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Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

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Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#81

Post by fyhn »

Home: A 13-inch Asus Zenbook from 2014 (UX32LN) now running Ubuntu (MATE) 22.04. It's still good!

Work: A recent 13-inch Dell XPS that shipped with Ubuntu 22.04. It's also great, but the function key row has been replaced with touch buttons which is not good at all (including the escape and delete keys).

Work, previously: A 13-inch Dell Latitude from 2017. I originally ran 16.04 on it, then 18.04 until the above replaced it. Worked very well. Had every port you can wish for, including ethernet. Eventually the battery swelled and the keyboard stopped working.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#82

Post by boplicity »

I use an Asus Vivobook Pro 16x. It's got a big, beautiful OLED screen, decent keyboard and trackpad, and runs fast enough for most things I do on it. It was also 1/3rd of the cost of the Macbook Pro I had to return.

(Unfortunately, Macbooks cause severe eyestrain for me, for some unknown reason.)

This laptop works quite well for my purposes; and I agree with the sentiment from a few other people, that it's almost a relief to not have a "perfect" laptop. It just works -- good enough.

I have an external bluetooth speaker when I want good sound. I have a good webcam, if I want to look professional on video. If I buy a new laptop, these will go with it. Not everything has to be built in, it turns out.

I also have an overpowered desktop, when I need to do serious video editing.

I'm on Windows -- I just don't have the time to fiddle with Linux. Though, I do that sometimes anyways, it tends to be a time sink.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#84

Post by jtwaleson »

ElectronBadger wrote: post #63

Lenovo T14 (Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U) with RAM expanded to 24 GB, running Debian Testing. Works like a charm. Previously I had MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, I prefer T14+Linux to both of them.

I have the previous gen (T495s) running Debian testing. Don't you have issues with power usage? That's my only gripe with this laptop. Battery lasts maybe 3 hours max while on Windows it should last 8+.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#85

Post by hesammelvil »

As many people mentioned my work computer is a mac chosen by the employer. My major issues with iMac Pro, which by the way is nice piece of machine overall, rises when I'm using non-commercialized applications, open source mainly, github projects, conda forge etc. My personal laptop is refurbished dell latitude 7470 which I bought for less than 300$ at 2019 despite the fact I replaced many parts does the job and I like the sturdiness.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#86

Post by MisterTea »

peatfreak wrote: post #48
MisterTea wrote: post #29

Thinkpad X270 running 9front. Thinkpad T410i running Debian. Edit: Though I much much prefer to work on a desktop.

What's the keyboard on the X270 like? Personally I like the X200, X220, X230, ... series (as well as T400, T430, ...). One of the primary deciding factors is the quality of the keyboard. P.S. What's it like to run 9front on a laptop? Is this a practical machine for getting the job done, or do you just want to learn about OS'es and experience the joy of Plan9? (I wanted to run Plan9 in the 1990's but was not yet open…

It's not bad but I much prefer a desktop keyboard. For me most laptop keyboards feel clunky or cramped.

Running 9front is a pretty bare bones experience but a great OS learning experience. Plan 9 is "unix built on top of a network." I LOVE the simple design which distills everything down to files you read and write data to. Those files can then be shared over a network. Its wild and fun to think of your OS as a host for servers that multiplex resources transparently without machine boundaries. Fun example: IP lives in /net so you dont need NAT on a 9 lan. You simply import the internet facing /net and bind it over your local /net and now you are using the internet facing ip stack. Everything truly is a file.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#88

Post by bryanlarsen »

boplicity wrote: post #82

I use an Asus Vivobook Pro 16x. It's got a big, beautiful OLED screen, decent keyboard and trackpad, and runs fast enough for most things I do on it. It was also 1/3rd of the cost of the Macbook Pro I had to return. (Unfortunately, Macbooks cause severe eyestrain for me, for some unknown reason.) This laptop works quite well for my purposes; and I agree with the sentiment from a few other people, that it's almost a r…

I too highly recommend getting a laptop with an OLED screen, they reduce eye strain, especially at night. I run an ASUS Zenbook and am mostly happy with it, except for trackpad palm rejection which is probably not ASUS's fault. I haven't tried tuning it yet.

I run Linux, which means I made sure the laptop didn't have any Nvidia products inside.

Re: Ask HN: What brand of laptop do you use?

#89

Post by sofixa »

boplicity wrote: post #82

I use an Asus Vivobook Pro 16x. It's got a big, beautiful OLED screen, decent keyboard and trackpad, and runs fast enough for most things I do on it. It was also 1/3rd of the cost of the Macbook Pro I had to return. (Unfortunately, Macbooks cause severe eyestrain for me, for some unknown reason.) This laptop works quite well for my purposes; and I agree with the sentiment from a few other people, that it's almost a r…

> Unfortunately, Macbooks cause severe eyestrain for me, for some unknown reason

For me it's the reflectiveness of the screen that does it. It's a bummer there's no matte choice.

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