[consto]

Meanwhile the hinge in my £600 Lenovo ideapad broke after 4 years of carrying it to university pretty much everyday. After a quick phone call they agreed to fix it free of charge (including return postage to Germany). This was because Lenovo had independently determined that my laptop model suffered from weak hinges. A year on, I am typing on that very same laptop. It is starting to show its age and its price. And you know what? When I do finally replace it, it is probably going to be another Lenovo. That is great customer service.

Meanwhile the richest company in the world fails to acknowledge a significant design flaw in their expensive, "Pro" laptop. Really, they should be willing, if not eager to replace the screens in every affected laptop free of charge. A laptop that fails after opening and closing the lid for a year or two is defective. There is should be no doubt about that.

I don't know how the laws stand in the US (it probably varies state by state), but in the UK with the 2015 Consumer Rights Act, customers have potentially up to five or six years to make a claim irrespective of warranty: https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-...

[zcid]

I'll add that I have 3 T-series laptops. All are over 6 years old and still in great shape. The worst I've ever dealt with was a lose monitor cable after a drop. Build quality is only one of the reasons that I continue to recommend them over any other laptop.

[ehnto]

I have an ASUS that i have had for 5 years. At some point the keyboard stopped working, so I popped it open and played with the ribbon and it works fine now. I don't mind fixing things, stuff breaks, but the thing needs to be serviceable.

[gst]

And even if the keyboard breaks at some point on a Thinkpad it's easy to replace it. A new replacement keyboard for the T480s currently costs $50 on eBay and it doesn't take longer than a few minutes to install it.

[dethac]

I had a tech come over and install and he was done in like 3 minutes. I asked him how he did it and he lead me through it... so I guess now I can do it myself?

Either way, it's insanely easy.

[gst]

Lenovo even has official videos on YouTube that describe how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7FI_y4FXdA

[yoodenvranx]

I am still using several T61 and T420 for web browsing and light work. Compared to those thin and flimsy modern ultrabooks those the old T series are almost indestructible.

And if something breaks you can easily replace everything with a screwdriver and cheap replacement parts.

[fencepost]

And service manuals. Don't forget that at least for the business lines Lenovo seems to have great availability of service manuals (pcsupport.lenovo.com)

[fbnlsr]

I'm a web developer and lately I've been using less and less Photoshop, which was the sole reason I kept using a mac as my main dev platform.

I'm really wondering if my next machine is going to be a mac. I'm pretty sure I could be as productive with a beefy IBM Thinkpad or a Dell XPS running Ubuntu.

[Theodores]

Breaking the chain with Photoshop is a good idea if you are a web developer rather than an artist. Most of what you need to do with images is best done on the command line or even within your IDE. Creative endeavours are also best done with HTML + CSS instead of the desktop publishing way.

I could not imagine life without Photoshop but nowadays I much prefer process rather than Photoshop wizardry. Everyone mocks Gimp and Inkscape for not being professional, same with Open Office Calc. I think that in web developer world it is the other way around, these open source tools are far better if you are fundamentally dealing with data that you are going to be coding with. They also obfuscate, for instance with SVG graphics it is much better to do them with the open source tools for HTML elements such as logos and icons. You don't get to actually understand the principles with the Adobe product so that 'magnifying glass' icon is some path made of hundreds of points listed to nine decimal places instead of two lines - one for the circle and one for the handle.

Ubuntu is also a good idea, your webserver is running native and there doesn't have to be some waste of time building a 'vagrant box' or whatever. All the instructions work too, so if you want to get things done with some linux application you just install it as per online instructions rather than find a paid for tool/software as a service workaround.

There is a lot of FUD regarding what works for Ubuntu and who would spend $$$ not knowing if they have wifi? In reality it is fine on linux whatever box you get.

