I went with an expensive XPS (their "carbon skin model") with the top config 3 years ago. The touch screen failed in less than a year, the battery become useless in 2 years and I am now in my second charger which is failing. The unit feels tired/old though the performance on what matters (cpu/memory/nvme) is still solid so far. I guess anything not made by Dell is holding on.

The market is splintered into high-end work laptop, low-end work laptops, gaming laptops. Only Apple has the brand value to be in the first set. Everyone else is in a market for lemons.

could try asahi? i think it's pretty good on the m1.

lenovos remain good if you get a high spec thinkpad. maybe get a few year old high spec thinkpad new/refurb off ebay with a three year service contract (search "p1 gen 6" on ebay)? i think you can always re-up the service contract on new ones as well.

Are you really complaining about old battery packs and USB C ports as bad engineering? I think you should try the framework laptop because then you have no excuses about the trivial things.

>The other issue is that 5550 uses USB-C ports. I blame on myself not checking it closely before the purchase. I really hate those ports. Why is everyone copying from Mac?

It's not copying Apple. It's that every port does everything, including charging. It is standards-compliant.

As just one example, you no longer need to lug a laptop charger with you; there are no longer "computer chargers" and "phone chargers", but one charger that can charge everything, often simultaneously via multiple ports. When you combine this with a docking station, one cable truly does all.

It is wonderful. Embrace it.

As someone also trying to get out of (or at least less dependent on) the Apple ecosystem, the laptop market sucks! Everyone but Apple is making the same garbage-tier, shoddy, plastic laptops with bottom of the barrel components that I'm sure are engineered to just barely work enough to avoid immediate product returns.

I'm starting to accept that if I want a development workstation class machine, I need to build a tower from components.

I bought a Dell XPS M1210 laptop in 2007. About a year later the laptop died. From what I could gather, the soldering on the NVIDIA 7400 graphics card had failed. Some people were apparently able to reflow it but I had no such luck.

In my opinion Dell laptops have never been good. But I never bought another one since that happened, so maybe I've missed out.

The quality you get for the money from Mac's is truly unmatched by any other laptop out there - why not use a VM on it for other OS & software?

I am resisting the urge to detail my insane story with my most recent Dell XPS purchase. Long story short, I will never again buy a Dell laptop. I went months without my machine during a critical time. I kept getting it back in worse shape than it was before I sent it for repair. After months of pure insanity, I just accepted that I'll never have a properly function touchpad again. At least they finally got a working motherboard put in it. I'm feeling waves of rage and anger just thinking back to what they put me through. Never again. I won't even accept a Dell as a work laptop again. Never.

I would say yes. Having been a big fan of Dell and having used it's laptops for both professional and personal uses over many years, I have moved off it to Acer. Couple of reasons - the first is that there is a price premium which I cannot seem to justify and second is the teething / niggling issues which I have had to face in pretty much every Dell I have owned. Sometime, it will be too long a time to wake up from sleep or a random crash which requires me to fetch bitlocker key from my account so that I can boot it up again to driver update issues to the fan continuously running for no reason etc. I had, by chance, a good experience with Acer in the past and since then have purchased a couple fo them more and the experience has been seamless and pleasant. I do hope Dell ups its game as it was an iconic and innovative brand but there is less now to differentiate it from competition and so no reason for the premium to be charged.

I don't know about Lenovo but Dell is so cheap, they've shrunk the diameter of even the case screws. All their laptop touchpads fail to draw a straight line over time. On their Insiprions, I know if the CMOS battery dies, the laptop will no longer turn on. Dell is absolute junk.

Using Macbooks spoils you. They're so well made that almost everything else feels shoddy.

There's also the software/hardware integration side.

Power management on Macbooks is unbeatable in my experience, both Windows and Linux have really serious issues dealing with sleep and low power modes.

On the Lenovo side, the only one I'm still reasonably happy with is my Thinkpad, but it pales compared to a Macbook (Air, Pro or whatever).

I'm having a lot of fun running Fedora in a VM with UTM on my MacBook (an old Intel one). You might try that if you already have an M1 MacBook.

