to get a 4 year).
Meanwhile my previous Thinkpad T470s is still going strong, though the screen just developed a line through it. That's ~10 year old now.
My personal 4 year old Macbook has been a real workhorse, never had any hardware issues with it. My son's macbook has been another story, he's had that in for service 4-5 times in the 3 years he's had it. But, I suspect that is more him than the hardware. I don't baby my MBP, but he is just terrible with things. He's lucky if a pair of glasses can last 6 months, ditto with a phone (usually broken screens), so I'm not sure I can blame the MB Air...
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#77I recently got a new Thinkpad for work, can't recall which model. I think L series? The build quality is nicer than my T530. The bottom cover doesn't have access panels anymore, but it's got just a few captive(!!) screws and the whole bottom comes off. Everything is neatly exposed and you don't need to access the top of the board at all. The bottom cover has plastic clips along with the screws, but they're spring loa…
> The NPU is slower than the integrated graphics for inference.
Yeah, that's expected. On consumer devices, the NPUs are not optimizing for speed and they're not meant to out-perform the GPU. They are optimizing for low power consumption. They want to be able to run simple AI tasks without turning your laptop into a frying pan, so that is where the NPU comes in.
Quoting wikipedia:
> On consumer devices, the NPU is intended to be small, power-efficient, but reasonably fast when used to run small models.
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#78I have a 2017 Dell XPS13 that's been hammered as a developer laptop and is still going great guns. It's on its third battery, and I've just replaced the screen. I bought a newer one in 2022 and sold it again a couple of months later because, although it had a faster processor and more RAM, it felt flimsier. I'm also currently upgrading a refurbed Lenovo X270 for my granddaughter who's starting high school, and I am t…
I have a similar vintage XPS13, it's a total tank. I'm sad to hear they're flimsy now.
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#79Lenovo is still good overall. The E-series are actually very nicely built for low end machines, if you can look past the poor colour rendering displays.
Dell, however is absolute trash now from what I’ve seen.
Re: Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?
#80[deleted]