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Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

pcadvisor.co.uk

31–40 of 90 posts

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#31
post #24

So now it's ThinkPad or MacBook Pro. What is it like to run Linux on MacBook Pros these days? Does Ubuntu and other popular distributions install without much fiddling? Does any of the hardware not work with Linux?

Well, this is an installation guide for the latest MacBook Pro, for the latest ubuntu.

I wouldn't call this "easy".

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro11-1/Saucy

It also has a fairly big section "Things that do not work (or fully work) yet".

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#32
post #28
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, in my experience, Dell and Lenovo now rule the corporate market, while the consumer market is now 1) smaller (since tablets and smartphones cannibalized some of it) and 2) clearly split between Apple and "everything else", where "everything else" runs on thin margins and is perceived as cheap and uncool. My anecdotal datapoint is that, in the last 5 years, I haven't seen anyone in my sector (finance / IT i…

Your experience is probably anecdotal. I have been using Surface Pro 3 and if that is not cool I am not sure what else could be.

I'm a Surface Pro 2 User and a Software Dev and couldn't be happier. I only have to carry 1.1kg of Hardware around to have my full Workstation with me and when i'm in my office i've got a perfect Dockingstation. No fiddling with cables: https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/t31.0...

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PC sales (laptop and desktop) in general have been on the decline since 2010 or so and the margins in that market for players who aren't Apple are generally so low that the declines don't have to be that bad to really put a squeeze on manufacturers. The iPad/Tablet market gets almost all the credit for this decline in the media but while I'm sure that's part of it I personally think the fact that we hit a point aroun…

Lenovo is doing good and getting better. http://www.cnet.com/news/lenovo-earnings-soar-on-solid-pc-sm...

Lenovo sells more than just consumer PCs.

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#34
post #24

So now it's ThinkPad or MacBook Pro. What is it like to run Linux on MacBook Pros these days? Does Ubuntu and other popular distributions install without much fiddling? Does any of the hardware not work with Linux?

Virtualisation is actually a really nice way to run Linux on a Mac.

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#35
post #24

So now it's ThinkPad or MacBook Pro. What is it like to run Linux on MacBook Pros these days? Does Ubuntu and other popular distributions install without much fiddling? Does any of the hardware not work with Linux?

The battery life might be better if you virtualize linux instead.

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#36
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience is probably anecdotal. I have been using Surface Pro 3 and if that is not cool I am not sure what else could be.

I'm a Surface Pro 2 User and a Software Dev and couldn't be happier. I only have to carry 1.1kg of Hardware around to have my full Workstation with me and when i'm in my office i've got a perfect Dockingstation. No fiddling with cables: https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/t31.0...

How do you connect 2 screens to it? What software do you run on it? Does it run Visual Studio well?

This looks awesome, tell us more!

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#37
post #3

Wait... what? I'm a bit confused here. Can someone please explain why Samsung isn't selling laptops besides the article's dismissive "It's common knowledge that the PC market is in decline." Is it that they are spinning off their laptop division, or is there is some other dominant manufacturer? Why on earth are laptops not selling?

They are still selling laptops, just not in Europe.

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#38
post #23
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been going on for a few years. If you look at the level of performance improvements (intel chips have single to barely double digit percentage gains in performance per generation upgrade now, whereas they used to almost double in speed every two years) and at the installed base (good enough screens with good enough resolution, good enough SSDs or HDs with enough space) it just shows that the replacement rate obv…

No doubt. Still using a 7 year old Core 2 Thinkpad and it still works great. Resolution and speed are not a problem. Replaced the hard drive for a solid state, the fan at some point but otherwise I just don't see a good reason to spend another $1k or $2k on a new laptop.

I just bought a Lenovo x220 which is about 2 years old, and it runs both Win7 and Linux Mint perfectly. Very fast, and I can even do SOME gaming with it. Best 200 USD purchase ever. There's no clear reason to upgrade laptops every year, until then I was using a 5 years old HP PC, which was working fine, too.

Shutting down your PC line in Europe is stupid, though. Well, that's better for the other competitors, which will fill the gap.

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#39
> "It's common knowledge that the PC market is in decline."

Mmm, not so much. Apart from what you hear from tablet makers. It's stagnant, but it's not in sharp decline.

Source: 2Q13 shipments : 75,700,902 VS 2Q14 shipments : 75,763,725

Yeah, it's "common knowledge" as they say, if you don't bother checking numbers.

https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2793921

Re: Following Sony, Samsung has stopped sales of its laptops in Europe

#40
If you are looking for a Linux compatible laptop that is somewhat similar to MacBook Air, look for Asus Zenbook UX* line. Excellent display, good but not awesome battery life, fast hardware and really good keyboard for its size. I've bought two UX31A's, one for myself almost two years a go and one for my dad last Christmas. Everything else works straight away with Ubuntu other than ambient light sensor. I think there isn't any workarounds for that.

I got Lenovo X1 Carbon (2014, Touch) from work couple months ago and while it has better CPU, bigger SSD, more RAM and better GPU than my two year old Zenbook, it's just worse. The Zenbook lid can be opened with one hand, Lenovo requires both hands. Lenovo has too heavy display and too light keyboard part combined with too tight hinges, so when trying to open the lid with one hand, the whole computer lifts up from the table.

Also, Zenbooks have normal keyboards. I hate the keyboard on X1 Carbon. Instead of normal function keys, there's are adaptive touch keyboard thingy that tries to figure out what kind of special buttons should be shown in there with each program, but it just fails. And feels like... well it does not have real buttons, so I can't feel a thing while using it.

Also, delete button is in the upper right corner in X1 Carbon. And backspace is on the left hand side of it. And that makes no sense. Backspace is used way more often than delete, so it should be easier to hit. And upper right corner is easier to hit than almost upper right corner.

And Zenbooks have normal arrow keys that are not too crowded. Lenovo decided to put page up and down right next to up arrow. When ever I accidentally hit page up or down instead of up arrow, I feel like I'm totally lost.

And almost forgot, Zenbooks have good touch pads, X1 Carbon touch pad moves up and down, so it's like a huge button. Really annoying when you just move your thumb on it and accidentally press too hard, so it registers a mouse click even tough you did not raise your finger.

So, in short Asus Zenbook UX* laptops pack awesome hardware, work with Linux pretty much perfectly and have really good build quality.

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