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We Need a Better PC

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Re: We Need a Better PC

#311

Post by askafriend »

mbrock wrote: post #281
superuser2 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer I work with text all day, a task made thoroughly more pleasant with good font rendering and proper HiDPI support, neither of which are available on Linux. I'll take my 13 inches of Retina display over a pair of 27-inch externals any day. SSH and rsync for remote editing work just fine from an rMBP.

It's possible to use HiDPI on Linux, but I guess it depends on what software you use. I've used it for almost a year. I set my DPI in X and GTK. I believe GNOME understands DPI, but I just use ratpoison so I don't know. After turning off hunting, fonts look very nice. Don't bother trying to connect an external monitor with a different DPI though, hehe. I've heard that problem is unsolvable with the X11 paradigm but w…

I want you to re-read the first paragraph you wrote. That's exactly why I don't use Linux. I don't mean this to be a condescending comment, but really, the contents of your entire first paragraph are just things that I don't want to deal with. It's all just bullshit, and I don't have time to deal with bullshit like that. I really just don't want to even think about stuff like that. Not even a tiny bit, not even for a second.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#312

Post by tluyben2 »

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…

I used to buy only Toshiba, Fujitsu & Panasonic. Panasonic still has great laptops in Japan and Fujitsu (used to) have the best warranty I could get where I live; no questions asked new laptop whatever happened for 5 years. But that time laptops were all expensive if you wanted something good; now these are overpriced last I checked.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#313

Post by TurboHaskal »

The author thinks apple.com is the pinnacle of web design, values form over function as he prefers the x1 carbon, gets overwhelmed when having too many choices, dislikes seeing user reviews on a product site and probably lies on the ground on a fetal position at the thought of replacing a hard drive by himself.

He is exactly the kind of person Apple makes products for. Just get a Macbook already.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#314

Post by spronkey »

manyxcxi wrote: post #183
derefr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP's consumer and enterprise divisions are effectively separate companies (and, in fact, were acquired from separate sources.) The enterprise "workstation" laptops are some of the best-put-together, simplest-to-repair, most-natively-well-supported-without-needing-drivers, and otherwise most "obvious" in their design machines I've ever had the pleasure of refurbishing. The EliteBook line is the one laptop where seeing…

A 2007 (maybe 2006) HP EliteBook was the last non MacBook Pro laptop I had. I loved that thing and it was incredibly easy to add my own RAM and an SSD to. Pretty sure it maxed out at 8GB. I'm sure they're sleeker now but that thing was pretty thick and the batteries on them seemed to wear down and die very fast. Bonus points for having an AWESOME dock that worked near flawlessly in Windows 7 for me, not so much, but…

The EliteBooks aren't even close to Macs in engineering. They're probably the closest thing I've found, but there are teething issues with all of them - like poor speakers, or noisy 3.5mm jacks, or poor display, or iffy keyboards, or poor trackpads.

Apple get all of this stuff right almost all the time, in almost every machine they build.

In fact, I only say almost above because it seems like they would have at least one lemon, but I can't think of what it is.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#315

Post by jordanthoms »

eosrei wrote: post #297
jordanthoms wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly true, but you may want to look into Divvy (which makes it very easy to maximize and manage windows) and TotalSpaces2. I'd rather deal with these issues and run a ubuntu VM for some things than deal with the cornucopia of crap that is the PC laptop market but hopefully some day that will change.

> cornucopia of crap that is the PC laptop market Haha! High-end Dell and ASUS machines are good, but the lack of Apple competition is why Microsoft made the Surface Book. "We gave you nearly twenty years to make something good! Fine! We'll do it ourselves."

I have had the thought that if the Surface machines had good Linux support (still can't stand Windows for development), they'd be a great option. The irony of running Linux on Microsoft hardware would be a major plus also.

With the way MS is going maybe they'll introduce official support!

Re: We Need a Better PC

#316

Post by TurboHaskal »

guelo wrote: post #63

I wish I could buy laptops that are not built in China. The Chinese army has zero scruples with regards to hacking. The hack where they got all US federal employees' info was an act of war as far as I'm concerned. I just don't see any reason why they would not be putting in backdoors into all the computers they manufacture.

You're probably an US citizen.

You have zero rights to complain about hacking and acts of war.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#317

Post by akerro »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #313

The author thinks apple.com is the pinnacle of web design, values form over function as he prefers the x1 carbon, gets overwhelmed when having too many choices, dislikes seeing user reviews on a product site and probably lies on the ground on a fetal position at the thought of replacing a hard drive by himself. He is exactly the kind of person Apple makes products for. Just get a Macbook already.

You missed the part about hardware locking and replaceable parts. Because of that, I will never ever buy anything from Apple, it's a big deal for me to replace RAM and HDD whenever I want, for whatever I want. I used to have mac book running Getnoo Linux, until I wanted to add new RAM... I bought new Dell. I have one SSD and one HDD in my laptop (because I don't need cdrom in 2016), I removed it and put HDD there and 4x USBs.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#318

Post by vatotemking »

chaostheory wrote: post #257
rmm wrote: post #235

Microsoft Surface Book. Easily the best device i have used in a very long time. Expensive (especially the i7 dGPU option) but i am amazed at how good this machine is. Huge battery life, powerful when it needs to be. Connect to a dock and you have a powerful desktop. Currently use it when im working in the office doing design work (plugged into a couple of Dell U2715H) then when i am out on mine sites use it as a port…

Agree. I just don't understand why MS has to call it a Surface. It's confusing since there are so many different MS devices that are called Surface.

You forgot the "Book" part. I guess its for branding.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#319

Post by suprfnk »

headmelted wrote: post #306

Am I missing something? Can't you just boot Ubuntu on a Macbook if that's what you want to do? (This is a genuine question - I've always found OSX sufferable enough to not need to, and I have a fanless Acer for Ubuntu that travels with me).

Yes you can. But from the article:

"However, I don't want a Mac.

Apple has great design, but they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software. You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts, and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style."

Re: We Need a Better PC

#320

Post by awongh »

unethical_ban wrote: post #190
awongh wrote: post #159

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 downg…

Or buy another laptop. Could have been a hardware issue. Or install another distro.

I thought that the hardware drivers were independent of the distro? or at least debian? I lazily assumed hardware support on other distros would be crappier.

I think the big issue here is that if a piece of hardware is listed as officially supported and it still doesn't work after you try to fix it with whatever hacks are suggested, it's not a workable situation.

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