Laptop suggestions

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sportdan30
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Laptop suggestions

Post by sportdan30 »

Looking for a 15.6” to 17” laptop for around $1200 or less while I’m stuck in bed dealing with a problematic back (couple slipped discs). Either going the epidural steroid route or most likely surgery. I need it for work pretty much strictly to log in to the server. Something not too heavy.

Thanks.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by pk500 »

I was going to recommend MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with new M1 chip. Kick-ass machines. But you would need to buy 13-inch screens to fit in the budget with the Pro. A 16-inch MBP is $2,400.

A 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip is super light while boasting an aluminum chassis, not plastic. Why do you need such a monstrous screen?

Feel better soon, Dan!
Last edited by pk500 on Fri Feb 19, 2021 6:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by Rodster »

Lenovo Ideapad or their ThinkPad line. You can great deals on Lenovo's website for ThinkPad's. Solid laptops and you can typically find T-Series laptops for around $700.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by sportdan30 »

pk500 wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 6:14 pm
I was going to recommend MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with new M1 chip. Kick-ass machines. But you would need to buy 13-inch screens to fit in the budget with the Pro. A 16-inch MBP is $2,400.

A 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip is super light while boasting an aluminum chassis, not plastic. Why do you need such a monstrous screen?

Feel better soon, Dan!
Good point Paul. Looks like this checks all the boxes except for the screen size. I can always use an external monitor when I’m sitting at a desk. Think I’ll go this route!

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by dbdynsty25 »

I will never recommend a PC laptop, even though I'm a huge PC honk. The MacBooks are just better machines. The combination of build quality (by far their biggest plus), battery life and overall computing performance...it's perfect. If you don't mean to game too heavily on it that is. :) Oh, and they hold their value extremely well. Resale on them is fantastic.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by sportdan30 »

The wife just picked up the M1 MacBook Air. Thing is silent, cool to the touch, and pretty damn fast. Great first impression.

Thanks for the recommendations.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by Danimal »

Well late to the party but what were you planning on using it for?
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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by pk500 »

sportdan30 wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:32 pm
The wife just picked up the M1 MacBook Air. Thing is silent, cool to the touch, and pretty damn fast. Great first impression.

Thanks for the recommendations.
I was a Windows laptop guy from 1993-2014. Then I got a MacBook Air. I'll never return to a Windows laptop again. The MacBooks are superior in every damn area that matters to me, especially as someone who uses an iPhone and likes integration with other Apple devices.

Build quality. Check. Lightness. Check. Durability. Check. Ease of use. Check. Integration with other Apple products. Check. Great screen quality. Check. Battery life. Check. The fact they never crash or give you Blue Screen of Death. Check.

Once you go Mac, you never go back.

Enjoy your new machine, Dan! And feel better soon.
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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by Rodster »

pk500 wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:22 pm
sportdan30 wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:32 pm
The wife just picked up the M1 MacBook Air. Thing is silent, cool to the touch, and pretty damn fast. Great first impression.

Thanks for the recommendations.
I was a Windows laptop guy from 1993-2014. Then I got a MacBook Air. I'll never return to a Windows laptop again. The MacBooks are superior in every damn area that matters to me, especially as someone who uses an iPhone and likes integration with other Apple devices.

Build quality. Check. Lightness. Check. Durability. Check. Ease of use. Check. Integration with other Apple products. Check. Great screen quality. Check. Battery life. Check. The fact they never crash or give you Blue Screen of Death. Check.

Once you go Mac, you never go back.

Enjoy your new machine, Dan! And feel better soon.
I hear that argument a lot and I don't buy it. I use and own PC's and Mac's. Windows gets a lot of hate because it's the biggest and most widely used OS in the world. People tend to forget that Windows needs to be compatible with millions if NOT billions of hardware configurations around the world. Apple only has to worry about their hardware. Apple likes to lockdown their OS and PC's, Windows doesn't. You can get malware and viruses on Windows PC's, you can also get malware and exploits on macOS. When you have the largest platform, you will get targeted. Hell even Linux is no exception to exploits.

