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Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

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Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#111

Post by toolz »

rtpg wrote: post #32
toolz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried putting linux on a zenbook? Easily as good or better than mac hardware and I've put archlinux on there with zero issues on multiple models.

how's the battery life? Being able to go long periods without a charger is really important to me. I have a friend who has a zenbook, was pretty unimpressed by the build quality, but that might have been a lower end model.

depends on the model, I'm sure. I've never had any problems with the battery life, but that's highly subjective to the way people use a laptop. I'm always spending a couple hours here and there at a coffee shop, but I carry my laptop in a messenger bag so having a charger nearby isn't a problem. Plug it in when I need to, don't bother if I don't.

I'm always curious why people talk about needing battery life so often. Only thing I can think of is if you fly overseas often you would need great battery life, but a mac wouldn't cover that use case either. Where are people going that they aren't within a few feet of an outlet when they are computing?

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#113

Post by stegosaurus »

johnchristopher wrote: post #66
pmontra wrote: post #58

Partially offtopic, but looking at the case of that laptop I wondered if I am the only one that slides them to the right to have the touchpad and the spacebar aligned with the central symmetry axis of my body? That means having 2/3 of the screen to the right of my eyes, which is a waste because I end up piling windows with important information to the left, for not having to tilt my head to the right. I believe that…

Every non-programmer/IT person I know want a `numberpad`. It's really easier for them to type numbers and when they happen to use my laptop and have to type numbers they really struggle with the shift keys.

Shift keys?

Which keyboard layout is this? I've used a few and always had 1-0 directly on keys.

I personally find number pads infuriating; I just don't really get it. It seems like something of very limited application, useful for only those who spend hours per day inputting numbers solidly and not much else. What's the use case? It seems like that amount of manual data entry would be slowed down by error checking much more so than the input stage.

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#114

Post by bhassel »

enupten wrote: post #108
bla2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newest Carbon X1 looks pretty good, at least compared to the previous model.

Yeah, but it doesn't the Trackpoint buttons.. which makes it infinitely worse.

The newest (2015) X1 Carbon brought back those buttons: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8821/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon...

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#115

Post by walterbell »

yoklov wrote: post #96
xamolxix wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I care more about open computer systems than making everyone middle class The parent speaks about slave labour or something very close to it not about living in the suburbs. > there will always be a lower class That is your opinion and it may be true. Even so, the "lower class" could live without the worry of basic necessities. A lot of people do not currently have that luxury.

> That is your opinion Well, it's not really an opinion though. Unless everybody had a perfectly equal standard of living (which sounds vaguely Harrison Bergeron-esque) there will always be a lower class, even if they have a rather high standard of living. Other than that, I agree with everything you say in your comment.

Ranking depends on the variable of comparison. There can be more than one.

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#116

Post by asb »

You may also be interested in a project a number of us have been working called lowRISC, aiming to produce a fully open-source SoC in volume using the RISC-V instruction set architecture. http://www.lowrisc.org/

I'm giving a main track talk on it at FOSDEM next weekend: https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/lowrisc/ so say hi if you're there. My speaker interview gives more background on the project and our motivations https://fosdem.org/2015/interviews/2015-alex-bradbury/

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#117

Post by sarciszewski »

keithpeter wrote: post #68
sarciszewski wrote: post #39

Nearly $2000 for a laptop I could have bought for that price in early 2008? Sorry, call me a stickler, but I just don't see the value here.

Fine, if you don't perceive value, then you are not part of the target market for this product/project. Enjoy your current choice of hardware and software. Other people may see value where you do not however.

4 GB of RAM and 500 GB HDD sounds like a hand-me-down I'd get from my grandma, not a new cutting edge laptop. What exactly justifies that cost?

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#118

Post by javert »

rtpg wrote: post #17
javert wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the linux desktop experience is there. So I guess it depends on what you want. There's nothing I want to do I can't do on Linux as well or better, except play games, and that's not enough of a factor for me to not prefer Linux.

From my testing, the macbook air is one of the better laptops on the market now in terms of battery life and general feel (the touchpad is second to none in my opinion). But even for a laptop this prevalent, getting it to work with Ubuntu is a pain, and you run into a bunch of little bugs consistently. I understand that it's a major uphill battle, but over the many many laptops I've tried to use with Linux, I've not…

I've had excellent experiences running Arch on Thinkpads (I think this is the 3rd, maybe 4th Thinkpad I've run Arch on).

One time I looked into getting a macbook for the nice hardware and running Arch on it, and quickly nope'd out of there. That is not a project for the faint of heart.

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#119

Post by Semiapies »

sarciszewski wrote: post #117
keithpeter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, if you don't perceive value, then you are not part of the target market for this product/project. Enjoy your current choice of hardware and software. Other people may see value where you do not however.

4 GB of RAM and 500 GB HDD sounds like a hand-me-down I'd get from my grandma, not a new cutting edge laptop. What exactly justifies that cost?

Ideology.
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