Lenovo: Ex-company gave me a NEW Carbon X1 around 2019, and the battery only lasted for less than a year (!). On the other side, I bought a used 2017 470S from the same company, added more RAM, didn't touch anything including the SSD, and I'm still using it in daily coding. I did buy a new battery last month so technically the old batteries lasted for about 7-8 years.
Dell: I bought 3 laptops + 1 desktop from Dell Refurbished (So the quality should be consistent). 2 laptops + 1 desktop are older models, and 1 is Precision 5550 (2021) that I bought last December. Everything works fine, except for the 5550, which has issues with battery (dropped from 31% to 4% in a few seconds) and (more deadly) charging port (doesn't charge from time to time). Even if I bought it new in 2021, I would be surprised that it only lasted for a bit over 4 years.
The other issue is that 5550 uses USB-C ports. I blame on myself not checking it closely before the purchase. I really hate those ports. Why is everyone copying from Mac?
What's my option? I can't really justify the 2,000+ CAD price point for a new laptop, especially if it lasts less than 5 years. I'd prefer a "low-end" workstation with 32GB memory, but because of the price point I can only afford a 16GB non-workstation one. I don't do gaming any more but I still prefer a good integrated video card. I can't afford Framework and other Linux laptops because they are expensive and usually don't operate in Canada so delivery is expensive too.
I did buy a used Macbook Pro M1 16GB (2021) from my current company last month. I haven't used it but I'm confident that the hardware is good. The problem is I don't really like the software, so I figured I still need a Linux box.
Did you find any sweet spot?
The touchpad sucks and routinely breaks requiring restarts, constantly having driver issues (and you have to deal with the capital-N Nightmare that is SupportAssist for drivers), graphics card is busted and makes the display driver crash once a month.
Power states are completely broken. Laptop will randomly turn on when it's in my bag and rev up to ten thousand degrees. Laptop will randomly, when on full battery and closed, decide to hard-shutoff leading to a windows recovery boot.
Decides to do BIOS updates when it's at 3% battery in the middle of the night, then when I wake up for work the next morning it has to go through a ten-minute recovery sequence.
Battery is swelling after only a couple years of use, which sometimes causes keys on the keyboard to stop working. In the middle of a slack convo I've had to type "Sorrymyspacebarstoppedworkinggottarestartmycomputer".
BSODs, hard drive corruption, you name it. Never buy Dell. Not that there's many good options out there unless you're willing to drop two week's pay on a Framework - but anything is better than Dell.
EDIT: Another I thought of - sound card is busted and sounds like it has a low pass filter on it. I know it's not a speaker issue because on occasion it magically fixes itself until the next restart.
If it was in sleep - Dell themselves recommend completely switching off a laptop before putting it inside a backpack:
https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/xps/faq-mode...
For somebody who has used MacBooks the last 18 years, this is insane.
I have stopped using Apple laptops more than 15 years ago and since then I have used only Linux laptops.
I have no idea whether hibernate worked on my laptops, because this is a feature for which I have never felt any need.
I always take care to optimize the boot time on my computers with custom built kernels and carefully selected daemons (and I do not use systemd). For decades, the boot time on my laptops had been of perhaps twenty seconds at most and the biggest delay in starting to use the computers after being powered off is entering a password to unlock them, not the start-up of the OS. Using something like hibernation instead of complete power off would speed up negligibly the process of beginning to work on the computer.
And sometimes I'd like to quickly put a laptop into a bag without waking it up just to shut it down first. If I had a way to transition from sleep to shut down I'd use it, but also... this is where I see that if the sleep state were more perfect (used zero energy, zero unintended wakeups), it would obviate my need to shut down most of the time.
In this case, a laptop sometimes waking up in a bag vs a constantly and deliberately cripled GUI and keyboard.
Very happy with my framework when I switched jobs. And my asus zenbook was also great.
I'm not dealing with the scale other people are in here. We should take the ancedotes of personal laptops with a grain of salt. Anyone pushing the scale that Dell does will have incidents where service runs totally off the rails. I don't know how they stack up at scale but I'm reading this thread with interest. When I'm due for a laptop upgrade Dell will still be in the running but right now Framework might be the one to get my business.
