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The Perfect Laptop

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Re: The Perfect Laptop

#331

Post by crossroadsguy »

brailsafe wrote: post #295
crossroadsguy wrote: post #291

M1 or M2 MacBook Airs *with 16 GB RAM* (and this is the catch). These are notoriously costlier (and difficult on retailer sites where you get deals) to have compared to their 8GB counter part - Apple already making it difficult for users to keep the laptop around for longer, because that default 8GB RAM is going to run out sooner than you think. And you can not upgrade it once bought. Anything on Windows (or Linux co…

My intel MBP 13" has only lasted as long as it had because I got the 16gb of ram, and wouldn't consider anything lower these days. The upgrade from 8 to 16 only a few years ago though was about $200 (already too high imo), but now every ram tier is a laughable $500 CAD upgrade. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for 16g more , and even though I know it's a great computer, it just feels sinister. Considering it's an additional $500…

Yeah. Unfortunately high RAM - no strike that; reasonable RAM laptop is hard to find at reasonable prices. And by the time FrameWork or something like that reaches my corner of geography I think it’d have been too late for me to try those things.

There was sale recently in my country across online retailers like Amazon. There was decent discount on 8GB one, but the 16GB one? It’s not even available. It is never available with retailers.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#332

Post by amiga-workbench »

twic wrote: post #7

> the body of a 12" laptop I've always owned 15" laptops, and i've never had any trouble fitting them in bags, even in a sleeve. I understand why people might want 7" or 10" netbooks, but a 12" machine just seems like a waste of space to me. I understand that most people feel very differently, though! > webcam that doesn’t make it look like your laptop (or you) are a potato during a videoconference And also doesn't l…

For me, 12" is the smallest size you can fit a non-compromised, normal keyboard layout in.

I also carry around a smaller messenger bag which 12" laptops just about fit in. I tried to pull off a 17" Dell mobile workstation, but got very tired of lugging around a backpack and having no battery life.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#333

Post by sanderjd »

maximamas wrote: post #46

I'm no die hard apple fan, but you would think I was if you heard me talking about my 16" m1 pro. It's an absolute beast, battery for days, and I've never heard the fan spin up once. It would take a lot for me to even give another machine a chance.

I know, the last couple macbook lineups are crazy good again. Just when I thought I was out!

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#334

Post by sanderjd »

jimmychoozyx wrote: post #169
maximamas wrote: post #46

I'm no die hard apple fan, but you would think I was if you heard me talking about my 16" m1 pro. It's an absolute beast, battery for days, and I've never heard the fan spin up once. It would take a lot for me to even give another machine a chance.

Personally, for me, the best laptop ever made is: 14 inch M2 Macbook Pro. Combine it with the Anker 737 Power Bank, and it's a match made in heaven.

Yep, this is what I'm running. Honestly shocked how good it is. Trackpad and monitor are great (the things they have never screwed up, to their credit), keyboard is back to being great, magsafe charger is back, no dumb touchbar gimmick, all usb-c, headphone jack, and I honestly think it seems faster - even on battery - than my beefy workstation I used to have at my office (just with less ram). The performance especially just feels like magic, for a laptop.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#335

Post by sanderjd »

matteoraso wrote: post #267
maximamas wrote: post #46

I'm no die hard apple fan, but you would think I was if you heard me talking about my 16" m1 pro. It's an absolute beast, battery for days, and I've never heard the fan spin up once. It would take a lot for me to even give another machine a chance.

The thing that's holding me back from getting one is the memory markups. The base configuration is too low and I can't just change the memory myself because everything is soldered.

Yep, you're not wrong at all. It's a great computer, but this is where they get you.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#336

Post by stonecharioteer »

I use an Asus RoG X13 Flow 2022 edition, and while it has its flaws (that the 2023 edition ironed out), I run Fedora on it and it's wonderful. I use it docked most of the time, and my requirements were mostly unique.

I wanted power. This has a Ryzen 9 and 32 GB RAM. I needed a 13 inch form factor because I use external monitors and don't want to lug around a large laptop.

And for the keyboard, I use a Kinesis Advantage 2 most of the time, but I had a very specific form factor requirment as well, I wanted to be able to use the laptop with the keyboard folded up under it. This gave me the ability to do that and plop my Kinesis in front of it. More desk space!

I like the built in keyboard though and for the life of me, I don't like trackpads. I've used a Mac before and while the trackpad is nice, and I've considered attaching a Magic Trackpad to my keyboard, I'm in love with trackballs. I use a Logitech MX Ergo Plus, and it is wonderful. I use Qtile so I don't really rely on the mouse much, but when I do, the trackball is great.

