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I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

solar.lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#191

Post by mumblemumble »

I'm more or less in that boat. I did by my laptop, a 2013 MacBook Pro, new, but 10 years later it's still fine for my purposes. For productivity purposes, the only real concessions to its age are that I did have to get the battery replaced about a year ago, and I do some light adblocking (no autoplaying videos or heavy scripting or anything like that, but I still let static ads through) to keep webpages usable.

For light gaming I recently bought a refurbished 2019 desktop for $250. I mostly only play older games (because I'm cheap), so that was more about Apple dropping support for 32-bit apps than it is about the MacBook not being powerful enough, though I am admittedly happy about having a computer that can play KSP without everything turned down to the lowest quality level. Overall, happy there, too - it's hard for me to imagine that a new computer would provide enough utility to justify the added cost. The latest generation of this computer retails for four times as much money as I paid for the used one, but the specs are very, very similar.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#192

Post by ido »

soulbadguy wrote: post #178
ido wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My old Dell XPS was actually slightly more expensive (even before adjusting to inflation - I was researching online and at the time it was the most recommended high-end pc laptop). And macs retain value a lot better than PCs - you can likely resell it for a significant fraction of its new price in a few years (unless you broke it).

Still doesn't answer my question, not sure why people feel the need to jump into this... maybe something wrong the tone on my answer. But while i have you here... Which dell xps (year/model/spec) was it and which M1 mac (year/model/spec) was it.

How does this not answer your question? If the XPS was more expensive even before adjusting to inflation, than the answer is no: the macbook was not the most expensive computer I ever bought (both adjusting and not-adjusting to inflation).

The Dell was XPS 13 (9350) bought Janaury 2016 for €2,105. The Macbook is M1 Macbook Air (the highest end model of which), bought June 2021 for €1,598. In both cases I wasn't trying to save money and was happily paying a premium for (within reason) the best laptop I could get, as far as I could tell from online reviews. I bought both of these directly from Dell's and directly from Apple's respective online shops.

The latter is radically higher performance while also being much better in many other ways (build quality, battery life, reliability, etc). I promise you I'm not getting a commission from Apple, in fact there's a lot of stuff they do that I deeply dislike :)

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#193

Post by DeathArrow »

On my development machine I run at the same time: at least two instances of Visual Studio each containing a big microservice based app, an instance of Visual Studio Code containing a large front-end, Docker Desktop, Postgres, Redis, MongoDB, management apps for databases, at least three Windows Terminal tabs, dozens of tabs in browser, dozens of tabs in Notepad++, Teams, Outlook and some other random stuff.

I need beefy laptops and I usually change them after two years.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#194

Post by SimonPStevens »

I last bought a laptop (in fact any PC at all) in 2015.

It was pretty beefy for the time. A desktop 4790K CPU, 32gb RAM and a GTX 980M. It was a long time ago, but I think I paid around £1500 for it.

Shout out to https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ for a great long lasting machine that is very open for maintenance, long before Framework was around. I will absolutely buy from them again next time. Removable battery, replaceable hard drive, ram, cpu, graphics card. Easily open-able case (screws, but I've had it open). They sold me a replacement keyboard for something like £30 when I smashed a few keys by dropping my camera on it.

My inner tech geek is keen to buy something new, but this one is still going strong, and I can't justify spending money when this one works so well. It still plays all the latest games. It's only had two problems over the years. 1) Obviously, the original battery doesn't last very long now. 2) The CPU started overheating after about 5 years when pushed, so I popped the cover open, took the heatsink off and reapplied fresh thermal paste. Has worked perfectly since.

I mean honestly, the single threaded CPU performance only seems to be about 50% behind modern chips. I don't really see many machines even today with 32gb ram.

Things it struggles with these days that I suppose would require a new machine if it bothered you: - 4k gaming. - VR games are a bit too choppy unless you turn the settings right down. (HL:Alyx is playable at pretty much lowest settings) - Probably going to struggle with any generative AI stuff given the older GPU, but I've not tried it.