Dell really seems to have taken a nosedive in quality the last few years. My wife and father both have an XPS and have had nothing but complaints.

Meanwhile my M2 MacBook pro is still going strong

Yes, it's a race to the bottom for most. Lots of plastic and soldered, non-upgradeable components, and a lack of ports. The used market is tricky to navigate thanks to the proliferation of model names and numbers, so little to no salvation there either. Spend a bit more for something that will last a bit longer (MacBook) and/or be upgradeable (frame.work), or accept a cheaper model (e.g. Dell Pro) that will likely need to be replaced in a couple years.

I just bought a Thinkpad T14s a couple of months ago. It’s lightweight, has great build quality. I installed Ubuntu and it almost ran out of the box but I ended up having to tinker with it to get My Dell docking station and i3 window manager to work. But that is something I was willing to live with. So far, I have had no complaints. If you’re using Linux, the sleep and standby performance aren’t good. But much better than my previous laptop.

Coming to my previous laptop which I still have with me, I bought a Thinkpad L480 in 2018. It was then a dirt cheap version of a Thinkpad. But it did the job with no complaints. I had to replace the battery after 4 years but that wasn’t an issue. It did everything a daily driver is supposed to do, reliable and never threw a fit. I only had to change it as I felt I needed a better screen and performance. The Intel processor was showing its age.

I have only minor complaints running Thinkpad with Ubuntu. But if you start moving away from popular distros, then you have to accept you will occasionally have to tinker to get things work.

Just my 2 cents: I run a tuxedo laptop, that is just a branded clevo device. It isn't as greatly build as a Mac, because nothing is. But my tuxedo works well, nothing broke, or needed any repair. Can recommend. Branded clevo pcs in Germany are used by Schenker, Nexoc, Wortmann, One Computer, MIFCON and more. Internationally, brands like System76, BTO and XNB are using clevo. I've never heard of BTO and XNB, so this might be false information. But I've heard good things from System76.

Yes, Apple seems to be the only company that actually cares about the quality of their laptop in my experience. And I say that as someone who used to run Linux on my laptops in 2010~18..

If you already have a macbook why not just buy a PC at this point? You can change parts that break, you won't have to deal with battery issues and if you are on a budget you can only buy what you need today and upgrade later.

edit: to lenovo/dell question I'd say the quality varies by model - lower end thinkpads are better while expensive one got worse. But there are still a lot of differences between a small business series and enterprise. USB-C perfect as a connector, but if it is not replaceble it is a nightmare.

I have a 2017 Dell XPS13 that's been hammered as a developer laptop and is still going great guns. It's on its third battery, and I've just replaced the screen. I bought a newer one in 2022 and sold it again a couple of months later because, although it had a faster processor and more RAM, it felt flimsier.

I'm also currently upgrading a refurbed Lenovo X270 for my granddaughter who's starting high school, and I am thoroughly impressed. Newer Lenovos are slimmer and slicker, but this thing will still be trucking after the cockroach apocalypse.

I was given a 2023 Dell XPS 13 for work. I was pretty stoked to go back to an XPS after using one in 2019 for work.

For some reason, the MOBO was dying slowly after a year. My other coworkers also reported similar problems.

Lenovo-wise:

    My personal Thinkpad X1 Extreme was a champ for 7+ years, and a few P series I've used over the years since 2021 were also great.

At the end, I just built a desktop and use a Macbook Air. So far so good.

Fuck yes. Our 2022 Latitude 5420s have the worst lithium ever -- and Dell is actually offering to get you good batteries for twice the price, as an 'extended service life battery'.

This, and literally all of them have paint chipping off the chassis at the slightest provocation. I have like 50 at work.

edit: we have now a mix of MacBook Airs/Pros (most of workforce), Frameworks (specialized tech roles running Linux and resource-intensive software) and HP ProBooks (run-of-the-mill Windows machines, or just where you don't need anything special at all).