The default warranty on at least the Optiplex line is one year of next business day service and upgrading to three years is cheap. I've never had a situation where same day service was worth the extra cost but it is an option.
The problem today is -- even with a similar price point (like top tier Dell mobile workstation does cost 3,000+ CAD), I'm not sure how long it lasts. It could be 5 years, it could be 5 months, I have no confidence in it.
The build quality is nicer than my T530. The bottom cover doesn't have access panels anymore, but it's got just a few captive(!!) screws and the whole bottom comes off. Everything is neatly exposed and you don't need to access the top of the board at all. The bottom cover has plastic clips along with the screws, but they're spring loaded! They aren't simply molded in and cannot snap off. It's some incredible attention to detail.
I've noticed that most recent laptops have the vent behind the screen hinge where it's completely blocked if the screen is closed. Thinkpad has the vent fully exposed. In fact, it exposes more vent when the screen is closed.
Too bad the CPU is a lemon. One of the new AMD chips with a built in NPU. The NPU is slower than the integrated graphics for inference. Not a discrete card, just the GPU baked into the chip.
In contrast, I got a hand-me-down Dell XPS-something from 2020 when I first started this job. It idles IDLES! at 100°C. I tried to re-paste the CPU, but the heat pipes were so small and thin that I crushed one between my fingers. Even with massive airflow through the case from external fans, it never drops below 100C. Absolutely inexcusable.
Looks to me like Lenovo still has it. At least if you're paying real money for a professional level machine. This new Thinkpad is now my #1 most repairable and maintainable machine. T530 is a close second. Absolutely every other laptop I've ever used is tied for last place in the garbage.
Yeah, that's expected. On consumer devices, the NPUs are not optimizing for speed and they're not meant to out-perform the GPU. They are optimizing for low power consumption. They want to be able to run simple AI tasks without turning your laptop into a frying pan, so that is where the NPU comes in.
Quoting wikipedia:
> On consumer devices, the NPU is intended to be small, power-efficient, but reasonably fast when used to run small models.
It'd be pretty cool for sure, but you'd be absolutely strangled by memory bandwidth, I'd expect. LLM sure the chipset would not at all enjoy trying to route all that RAM to three processors at once.
1. Put the tokenizers or other lower-performance parts on the NPU.
2. Pipelining that moves things through different models or layers on different hardware.
3. If multiple layers, put most of them on the fastest part with a small number on the others. Like with hardware clocking, the ratio is decided to ensure the slower ones don't drag down overall performance.
In things like game or real-time AI's, esp multimodal, there's even more potential as some parts could be on different chips.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/d/linux-laptops-desktops/
And as I often state here, Chromebooks have a Debian Linux distro 2 clicks away, including the ability to run X11 GUI programs like VSCode and Cursor for software development.
Because it's an integrated OS/hardware product, there's no fussing with display drivers or power management issues. It all "just works". High performance models kitted out with 16GB RAM and USB A and C ports can be purchased for < $800USD, like:
https://www.acer.com/us-en/chromebooks/acer-chromebook-plus-...
If high-performance is less of a concern, you can get models with very usable performance for < $500USD.
I was sucked in by the advertising I guess. They looked very good on paper - good battery life for the time, thin, light, powerful, sleek, latest everything. I've built computer systems for most of my professional career. Looking back on it, how I could have possibly thought some fresh shiny new design first off the production line was going to be rock solid work horse is beyond me. Lack of critical thinking skills I guess.
Now, I buy something like a Dell Latitude. It's an enterprise machine. Translation: a plain, boring design with parts that have been trialed by the XPS/X1 suckers, so most of the bugs are ironed out. Enterprise tends to mean expensive. But they lose 75% of their value in 2 years, so second hand prices are very reasonable, and since Dell offers 5 years warranty on them they can effectively come with the same guarantees as a new one.
Enterprise also means well supported. It's almost night and day. Ring Dell about a Inspiron or even an XPS issue, and you are met with a wall of excuses. Contact them about an Latitude issue, you get a fast response. The one time I wasn't happy with the outcome, I said so in their "how did we go" questionnaire, and they rang me back begging me to let them have another go.
