12 Years ago I had a Sony Vaio. I quite liked it. Then in my next job, 2017 or so, I went for a Toshiba Portege, and absolutely loved it.
Guess what the above two have in common? Yup, they stopped making laptops for the professional market. So now I’m a bit at a loss. Any recommendations?
Requirements:
- Lightweight and easy to carry around.
- 13-15" display, preferably
- Decent battery life
- It absolutely must have an RJ45
- Works well with linux
- Good keyboard quality
- ISO keyboard availability
- Touchpad. Bonus points if it has the touchpad buttons ABOVE the pad itself.
I’ve used Macbooks in networking / programming and construction environments for over fifteen years. They’ve been incredibly solid in my experience. In fact, the first week I was given a Thinkpad, I broke it because it was so much more fragile than a Mac. I always used USB adapters for Ethernet and serial connections without issue. They also run Windows and Linux.
Their Linux support is so bad it might as well be unsupported.
I run Asahi on my 2023 m2pro mbp; performance-wise it’s closer to a contemporary i7 than the actual performance of the M chip on macos, but a lot of what I need is there, a surprising amount of stuff is compiled for Arm64 actually. Feels like normal Fedora in most every aspects. Coming from thinkpads / latitudes, keyboard is shit tho, really. Screen is great, sound is quite good, device feels sturdy but sleep eats 50% battery a day. Air vents are placed just right to gulp any spilled drink, like, vacuuming it off the table, a puzzling design choice. Prices took a dive with the advent of the m3 so I’m not really angry, a 2023 i7 thinkpad would have cost me the same.
Premium product experience at a premium price. Whether the cost premium is worth it is a judgment call for the user.
The hardware is pretty premium, but the software is such a pain. As a result the overall experience is just “okay”.
I see you’ve never seen a Dell BPA
Dell is giving the Feds a premium experience?
They no longer do (since the switch to ARM) - unless you count running under a VM.
Right. I use Parallels.
Windows supports ARM https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/overview
But nothing supports windows arm
I know, but you can’t install it directly on a MacBook - you have to use a VM like Parallels or UTM.
Honestly, unless you need Solidworks or something else highly resource heavy and windows only, VMs work well with M chips. They’re surprisingly fast.
Genuine question, but what the actual fuck are you doing with your laptops? I used a ThinkPad through high school and college, and school aged me certainly didn’t treat it very kindly.
I picked it up by the screen and the LCD cracked. I realize this is stupid but it’s something I’ve always done and continue to do with Macs.
Why? That’s not a good way to pick up laptop, the base is heavier than screen