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by 1amzave 4081 days ago
After getting more and more tired of Apple's generally obnoxious behavior over the last few years I'm wondering which straw will be the last for me before doing exactly that. I'm pretty seriously considering wiping OSX off my MBP and running some variety of Linux on it at this point, though regrettably I might still be forced to consider them for future hardware purchases on account of the fact that I don't think I've ever encountered a non-Apple laptop that seemed worthwhile (in terms of general construction and build quality).
1 comments
Yetanfou 4081 days ago
In danger of being accused of flogging deceased equines I can but point at the T42p ThinkPad which I'm typing this message on for an example of a device which fits that premise: solid hardware and a generally well though-out design. It is 11 years old, but sports a screen which comes remarkably close to the more recent Apple offerings. It also runs the latest software flawlessly, as long as that latest software is a recent Linux distribution. It has a keyboard which Apple-adepts can only dream about. Ports aplenty, two batteries or drives or whatnots, no problem, ~8 hours on a single battery charge when using the oddly shaped 'extended' battery.

An additional bonus is that you can get these things for free if you know where to look.

Of course, being 11 years old it also has its drawbacks. It won't fit more than 2GB of RAM. It is based around a single-core Pentium M which generally performs fine but shows its age mostly when meeting Javascript-hobbled web-related things.

BUT... and this is one of the main reasons why I use older hardware... if you develop software on this machine, and it works fine on that machine, it'll run circles around the stuff your neighbour made on his latest FlitzBang Fruitmachine. It'll but cause a blip on the CPU meter where his (or her, your choice) result maxes it out. It'll use memory like it was rationed, not like it was on sale.

Of course you can not develop software for the dark side on this older hardware. A small loss, in my opinion.

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