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Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

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Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#561

Post by acdha »

niclo wrote: post #278
ghc wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know from extensive debugging of this issue that docker is the problem. You basically can't run docker (as of 6 months ago...I hope this will eventually be false) on an M1/M2 without causing significant heating and battery drain. Since this is the fault of the OS, maybe Asahi will eventually be the solution.

Yes, same conclusion. I wonder if people using it for writing code are running docker at all, you read so many comments on HN of how the battery life is incredible (on any thread about comparisons between any Mac and any other laptop) while in my experience a full charge Macbook Air M2 lasts about 6 hours with Docker running instead of the usual 15 it lasts when its off.

I switched to using Podman when the licensing terms came out and it was clear we weren’t going to be able to get a procurement through. The move was generally painless and the battery life is great - no noticeable impact unless I’m actually hammering the CPU in a container.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#562

Post by colejohnson66 »

Vrondi wrote: post #488
IggleSniggle wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what? I’ve only had my Steam Deck for slightly under a year, but I’m honestly astounded at the amount of abuse it has endured without showing any apparent problems. I’m very curious to see how long it lasts. I doubt it will be competitive with a Switch for durability, which is the closest mirror to a Deck that also has some similarities to Apple-style hardware-quality + lock-in. But that said, I’ve had probl…

Maybe Steam will give us a line of gaming laptops with the same build quality...

Wasn't the "Steam Machine" supposed to be an attempt at a gaming PC, but it failed?

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#563

Post by ActorNightly »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #426
browningstreet wrote: post #329

Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…

You know what they say. Windows for your gaming desktop, Mac for your laptop, and Linux for your servers.

Not so much anymore.

WSL2 under Windows is very good these days, you can run ML tasks without much overhead, and Windows 11 has an x server that allows graphical applications to run from WSL2. So for home development, all you really need is Windows (if you game, if you don't or run games that work well under Linux, Linux is the better choice).

For laptop, it very much varies by use case. For general higher level coding and web browsing, M1/M2s work very well. For more specialized use cases, Linux is simply better than OS X.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#564

Post by danielfoster »

tomxor wrote: post #421
browningstreet wrote: post #329

Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…

> I bought a Lenovo gaming laptop for my son These are not comparable. There are wildly different quality of laptops under the Lenovo brand. A ton of them are complete crap. Apple simply doesn't sell anything like that. The author is comparing to a Thinkpad specifically. Additionally, the 10 years old Apple that made your macbook is a very different company from today. Although they are still a premium brand, the rel…

If Lenovo put their name on it, it's absolutely reasonable to blame them.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#565

Post by paulmd »

baq wrote: post #520
thrill wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I ever go back to PC-land, it'll be to an underpowered device from a business-oriented line." If I ever need a PC again, it'll be by running Parallels on a Mac Air.

If only they made a Mac air with 64GB of ram. Alas market segmentation department won’t hear any of it.

Supply-chain rumors suggest the launch of a 15.6" MBA in the near future, leakers suggest it has M2 Pro as an option. If so it might offer 32GB (or like the mini vs studio, maybe that will remain a segmentation point). Current rumors are maybe June launch.

I agree though, 16GB is tolerable for casual usage and consumption without massive swapping, but, 32GB would really be nice.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#566

Post by Gigachad »

bsder wrote: post #389
Gigachad wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a 2019 i5 MacBook and the fans would be blasting and the thing still roasting hot. It’s incredible how just one year later they released something revolutionary

I'll scream about Apple's bad practices any day of the week, but I used to go out of my way to configure my Macbook Pro's with max RAM, upgraded SSD, and an i5 specifically because that meant my fans were never audible. Yeah, everything i7 was a thermal problem, but that wasn't unique to Apple. And the i9 systems were laughable. However, with an i5, I never had noticable thermal issues. If you're having thermal issue…

I don’t think anything was broken with this MacBook. It was the 13” one and I had to run docker which just made it hot all the time. Now I do an even heavier load on the 13” m1 and the thing is cold while being so much faster.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#567

Post by unxdfa »

mst wrote: post #514
Foobar8568 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices in Switzerland are ok, to not say cheaper than elsewhere, but support...Unless in warranty, is atrocious. They asked me to send my laptop for "diagnostic" with unknown cost when I requested how to buy the part (out of stock on their website) to replace it.

Honestly, once it's out of warranty, I buy the part I need on ebay/aliexpress/etc. and fit it myself. "being able to take it apart and put it back together" covers for a multitude of sins if you're me. Others may feel differently, and, well, to each their own preferred set of trade-offs :)

By the time it's out of warranty you can afford a fully working parts mule off ebay to leave lying around.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#568

Post by dpkirchner »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #562
Vrondi wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Steam will give us a line of gaming laptops with the same build quality...

Wasn't the "Steam Machine" supposed to be an attempt at a gaming PC, but it failed?

IIRC the Steam Machine was a specification and not a product you could buy, so quality varied. I'd bet that contributed to its failure.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#569

Post by 7speter »

browningstreet wrote: post #329

Regarding Lenovo: I bought an original Macbook Air. It always worked well. As it got on to about 10 years old, I took it in to an Apple Store a couple miles from my house and asked if they could replace the battery. The battery worked pretty well, but I figured.. the machine was going strong and if they still had batteries in stock, I should grab one now and the laptop will live even longer. They replaced the battery…

I bought a t470s on ebay for 100 dollars during the holidays and I’m blown away that its mostly an intel era macbook air (was there a 2017 model?) with upgradeable ram 16gb (for 35 dollars), nvme, and a replaceable battery.

Gaming pcs, until about a year or two ago, are pretty much desktop replacement pcs.

Re: Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480

#570

Post by paulmd »

kemayo wrote: post #509
yamtaddle wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once every 3 years isn't going to break the bank vs. like $50 for an X220 battery. My Apple laptops haven't gotten frustratingly-low battery life—but, hell, still better than any PC laptop I've ever owned at purchase, even when "degraded"—until ~5 years, historically. Including the Intel ones. IDK what Apple does with their batteries (extra, "stealth" capacity? Just way, way higher-quality batteries than any other…

The Apple Silicon models will probably also benefit from being the first(?) ones to run their entire life with Apple's new optimized charging behavior. E.g. my laptop spends most of its life plugged in running a display, and so it has its battery charging kept on hold and is occasionally charged up to ~80%. I can only assume this'll help the battery life in the long term...

Check out the application "aldente" for a tool that lets you manage this behavior directly... it can stop charging at a specific battery level regardless of what "optimized charging" wants to do, it allows "sailing" mode where it won't start recharging until the battery is discharged to a specific level, and it allows halting charging when the battery is above a certain temperature.

It does what it says on the tin in terms of system behavior at least, no idea how much it will actually help in terms of battery life.

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