I started buying 4x4 mini PCs. They're exactly what you describe. For $600 I got an 8 core AMD Ryzen 7 8745H with 96GB of RAM from Minisforum. The graphics aren't half bad and the overall system has been really good. It's even got better thermal performance than the Intel 4x4 I had previously and generally runs 10C cooler for the same workloads.
If you don't absolutely need a "backpack portable" computer I can only highly recommend them.
I'll check out those mini PCs. The Steam one also looks interesting.
But, sadly, next generations went deep shit instead.
Nowadays, I have a very hard time selecting a laptop that would fit my needs, even disregarding the price. One of the worst feature in term of offender is the keyboard: Manufacturers are going on with this totally stupid unergonomic trend of having "half size" enter keys, removing page-up/page-down keys, and hiding directional arrows behind over keys needing to use the "FN+other_key" to be able to use the arrow.
OK we probably have different preferences, but I really hate:
1. Arrow keys have different sizes
2. page up/down right up arrow keys (very easy to touch those accidentally)
So far I really love the Macbook Pro layout. I wonder why no one tried to copy it, considering they tried to copy everything else.
Now 4.5 years in: cursor moving randomly, with jitter (the same symptom as before), when TouchPad is activated. Plus: barely used trackpoint is defect.
That device was mainly used with an external keyboard and mouse -- no excessive usage of the built-ins.
It's got a middling display (the 2-in-1 display is better) and a somewhat dated Hawk Point SoC, but it's fine for running to a client's site for imaging or network troubleshooting or what have you. I still don't think it's going to last very long, but it's a nice complement to the MacBook I use for client dev work and it didn't break the bank.
I think I'll eventually go for the more expensive route if I want another laptop. Either an Apple refurbed Macbook or some other Linux laptop.
I personally prefer desktop workstations. They are better.
I'm starting to accept that if I want a development workstation class machine, I need to build a tower from components.
The sad thing is that plastic should be the best material to make laptops from. It's lighter, and it gives when dropped. Think about the cases everybody puts on their phones. They're not made of solid metal, for good reason.
The old Thinkpads had it right, they used a magnesium frame surrounded by high quality plastic.
My MacBook Pro is well made, but it's also a pound heavier than it needs to be.
Why? It works and it is very lightweight.
Also aluminum is quite good at heat transfer.
Wait....
But that means spending ~$1600-2000 (though, about how much my MBP cost).
It seems to take some good research or a clutch recommendation to spend less than that while getting what I want. And I don't understand how 1080p is still such a common resolution.
I had one issue where I needed to ship it back: it would reset and then it was running off the battery, and no matter what port I plugged a charger/docking station into it wouldn't charge until I powered it off and back on again. I got them to do a replacement under warranty a couple years ago.
Around a month ago it was doing the reset fairly frequently and then wouldn't power on sometimes, and I noticed the wrist rest was a little bowed. I replaced the battery pack (kind of a pain, but not the worst I've done), and it was good for around a month, but now it has that "won't charge the battery" issue again. I believe when they did the previous repair they replaced the motherboard, but now I'm out of warranty.
For my next laptop I kind of want a Framework, so I can replace the mobo if I need to. My work likes us to replace hardware no more frequently than every 5-6 years, but we get a warranty for way less than that (my laptop I pushed to get a 4 year).
Meanwhile my previous Thinkpad T470s is still going strong, though the screen just developed a line through it. That's ~10 year old now.
My personal 4 year old Macbook has been a real workhorse, never had any hardware issues with it. My son's macbook has been another story, he's had that in for service 4-5 times in the 3 years he's had it. But, I suspect that is more him than the hardware. I don't baby my MBP, but he is just terrible with things. He's lucky if a pair of glasses can last 6 months, ditto with a phone (usually broken screens), so I'm not sure I can blame the MB Air...
And yeah my 470S is still pretty strong. I started to use it again for my side projects.
I kinda wish I could find a contracting job, so that I can buy an expensive laptop and expense it as cost, and my wife won't cast an angry look towards me, lol.