But I get the appeal of a Mac. I've considered getting a 13 inch MacBook and using it to just ssh into a cloud machine for work. I'm on the fence about it, but I might do that one day and just live my life in the terminal.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#337

Post by mixmastamyk »

jwells89 wrote: post #257
maximamas wrote: post #46

I'm no die hard apple fan, but you would think I was if you heard me talking about my 16" m1 pro. It's an absolute beast, battery for days, and I've never heard the fan spin up once. It would take a lot for me to even give another machine a chance.

I’ve been very happy with the 16” M1 Pro’s I’ve done work on. It’s probably the first laptop I’ve used where the load threshold at which its fans make noticeable noise feels somewhat appropriate (rather than spinning up for little to no reason), its power level feels more desktop-class than laptop-class, and I don’t have to keep my eye glued to the battery meter even when running heavy IDEs. I’m even kinda happy abou…

Funny how an IDE is considered heavyweight these days, rather than a vfx package like Blender.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#338

Post by kayodelycaon »

solardev wrote: post #317
kayodelycaon wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less difficult than I thought to to get an M1 Max chip hot enough to spin up fans. Run CitiesSkylines on a 4K display with all of the graphics maxed out for a few hours. ;) Or do 8 parallel runs of transforming and merging a massive amount of jpgs into less massive pile of pdfs. Just about fully pegged all of the cores for hours. What surprised me was how fast everything still was. Without the fan, I wouldn't ha…

Out of curiosity, why would you want to combine jpegs into PDFs? And why did that cause such a load? It wasn't just embedding them into PDFs, but somehow recompressing them too?

Documents scans. Lots of them. They all needed to get processed so the pages would be the same size.

I don't know what imagemagick does when you ask it to merge jpgs into a pdf. :)

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#339

Post by jimmychoozyx »

sanderjd wrote: post #334
jimmychoozyx wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, for me, the best laptop ever made is: 14 inch M2 Macbook Pro. Combine it with the Anker 737 Power Bank, and it's a match made in heaven.

Yep, this is what I'm running. Honestly shocked how good it is. Trackpad and monitor are great (the things they have never screwed up, to their credit), keyboard is back to being great, magsafe charger is back, no dumb touchbar gimmick, all usb-c, headphone jack, and I honestly think it seems faster - even on battery - than my beefy workstation I used to have at my office (just with less ram). The performance especia…

I went with the 32GB Ram upgrade ($400)-- mostly because I work with Docker (it seems to eat up about 33% of the RAM).

Never heard the fan. Stays cool to the touch, which is quite unexpected and pleasant.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#340

Post by pwpw »

brailsafe wrote: post #327
pwpw wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's a 16". I spent two weeks vacationing in Europe and then a 3rd week working at night, and it was a pain to carry that MacBook around! It forced me to bring an entire backpack to carry it. Not fun to add all of that weight when I was also hauling a camera around. That's where the Nano thrives. Even the 14" is considerably heavier than Nano as you've pointed out.

As seanmcdirmid pointed out below, I'd agree that the Macbook Air would probably be the closest approximation in the mac lineup in terms of weight, but intended to compare the weight between the 14" MBP and the Nano favourably. To me, yes the weight and size of the 16" would be a bit of a pain to carry around for any substantial amount of time, but the added 1.5lbs of the MBP 14" or the 0.8lb difference of the Air do…

Just for clarification, the parent I was originally responding to was expressing their negative view about the Nano and how they love their M1 MacBook Pro, so I wanted to provide my experience with the two laptops that I have used extensively.

I did briefly have a 2020 M1 Air for 2 years. It was fine for carrying around. It failed for portability primarily in its inability to dock to a 2 monitor workstation. I still vastly prefer my Nano as a portable laptop to travel with (e.g. plane or bus travel outside of my city). The Air indeed weighs very little, but it still weighs 40% more than a Nano! I usually travel with a portable screen that weighs half a pound, so my combo still weighs less than just an Air.

It’s hard to describe the experience with an Air, since weight is about physical feel, but that weight saving does make a difference. The Nano is so lightweight that I can quickly pick it up and use it on the sofa as comfortably as an iPad. My Nano even has a 5G SIM card slot that I can pop my cellphone SIM into. However, that only works on the Windows side for now. Finally, the keyboard is much more pleasant to type on with the Nano. It really is a great travel laptop. Add in the ability to natively run Arch Linux, and I’m happier than ever with it.

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