Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Need a Better PC

blog.dcpos.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 699 posts

Re: We Need a Better PC

#81

Post by DKnoll »

SwellJoe wrote: post #75
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…

"HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad." I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping…

The HP consumer and enterprise lines are vastly different in terms of quality.

By the way, upon first boot of an HP laptop you will be prompted to burn recovery DVDs. $10 is actually pretty reasonable compared to what others would charge you.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#82

Post by stepvhen »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #79
stepvhen wrote: post #62

I've bought old thinkpad T-series on ebay for ~$300, installed arch, and moved on with my life. I keep most of my relevant data on git repos or a home server. If it dies, which usually happens after a good few years, I just get a new one. Not ideal, and certainly not for everybody, but a reasonable option if it fits your needs.

Can you get IPS screens on those?

Probably not. You're usually looking at a 2-3-year old laptop already for $300. And for that money, you kind of get what you get.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#83

Post by derefr »

SwellJoe wrote: post #75
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…

"HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad." I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping…

HP's consumer and enterprise divisions are effectively separate companies (and, in fact, were acquired from separate sources.) The enterprise "workstation" laptops are some of the best-put-together, simplest-to-repair, most-natively-well-supported-without-needing-drivers, and otherwise most "obvious" in their design machines I've ever had the pleasure of refurbishing.

The EliteBook line is the one laptop where seeing inside actually made me want to own it more. (And I did buy one, and it was an excellent machine that served me well for years and would still be decently competitive today.)

Other neat thing: the EliteBooks I was refurbishing tended to be 2007 models—but they came with fully-working UEFI, hidden under a "this is only a prototype implementation" warning. It was fun playing with 64-bit Windows 8 on them; none of the other machines in the shop could make heads or tails of the W8 install discs.

They also tended to come with fingerprint sensors. I got used to unlocking my laptop with my thumb long before TouchID was a thing.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#84

Post by codebook »

vardump wrote: post #19

My dream laptop: 1) No malware/spyware tainted brand. 2) At least 32 GB ECC RAM, 16 GB is so 2010. ECC, because memory errors do happen and cause instability. 64 GB option wouldn't hurt either. 3) HiDPI (retina) display (IPS or equivalent) 4) Fast PCI-e attached SSD. 5) Ability to run two 4k monitors @60 Hz. 6) Stable USB3 ports (My 2015 RMBP keeps resetting USB3 ports, making it nearly impossible to run VMs on USB3…

2) ECC , IMHO, is useless on personal laptop. Error rate is quite low that "opportunity cost" is too high. Except that, MBPr is proper solution. So, let's hope Apple to solve your USB3 port issue. (you can report, by the way)

Re: We Need a Better PC

#85

Post by caleblloyd »

dantillberg wrote: post #10
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Don't get a a laptop. The pc industry is doomed with phone envy. Desktop machines are one place you can really do better.

This sounds like a troll comment, and maybe it is. But I agree, and for me, switching a lot of my usage from a laptop to a desktop was a solution. After 5-6 years of adoring a series of macbooks, I finally got fed up with Apple slowly locking down OSX. And if you're not willing to run OSX, then even the macbooks lose a lot of their luster. If you run a desktop, though, then most everything pretty much works great (ev…

I was thinking the exact same thing. I recently got Intel NUC boxes for every developer at our office. Linux support out of the box. It's 4 inches square ans easy to take different locations provided you can hook up to screen.

Everyone's got a laptop too, but they can now also VNC or SSH to their Linux machine if they need to work remote. Hell you can VNC into them from a chromebook.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#86

Post by noobermin »

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…

>Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot.

Sometimes[0].

P.S., if you're interested in helping, we'd all appreciate it!

[0] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891

Re: We Need a Better PC

#87

Post by protomyth »

SwellJoe wrote: post #75
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…

"HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad." I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping…

We bought 120 HP netbooks and had almost 90% drive failure (Seagate) and their firmware only for service contract customers has really soured me on HP. I find SuperMicro makes better servers, so I am pretty much out of HP now.

Re: We Need a Better PC

#89

Post by martey »

jseliger wrote: post #77

I'm surprised not to see a link to the Librem laptops: https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-13 . They're an attempt to solve the problem being posited, AFAICT, though they ship with Linux, not Windows. I gave $10 to their initial Kickstarter but have never used one.

Purism/Librem looks extremely similar to System76 - they are rebranded laptops from an Asian ODM running a variant of Linux.

None of their marketing materials make reference to better build quality, battery life, or support, just "security, privacy, and freedom". I would love for them to hit all of these boxes, but I am unsure that their hardware will be as free/secure as they claim (see https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-p...).

Re: We Need a Better PC

#90

Post by knights123 »

It seems like you should really just buy a MacBook Pro. Sure the software isn't perfect, but it's an order of magnitude closer to perfect than Windows has been lately. You buy it, boot it up, and it works wonderfully. Of course the one day out of the year that it doesn't you go rage comment on how it sucks and it scares Windows users away from Mac, but the rest of the time you'd never consider going back to a typical PC.
Post reply on HN