On top of that, the gan chargers are made as small as possible and overheat all the time. Modern, sleek, enshitified - just like our software!
And even in that case, USB-C chargers and cables are available everywhere, unlike proprietary laptop chargers, If the ports are dying on you though, I don't know what to tell you. They seem fine on phones, so I can't see what the problem would be on laptops, unless there are specific models that just have horrible ports.
usb chargers and devices have many different voltages and power, and they don't always work very well together. It helps to have one format, but it doesn't mean no charger bloat. Cables are even worse, with wildly different specs, all looking exactly the same. They should require colored shapes or something on the cables to indicate their properties.
Everything USB should still take normal 5 volts, which any charger should provide without needing negotiation, and anything larger that actually needs more juice also should have the appropriate electronics to handle that (i.e. it's a phone or a laptop or a tablet or similarly expensive device). If you have devices that don't fall into either of those categories, so they don't take normal 5 volts, or they need more juice but are picky about USB, I'd consider them faulty from the get-go, as it's clear they haven't actually implemented USB-PD in any meaningful way. And if your charger doesn't provide 5 volts without asking, it too is faulty.
It's hard to go wrong with charging cables when it comes to USB-C. I agree there's a mess on the data side, but the USB Forum can't even get its head straight with what it should even be called, so it's no wonder nobody there has the balls to mandate colour coding or something similarly helpful.
I've had to replace a few cables, but have never had issues with USB-C sockets.
I used to have issues with the oldeer micro-usb ports, but since USB C came along I don't think I've had a single failure.
2. I have a usb-c right here, and the weight of the cable is absolutely distorting the port. It will need to be replaced soon just based on its own self-damage. The cable is not even that heavy. I see all kinds of used devices advertised with the caveat - one usb-c not working. It is very common.
I did break multiple micro-USB ports though, as did ham-fisted family members. USB C made that all go away.
I have friends with kids (with tech) who don't seem to have a ton of broken devices either. Clearly we have very different experiences.
I'm also currently upgrading a refurbed Lenovo X270 for my granddaughter who's starting high school, and I am thoroughly impressed. Newer Lenovos are slimmer and slicker, but this thing will still be trucking after the cockroach apocalypse.
Coming to my previous laptop which I still have with me, I bought a Thinkpad L480 in 2018. It was then a dirt cheap version of a Thinkpad. But it did the job with no complaints. I had to replace the battery after 4 years but that wasn’t an issue. It did everything a daily driver is supposed to do, reliable and never threw a fit. I only had to change it as I felt I needed a better screen and performance. The Intel processor was showing its age.
I have only minor complaints running Thinkpad with Ubuntu. But if you start moving away from popular distros, then you have to accept you will occasionally have to tinker to get things work.
I'll check out the T14s. One of my concerns is: it seems to be more difficult to replace batteries for modern laptops. I tried to remove the battery of the Dell 5550 last night and found it more difficult than the older models. How about the T14s?
In my L480, I opened the laptop to change the battery and also install more RAM. Even for a hardware neophyte such as myself , this was straightforward.
Thinkpads are modular, you can easily get the components such as a battery etc. My T14s comes with a 3-year warranty as well.
There's also the software/hardware integration side.
Power management on Macbooks is unbeatable in my experience, both Windows and Linux have really serious issues dealing with sleep and low power modes.
On the Lenovo side, the only one I'm still reasonably happy with is my Thinkpad, but it pales compared to a Macbook (Air, Pro or whatever).
I've been dealing with this recently. Linux won't hibernate if you have Secure Boot enabled, even if your swap is encrypted. So I either have to leave my laptop plugged in all the time or remember to shut it down before unplugging it so it doesn't completely drain its battery while sleeping.
> The Linux kernel disables the possibility of hibernation when Secure Boot is in use because it cannot guarantee that the swap file is unchanged. "Unencrypted hibernation/suspend to swap are disallowed as the kernel image is saved to a medium that can then be accessed."
https://wiki.debian.org/Hibernation
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/kernel_lockdown.7.html
That's why it works for you. Enable secure boot and you lose hibernate.
