[z9znz]

> And that’s why most people buy $500 laptops.

Most people is a sketchy expression, but I would venture a guess that "most people" buy cheap laptops because they don't really care, they don't know how to adequately judge which ones are worth more, and they also just don't want to spend much on a computer.

It's hard to imagine, but "most people" actually care little about computers.

[comprev]

For many people outside of HN demographic $500 is a lot of money for "a computer"

A macbook would be like buying a top spec Mercedes when all they need is a no frills base model Ford.

[nickjj]

> For many people outside of HN demographic $500 is a lot of money for "a computer"

It would be but it's also kind of overkill based on the specs you can get nowadays for general computer usage.

I recently picked up a $399 15.6" Lenovo laptop new on Amazon for a family member. It has all of the important stats for a regular user. A 1080p display, fairly light, 11th gen Intel CPU (i3), 8gb of memory and most importantly an SSD. It's lightning fast for browsing the web, working with Excel and playing browser games.

If you did care more about development they have a 20gb of memory version with a 512 GB SSD for $540 and a 36gb of memory version with a 1 TB SSD for $630.

[cywick]

With these cheap computers, the manufacturers typically cut corners on things that are not listed on the spec sheet, though, especially the quality of the trackpad.

We have a bunch of $400 Lenovos at work and their trackpads are absolutely atrocious. When someone is using one of those, they almost always use an external mouse with them, because otherwise, mouse cursor handling is just too frustrating.

[nickjj]

The webcam and sound are decent enough for casual usage. The keyboard was surprisingly good.

I can't speak for the trackpad. When setting up the laptop I found it to be ok but I only have 2 occasions of using it for 20 minutes (2 different laptops) which isn't enough time to really evaluate it since so many things can be hit or miss with trackpads. The people who use it do use an external mouse, mainly because using a trackpad is too foreign to them.

Both Lenovos are IdeaPads that were purchased a few years apart. The latest one wasn't to replace the first one, it was for someone else. The first one is still going strong. I had forgotten I even picked a Lenovo the first time around and ended up picking the same brand / model when researching "what is a really good budget'ish laptop for general computer use".

[BoorishBears]

My mother had this mentality.

Almost yearly she'd buy some $150-$200 Dell clunker, all plastic, atrociously low resolution, loaded with bloatware.

For years I told her if she'd just buy one "overpriced" Macbook she'd save money in the long run, since despite some hiccups over the years, Macbooks are not particularly unreliable.

-

Eventually I took it upon myself to give her my old Surface since she didn't want to learn OSX.

A machine I optioned out to nearly 1k, for someone who only checks emails and writes word docs... yet 4 years later and she hasn't needed a new one.

She's easily saved her money's worth if she had bought it new herself simply from not dealing with the hassle of needing a new machine every 12-24 months.

[endorphine]

Agreed. I'm very proud of a $1200 Sony Vaio laptop I got back in 2007. My mother still uses and it's going strong, albeit the battery which needs to be replaced.

[NoPicklez]

I don't think that's true. Yes I agree it might be a Mercedes but given that most of Apple's customer base isn't HN and most people seem to be happy spending $1k+ on an iPhone. $500 isn't a lot of money for a computer.

[diffeomorphism]

This doesn't really transfer. The same people willing to spend $1k+ on a phone might still say that $500 for a computer is a lot. Just like they would consider $200 for a kitchen knife a lot. Different categories, different scales.

[tyre]

Phone through carriers are heavily discounted with 2 year contracts. Apple also offers zero APR financing to pay for a new phone. Humans have a harder time reasoning about buy now/pay later.

[NoPicklez]

Apple also offer financing on their laptops as well?

Phone's are not heavily discounted with 2 year contracts, definitely not here in Australia anyway. Carriers are going down the route of customers paying the standard device repayment per month (equalling the RRP). The days of device subsidies by taking a plan are fading.

Plans from mobile carriers are becoming suped up pre-paid plans with a device payment tacked on.

[ok123456]

Except the Mercedes is actually repairable.

[surfpel]

For most people, you'll have to take it to the mechanic and it'll cost you an arm and a leg... wait that sounds familiar...

