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We Need a Better PC

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Re: We Need a Better PC

#151

Post by Yaggo »

ekianjo wrote: post #114
knights123 wrote: post #90

It seems like you should really just buy a MacBook Pro. Sure the software isn't perfect, but it's an order of magnitude closer to perfect than Windows has been lately. You buy it, boot it up, and it works wonderfully. Of course the one day out of the year that it doesn't you go rage comment on how it sucks and it scares Windows users away from Mac, but the rest of the time you'd never consider going back to a typical…

For developers OSX will almost always be worse than a Linux distro, if only because of package management.

There are many developers who value high several OS X features, such as well-implemented HiDPI mode with custom resolutions, super-easy backup solution, solid energy saving & suspend & resume functionalities (no conflicts with crappy 3D drivers), etc, etc. Those features wouldn't mean much without the possibility to easily¹ run FOSS on unix-like system.

¹) The differences between various package management systems are not significant in this context.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#152

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

jmspring wrote: post #125

Post didn't address - buy apple hardware, run something other than OS X on it. Seems simple. Sure you are locked to apple hardware issues/resolutions, but Apple today is what the Thinkpad was for years (pre-Lenovo), hardware mostly just works. Insert arguments of customization, configurability, etc... Most people don't care. Lenovo doesn't deliver as well as IBM did on the Thinkpad line. What's the alternative beside…

Personally, I use far too much mainstream software to be able to run Linux as my only OS, and I hate dual-booting. Sometimes I'll run Linux in a VM for convenience, but Linux is so broken with respect to so much hardware, I'm not interested in running it as the main OS.

And running Apple's OS as the top level OS would drive me insane. So unless you're suggesting I try to run Windows 10 on Apple hardware, I agree with the article that the world needs a better hardware options.

Until then I'll stick with my Toshiba. I'm pretty happy with it, all told. I don't see it as "better" in an engineering sense than Apple, but I get an i7 with 16Gb of RAM and a 1Tb SSD for about 1/2 the cost of the equivalent Apple hardware.

And the control key is in the right place (the bottom left corner of the keyboard) ergonomically. That alone kills all Apple hardware for me.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#153

Post by ekianjo »

jordanpg wrote: post #149
ekianjo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few reasons: - you have way more packages on any Linux package manager. - Linux package managers do not mess with /usr/local as expected in a UNIX compatible OS. Homebrew does. Linux package managers run as root, not in user-space. - Apparently Homebrew gets broken by Apple software/OS updates. - Linux package managers are an integral part of the OS environment and update process - it's structured this way even for…

Most of these things are considered features of homebrew, not bugs.

Not being a part of the OS is a major issue, though.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#154

Post by scrollaway »

ekianjo wrote: post #146
scrollaway wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a UX305LA and have owned two previous models in the UX line. Glad to see it mentioned, I like them all very much. The battery is proprietary but easily replaced. My main issue with my previous UX31 was with the SSD. It died within a year and was no longer readable. It was a piece of proprietary SanDisk crap. Googling around about it yields various complaints about it ( http://www.pcper.com/news/Mobile/Be-carefu…

> It was a piece of proprietary SanDisk crap. you mean it was not a standard SSD ?

It wasn't, no. The UX is too thin for 2.5in SSDs. I had to find a special adapter to attempt reading it when it died.

This is what it looks like:

http://www.pcper.com/files/news/2012-03-12/SSDR_Sandisk-SSD....

FWIU they went with a different brand on their newer models, might be better.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#155

Post by nchudleigh »

It would be really cool if someone could do a clean developer book.

Software: Would love something that comes with a Debian distro installed. Something minimal and clean.

Body: Brushed metal exterior, hard rubber for hand rests- no sharp edges either (my wrists hate MBP's edges). Nice big touchpad. Elegant branding (love the lightbar on the chromebook pixels) but perhaps even more subtle (the new macbooks do a good job of this- eliminating the obnoxious glowing apple). Thin would be good.

Hardware: 500GB SSD would be more than enough. Don't need GFX card. 8gb ram is more than enough. Good CPU please. Fan-less would be amazing. USB-C would be interesting, at least need a couple of those. And then a pair of USB-3 ports, and a headphone/mic jack. Maybe an HDMI. It would be good if the internals were simple enough to swap out everything with a small philips head.

MOST IMPORTANT THING: I can buy replacement parts on your site for everything (screen, keyboard, shell, all of the hardware, touchpad, etc.)

Price: I would pay anywhere from 1-2k US for this computer. Honestly just to support some healthy competition in the space- I would even go to 2.5k

Re: We Need a Better PC

#156

Post by [deleted] »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #140
habosa wrote: post #113

Not disagreeing with the premise, but just want to plug a machine I am very happy with. I was a lifetime mac owner (since OS 9) and my 2010 Macbook Pro finally broke down this year. It made it that long because I doubled the RAM, replaced the battery, and replaced the HDD with a hybrid drive. Finally the battery puffed up and exploded. I brought it to the Apple Store and they were beyond useless. The new MBPs are not…

I'm really happy with my Toshiba Tecra Z series. The article totally missed Toshiba, which is still a decent manufacturer. I get 5-6 hours of battery life with real usage, close to 10 hours in "green" mode, I've got a 15.6" screen, a keypad, 16Gb of RAM, an i7 processor, and a 1Tb SSD. And it's just over 4 pounds and pretty thin. I have NVIDIA graphics. The Tecra Z has an available 3K touch display, and its HDMI port…

[deleted]

Re: We Need a Better PC

#157

Post by khedoros »

scrollaway wrote: post #154
ekianjo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was a piece of proprietary SanDisk crap. you mean it was not a standard SSD ?

It wasn't, no. The UX is too thin for 2.5in SSDs. I had to find a special adapter to attempt reading it when it died. This is what it looks like: http://www.pcper.com/files/news/2012-03-12/SSDR_Sandisk-SSD.... FWIU they went with a different brand on their newer models, might be better.

That looks like an M.2 PCIe connection. Is it something less standard than that?

Re: We Need a Better PC

#159

Post by awongh »

I had a thinkpad running ubuntu for a couple of years, around 2010-2013, but I was forced to switch to a mbp for one simple reason:

About 1/10 of the time when I would be at a coffee shop or something and would try to connect to the wi-fi router, ubuntu simply wouldn't be able to connect. This thinkpad had one of the officially supported wifi chips in it, and it still didn't work.

Lots of forum posts told me to downgrade driver versions or some such thing, I wasted a bunch of time trying many different solutions and nothing ever fixed it.

I'm a web dev, and without internet I can't get anything done- I had to eventually get rid of it. Too bad, because the build quality was nice and it's a much better deal than a mbp, but unreliable internet is a deal-breaker.

(If there had been some way for me to pay someone with driver knowledge to diagnose and patch the driver problem I would have done that!)

Re: We Need a Better PC

#160

Post by hysan »

ekianjo wrote: post #126
jolux wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly not true. You can basically get any package with Homebrew that you can on Linux, (assuming it's on GitHub, you can get all of them) in fact there's even a port of it to Linux for people that love it on Mac.

Homebrew is certainly not as good as a regular package manager you get in Linux. I'm not sure how you can argue otherwise.

Decade old heavy Linux user who got his first Macbook a few months ago. I agree that Homebrew is not as good as most package managers. However, it's good enough and doesn't get in the way. It does what it needs to do and because of that, I don't think it's fair to use that as a reason to claim that OS X is worse than Linux for developers.
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