I've used a Dell Precision 5530 professionally and got a 5570 refurb this year from ebay for ~$800. The fit and finish of the Precision 5000 series is great as far as I'm concerned, though I'm happy the camera is back on top of the screen and would appreciate a 10 key. The work model I used for 3 years and basically the only issue I had was on the Windows side with sleep states (waking up from sleep while commuting). I rarely work long off ac power, but <40% is always kind of a danger zone, especially when doing intensive tasks like CAD modeling. Again, worked connected to Dell workstation dock 90% of the time, so ports are not an issue, but the state of unpowered usbc dongles/micro-docks with hdmi/usba/usbc/++ makes stationary use a non-issue. I also had a 2016 XPS13 I only stopped using as a primary due to lack of ram expansion.

Top of the line laptops from e.g. 2019 are very cheap and still competitive with current hardware for realistic use. You can find one with an i9 and 64gb of ram for $5-600, you'll just need to plug it in after a few hours!

The move to USB-C is actually great for compatibility across machines. Europe has a directive for companies to implement USB-C to reduce e-waste from chargers.

I recently got a new Thinkpad for work, can't recall which model. I think L series?

The build quality is nicer than my T530. The bottom cover doesn't have access panels anymore, but it's got just a few captive(!!) screws and the whole bottom comes off. Everything is neatly exposed and you don't need to access the top of the board at all. The bottom cover has plastic clips along with the screws, but they're spring loaded! They aren't simply molded in and cannot snap off. It's some incredible attention to detail.

I've noticed that most recent laptops have the vent behind the screen hinge where it's completely blocked if the screen is closed. Thinkpad has the vent fully exposed. In fact, it exposes more vent when the screen is closed.

Too bad the CPU is a lemon. One of the new AMD chips with a built in NPU. The NPU is slower than the integrated graphics for inference. Not a discrete card, just the GPU baked into the chip.

In contrast, I got a hand-me-down Dell XPS-something from 2020 when I first started this job. It idles IDLES! at 100°C. I tried to re-paste the CPU, but the heat pipes were so small and thin that I crushed one between my fingers. Even with massive airflow through the case from external fans, it never drops below 100C. Absolutely inexcusable.

Looks to me like Lenovo still has it. At least if you're paying real money for a professional level machine. This new Thinkpad is now my #1 most repairable and maintainable machine. T530 is a close second. Absolutely every other laptop I've ever used is tied for last place in the garbage.

I got a Lenovo Legion 7i with a i9-13 and a rtx gpu for work and I have been very happy with it. Build quality is solid imo, it is very upgradable, and the battery size is generous with easily configurable charge limiting. Lenovo also seems to have good support so far. All in all, a professional experience for a consumer device from my point of view.

A few things:

My G11 carbon is tolerable, but I did have a motherboard replacement in mine mid cycle. Known issue with charging just giving up. I like my carbon, but its a lot of money.

I have a gen 1 carbon, a gen 7 carbon and a gen 11. I still think the G1 was best in a lot of silos. The keyboard especially.

The G11 is performing better than the G7 overall, the G7 had the shittiest case so far.

Recently did an analysis on price/performance across Dell, Lenovo and Surface for a customer, and the Lenovos came out at best quality but not price competitive. This was before EOFY however and vendor pricing might have turned over. I also got the impression that both Dell and Lenovo were halfway through launching new product lines, and certain features were only available in either new or old, not both.

The Dell Pro line of laptops seems quite bad, having deployed several. Seems like they are trying to take Latitude and split it into Bad and Worse categories. Cant praise a single thing on it, case feels worse, screens worse, everything just got soggier. But it has an Ultra sticker on it so YMMV.

I'm had 15 months of daily usage (8+ hours per day) of an Asus S16 and it's been pretty great. I haven't been lugging it around very much - mostly just using the 10 cores at my desk to run minikube and WSL and Windows and also gaming on it and I upgraded the SSD to 2GB. I was a longtime thinkpad bigot (T41, T42, T60, T430, T460s) but their near-complete shunning of AMD CPUs has been a FAIL. This laptop had some MediaTek WiFi issues and STILL doesn't always come out of sleep, but the 16" oled is fantastic, it's thinner and lighter and FASTER than a macbook air, I love the build quality and ceraluminum ceramic coating, and it plays just about any 3D game you can think about ... The 31 watt power limit clips all the performance off the hx370 / 890m GPU (32GB RAM) so I went with the hx365 / 880m GPU (24GB RAM). The low amount of RAM is my only complaint.