[namecheapTA]

A vehicle needing a repair that costs 50% of its new MSRP is extremely rare, outside of a few electric vehicle battery packs.

In addition, when a vehicle reaches the point where any common repair costs more than it's current market value, it's basically considered worthless and only desperate people buy them. How long does it take an apple product to reach that point? A year?

[ok123456]

Exactly. Apple has engineered their products and supply chain to make it not economically viable to do any kind of repair.

For traditional cars, as long as it's not a completely blown motor or transmission or a extensive front end collision, it's always economically viable to repair them.

[ok123456]

You can take it to an independent repair shop. There's a supply chain of repair parts. Mercedes doesn't try to use trademark laws and DRM to stop you from using a third-party water pump.

[mrexroad]

They’ll just void your warranty for tenuously related issues, oh, kinda like…

[ok123456]

If you have a warranty, take to it Mercedes for the warranty work. If you don't have a warranty it doesn't matter.

[asdff]

Not anymore

[OJFord]

That used to be true, but somehow Apple gets them. Probably still more true of non-mac computers - where high-end sales I imagine are almost exclusively to businesses and gamers.

[LoveMortuus]

Especially because "Why do I need a computer, I can already do everything on my phone".

I got this from my brother, so it's really not that far away from us.

[JustSomeNobody]

I needed a new laptop last year. I decided to care less about my computer and so I chose not to get another Mac. Got a small Lenovo instead. Runs great with Linux. Does exactly everything I need it to do.

[nibbleshifter]

I've been instructing (extended) family members asking about laptops to just get an ex-biz lenovo (x220, x230, etc) and let me configure Linux/do upgrades on it for the last 8-9 years.

It serves all their use cases, and most of them are still working fine with no real repair need.

The apple branch of the family though (my in-laws) have been having hardware failures almost consistently during that time.

[z9znz]

I'm too old and not of the right disposition to provide much tech support for people anymore. I did that for years, and I learned that it truly sucks to have to fk around frequently with stupid stuff (usually Windows stuff). But even Linux, using it as my own development environment, I would periodically have stupid stuff just mysteriously break and than require a lot of fiddling to get fixed.

As for Apple reliability, I set my grandfather up with an iMac 11 years ago. It was still functional when I replaced it with a Chrome desktop machine last year. (Of course it was no longer supported for OS upgrades, so that was the final reason to replace it). Likewise, my girlfriend daily drives my 2014 MBP which I used and abused around the world for years. I did an Apple service center battery replacement, and otherwise it performs as new. 8 years with a laptop is pretty great, especially considering it still does everything it's supposed to.

Oh, the wifi at my grandfather's house is still the original Airport I setup 11 years ago. It still does its job, without fail. I think I had to provide tech support (unplug, wait, replug) once.

For low-tech family, I now recommend Chrome devices. They are about the easiest things to support, and they are fairly low priced.

[ricardobayes]

Most people care about design more than realiability

[herbst]

The X2 or T4 series from Lenevo are definitely state of the art in Design. Being so thin that no standard plugs fit anymore wouldn't be 'hot' among humans either.

[ricardobayes]

For me as an engineer yes. But for a normal person, they look too industrial.

[ungamedplayer]

I think the intent was to look business. If you want to see industrial check out the Panasonic toughbook and toughpad range.

Makes the apple gear look and behave like flowers.

[jdshaffer]

I've been pondering doing something similar myself. If you don't mind my asking, which Lenovo did you get and which Linux variant does it seem to play nice with? :-)

[harry8]

T480s 3.5yrs old, out of warranty, ex-corporate cost me USD$430 running ubu 22.04 on a 4 core 8th gen core i5 & intel gfx is getting me 10 hours of battery life without having replaced the battery. (power settings set to Power Saver in the very obvious gui menu above shutdown). I did shove in more ram and a bigger ssd. Meh, 8G & 250G would have been enough fwiw. Gnome desktop is a thing I now find really polished and lovely to use.

In all it's just a beautiful thing I'm very, very happy with.