What I like about Windows is that it offers something that macOS doesn't. They have copied Apple's device integration of the Apple ecosystem and done the same with Windows and the Xbox. It's pretty slick what Microsoft has done.

Some b*tch about all the bugginess of Windows. Well i've been using macOS when it was called OS X back in 2002 and it also has it's share of quirkiness and bugs. I've seen first hand OS X and macOS get pretty slow and unstable. Some people buy into the grass is always greener on the other side and my guys are better than your guys, like the old Apple vs Microsoft commercials. Apple is really great at marketing and PR spin. And if you think i'm off base with my assessment just go over to Appleinsider or Mac Rumors websites and watch people b*tch and complain about Apple, it's hardware and software.

Lastly the old adage, you get what you pay for. I'll take a nicely spec'd carbon ThinkPad X1 and put it up against any Macbook Pro. Paying $350 for a laptop is going to get you $350 worth of happiness. Pay $1200-2500 for a laptop whether it's made by Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, HP, etc. it should get you years of good service as well.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by dbdynsty25 »

Rodster wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:42 pm
I hear that argument a lot and I don't buy it. I use and own PC's and Mac's. Windows gets a lot of hate because it's the biggest and most widely used OS in the world.
It's not even about operating systems. The Macbooks are light years ahead of any PC manufacturer in terms of hardware. It's simply a higher class machine. OS's are meh, whatever, they both work fairly well. It's the hardware that sets Apple apart.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by pk500 »

It's always fun when criticism of Apple consists of "Windows is more unstable and suffers from more malware attacks because it's so much more popular than MacOS," as if Apple security is nothing more than smaller numbers and not smart engineering and coding.

Plus, as DB said, there is no comparison regarding hardware, for the price or performance. Also, find me a Windows laptop with an M1 chip right now and get back to me.
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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by Rodster »

dbdynsty25 wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 1:50 am
Rodster wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:42 pm
I hear that argument a lot and I don't buy it. I use and own PC's and Mac's. Windows gets a lot of hate because it's the biggest and most widely used OS in the world.
It's not even about operating systems. The Macbooks are light years ahead of any PC manufacturer in terms of hardware. It's simply a higher class machine. OS's are meh, whatever, they both work fairly well. It's the hardware that sets Apple apart.
pk500 wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 11:56 am
It's always fun when criticism of Apple consists of "Windows is more unstable and suffers from more malware attacks because it's so much more popular than MacOS," as if Apple security is nothing more than smaller numbers and not smart engineering and coding.

Plus, as DB said, there is no comparison regarding hardware, for the price or performance. Also, find me a Windows laptop with an M1 chip right now and get back to me.
And this is how perceptions get started. Let's first start with your perception PK that Apple builds the most durable computers. Apple is faced two class action lawsuits because they build such quality products. The first was the "butterfly keyboard" fiasco because Jony Ive had such a fetish with lightness and thinness that Apple switched out their scissor keyboards for the butterfly keyboards. They put them in their Macbook Air and Pro laptops. Then complaints started coming in after a couple of years because owners were complaining of sticky keys and keys not working. Apple dismissed the complaints which costed the owners several hundred for a new keyboard because it involved a complete teardown. Once the lawyers got involved they backed off and paid for the repairs. Up until the most recent Intel based MB Air they were still using those butterfly keyboards. Good durability, right? Please !

Then there was the infamous "stagelight fiasco" another one of Apple's beautiful designs where they went with an inferior display cable and shitty design that cause bright spots to appear from the bottom of the screen on some of their MB Pro laptops. Users complained and Apple dismissed it as out of warranty. Those that could not put up with had to pay around $800-900 for a display because the cable was attached to the display head. That's until the lawyers got involved and Apple had to back down again and paid for those repairs. See how perceptions work?

Another perception is the M1 is badass and beats any chip in its class? Is that because Apple says so in their marketing spin? How does a comparable M1 compare to an Intel or AMD based machine in the you know "real world"? Benchmarks are fun and we get to say my pecker is bigger than your pecker but when it comes time to real compare how "real users" use their machine, how much better is the M1 better?