I miss so much the first generation of the Dell XPS 13 dev edition. I think that we were almost at the top of the curve in term of quality/price. Only a few things could have been fixed (like the webcam at the bottom of the screen) and it would have been perfect.

But, sadly, next generations went deep shit instead.

Nowadays, I have a very hard time selecting a laptop that would fit my needs, even disregarding the price. One of the worst feature in term of offender is the keyboard: Manufacturers are going on with this totally stupid unergonomic trend of having "half size" enter keys, removing page-up/page-down keys, and hiding directional arrows behind over keys needing to use the "FN+other_key" to be able to use the arrow.

About 15 years ago I had a Dell, then two Asus, and about 6 years ago I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad (T490), which I still use. The Thinkpad was a major step up in quality compared to everything I had before - I haven't even needed to replace the battery, though I think it has dropped from around 5 hours to 3-4 (I unplug it multiple times a day, every day, to use it in the kitchen or while sitting on a couch).

X1 Carbons are mOdErN Apple-inspired slimslop. If a T-series or thiccy X-series had those kind of battery issues I'd be worried.

> I'd prefer a "low-end" workstation with 32GB memory, but because of the price point I can only afford a 16GB non-workstation one. I don't do gaming any more but I still prefer a good integrated video card.

I started buying 4x4 mini PCs. They're exactly what you describe. For $600 I got an 8 core AMD Ryzen 7 8745H with 96GB of RAM from Minisforum. The graphics aren't half bad and the overall system has been really good. It's even got better thermal performance than the Intel 4x4 I had previously and generally runs 10C cooler for the same workloads.

If you don't absolutely need a "backpack portable" computer I can only highly recommend them.

It seems to be a general phenomenon with most brands that their quality is reduced with time.

There seems to be a lot of profit in buying brands with a reputation for high quality and then replacing it with lower quality and reaping the profits.

It shouldn't be legal if you ask me, it has elements of fraud, the brand should be consistent, Apple implies quality for example, if Apple where to release a cheap badly made product at an expensive price, they would be breaking the brand-contract.

I got my first Dell laptop, the XPS15, 5 years ago. Prior to that I had a good 25 years as a Thinkpad die-hard. The XPS has been ... ok. I've had some issues with it resetting for no apparent reason over its life. Frequency varies, but sometimes it'll just blank the screens and then the BIOS comes up on the display, a few times a week, then it'll be good for a month or more.

I had one issue where I needed to ship it back: it would reset and then it was running off the battery, and no matter what port I plugged a charger/docking station into it wouldn't charge until I powered it off and back on again. I got them to do a replacement under warranty a couple years ago.

Around a month ago it was doing the reset fairly frequently and then wouldn't power on sometimes, and I noticed the wrist rest was a little bowed. I replaced the battery pack (kind of a pain, but not the worst I've done), and it was good for around a month, but now it has that "won't charge the battery" issue again. I believe when they did the previous repair they replaced the motherboard, but now I'm out of warranty.

For my next laptop I kind of want a Framework, so I can replace the mobo if I need to. My work likes us to replace hardware no more frequently than every 5-6 years, but we get a warranty for way less than that (my laptop I pushed to get a 4 year).

Meanwhile my previous Thinkpad T470s is still going strong, though the screen just developed a line through it. That's ~10 year old now.

My personal 4 year old Macbook has been a real workhorse, never had any hardware issues with it. My son's macbook has been another story, he's had that in for service 4-5 times in the 3 years he's had it. But, I suspect that is more him than the hardware. I don't baby my MBP, but he is just terrible with things. He's lucky if a pair of glasses can last 6 months, ditto with a phone (usually broken screens), so I'm not sure I can blame the MB Air...

