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Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

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Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#171

Post by oarsinsync »

mpol wrote: post #131
oarsinsync wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this analogy, and it's remarkable at how much sense it makes when I look at the choices I make in my day to day life generally. Hotel-chic is very clean, very minimal, very sparse. Just enough to have the necessary conveniences that appeal to everyone, with absolutely nothing personalised for any individual. As of about 10 years ago, I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mob…

> I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mobile) experience away from the defaults as much as possible, as I was fed up of having to document and then re-deploy all of my customisations every time I had to reinstall for whatever reason. I just copy my home-dir settings everywhere I go. I have a different setup on my desktop and laptop. It is mostly .config that I need. But when movi…

> Happily living on the same config files for 20 years now

I just wanted to draw more attention to this particular snippet. That's a remarkable achievement, and you should be proud of yourself and your working environment.

Regardless that most other people (myself included) are unlikely to be able to replicate what you've done, the reality is you've done it, and it works for you. Good job.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#173

Post by ryaniscool »

cranium wrote: post #71

It saddens me that Apple used to make (almost) perfect laptops – price aside – and it's no longer the case, leaving a bunch of geeks looking for a replacement. In 2017 after searching the market, filtering on required specs and reading reviews, I came to the conclusion that there are no perfect laptop: every time there's a compromise to be made. For me, I had requirements that were previously met in the MBP: good bat…

Here is an anecdote on Dell laptops. I have an XPS 15. I too had a swollen battery and I got it replaced while it was in warranty. It swelled again about a year later. Seems to be a design flaw in either their laptops or their laptop batteries.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#174

Post by LeonM »

mcv wrote: post #127
LeonM wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an X1E also as a replacement for my MBP, mostly for the keyboard and due to all the praise of developers about Lenovo. Mine has the same specs as yours, including the dual SSD for Linux. Overall it is pretty good, but nowhere near the finish of an Apple laptop. The X1E has terrible coil whine, and the fan is noisy. I have Windows 10 and Linux installed, both have it's problems. Windows has all sorts of power…

I've replaced the fans on that old MBP and that didn't help, so I think it's really just that noisy. I was hoping the X1E would be quieter, but your experience is clearly different. My impression from reviews is that coil whine seems to be a fairly random issue that can affect any model, but usually doesn't. I wonder if Lenovo should fix it under the warranty. Seems to me there's no good excuse for coil whine. I've h…

The dust accumulates between the fan and the heatsink/radiator, it usually has nothing to do with the fan itself.

Thanks for the tip on the coil whine issue, I thought it was just a design flaw. Maybe I can get it fixed under warranty.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#175

Post by AdamGibbins »

mherrmann wrote: post #48

I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…

> the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils.

This is no longer the case in the latest gen, they've placed it back at the top on a very thin bezel still.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#176

Post by mkl »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #162
mkl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: my two year old Surface Pro 4 developed a battery-swelling issue, and Microsoft replaced the whole laptop right away (well, as soon as I worked out how to contact the right level of tech-support).

My surface 3 battery swelled and it cracked the screen. Was out of warranty about a year so I never contacted them. I don't think I want to buy another one.

Mine was out of warranty, but they did it anyway. They seemed to have moved on to a different type of battery, as my refurbished Surface 4 replacement has better battery life than the original.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#177

Post by beefield »

tasuki wrote: post #62
mherrmann wrote: post #48

I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…

+1 for ThinkPads, they just work. The XPS has super annoying fans which change their speed randomly all the time (though it's possible to override: https://github.com/TomFreudenberg/dell-bios-fan-control ). Btw, Xfce is a desktop environment while Ubuntu is a distribution. Perhaps you meant to write you're on Xfce instead of Gnome?

Just do not make the mistake of assuming that the lenovo's next business day warranty means next business day. My current understanding is that they try their best to give a call to you next day but what comes to actual repair, there is no guarantee whatsoever when that is going to happen (some time ago my latop was in a brick-like state for more than 10 days and lenovo seems to be perfectly happy with their performance.)

