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We Need a Better PC

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Re: We Need a Better PC

#641

Post by mbrock »

askafriend wrote: post #608
tingol wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you sure convinced me with your accurate statistics. You talk of benefits as if higher dpi cures cancer, it looks better and that's it. I really don't know what the big deal is, I have a HiDPI screen, works fine under linux as most of my work is done in terminals all I've had to "configure" was turning off hinting for my emulators and that was that. But they are waay more important things I would like from my ma…

I honestly don't care what "hinting for my emulators" means or why it matters that it's off. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I just want to get work done in a sane way. Linux is insane to any normal human being.

Since when is this a forum for normal human beings?

Re: We Need a Better PC

#642

Post by davvid »

mbrock wrote: post #271
thirdsun wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my impression too. I'm not an expert on Windows hardware/devices but from what I hear the Dell XPS 13 is an excellent machine if you don't want a MacBook. Not even mentioning Dell tells me this guy misses a few things.

I have the XPS 13 Developer Edition, and it's a fine laptop in many ways... But it's marketed as a Linux laptop, yet requires a proprietary WiFi driver. After I upgraded my kernel a month ago, the WiFi started kernel panicking randomly and often, so I don't bother even using the computer anymore... I just use a full screen terminal on my old MacBook and ssh to a VPS. One day I'll reinstall the driver or something, bu…

I have the same laptop. I wanted to run Debian/sid on it so I knew going in that I was going to need to do something about the wireless card. I researched[1] a bit and bought an Intel Wireless 7260 for ~$25, swapped it in, and it made all the difference.

The card identifies itself as:

    02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev bb)
[1] https://yurovsky.github.io/2015/05/18/dell-xps-13-wifi-linux...

Re: We Need a Better PC

#643

Post by x0 »

hguant wrote: post #169
jordanpg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these things are considered features of homebrew, not bugs.

Nonsense. Absolute rubbish. Being broken is a feature? Changing /usr/local instead of being sane? Leaving old versions of packages lying about instead of cleaning them up? Breaking when the Apple devs wonder if it would be fun to switch things up a bit under the hood without telling anyone? The one thing I can think of that's a "feature" is that brew compiles locally, instead of pulling down a binary, but even that h…

> Changing /usr/local instead of being sane?

Better than most OS X programs, which seem to have paths like /Applications/Something.app/Contents/Resources/SomethingElse.app/Contents/Developer/Frameworks/Resources/Something.dylib/Contents/Resources/MacOS/Resources/Frameworks/Something.dylib/Contents/Developer

Case in point, an excerpt from the program Lipo's usage text:

fatal error: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/lipo: Usage: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/lipo [input_file]

Re: We Need a Better PC

#644

Post by mbrock »

davvid wrote: post #642
mbrock wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the XPS 13 Developer Edition, and it's a fine laptop in many ways... But it's marketed as a Linux laptop, yet requires a proprietary WiFi driver. After I upgraded my kernel a month ago, the WiFi started kernel panicking randomly and often, so I don't bother even using the computer anymore... I just use a full screen terminal on my old MacBook and ssh to a VPS. One day I'll reinstall the driver or something, bu…

I have the same laptop. I wanted to run Debian/sid on it so I knew going in that I was going to need to do something about the wireless card. I researched[1] a bit and bought an Intel Wireless 7260 for ~$25, swapped it in, and it made all the difference. The card identifies itself as: 02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev bb) [1] https://yurovsky.github.io/2015/05/18/dell-xps-13-wifi-linux.…

Thanks. The proprietary Broadcom driver worked well enough until it didn't, and now I know firsthand why not to use them, so that's a useful experience at least.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#645

Post by xerophyte12932 »

lmm wrote: post #476
xerophyte12932 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal solution is a desktop and a 7-inch tablet. Sure the tablet loses some of the power as compared to a laptop, but huge portability gain. And it fits my use case. I don't write code while on the move. I do that at my desk. For all other use cases like consumption of data or even blogging, the tablet works.

Blogging with an onscreen keyboard is painful, and carrying around tablet + bluetooth keyboard is more cumbersome than a 9" or 11" "ultrabook". The ability to run old binary-only windows/x86 programs comes in handy too. What do you do for a phone? What works for me is: 6"+ phone that does anything I'd use a 7" tablet for (smartwatch means I don't need to take it out my pocket as often), 11" ultrabook for doing things…

>Blogging with an onscreen keyboard is painful

I used to think that. But then i got the hang of it and now I do most of my writings on my tablet

> What do you do for a phone?