I might mixed up System76 with Framework, I need to double check the subreddit
-display quality
-sharp edges
So I would never recommend that one, but reportedly this is common among the "low-end" ThinkPads (mine was at around a thousand euros).
My G11 carbon is tolerable, but I did have a motherboard replacement in mine mid cycle. Known issue with charging just giving up. I like my carbon, but its a lot of money.
I have a gen 1 carbon, a gen 7 carbon and a gen 11. I still think the G1 was best in a lot of silos. The keyboard especially.
The G11 is performing better than the G7 overall, the G7 had the shittiest case so far.
Recently did an analysis on price/performance across Dell, Lenovo and Surface for a customer, and the Lenovos came out at best quality but not price competitive. This was before EOFY however and vendor pricing might have turned over. I also got the impression that both Dell and Lenovo were halfway through launching new product lines, and certain features were only available in either new or old, not both.
The Dell Pro line of laptops seems quite bad, having deployed several. Seems like they are trying to take Latitude and split it into Bad and Worse categories. Cant praise a single thing on it, case feels worse, screens worse, everything just got soggier. But it has an Ultra sticker on it so YMMV.
My first G1 carbon traveled several hundred thousand kilometers with me, getting bashed around in airport security etc.
My G7 keyboard keys were falling off, having rarely left my office.
Brands arent as consistent as we would like them to be. Make sure any reviews you turn up are for the specific product you purchase.
I might eventually go down this route, if I can't find a reasonable good one. I use VMWare in Windows to access Linux on my 5550, so it's not a far stretch to switch the host.
However, whenever in the past 20 years I bought a laptop, for a given amount of money there were always laptops with better quality than any Apple model.
Moreover, while the Apple computers are fine for the general population, there are also users like myself, for whom the Apple products lack adequate computational performance. My laptops typically used Intel Xeon/NVIDIA Quadro combos that were much faster than anything sold by Apple and 4k screens and very good keyboards. Apple has a poor reputation for keyboards.
If I bought a laptop right now I would probably choose something with Ryzen 395, which easily beats any Apple CPU for the things in which I am interested, like computations with big integers and FP64 array operations. The very good single-thread GeekBench results of the Apple CPUs are not at all representative of the CPU performance in other kinds of workloads, where the Intel/AMD ISA still provides features not yet available in the Arm-based CPUs.
Why many comments in this thread indicate that at least the consumer laptops made by Dell have a poor quality nowadays, I still have a rather old Dell Precision mobile workstation (sold with Linux) with excellent quality that no Apple laptop ever approached. Of course, such a mobile workstation has poor battery lifetime, incomparable with that of an Apple laptop, but for my needs this is a really minor inconvenient in comparison with its advantages.
I've had good luck with a Macbook Air and running a Debian VM for anything of import. The build quality is good and I can go to a physical location for repairs.
(Though over time more and more can't be fixed on site sadly.)
Blowing the dust out does run into the problem of some laptops being designed to only open with use of a chainsaw. I've ruined a couple laptops that way.
AMD and Intel support Linux as a first class platform, and everything CPU and GPU from them will work perfectly. Nvidia is on track to match them, albeit on proprietary drivers, if you use the most recent hardware, kernel and drivers. Qualcomm is still basically unusable and so is Apple.
The vast majority of popular and modern wireless chipsets have at least basic drivers in tree. Webcams, touchscreens and pens mostly work. Fingerprint sensors mostly don't work.
System76 has its place. You'll avoid hassle and you'll get the full feature set. You won't have to deal with bizarre edge cases around sleep, multi-gpu, or power saving features.
But truth be told, if you buy a new x86 laptop from any major brand, chances are that everything essential will work instantly or with a bit of tinkering under Linux.
For some reason, the MOBO was dying slowly after a year. My other coworkers also reported similar problems.
Lenovo-wise:
At the end, I just built a desktop and use a Macbook Air. So far so good.I got a 2021 Macbook M1 Pro to replace it, and I can't imagine needing to replace it for at least another 5 years given what I usually need my laptop to do (any really heavy compute gets off-loaded to a desktop). My only worry would be the same as my previous machine: the battery.
