- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36646791, 530 comments
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486191, 279 comments
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674830, 111 comments
How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
41–50 of 149 posts
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#42Great article. 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.
On my side I prefer Dell Latitudes and Fujitsu Siemens, which only makes "professional" laptops. I agree with the keyboards, however really good keyboards have totally disappeared now.
That said a used laptop is perfect for web browsing, office stuff, casual development and light gaming. When it dies you have no regrets. It is almost 20 years I have not bought a new laptop. Of course my kids have used laptops too. At some point they had Fujitsu Siemens with a Wacom stylus/digitizer. I do not think they still make those. They were rock solid and quite fun to use.
I only buy new laptops for my wife. She is very careful with her stuff, they last ages. I bought her a new one recently only to offer her a better screen.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Have you considered a Framework laptop? They have 13-inch and 16-inch models and are designed to be upgraded. https://frame.work/
Do they have 15 hour battery life, run cool and silent like my MacBook Air?
The Framework laptop has way too many compromises
https://www.theverge.com/24185827/framework-laptop-16-six-mo...
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#44... well... this is all good except... if you use Windows and want to upgrade to Windows 11... am currently fighting with a Lenovo W530 from 2013 - and nothing is working "well", even the recent 2024 Win 11 IoT Enterprise release build that can make TPM/etc optional via a Rufus-created USB stick.
And then testing newer Linux distros is also not working with the nVidia K2000M discrete graphics system.
Am thinking it may be time to give-up, harvest the RAM, the SSD's and the screen and recycle the rest of this one...
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#45Spent like $2000 NZD on a new XPS 13 to replace my old XPS 13 from ~2017 - a device I loved. The new one was a piece of hot garbage. Overheat and throttled playing League of Legends - a game that has ran adequately on every other piece of hardware I've owned since 2011?
I couldn't understand how a 2022 device would run so much worse than 2017 device and assumed it was faulty. Returned, given a replacement, same issue. It is quite literally not built to hand the heat from the Intel chip doing very minimal stuff. I refuse to use a laptop that sounds like a jet engine when Microsoft is doing basic background stuff.
Returned and ended up buying a used 15 inch T-type Thinkpad with an AMD chip recommended by Reddit for $500 NZD. Runs great, cool, and quiet. It's much bigger and bulkier that the Dell but I don't mind.
Note: Not a Thinkpad fanboy, work has given me an X1 Carbon that I dislike for the same reasons I didn't like the new XPS 13 - it's useable, but it's still much hotter and louder than I would like.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#46>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…
Even if it is, most of the keys are interchangeable. Your fingers don’t care that the M key has an N on it.
With my mechanical keyboard, I have had a tendency to break a few (specific) keys. I got around it by 3D printing a few blank keys.
So long as I know where the N and M keys are, that's all that matters :)
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#47That's all fine when you use the laptop as a typewriter. I keep around a 2010 laptop that only has some text editing software on it for that exact reason. Unfortunately, with the advent of soldered ram and storage, this isn't feasible any more for more taxing uses. Most of the used devices will have the default ram and storage and you'll have to buy new so you can order the thing with enough resources.
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.
In 2025, I expect my laptop to be lightweight, fast, 14 hours+ on a single charge, silent and run cool.
I care more about all of those features than the replaceable parts.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#48If it's someone local or friend-of-a-friend, fine. But for rando ebay/web: is there some part of the supply chain where thousands or tens of thousands of machines hit a single point where it's scalable for, say, a software rootkit to efficiently be put on them? E.g., I know universities typically buy a shit-ton of the same model. Where do they eventually unload them if they don't end up selling through their official…
doubt a bitcoin millionaire is going to bother buying second hand hw. For anyone else, just format hdd & reinstall os
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#49My imagination produced a product with the worse possible build quality but with various tiers of replacement parts.
Say you buy the laptop with a crude 3d printed case and when new money comes in you buy the titanium case. Spending the weekend swapping the parts over is a bonus.
It should be modular but extra crappy. 2 GB memory is a lot.
Ideally go full ship of theseus.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#50I presume, with Windows 10 support ending this year, there's going to be a glut of used laptops.
This will be an interesting one to observe; will Canonical and others be able to capitalize on the Microsoft FUD around secure boot to convert users? Alternatively, can the community come up with some interesting uses for all the machines?
> Alternatively, can the community come up with some interesting uses for all the machines?
Google has targeted this model with ChromeOS Flex.