My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…
My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…
Have you looked at the new crop of arm-based windows laptops?
The main problem with the Framework 13 at this point is underwhelming battery life. I have one of the newly announced models reserved in hopes that the new CPU improves that to a reasonable degree, but if reviews come out and that turns out to not be the case there’s a substantial chance I’ll cancel.
I honestly don't understand battery complaints. Cafes have plugs. Airplanes have plugs. Were are people working for hours without power?
It's less so having access to plugs and more not needing to carry a charger.
M series really is amazing. But if you don’t want Apple, or you want to be able to upgrade, check out Frameworks. [1] Really satisfying combination of quality and value for high performance laptops. [1] https://frame.work/
Their 16" laptop is extremely bulky. I think this is a category where Macbooks clearly win. Thinkpad and FrameWork have great options for 14", but at larger screen sizes something is always missing for me.
To be fair, the 16" MacBook Pro (I have the M1 Max) is also rather bulky. It's to big and to heavy for travel. If you need do a lot of traveling, or just don't work at your desk, I'd recommend against getting a 16" laptop in general.
Pixel density is important for crisp small text, so cli on a 14 inch screen and maybe web browsing would be good reasons for a 4k display - it would be the only reasons for me at least.
why do you need crisp text for cli? cli works just fine in 180p still
I’ve considered trying an ultralight PC laptop with a superior screen. But the sad state of reality is that: (1) Windows these days feels like a constant battle against forcibly installed adware / malware. (2) Linux would be great, but getting basic laptop essentials like reliable sleep/wake and power management to work even remotely well in Linux continues to be a painful losing battle. (3) Apple’s M series chips’ p…
You don't buy a PC and try to run MacOS on it do you? Then why do people keep buying random laptops and then complaining when Linux doesn't run on it? You buy a laptop from a vendor who designs them to run Linux out of the box. Also, Apple's power management isn't flawless either. It used to be fantastic, but I've never, ever seen a laptop that has to charge for 15 minutes before you can even boot it from a flat batt…
The whole point of Linux is that it works on random laptops
Yes. No other laptop can sustain peak performance as long as the M-series Macs. The only thing that competes is a dedicated desktop with a big cooler and fan. Mac laptops feel faster, even if the synthetic benchmarks say otherwise.
I think this has a whole lot to do with the memory throughput, as well as great efficiency. My M1 still holds right up! It is the smallest RAM model, and even that is not the end of things.
I bought an M1 Max with 64gb of ram at release. I'm still not sure what will get me to replace it other than it simply breaking. Maybe an M5 will finally make me want to buy something new. I'm debating getting a cheaper Air and maybe a base Ultra now that I do most of my heavy work at a desk.
You’re making it seem like they’re hiding that information under a footnote. The real text on the page, which is quite visible, is: > Up to 23x faster than fastest Intel‑based MacBook Air And right next to it: > Up to 2x faster than MacBook Air (M1) The footnotes are there to expand on the conditions of the measurements. So not exactly misleading. On the contrary, it seems to me they’re quite clearly saying “if you h…
"Up to" is still doing a lot of work there. What kinds of workloads are we talking that get the big numbers, and what can we realistically expect on real workloads? I'm reminded of 90s advertisements in which the new G3 processor was supposed to be so many times faster than the Pentium or even Pentium II. Their chosen benchmark: how long it takes to run a Photoshop plugin. On Mac OS pre-X, a Photoshop plugin got 100%…
> Testing conducted by Apple in January 2025 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 32GB of RAM, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics and 16GB of RAM, all configured with 2TB SSD. Tested using Super Resolution with Pixelmator Pro 3.6.14 and a 4.4MB image. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
My 4-year old Dell XPS 15 is up for replacement, but somehow no manufacturer aside from Apple is making laptop with decent specs nowadays? I want 2TB storage, a 4k (or close) HiDPI display, good build quality, and not a bulky gaming laptop. The XPS 15 was perfect, it had those specs, except it only had 1TB storage which is now full. I was expecting that to not be an issue 4 years later ... But now Dell discontinued X…
Gen question: why do people care how bulky a laptop is? I buy gaming laptops because they're the only powerful laptops and their size has never bothered me when traveling
Because they are laptops. I can't even use my 16" MacBook Pro on the couch. It's portable sure, but it's not a laptop. You can't take it anyway, only move it from desk to desk. It's the single heaviest thing in my bag when I travel.
I can do the same work on a MacBook Air when I'm away, and it's basically just a desktop when I'm home. To me it would make way more sense to have a desktop at home and a 12 - 14" laptop, if it wasn't for the cost of having both.
> but even non-tech people I know are wondering why Android phones run smoother than iPhones. Stuff that would be completely unheard of purely because of how noticeable 60hz vs 120hz is. Are they? I'm a tech person and I can barely notice it at all. And I don't think I have a single non-tech friend who is even aware of the concept of video refresh rate. Whenever there's something that doesn't feel smooth about an int…
In seriously surprised you can't tell, it feels significantly smoother for me to see a high refresh rate display. 60hz just looks sluggish/slow and wrong to me now. I had a side by side of the same monitor (was at a lan) and was watching my friend play and couldn't understand why his game looked so laggy untill I realise he had high refresh rate off. Turned on 144hz and it was so much better
That may have very little to do with refresh rate itself, and far more to do with the image processing and latency introduced by the monitor in different video modes.