I don't have the use case for an expensive phone or even a data plan. I have a low end smart phone ($70) that I use mostly for just texts and calls. Even my whatsapp is on my tablet (needs manual .apk as playstore won't let you do this).

I am at my desk most of the day (office), so all Internet related things I do on desktop. After work hours I have my tablet at home so don't really need my phone for much else. Have a desktop at home as well.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#646

Post by cyphar »

xlayn wrote: 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…

The latest MacBook (2015) doesn't use USB internally for the keyboard and touchpad. As a result, Linux doesn't support it. I was thinking about writing patches to fix it (it does boot) but it looks far too complicated (I'm not even sure if the "protocol" is the same over different serial protocols).

Re: We Need a Better PC

#647

Post by spronkey »

sbuk wrote: post #466
spronkey wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's real. Sure, OS X was terrible in the early days. But then we got stuff like Tiger and Snow Leopard. It was clear progress. And now it isn't.

Extrapolate; in what way? 10.4 took until 10.4.11 to be stable. Snow Leopards wasn't great out of the box either. Marco's original post was nerd rage and the new mDNS solution. Was it annoying? Yes. Is it symptomatic of a larger issue? Hardly. I think, like may others, you are looking at this with extremely rosey glasses, especially given the comparison to Linux desktops, which in my experience (around 15 years) is s…

Maybe I have the ole' tinted glasses a la Rose, but I don't remember any really bad bugs with 10.4. Spotlight was slow, iTunes broke yet again, but in general it seemed to work OK. Maybe because I was on a PPC machine back then?

I won't even try to defend Linux desktops, but I definitely notice just as many day to day issue with OS X than I did in the past, and really, I notice a lot more little bugs that really affect me. Like my multi monitor setup menu items disappear. And sometimes the windows don't render themselves correctly. Finder and smb etc..

Re: We Need a Better PC

#648

Post by spronkey »

slantyyz wrote: post #617
k-mcgrady wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "The two Mac laptops I have, they get hot and the fan is noisy, especially my Macbook Pro." What are you doing on them? I'm generally running browser/Xcode/iTunes or Logic Pro X/iTunes/Browser and my fan never spins up. In fact it spins so rarely I tend to think somethings going wrong when it does. It freaks me out. I'm on the lowest spec 13" MacBook Pro.

I run mostly dev tools, text editor, etc. But I have a bad habit of having more than 50 Chrome tabs open, and Chrome is a notorious pig on just about every OS. My Macbook Pro (2011, quad core i7) is famous for heating issues, but that aside, any app that forces use of the discrete GPU (at one point, even Coda did) would cause the fans to spin. I don't want to sound like a snob, but the 13" MBPs aren't comparable with…

Those 2011 quad cores are powerful machines, especially for their size (thickness, mainly). I've used HP Elitebooks with similar CPUs, that are close to twice as thick, yet still have worse heat issues.

You've gotta work them pretty hard to start reaching thermal issues - as you are doing with lots of Chrome tabs :P

Re: We Need a Better PC

#649

Post by spronkey »

tluyben2 wrote: post #343
Zarel wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I googled around and found this: http://www.trustedreviews.com/dell-xps-13-2015-review-batter... which gives a rated battery life of 18 hours and a real-world use battery life of 9-10 hours http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/dell-xps-13-battery-life-f... This article suggests a battery life of 12 hours. What kind of battery life are you expecting?

Ah my bad; I read somewhere it was much much less. Maybe that's outdated information. But when people say 9 hours, basically I get 3-4 out of them... Usually.

Just one more thing to add to the list of things Apple do well - quote realistic battery life figures.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#650

Post by spronkey »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #250
stock_toaster wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it has a matte screen, which sounds glorious! I am still using a seemingly ancient macbook pro 15" 2009 model, simply because it has a matte screen, yet still runs the latest OSX. The super glossy screens make my eyes hurt after a while. I have been hoping that some day the glossiness gets down to a level that I can tolerate enough to get a newer macbook. However, if my laptop ends up giving up the ghost along th…

Have you tried using an anti-glare (matte) screen protector? I haven't, but they're reasonably priced and it seems like an easy product to get right.

From my experience the matte films are pretty poor, they really do reduce the visual quality of the display to far worse than the actual Matte displays
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