Back in 2019I purchased a new Mac Mini because Apple said it was the fastest Mini ever made and beat the competition. I paid around $1000 for that Mini. I had to upgrade the memory from 8GB to 32GB because working on Apple gear is a giant pain in the ass. So I only wanted to upgrade once. Sure the 2018 Mac mini blew the doors off my 2012 Mac mini. Then with the release of macOS Catalina Apple supposedly lost some licensing where they couldn't use certain fonts so running macOS on 1080P looked but ugly. That's not a problem with Windows but I digress. So I went and bought a 4K monitor, then the fonts looked great. Prior to purchasing the 2018 Mini, I kept reading reports from users claiming bluetooth issues, my bad that I dismissed it because about a month and a half into my purchase I began developing keyboard and trackpad disconnects and erratic behavior with the cursor. And this is using genuine Apple BT Keyboard and BT TrackPad. It turns out their is either a design flaw with the Mini's casing that causes BT problems or they went with inferior BT components that causes BT dropouts. How's that for great build, longevity and dropouts.

Now comes the part about Apple's marketing spin how the 2018 Mini wipes the floor with a comparable Windows based PC. After I got tired of the BT drops I purchased a Lenovo Tiny PC which is about the same size as the Mini. I equipped it with similar specs as my 2018 Mini except the Mini used the 6 core CPU desktop version so the Lenovo had the mobile CPU version. The Mini and Lenovo both had the same CPU although the desktop version should be faster and the 2018 Mini had 32GB and the Lenovo had 8GB. The Mini had soldered ultra fast SSD storage and the Lenovo used an Nvme slot disk disk. The Mini should blow the doors off the Lenovo.

The Mini boots macOS in about 11 seconds and the Lenovo boots Windows 10 in 7 seconds. So much for marketing PR spin and BS. My outlay for my 2018 Mini including the RAM upgrade and monitor was around $1400. The Lenovo "just worked as Steve Jobs used to say" and cost me $398 plus tax because Lenovo was running a Tax day sale at the time.

That's why you shouldn't get caught up in perceptions and marketing spin. The Intel vs AMD marketing spin is just as bad. AMD was saying how the Zen3 CPU's were so much faster than the Intel counterparts and their benchmarks proved it. That's until gamers and gaming websites ran and posted their results. And the results were AMD was not the clear winner and that contrary to all of AMD's benchmarks the results were too close to call because Intel still won and AMD won their share of real world gaming tests. So the BS line about how Apple's M1 is sooooo much better than anything else too me is just more spin. Apple also has a way of milking their customers by configuring low and forcing an upgrade prior to the sale. In today's world a Mac with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage is a joke but Apple will happily sell you a higher priced machine at a cost. And Apple being Apple decided to soldered the RAM and SSD on the motherboard so upgrading the RAM at a later date is impossible. Hopefully Apple with their new silicon PC's has gotten their T2 chip under control because it also has caused a shitload of headaches for users in the past.

I'm also not buying into macOS is sooo much better than Windows or maybe I should type Windoze because it makes Apple aficionados feel better. I have owned a shitload of Windows PC's and have gaming rigs where I installed a crapload of Steam games that the OS ran just as good 5 yrs later and that includes installs and uninstalls. I've also used PC's to install games to test from my buddy Joe Torrentski and I never encountered malware or viruses. The virus and malware nonsense is fun to play up by the Apple faithful but it's way overblown tbh.

As you said to Dan, enjoy your Mac PK

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by dbdynsty25 »

Wow that was a whole lotta typing about nothing.

I’ve had three MacBooks in the time my wife has had 6-7 pc laptops, always top of the line or highly regarded. So, it really is just anecdotal for me. The macs have been much better machines in all regards. I haven’t had a single issue with any of mine. I just upgrade when new specs make it worthwhile. The PCs last 2-3 years and then they start acting up. Fresh installs help a bit but ultimately the hardware just lags behind.

Anyway, clearly there is a bias against Apple and that’s fine. Everyone has their preference. My wife won’t use a MacBook either, so I get stuck buying Mediocre laptops. We don’t use them for performance based tasks so benchmarks mean nothing to me. As long as the battery life is good, it feels good and has a nice screen, I’m in.

