|
> we need to force the rest of the industry into a more ephemeral mindset What a despicable position. 5–10 year stability is something the tech industry should be aiming for, minimum—not trying to stamp it out as if someone who achieves it is doing something wrong. Consider the Dell Chromebook 13 (7310; Lulu). It blew me away last summer to realize that this 2015-era notebook which could be had for $200–300 was still the best option among everything else I evaluated in 2020. Five years to make progress in hardware and yet _every_ other option promised only to be a step backwards. (A phenomenon separately documented here: <https://drewdevault.com/2020/02/18/Fucking-laptops.html>) Manufacturers of course do offer systems today are offering systems with slightly better CPUs or more RAM, but invariably they demand compromising on the ergonomics of either the Lulu's MacBook-quality touchpad, the 67Wh battery that lasts 6–10 hours, the form factor of its 13-inch matte screen and carbon fiber body, the silent fan, or on price—these are companies that expect you fork over at least $1000 more than the putative value of the one already unpacked sitting on the desk—just to have a system that is worse! Against every signal saying that it would be a mistake, I actually swallowed my reservations about paying the price for a newer system. I was partially reassured by the support lead of one prominent Linux laptop vendor saying that they "promise" that I'd be happy with the purchase, and that it would be better than the Lulu. Sure enough, it gets here; the touchpad is dogshit, the fan is only able to modulate between "screaming loudly" and "screaming very loudly", and I'm left feeling a mixture of horrible dread/remorse while asking myself "is this a joke?" It got packed up and sent back and refunded, and I promptly turned around and spent 1/3 of the refund on a second refurbed Chromebook 13 and left the remaining 2/3 in my bank account. Aside from the goofy Chromebook keyboard layout, the only downside to these devices? It's that, despite being on par with Purism's flagship notebook at the time (that also sold with a 50+% higher price tag in comparison to this notebook's original retail price), Lulu went largely unnoticed by the community. So newer Ubuntu releases silently broke the graphics, which means upgrading to 18.04 and 20.04 is a non-option. In the midst of this, we get unqualified opinions in the comments here that implicate people who want to stick with 16.04 (because a system that boots is better than one that doesn't) as threatening to "hold back progress" (clearly we've got different definitions of progress) and others cluelessly pontificating that upgrading is "easier and saves you money and pain in the long run" (again, somehow we have a different ideas of how to measure which numbers are bigger than others). |
I think there are enough Laptops that don't suck. And Ubuntu should basically run on most laptops. Fingerprint reader? I don't care.
For the older ones, how about a DELL XPS 13? Or Thinkpad? lenovo carbon x1?
You can get a decent latop for 200-800 USD. I love the DELLS XPS 13/14. But sometimes I get greedy and wish I had 16GB instead of 8GB.