Use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X1_series

& Ebay. But it's also a very reasonable & justifiable decision to buy a new thinkpad imho. When it's a couple of years old the hardware support is usually perfect on first install - but I guess I don't use garbage like fingerprint readers so ymmv on that kind of silliness.

Thinkpads, T-Series, X1 carbon are the best laptops on the market by a good margin and have been there in that spot consistently for a long time. Buy apple if you really want/need to run apple software. I'd say just about /any/ distro will place nicely with the kernel-hackers laptop of choice. I'd bet fedora, rhel/centos, debian, arch would all be just terrific if you prefer one of those (and why not?)

[abrouwers]

I mean, x1 carbon (new) isn't much cheaper (in fact, more expensive, at the time of my googling) than a MacBook Air. The linux ecosystem (which I love) has it's own fair share of problems - gnome vs. KDE, deb vs. rpm, X vs. Wayland, pulseaudio vs. pipewire, systemd vs. (the world). Sure, installing ubuntu and not worrying about any of it is a great option, but I think you've painted a slightly too pretty picture :-)

(And, on your "kernel-hackers laptop of choice comment," it's curious that Linus released the last kernel from a MacBook device)

[lillecarl]

Gnome vs KDE isn't really a thing, deb vs rpm isn't a thing, X vs Wayland is only a temporary thing, Pulse vs PipeWire isn't a thing, PipeWire implements pulse apis.

systemd vs $INITSYSTEM is also temporary, though on a longer timescale. We need the old generation to die before systemd is accepted by everyone.

I don't mean to shit on your argument, but most things are either just preferences or progress that isn't done yet.

I'm about as bleeding-edge as can be (always latest stable kernel with xanmod patches) from NixOS, using Wayland and PipeWire.

The move to PipeWire made literally everything better for me (just works TM). While Wayland isn't perfect yet.

Gnome or KDE is a preference, it doesn't matter much and they're cooperating on many Wayland extensions.

systemd hate is either because you love the drama or you like bash scripts.

I don't particularly like either, so I like systemd.

A good thing people often forget with Wayland, PipeWire and systemd is that they are making our ecosystem a bit less fragmented, which I see as a great win, especially since I'm a NixOS user, my system relies heavily on systemd being declarative. My distro of choice wouldn't work as well (at all) without all "standards" (both real and implementation) that systemd and freedesktop puts forward.

Back on topic, the Linux desktop is honestly quite great if you constrain yourself a bit (Run a stable distro with boring tech, no Nvidia) or live on the bleeding edge where things also work well but might require more maintenance.

Lets be honest though, if I wasn't running NixOS I would probably run Ubuntu with whatever display and audio server they decided for me. And the package manager would be apt, brew, nix or flatpak depending on application. (Now it's Nix and Flatpak only).

[abrouwers]

Fair points, though I don't share your enthusiasm about wayland/pipewire transitions being "temporary." The fragmentation that Wayland has caused will be difficult to recover from - I think many older WM's will just die off. I generally agree that less fragmentation is good, though, so hopeful that desktop linux emerges stronger. But, having used it full time for the last ~15 years, it feels less focused than ever. Perhaps I too should transition to something like ubuntu, and just not worry about any of it :D

[harry8]

Huh? We've been asked for our experience and that was mine. I feel strongly that if I were using fedora or debian that experience would be strikingly similar.

Gnome vs kde (and there's /plenty/ of other options) is a choice, make it. Done. No further issues. And as a happy gnome guy I'm very sure KDE is excellent and will serve well.

deb vs rpm. That choice is made when you choose your distro, never to be revisited or cared about again. Likewise pulseaudio, systemd are chosen when you chose your desktop and distro respectively and you don't have to think about them on your laptop again. X vs Wayland - whatever comes with your distro you use if you're even aware of it.

But yes you can complicate it all as much as suits you if you have the need or want to do so which you basically can't with apple, so... And your knowledge then translates to the pi or other SBC so that's pretty cool too. And to your servers or ones you work with for money. This is not a negative imho.