I'll give Framework a try when the time comes. It's probably the only one outside of Apple that I have any confidence in not being horrible in some way. There are some other options with decent Linux support, which I would need if I am to migrate away from Apple, but they are few and far between, especially if you rule out Lenovo.
To be fair, I did replace the SSD early in its lifespan, and I don't use my laptops for anything heavy. It could still play Youtube when I decommissioned it, and that was probably the heaviest thing I regularly did on it.
What are the specs?
In my opinion Dell laptops have never been good. But I never bought another one since that happened, so maybe I've missed out.
For personal stuff just dual boot my old Thinkpad, at work I use Macbook.
lenovos remain good if you get a high spec thinkpad. maybe get a few year old high spec thinkpad new/refurb off ebay with a three year service contract (search "p1 gen 6" on ebay)? i think you can always re-up the service contract on new ones as well.
I'll check with Dell and Thinkpad if I can buy extended service contracts. AFAIK Dell tops out at 4 years but maybe I can extend that later. I wouldn't mind if I have to pay half of the laptop price to get a 8-10 year contract because new laptops break up way too soon - and every time it is something small but critical, like the charging port thing that many people had to get a new motherboard from Dell.
the thinkpad and dell stuff is more upgradable, but is largely aimed at business markets where they plan on refreshing every 3-4 years.
i think maybe you get the most longevity (and possible warranty) out of thinkpad, but sadly none of this stuff is really designed to last that long.
e-waste sucks. unfortunately, our current dominant system of production doesn't really reward design for longevity. refreshing technology on the regular makes for a pleasant consumer experience, i wish it were less environmentally damaging.
framework has an angle on this, but i think in practice they're somewhat equivalent to thinkpads in terms of extendability. i also wonder how much you actually save when you start replacing everything over the long run.
I wish they'd make something like the x220 again.
This, and literally all of them have paint chipping off the chassis at the slightest provocation. I have like 50 at work.
edit: we have now a mix of MacBook Airs/Pros (most of workforce), Frameworks (specialized tech roles running Linux and resource-intensive software) and HP ProBooks (run-of-the-mill Windows machines, or just where you don't need anything special at all).
I think Apple is winning but not to the extent of being the only game in town.
But still, failing in a couple of years is really unacceptable. I was thinking 5 years for the battery and another 5 years for everything else. If you and me have to spend some $2,000 every 3-4 years it sounds more like a subscription service.
The other issue is that price point does not guarantee quality for any non-Apple boxes.
With the on-site option, they come to your home or business next day and fit any required parts.
The best experiences I've had with Dell hardware have been mid though... worse with HP, won'y buy their stuff at all any more.
I've had mixed to very good experiences with Lenovo... Even their cheaper IdeaPad options. My SO had an IdeaPad that lasted about 7 years, and she was pretty rough on it. Just replaced with another a few months ago. For what it's work, runs PopOS like a dream. On the down side are soldered ram, and shorter vnme drives that have apparently had higher failure rates, already have a replacement ready on a shelf.
My personal laptop is an M1 Air 16gb... it's been a pretty great little box, though with my vision what it is, has been very hard to actually use for much.
I've been getting into astrophotography recently, so I went out to my local Astronomy club's dark site in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Ohio, star tracker, DSLR, lens and nearly brand new HP Gaming Laptop I bought specifically for this purpose in tow.
It was cold as shit outside - 25 with a wind chill of just under 15 degrees. But I came prepared, and the club has a small heated clubhouse on the grounds of the site, so I set up all my equipment, did my polar alignment, and left my laptop plugged into a power outlet and remoted into it on my iPad so I could monitor the data capture from inside where it was warm.
About 20 minutes later, I lost remote access to my laptop suddenly. No problem, I thought. I headed outside to go debug what was going on, to find that the laptop had shut down randomly. That's weird. I tried to turn the laptop on, and it spun on the windows logo for over 5 minutes. I got worried that somehow out of all this gear I brought out to the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold, somehow the laptop was what had died. I try force-resetting a few times, to the point where I get the windows recovery environment, and it boots _so slowly_ that I think something is seriously wrong. Then the CMOS battery reset screen comes up (what the fuck?) and I finally get it to boot after about 8 attempts. However, it's so slow it's completely unusable - the CPU is pegged at the lowest possible frequency and just opening up the controller software for my star tracker takes nearly 5 minutes. decide to pack it in for the night, assuming my laptop is dying.