And literally no one can say a pc laptop has a better track pad. Some have gotten close but Apple is still king.

Oh, and I hate iPhones. Lol.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

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dbdynsty25 wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 2:13 pm
Wow that was a whole lotta typing about nothing.

I’ve had three MacBooks in the time my wife has had 6-7 pc laptops, always top of the line or highly regarded. So, it really is just anecdotal for me. The macs have been much better machines in all regards. I haven’t had a single issue with any of mine. I just upgrade when new specs make it worthwhile. The PCs last 2-3 years and then they start acting up. Fresh installs help a bit but ultimately the hardware just lags behind.

Anyway, clearly there is a bias against Apple and that’s fine. Everyone has their preference. My wife won’t use a MacBook either, so I get stuck buying Mediocre laptops. We don’t use them for performance based tasks so benchmarks mean nothing to me. As long as the battery life is good, it feels good and has a nice screen, I’m in.

And literally no one can say a pc laptop has a better track pad. Some have gotten close but Apple is still king.

Oh, and I hate iPhones. Lol.
It's good you haven't had a problem with your Macs but I have and others as well which is why two class action lawsuits came about. The hate also works both ways because I also see a shitload of hate for Microsoft as well as Windows which really is unjustified. And just a note to PK, there is already an M1 exploit that has been identified.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by pk500 »

Anecdotal: I've used approximately six or seven Windows laptops in the last 28 years. IBM, Lenovo, Dell, Toshiba. None were crap models. They were all enterprise-class business units. Also had a couple of HP personal laptops.

My basic MacBook Air from 2016 is lighter, more reliable, more durable, easier to upgrade (free software updates) and just flat-out better than ALL of them. Every. Single. One.

I've had to restart my MacBook less than five times due to a lockup since 2016. There were DAYS in which I had to reboot my Windows laptop that many times due to Blue Screen of Death.
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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by 10spro »

I have no issues with my MacBook Pro dating back to the 7-8 years model running still on High Sierra.

Processor was a 2.66 GHZ Intel core i7.

Big 15’ screen which in those days it was the size to go with, but I will gladly settle for a 13’-14’ model once the M1 comes equipped with the MacPro models this spring. The only thing I did with my current Pro was to increase the HD to a SSD while boosting up the memory.

Unable to update to Catalina but is still running fine.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

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pk500 wrote:
Sun Feb 21, 2021 8:27 pm
Anecdotal: I've used approximately six or seven Windows laptops in the last 28 years. IBM, Lenovo, Dell, Toshiba. None were crap models. They were all enterprise-class business units. Also had a couple of HP personal laptops.

My basic MacBook Air from 2016 is lighter, more reliable, more durable, easier to upgrade (free software updates) and just flat-out better than ALL of them. Every. Single. One.

I've had to restart my MacBook less than five times due to a lockup since 2016. There were DAYS in which I had to reboot my Windows laptop that many times due to Blue Screen of Death.
I've had ThinkPad's running Windows 10 that were more than 15 yrs old, they found a home at Goodwill. Buy quality laptops and they'll last a long time. Treat them like s*** and they'll break. The bottom line is Windows 10 is nowhere as bad as you say it is and macOS is nowhere as good as you think it is. I've been around computers and PC's since the late 70's and i've worked with all kinds of operating systems. MacOS is nice and so is Windows 10. Neither of them are perfect.

Too bad Grid no longer makes laptops. Those damn things were designed to be abused, literally.

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Re: Laptop suggestions

Post by pk500 »

Heh. I don't abuse laptops. They rarely leave my desk. When they do, they're in a padded computer bag.

Windows 10 is Microsoft's best OS, by far. It's stable. Not as stable as MacOS, but a big improvement. It's the best Windows OS I've used since NT.

Then again, the bar isn't that high. I can count three consistently stable, functional Microsoft OS since the early 90s -- 3.1, NT and 10. That's it.

When you launch a full-throated defense of Microsoft Bob, then I'll know you've truly lost it, Rod. :)
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