The consumer Lenovo devices are a better bet than the Thinkpads, you can do well with built in Intel graphics if you are a mere web developer and the screens on the Yoga things are gorgeous. If the keyboard suits you and has backlights then you should be fine. As for the Dell, go for the refurbished and save yourself the $$$. You won't regret the saving particularly if you can get th 4K display for the price of a non-touch lame-display.

Don't even bother with dual boot as Windows is a waste of space on a dual boot Ubuntu machine as you will never use it.

[fencepost]

Ubuntu is also a good idea, your webserver is running native and there doesn't have to be some waste of time building a 'vagrant box' or whatever. All the instructions work too, so if you want to get things done with some linux application you just install it as per online instructions rather than find a paid for tool/software as a service workaround. ... Don't even bother with dual boot as Windows is a waste of space on a dual boot Ubuntu machine as you will never use it.

I will note that Windows 10 (Pro at least, not sure about Home) on laptops with appropriate virtualization capabilities can do a heck of a job of running Linux VMs with basically trivial setup. At a quick glance, the Microsoft Store (for installing software in Windows) includes VMs for Ubuntu, Ubuntu LTS, Debian, SUSE Enterprise, openSUSE and Kali.

One downside, I'm not sure how it is for spinning up multiple instances.

[Theodores]

Actually you just reminded me what Windows is good for in web development - testing on the 'Edge' or 'Internet Explorer' browsers.

Rather than run Windows native you can download and run the Virtualbox version Microsoft offer for free just for web developers to test browser compatibility with.

With Windows the file system is nowhere near as fast as Linux due to design considerations made in the MS-DOS and Windows NT days. If your code base has thousands of files then reading them across the file systems is a pain meaning that everything runs slow in Windows, the VM or both, particularly with Vagrant type setups. Native Ubuntu is like a breath of fresh air if you have had to work with compromised development arrangements where company policy dictates a slow Windows machine.

[fencepost]

I can believe that NTFS is slower than most Linux filesystems, though I'd be curious how much of that relates to things like use of ACLs, etc. Regardless, both security-related and filesystem-related speed differences on developer systems should be effectively negligible except in edge cases.

If filesystem differences are making a significant difference, it's time for someone to suck it up and spend a few hundred dollars on SSDs for the developers (and not the cheapest ones available, which frequently lack DRAM and can have their own speed issues).

[consto]

It is probably worth noting I purchased the laptop from a major computer retailer sans extended warranty.

[jorvi]

The problem is that anecdotes are not data. On the internet Apple stores are ‘famous’ for giving people the newest model MacBook Pro or iPhone in trade for an old model because their old model has some obscure specific problem that can’t readily be fixed. Or someone has had their crackedscreen replaced free of charge. However, 99% of these things happen only in US Apple stores. Geniuses in the Apple stores in Europe would laugh you out of the store if you asked for similar treatment, and would’ve told you to just wait for a few days until the replacement part / device has arrived. This leads to contentious discussions and flame wars about Apple having alternatively crap or amazing service. The same is probably true for the majority of manufacturers: some people get amazing service whilst others get dicked around. Sometimes it depends on geography. Sometimes the customer service agent was grumpy (or happy!) that day. You simply cannot base your purchase on these stories.

[gambiting]

Again, anecdote. I've had a very minor problem with my MacBook Air(the case was making a creaking noise when pressed in one place) and got the entire case replaced without any question at an apple store here in UK. That was the best customer experience I've ever had with any company. My point is that I'm not sure why you say this kind of treatment is only limited to US.

[dethac]

I had a problem with a MacBook Air (the hinge had an issue)... They asked for $800 to fix it. Never dropped, everything still worked, the hinge just would not stay up.

I'm in Canada :(

I guess Apple gives better service in countries where they dominate mindshare? They dominate the US market and presumably the UK market.

In Canada, they're still fairly strong... but I also see a ton of Surfaces everywhere.

[rayhendricks]

They replaced the whole display on my old [2017] MacBook Air because the plastic creaked. Didn’t even buy the device new...