Lenovo is still good overall. The E-series are actually very nicely built for low end machines, if you can look past the poor colour rendering displays.

Dell, however is absolute trash now from what I’ve seen.

Work got me an hp elite book a few year ago and the only thing negative I have to say about it is that the screen is pathetic! Otherwise it's a decent yet overpriced (unless you buy hundreds of them each year like my work place does) laptop. I used to run arch Linux at work but I was denied my favorite OS this time because it's wasn't compatible with the EDR software... So i cannot tell you how bad it is with Linux.

It still hold its charge but then I mostly work on it plugged either via RDP from my personal workstation at home or from the docking station in my office at the campus. So it has less than 50 charge cycles.

I got a Dell XPS for work a couple years ago on someone's recommendation... one of my worst-ever decisions.

The touchpad sucks and routinely breaks requiring restarts, constantly having driver issues (and you have to deal with the capital-N Nightmare that is SupportAssist for drivers), graphics card is busted and makes the display driver crash once a month.

Power states are completely broken. Laptop will randomly turn on when it's in my bag and rev up to ten thousand degrees. Laptop will randomly, when on full battery and closed, decide to hard-shutoff leading to a windows recovery boot.

Decides to do BIOS updates when it's at 3% battery in the middle of the night, then when I wake up for work the next morning it has to go through a ten-minute recovery sequence.

Battery is swelling after only a couple years of use, which sometimes causes keys on the keyboard to stop working. In the middle of a slack convo I've had to type "Sorrymyspacebarstoppedworkinggottarestartmycomputer".

BSODs, hard drive corruption, you name it. Never buy Dell. Not that there's many good options out there unless you're willing to drop two week's pay on a Framework - but anything is better than Dell.

EDIT: Another I thought of - sound card is busted and sounds like it has a low pass filter on it. I know it's not a speaker issue because on occasion it magically fixes itself until the next restart.

Lenovo has tons of options that you can configure to your delight including with Ubuntu pre-installed, well below your $2000CAD price limit. I'd be surprised if you can't get one with USB-A ports:

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/d/linux-laptops-desktops/

And as I often state here, Chromebooks have a Debian Linux distro 2 clicks away, including the ability to run X11 GUI programs like VSCode and Cursor for software development.

Because it's an integrated OS/hardware product, there's no fussing with display drivers or power management issues. It all "just works". High performance models kitted out with 16GB RAM and USB A and C ports can be purchased for < $800USD, like:

https://www.acer.com/us-en/chromebooks/acer-chromebook-plus-...

If high-performance is less of a concern, you can get models with very usable performance for < $500USD.

yes. next question.

I'd still be on my 2012 Macbook Pro if it weren't for the fact that I seemingly can't get a battery that lasts for it.

I got a 2021 Macbook M1 Pro to replace it, and I can't imagine needing to replace it for at least another 5 years given what I usually need my laptop to do (any really heavy compute gets off-loaded to a desktop). My only worry would be the same as my previous machine: the battery.

I'll give Framework a try when the time comes. It's probably the only one outside of Apple that I have any confidence in not being horrible in some way. There are some other options with decent Linux support, which I would need if I am to migrate away from Apple, but they are few and far between, especially if you rule out Lenovo.

My sweet spot are thinkpads that are a couple years old, usually. Especially the workstations. You can save a grand or so and they're pretty serviceable.

Buy a macbook air and run linux via orbstack.

Apple Canada M4 Mac mini @ 799 CAD 10‑core 16GB 256GB SSD. Combine with USBC power bank and screen = instant laptop under <$1K CAD. Far better power efficiency than PCs. https://github.com/vk2diy/hackbook-m4-mini/blob/main/README....

It’s a mess! Owner of a Lenovo t14s gen3 here. Standby works for a day then the battery is drained. My MacBook will be on standby for weeks without any issue. Lenovo and Microsoft pointing on each other on this one is a shame as it’s not going to be fixed.

Still daily driving an old x220 and a T480. Last time they were actually decent. You can pry them out of my cold dead hands.

I wish they'd make something like the x220 again.