I bring all my equipment inside to tear it down, and leave the laptop in the warmth for 15 or so minutes while I tear everything else down. Then I hear the familiar Windows 11 startup chime behind me. I turn around and the laptop happily boots up, running at full speed, as if nothing was wrong.
Friends, the laptop got _too cold_. I have never experienced this before in my life, and I have put laptops through similarly extreme conditions in the past for other projects, let alone all the Raspberry Pi's I've left to bake in the sun and freeze in the cold. I am so done with modern technology, I want to return to 2011 when Thinkpads were good, Macbooks were great, and phones couldn't break my brain's dopamine circuits. I'm so tired.
I too have done the same thing you experienced.
Now I run everything off of a minipc with a lead acid UPS.
This is also why most of your power packs to run astronomy gear are still lead acid and not lithium. Celestron's not just trying to sell you last generation equipment at a steep mark up, there's a reason for it
edit: to lenovo/dell question I'd say the quality varies by model - lower end thinkpads are better while expensive one got worse. But there are still a lot of differences between a small business series and enterprise. USB-C perfect as a connector, but if it is not replaceble it is a nightmare.
It still hold its charge but then I mostly work on it plugged either via RDP from my personal workstation at home or from the docking station in my office at the campus. So it has less than 50 charge cycles.
Those brands aren’t really the end all be all like they used to be.
Based on the requirements that OP has I think they’d be really happy with a Framework system.
OP could also run Linux on the MacBook Pro M1 that they already own.
For laptop reviews, I’ve been enjoying Just Josh on YouTube, and he has a website associated with it. There’s also rtings.com
Another Lenovo model that’s getting acclaim as a solid premium laptop is the Lenovo X9 15 Aura Edition.
It's not copying Apple. It's that every port does everything, including charging. It is standards-compliant.
As just one example, you no longer need to lug a laptop charger with you; there are no longer "computer chargers" and "phone chargers", but one charger that can charge everything, often simultaneously via multiple ports. When you combine this with a docking station, one cable truly does all.
It is wonderful. Embrace it.
And what is worse? New laptops have less ports than the older ones. That 5550 only has 3 ports and 1 is for charging. If I want to mount an external hard drive, I need to bring a hub.
What again, looks like everyone is doing that, so yeah, better embrace it.
Imagine having 4 USB-C ports, but 2 of them are USB 2.0 only. Like that but more complicated because it's a feature on a separate controller. Video out, which requires additional connections to the GPU. Power input, done through a USB-PD controller. PCI-E tunneling, taking up PCI-E lanes from the CPU.
Even looking at the Framework Laptop: https://frame.work/laptop16?tab=specs , only the Nvidia GPU USB-C port supports charging while the AMD one doesn't. Look at the section on the "6x user-selectable Expansion Cards" where they list the capabilities of the individual ports. I think different specs for those USB-C ports are less egregious because the idea is to install an expansion card, but giving 6 different USB-C ports like that to a regular user sounds like a bad idea.
To be fair, that's already how PC laptops are - they have USB-A ports with random colors and symbols on them that you need to figure out which is the good one, so I don't see why they aren't doing the same with USB-C.
I love having a dock, it means I get to hide all the wires behind the desk, and plug the laptop into power, two screens and all the other peripherals with a single cable.
Dell, however is absolute trash now from what I’ve seen.
There seems to be a lot of profit in buying brands with a reputation for high quality and then replacing it with lower quality and reaping the profits.
It shouldn't be legal if you ask me, it has elements of fraud, the brand should be consistent, Apple implies quality for example, if Apple where to release a cheap badly made product at an expensive price, they would be breaking the brand-contract.
Meanwhile my M2 MacBook pro is still going strong
Anyway, it does. https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...