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We Need a Better PC

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421–430 of 699 posts

Re: We Need a Better PC

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you are spending more than 10 hours per day on your laptop, price shouldn't matter. On a side note, you've missed the retina thing, it's making a true difference.

What does a 'true difference' mean? (retina screen) => (mediating factor) => ( more productivity / better eyes )?

For me Retina meant that I stopped printing papers, now I can read PDFs comfortably straight from the screen. Not sure it's better form my eyes, but it saves time a lot.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#422
Has the quality of laptops really been decreasing or are we just remembering "the old days" with nostalgia? Seems like a perfect question that could be easily answered with proper research.

My guess: if you're prepared to pay several thousand you can still buy quality modern laptops today (like ThinkPad P70.) Or do it the cheap way: buy old hardware that's known for its reliability like used ThinkPads (currently using a ThinkPad T520 myself.) There's a good guide here for choosing a ThinkPad model if you're a fan of solid laptops that will last: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/images/8/8f/Tpg140901.png -- it's a bit memey but has solid advice.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For developers OSX will almost always be worse than a Linux distro, if only because of package management.

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.

Use Linux Mint with Cinnamon - HiDPI is awesome there, Linux finally looks good! I switched development over there from OS X & Win, on three 4k monitors and a notebook with 3200x1800 resolution.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#424
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have to agree. It's always the small details that aren't obvious at first blush. Here's another one that always gets me about PC laptops: Air vents on the bottoms so I can't safely rest it on anything soft that would block them. On my MBP I only have to worry about the very back.

YMMV; my Thinkpad and my HP DV2 before that both had side vents.

Without even passive vents? Which exact models?

I might need an additional laptop soon and would love to know about anything comparable to a MBP 13 retina but doesn't have any vents on the bottom.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#425
post #12

Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot. Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the machine you are going to buy (unless you also want the website). HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad. And last but not least I would like to give this entry the RAGE post award, nomination points for What I want is a computer with: -Decen…

Add me to the rage brigade. I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image and you buy direct from Microsoft. I just wish they'd sell me the XPS 13 9350 (the highest spec'd one) in Australia. Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.

If Windows gets bad battery life on MacBooks then that's an indictment of Apple's windows drivers.

Just one poorly written driver can ruin your battery life, and that's a place where the MS "hardware manufacturers write the drivers for their hardware" model really falls down - there are Windows laptops where you can nearly double the battery life by fixing the touchpad driver, or the webcam driver, or, .... In theory a manufacturer/integrator should be auditing the drivers they're shipping and making sure the whole thing works together. Maybe the signature edition programme will improve this.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#426
post #56
post #12

Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot. Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the machine you are going to buy (unless you also want the website). HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad. And last but not least I would like to give this entry the RAGE post award, nomination points for What I want is a computer with: -Decen…

> Rage score 9/10. LOL. Yes, that's fair. I was frustrated with Lenovo's website for all the reasons I described. > Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb. Apple's website is an icon of web design. It's 100MB not because of needless JS & ad tracker bloat, but because of high res images. Just look at it. It's gorgeous: http://www.apple.com/macbook/

Just look at it. It's gorgeous

Meh. The pictures are pretty, but other than that, what's so great about it? The stuff moving up and down as you scroll is just dizzying, and the tech specs page is way too sparse. Frankly, I prefer the ASUS notebooks site.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For developers OSX will almost always be worse than a Linux distro, if only because of package management.

BULLSHIT I live in the command line and use a modern toolchain. Package management has no bearing on my development. mvn, npm, composer, gem, and pip all work just fine. Home brew gets you the OS packages and I've yet to run into an even remotely popular package not in a Homebrew repo somewhere. On top of all that- with Vagrant and (or even just) Virtualbox you have whatever flavor of Linux you want running on your d…

> I live in the command line and use a modern toolchain. Package management has no bearing on my development. mvn, npm, composer, gem, and pip all work just fine. Home brew gets you the OS packages and I've yet to run into an even remotely popular package not in a Homebrew repo somewhere.

When you're building for a managed runtime it's fine. When you're building native code not so much.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#428
post #366
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothered me was this paragraph: >Apple has great design Functional design. A lot of haters misunderstand it as style. >but Uh-oh >they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software. OK, I guess you read that on the Internet. But you should question it. When I bought my first Mac the first thing I did before buying it was call Apple support and check whether I could open it and upgrade the har…

Work issued me a Macbook Pro. The lack of buttons below the trackpad makes right clicking in a controlled manner impossible - I cannot feel nor hover my thumb over the button I want. Accidentally touching the "right" part of the trackpad jumps the mouse cursor over there, or activates some multi-touch gimmick. The power button looks like a regular keyboard ke. The edges of the case are actually too sharp to rest your…

Except for the sharp edges, I really like all of those features.

I rarely click buttons with trackpads, only when I drag things. I almost always tap.

The power button is both a keyboard button and a pure hardware button if you keep it pressed for longer. Don't let the look of it scare you off.

The keyboard keys are quite clearly separated for me. I can't really use mechanical keyboards very well.

The home/end/page keys are replaced by cmd+directions. Delete is Fn+Backspace. If you're using emacs or vi, it won't matter either way.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#429
post #342

I've been very happy with my Dell Precision M3800 which has outstanding build quality, easily comparable to my previous MacBook, and runs Ubuntu perfectly. In fact I like it better hardware-wise than the macbooks because it has a much more pleasant keyboard-surround surface, which is not freezing cold like my MacBook, nor does it have that unpleasant vertical front leading edge which in my opinion is uncomfortable wh…

Agreed. The M3800 workstation is what I chose after a similarly frustrating search to the OP's over a year ago. It's all subjective, but big pros for me was Win7 (as a business machine this was available over a year ago, at a time when most new laptops were Win8 only), really good Debian support (with VMware I rarely need to boot into Win7 now), 16GB RAM option, two drive bays (mSATA and SATA) so 2TB SSD is obtainabl…

yes - I have a fully kitted out one (16GB, 512 ssd, quadro, hidpi etc) and it hit me for around 2000 pounds at the time. Same price as similar MBP. The only issue I've had is that I couldn't get CUDA running properly under any Linux flavour when I also had an external monitor plugged in. Completely frustrating so the quadro 1100 basically goes unused. Other than that, I like the machine a lot. It's superseded now but the new one looks even better. I don't honestly think I'll need to replace this for another couple of years so 4-5 years for this to me makes the initial outlay easy to justify.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#430
post #415

One very strong point which not that many discuss here is how awful websites of non-Apple manufacturers are. They are a strong indication of how bad things are organized and developed at those companies, if they can't make a nice website answering all your questions in an attractive manner – how can they expect you to buy stuff from them? Always impressed me.

Even if you know you want to buy from Lenovo... have you ever tried it?

In Europe that means interacting with Digital River. It's extremely common that your first order will just be binned by their fraud squad, and from there if you persevere you'll be welcomed by even more pain and torture until the laptop eventually arrives and your view of Lenovo is already very negative.

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