61–70 of 353 posts
I won't need a retina display in the near future unless Visual Studio or vim suddenly require it.
(and I really don't see that happpening -ever)
What's the life cycle on laptops? I tend to upgrade every 18 months or so. I'm sure many other professionals and power users upgrade even more frequently. At this rate, as the article states, we've voted with our actions.
Strangely I still occasionally use a Sony Vaio SRX51p/B from 2001 occasionally for light surfing or IRC over SSH and that works fine apart from the battery.
The argument doesn't really hold up, as we're only given two choices: Upgradable, or amazing screen. If there was a third, "Upgradable and amazing screen" with the applicable price/weight tradeoffs, then the "we can choose" view would be more tenable. Regardless, the lack of upgradability isn't something that bugs me. My last two Apple laptops were "upgradable", but all I ever did was throw some RAM in there. The sub…
I've maxed out the ram, added an SSD _and_ added the biggest SATA drive I could find and fit it in the DVD tray using an adapter from iFixit. My laptop is from 2007 and it feels like a speed demon with the SSD and still can store all my media. So now, I have the option of maxing out the hardware _hoping_ that it will last me many years. That's part of buying into a closed platform _and_ belonging to a niche of consum…
For years Apple has wanted to get closer and closer to the "appliance" model for their products. They are targeting consumers who's gut instinct when it comes to fixing their computers is to call a "geek". These consumers just want the damn things to work and would rather not worry about upgrading it over time. This is of course very unattractive to the hacker crowd, but they make up a much smaller percentage of the…
What's the life cycle on laptops? I tend to upgrade every 18 months or so. I'm sure many other professionals and power users upgrade even more frequently. At this rate, as the article states, we've voted with our actions.
For work, I've not had a laptop last more than 3 years before dying, but I have a habit of punishing them. My current MBP (bought a couple of months ago as I wanted the top end Sandy Bridge with all the kinks ironed out rather than a 1.0 Ivy Bridge model) I'm hoping will make it to 4. It's an experiment, never had a mac laptop before for work (my last mac laptop was a PowerBook Duo 280c). Strangely I still occasional…
Even so, once I've used a machine for a few years, it tends to feel like sending good money after bad to "upgrade" a 2+ year old laptop. At that point I wind up using them for odd jobs (e.g. print server, media server) rather than my primary computer.
I'm on the fence. On the one hand, the new MBP is a fantastic machine and if I pay the premium for the 16GB of RAM, I'm probably going to be set for years. That said, I'm currently running the original Late 2008 Unibody Macbook Pro. It's survived for four years because I've been able to, over time, upgrade the RAM, replace the spinning disk with an SSD, and replace the aging battery. SSDs weren't available when I pur…
The argument doesn't really hold up, as we're only given two choices: Upgradable, or amazing screen. If there was a third, "Upgradable and amazing screen" with the applicable price/weight tradeoffs, then the "we can choose" view would be more tenable. Regardless, the lack of upgradability isn't something that bugs me. My last two Apple laptops were "upgradable", but all I ever did was throw some RAM in there. The sub…
That's not the only point mentioned in this article. You are forgetting about two aspects: - Environment: Gluing glass and aluminum most probably forbid recycling both of them, that's just a waste. - Cost of repairing: While with previous models, any of us could replace some part of his laptops easily (to repair as well as to upgrade), that won't be possible anymore. That means that it will cost tons of money to cust…
What's the life cycle on laptops? I tend to upgrade every 18 months or so. I'm sure many other professionals and power users upgrade even more frequently. At this rate, as the article states, we've voted with our actions.
I'm definitely considering a new one but may hold off until fall/winter.
Wasteful? Very.
Edit: Don't downvote because you hate it. I hate it too. Its just where things are going as computers are becoming commodities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
90% of BlackBerry users will never change the battery on their device. 100% of BlackBerries have a stupid door on the back which allows you to remove the battery and eventually becomes very loose and slides off. True, but it was sometimes the only way you could do a hard reboot on those things!
Oh god don't remind me. You'd hear a notification for a text message, unlock the device and you'd see > JAVA MESSAGE ERROR Which required removing the battery to do a hard reset (which took about 120 seconds).