[lm28469]

> 600 might seem budget, but it's out of budget for most people.

Out of budget for my parents but I'll pay the difference myself. It's just painful to see them use their pile of shit $300 laptop that can barely open a text editor, sounds like a jet engine and has about 45 minutes of battery life.

The only haptic feedback they get if the entire fucking thing creaking as soon as you lightly touch it.

They've been through at least 5 of them since I bought my 2015 mbp, which is still working fine in every aspects

[kreco]

The funny thing is that it would do the same for double the price.

You need to spend a ridiculous amount of time on research because the producer itself is selling very different product (very different quality) from a year to another.

I wish a "brand" would be consistant but it's not 99% of the time.

[ndr42]

And it's even more painful for me to do the remote tech support for my (80+ years old) parents so paying the difference is a kind of preservation of my mental health...

[bdbdbdb]

You need to think about the tech support you do for your parents and decide if it would really be less by moving them to another platform, where "there's no start button" and "where did the top of the window go" and "how do I install this obscure app Ive used for twenty years"

Most of the support questions I field from my folks and in-laws are actually phone things these days. 90% of what I have to deal with is "this thing came up on my phone during the week and I clicked on it, am I hacked? No I don't remember what it said"

[ndr42]

Good point!

At least the build-in remote desktop on Macs makes it very easy to provide help. I don't know if Windows has something similar build in.

Phones are more of a problem as I can't have a look at their screen remotely.

[tim333]

That's an important point - the been through 5 of them. The cost or running a $600 mac is probably similar to running $300 pc laptops that pack up.

[MengerSponge]

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

[LtWorf]

They will just be confused about everything if you give them a mac.