I code on it, but I don't do high intensive stuff like video editing, 3d work, rendering, etc, so perhaps it would struggle with that kind of stuff.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#195

Post by [deleted] »

cempaka wrote: post #23

I'm still getting great mileage out of a T430 I bought in 2017, and I'm not particularly nice to my laptops. The one frustration I've had recently is that it can't drive my nice 38-inch monitor at its full resolution, so I've started eyeing a T470.

[deleted]

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#196

Post by soulbadguy »

mgraczyk wrote: post #106

I just bought a new Macbook Pro and have been using it for ~1 week. Even compared to my previous 2019 Macbook Pro, it's a huge step up in build quality and speed. If you spend any time waiting for code to compile, web pages to load, or dependencies install, I'd say buy the fastest laptop you can find. I'd guess this new machine has already saved me around 20 minutes of waiting. At that rate it will pay for itself in…

+1 on the importance a high-quality screen. I never quite understand why PC manufacturer skimp on what is agruabably the most important interface with the device. And when they do, they of course jump into spec chasing with resolution and frame rate taking the focus instead of contrast, color reproduction and PWM (for people sensitive to it ).

What's the delta in BOM cost for a high quality display ? Maybe someone with industry knowledge can comment.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#197

Post by jwells89 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #157
stetrain wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18 hours advertised is usually running a locally stored video file on loop at medium to low screen brightness and some light web browsing. My 18-hour laptop is more like 8-10 hours of real work usage, which is still fantastic compared to the 2-3 hours I would get at similar tasks 6-7 years ago. Another big change is improvements to sleep and standby time. I can use half the battery, close the lid, and be reasonably c…

> My 18-hour laptop is more like 8-10 hours of real work usage, Ans in which context do you find yourself needing to be even 8 hours in a row on your computer without being close to a power plug? You can even charge your computer in planes now!

Part of the appeal is the convenience. Not having to pull out the brick and charging cable, sit next to an outlet, and then pack it all back up is nice.

Longer battery life also means that for trips, you don't necessarily need to bring a full size laptop brick at all and instead can charge overnight off of a tiny phone charger.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#198

Post by neuralRiot »

Atotalnoob wrote: post #50
redroyal wrote: post #37

“Laptops don’t change” Really? because a few years ago battery life was maybe 7 hours and now it’s 18. And with faster processors, thunderbolt 4 and USB C charging, wifi 6, better screens and lighter. I keep hearing this argument for not buying a new laptop every year and it just doesn’t hold water. I say buy the latest MacBook, expense it, factor it in as a monthly cost. These are expendable and essential tools. The…

So if framework can let you reuse the "shell" for 2-3 upgrade cycles until they have to change the motherboard, that's a lot better than having to buy an entire new laptop. It's not about keeping the same form factor forever, that's unrealistic. It's about reducing the amount of stuff you have to buy for each upgrade. Opening and closing stuff is realistic, if it's easy. I've opened and upgraded various components of…

Upgradeable hardware sounds great in theory but doesn’t work in real life, just like PCs you configure it once and it will be that HW until it is obsolete for your purpose.

Re: I stopped buying new laptops (2020)

#200

Post by soulbadguy »

ip26 wrote: post #39
danradunchev wrote: post #2

Although capitalism could provide us with used laptops for decades to come, the strategy outlined above should be considered a hack, not an economical model. It’s a way to deal with or escape from an economic system that tries to force you and me to consume as much as possible. It’s an attempt to break that system, but it’s not a solution in itself. We need another economical model, in which we build all laptops like…

laptop sales would go down, but that’s precisely what we need. Furthermore, with today’s computing efficiency... Somehow these conversations never seem to talk about how we would not have current levels of compute if everybody kept their computers for one or two decades before buying another. Good or bad, right or wrong, the present state of affairs only happened with the present replacement cycle. I'm not arguing we…

> Good or bad, right or wrong, the present state of affairs only happened with the present replacement cycle.

Hmmmm... I am not sure that those two things are as correlated (much less causally linked) as it might first appear.

We could have the same "average" pace of innovation, just delivered between longer intervals.

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