81–90 of 215 posts
The move to USB-C is actually great for compatibility across machines. Europe has a directive for companies to implement USB-C to reduce e-waste from chargers.
On top of that, the gan chargers are made as small as possible and overheat all the time. Modern, sleek, enshitified - just like our software!
I 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…
I 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…
And yeah my 470S is still pretty strong. I started to use it again for my side projects.
I kinda wish I could find a contracting job, so that I can buy an expensive laptop and expense it as cost, and my wife won't cast an angry look towards me, lol.
I miss so much the first generation of the Dell XPS 13 dev edition. I think that we were almost at the top of the curve in term of quality/price. Only a few things could have been fixed (like the webcam at the bottom of the screen) and it would have been perfect. But, sadly, next generations went deep shit instead. Nowadays, I have a very hard time selecting a laptop that would fit my needs, even disregarding the pri…
OK we probably have different preferences, but I really hate:
1. Arrow keys have different sizes
2. page up/down right up arrow keys (very easy to touch those accidentally)
So far I really love the Macbook Pro layout. I wonder why no one tried to copy it, considering they tried to copy everything else.
> 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 g…
I'll check out those mini PCs. The Steam one also looks interesting.
Yes, it's a race to the bottom for most. Lots of plastic and soldered, non-upgradeable components, and a lack of ports. The used market is tricky to navigate thanks to the proliferation of model names and numbers, so little to no salvation there either. Spend a bit more for something that will last a bit longer (MacBook) and/or be upgradeable (frame.work), or accept a cheaper model (e.g. Dell Pro) that will likely ne…
I think I'll eventually go for the more expensive route if I want another laptop. Either an Apple refurbed Macbook or some other Linux laptop.
It still hold its charge but then I mostly work on it plugged either via RDP from my personal workstation at home or from the docking station in my office at the campus. So it has less than 50 charge cycles.
A few things: My G11 carbon is tolerable, but I did have a motherboard replacement in mine mid cycle. Known issue with charging just giving up. I like my carbon, but its a lot of money. I have a gen 1 carbon, a gen 7 carbon and a gen 11. I still think the G1 was best in a lot of silos. The keyboard especially. The G11 is performing better than the G7 overall, the G7 had the shittiest case so far. Recently did an anal…
The touchpad sucks and routinely breaks requiring restarts, constantly having driver issues (and you have to deal with the capital-N Nightmare that is SupportAssist for drivers), graphics card is busted and makes the display driver crash once a month.
Power states are completely broken. Laptop will randomly turn on when it's in my bag and rev up to ten thousand degrees. Laptop will randomly, when on full battery and closed, decide to hard-shutoff leading to a windows recovery boot.
Decides to do BIOS updates when it's at 3% battery in the middle of the night, then when I wake up for work the next morning it has to go through a ten-minute recovery sequence.
Battery is swelling after only a couple years of use, which sometimes causes keys on the keyboard to stop working. In the middle of a slack convo I've had to type "Sorrymyspacebarstoppedworkinggottarestartmycomputer".
BSODs, hard drive corruption, you name it. Never buy Dell. Not that there's many good options out there unless you're willing to drop two week's pay on a Framework - but anything is better than Dell.
EDIT: Another I thought of - sound card is busted and sounds like it has a low pass filter on it. I know it's not a speaker issue because on occasion it magically fixes itself until the next restart.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/d/linux-laptops-desktops/
And as I often state here, Chromebooks have a Debian Linux distro 2 clicks away, including the ability to run X11 GUI programs like VSCode and Cursor for software development.
Because it's an integrated OS/hardware product, there's no fussing with display drivers or power management issues. It all "just works". High performance models kitted out with 16GB RAM and USB A and C ports can be purchased for https://www.acer.com/us-en/chromebooks/acer-chromebook-plus-...
If high-performance is less of a concern, you can get models with very usable performance for < $500USD.