Go to any kernel conference and you'll see all kinds of laptops for sure, some hilariously eccentric. Linus used a mac 15 years ago too (powerpc iirc). Yet you'll see Thinkpads are always, clearly and obviously the most commonly used by a large margin unless things have changed dramatically during pandemic times, which I kind of doubt.

Anyway I bought a T480s second hand for peanuts, dumped ubu on it and have been contemplating its beauty and utility since. Apple gear is a _much_ bigger sysadmin headache for me (and it isn't close) but might be less so for you if that's what you know and understand. This is /my/ experience of it.

Linux on the laptop in 2022 is flipping great. Shhhhh, don't tell.

[LoveMortuus]

I think ThinkPads are so commonly used because they're durable, but most of all, because their keyboards are probably one of the best among any laptops.

I can vouch for Linux in laptops, I've been running Debian+xfce (recently switched to Debian+lxde, for maybe slightly less ram usage) on my Acer Aspire One for probably more then 10 years now! It's my go-to machine whenever any hardware needs testing, be it networking or just a printer.

[jdshaffer]

Sorry for the very late reply, but thank you so much! I'm very glad to hear you have a machine (and OS) that you are happy with. I'll definitely check it out for myself!

Thanks again!

[JustSomeNobody]

Ideapad 5 pro with an AMD proc. it's the 14" variant. I am not near it right now, so I can't give you specifically what model. Got it on sale at Costco. Running Pop_os. The newer Linux kernels have support of amd_pastate so battery life is good.

Previous Mac was a 13" Macbook Pro if anyone is keeping score. Loved it, but just didn't want or need something that expensive.

[jasonfarnon]

they don't know how to adequately judge which ones are worth more

yeah we buy 500$ (150$ in my case) laptops over apple products precisely because we can judge which ones are worth more

[throwntoday]

Guessing power isn't your concern then. The macbooks offer power at a slight premium over the rest.

[bonestamp2]

Apple service is usually very good as well -- I've had several products replaced by overnight fedex with no additional cost. Also time machine backup/restore is a godsend for mission critical workstations when you do need a replacement. But ya, most people aren't doing work where time is worth the slight premium.

[Const-me]

I agree with GP, and I think here on HN the opposite of your comment is true.

People buy expensive laptops because they don't know how to adequately judge which ones ain’t worth more. Not just on HN, I’m observing same behavior among friends and co-workers.

People buy ultra-thin laptops because marketing sells them as high-end. It’s often impossible to upgrade them to good specs like 32-64 GB RAM and fast 2TB+ SSD. And even CPU performance ain’t great because thermal throttling, hard to dissipate heat from an ultra-thin computer.

Similarly, people who never play videogames buy laptops with discrete GPUs like nVidia 3070, paying money, weight, and even battery life for something they don’t need.

[Bayart]

I've never spent more than 400 or 500$ on a laptop. Plenty of good enough stuff on the second hand market if you go after business laptops. But it's never my main machine (I can't understand doing anything productive with 14").

[z9znz]

The screen size is the only real limitation for me when using my M1 Air. The keyboard is pretty decent, the trackpad is just right, and the form factor is wonderful.

There is a noticeable loss in human productivity by not having a separate large monitor (and sometimes also a nice external keyboard+mouse). However, I find that the small screen constraint can be beneficial sometimes as it forces me to approach my work a bit differently. I would say it's a bit like how changing my scenery or routine temporarily can recharge me.

[Bayart]

> I would say it's a bit like how changing my scenery or routine temporarily can recharge me.

Work-wise, the only thing I like about laptops is the ability to quite literally change my scenery (going in a café or in nature for an afternoon). But it's always with the intent of doing the few things I can do on that sort of device : reading or writing some doc and doing some surface level diagnostics through SSH (my job is a mix of Kubernetes administration and miscellaneous production tasks).

It's nice to have, but it also can't be the tool of my trade. Putting any significant money into a machine that'll end up 70% of the time as a self-standing Netflix screen in bed isn't worth it.

I know a few people who can work exclusively on their laptop, but they also use no UI scaling and have much better eyesight :)

[derekbaker783]

I've had good luck with refurb machines also (but never tried an Apple laptop refurb).