31–40 of 149 posts
Off-topic, but I was far more intrigued by the fact that their server runs on solar power and may go offline. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power/
''The accessibility of this website depends on the weather in Barcelona, Spain''
There is a very dire need to have those with hardware hacking skills assist the larger freedom software community in "liberating" newer machines.
Someone recently got Libreboot running on a ThinkPad T480
https://ezntek.com/posts/librebooting-the-thinkpad-t480-20241207t0933/I have had a similarly positive experience with older laptops, in particular ThinkPads (x230) and Latitudes (e7460). The older machines often also have much better keyboards than more recent laptops, IMHO.
As the OP writes, swapping out HDD for SSD (1 usually prefer at least 1 TB) and maxing out RAM are affordable things that you won't regret.
Maybe for OpenBSD. These days I am parano... savvy and prudent enough to not trust security swiss-cheese software bare metal, and so I box it all up into qubes with Qubes OS. For Qubes, it's always best to max out RAM, core count, and GPU count (AI). Libreboot laptops don't cut it if you want to run seven isolated chat/social profiles on seven separate VPN/Tor connections while also running LM Studio in an offline GP…
> seven isolated chat/social profiles on seven separate VPN/Tor connections Bravo for you, but surely you realize that almost nobody does this? Hardly relevant to an article about getting some more useful life out of an old laptop.
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The Lunar Lake laptops have reduced the power efficiency gap by a lot.
CPU wise or whole system wise? You can play some pretty taxing x86 3d games on my M3 pro laptops, in spite of the two layers of emulation. Those Lunar Lake laptops would need a GPU for that wouldn't they? Have they in the Wintel world figured out why Apple trackpads can actually act like a mouse replacement yet?
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The Lunar Lake laptops have reduced the power efficiency gap by a lot.
CPU wise or whole system wise? You can play some pretty taxing x86 3d games on my M3 pro laptops, in spite of the two layers of emulation. Those Lunar Lake laptops would need a GPU for that wouldn't they? Have they in the Wintel world figured out why Apple trackpads can actually act like a mouse replacement yet?
I’m not a laptop user myself and don’t consider even Apple trackpads (I actually own one of their desktop trackpads) anywhere close to a viable mouse replacement, so no further comment on that.
[0] e.g. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/first-intel-lunar-lake...
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LOL I posted this in the previous thread > I am still on my MacBook Pro 2015 because of the Keyboard and Trackpad. So in about 2 years time this will be 10 years of usage. I dont intend to replace it any time soon. For browsing it is fast enough. And if you look at the Louis Rossman Channels it seems newer MBP just aren't built the same. It may be worth looking at it again I 2025. How little ( or big ) the past 10 ye…
Jumping from x86 to arm may be worth it just because of how little power it needs. Perhaps you'd like a laptop where the fan never [*] turns on enough to be audible and with 20 hours battery life? They fixed the keyboard and the trackpad has been good even in the emoji keyboard models. Do get one with 32 Gb ram if you can. You never know what you'll want to use it for next year. [*] Of course, if you compile/run rend…
I actually have one with my previous company and they are still not as good. New Scissors has a key travel distance of 1mm instead of 1.5mm, and trackpad is too large that causes false positive compare to zero on my MacBook 2015. Was rather hoping Apple to walk back these two thing by the time I get a new MacBook for myself. But looks like not.
> On the contrary, the only thing a consumer can do to improve their laptop’s ecological and economic sustainability is to use it for as long as possible. This is true for everything, not just laptops. Any purchasing that occurrs on a fashion cycle is largly a rip off...
>I grumpily ordered a replacement key for 15 euros. A single key for 15€?! I remember ordering one from an online shop specialized in replacement laptop keys at some point in the 2010s and it was like 2€ total. Browsing through similar shops now, it seems like the minimum is 5€ per key nowadays, but still a far cry from 15€. >After spending more than 100 euros on plastic keys, which would soon break again, I calculat…
Unlike my daughter's friend's Dell, where basically everything had to come out of the laptop to get at the keyboard (battery, speakers, motherboard, etc), AND it was plastic-riveted down. I must have spent 2-4 hours replacing it, because I had to do it twice (for reasons I don't remember).
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You can just be an informed consumer and not buy laptops with non-replaceable components. Don't give bad products money and incentive to keep making more like them.
I don't think there is any middle ground left between thin and portable and all soldered and replaceable components and "transportable" instead of "portable". Gaming like laptops are a no no for me, sorry. And I doubt there's anything just slightly larger than a macbook pro but with upgradeable components.