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#178

Post by Symbiote »

oarsinsync wrote: post #171
mpol wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mobile) experience away from the defaults as much as possible, as I was fed up of having to document and then re-deploy all of my customisations every time I had to reinstall for whatever reason. I just copy my home-dir settings everywhere I go. I have a different setup on my desktop and laptop. It is mostly .config that I need. But when movi…

> Happily living on the same config files for 20 years now I just wanted to draw more attention to this particular snippet. That's a remarkable achievement, and you should be proud of yourself and your working environment. Regardless that most other people (myself included) are unlikely to be able to replicate what you've done, the reality is you've done it, and it works for you. Good job.

I have a similarly low, although very important to me, set of requirements for my personal configuration.

I use KDE, which has many, many, many buttons and knobs available for tweaking. I use hardly any of them: I can set KDE as I wish in about 2 minutes. I add a "Keep window above others" button to the default minimize-maximize-close set, activate "Focus follows mouse", and swap Ctrl and Caps Lock. I think I also change the task switcher (Alt+Tab thing) to only cycle though not-minimized windows on the current screen.

For everything else (Zsh, SSH, etc), I just carry around my dotfiles. I've done this since about 2002.

If I were setting myself up with a clean KDE environment more than once every 2-3 years, I'd make the small effort to work out which bits of KDE config I need to keep. So far, it's not worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#179

Post by rwha »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #128
hardwaresofton wrote: post #85

System76[0] makes some nice laptops (I have an Oryx Pro and i like it a lot), and there's the Lenovo X1 Extreme[1]. [0]: https://system76.com/laptops [1]: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/X1-...

How is the keyboard on your system76? I've been leaning towards System76 for my next laptop, but its hard to pull the trigger without testing the keyboard. I really need cushier and longer travel keys these days or I get really bad muscle fatigue in my arms and wrists, while working on a laptop keyboard. My 2014 MBP causes me issues only after an hour or two. And their newer keyboards... well, I'm just not even going…

I have an Oryx Pro and the keypad is good as far as your two requirements.

The one thing I had to get used to is that the keys have no curvature (no gradient or tapering around the edges and the tops have zero convexity). My fingertips are either a bit more calloused now from moving between keys or my fingers have worn away the keys' sharp edges. Or a little of both.

Oh and if you do get one, and if you think it would be fun to have your keyboard light up certain sections with certain colors for certain alert conditions... it gets old real quick.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#180

Post by faizshah »

disposedtrolley wrote: post #55
yoloClin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used an X1 for a few months. It took me a fortnight of rage before I discovered you can switch fn and ctrl in BIOS. after that I really liked it. I'm going to be in the market for a new <= 14" soon but want more ram than the X1 carbon offers. A T490 caps out at 40gb and has decent specs on paper, I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on the model though.

I recently purchased a T490 and it works reasonably well with Linux. My model has the base 1080p display rated at 250 nits, and while resolution and colour are no match for an MBP, the display surprisingly gets bright enough for some outdoor use. Build quality is solid and keyboard is great. Speakers sound pretty rough but get decently loud. I got maybe 7-8 hours of use with the screen at 60%, and alternating between…

Same, I bought a t480 but I went with POP OS. I bought it to see if I could switch to linux.

On the plus side its a solid and stable dev machine, iterm seems slower than the linux terminal. Rubymine, pycharm etc are stable. Google cloud shell freezes in browser sometimes but firefox quantum and chromium work pretty well otherwise. It also works great with my uhd monitor even tho it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card.

But, I encounter screen tearing a lot on web pages. The trackpad is horrible in comparison to a macbook pro. There is some pretty nice support for multiple workspaces but they dont have the amazingly useful trackpad gestures.

I honestly feel like if there was a thinkpad with a trackpad as good as a macbook pro 2012 then there would be no problem switching.

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