The Windows OS Thread - Formerly THE OS for gamers and normies, now sadly ruined by Pajeets

[Curry Teafag]

The only thing MacBook users have complained about was insufficient RAM. Other than that, those things are pretty good.

 

[Kiwifarmsname]

I think Macos is a realistic replacement unless you're a gamer. Apple hardware is really good for laptops, and mainstream software is well supported. There are some edge cases, but in most cases its perfectly capable. Despite the issues I have with some of Apples design decisions, I think it speaks volumes that most normies I encounter genuinely like their MacBooks, while the ones on Windows simply tolerate it.

Windows is constantly 1 step forward 2 steps back, and it really seems to be catching up over the past few years. 11 wasn't even as bad as people made it out to be at first, but the forced adoption of garbage, incomplete features is clearly having an impact.

Mac is too expensive though.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I think Macos is a realistic replacement unless you're a gamer. Apple hardware is really good for laptops, and mainstream software is well supported. There are some edge cases, but in most cases its perfectly capable. Despite the issues I have with some of Apples design decisions, I think it speaks volumes that most normies I encounter genuinely like their MacBooks, while the ones on Windows simply tolerate it.

Very easy to pair a macbook with a game console or steam deck.

Mac is too expensive though.

Have you seen the cost of good PC laptops lately? Something with a decent screen, a lid that doesn't wobble when you type, and a trackpad that isn't AIDS is minimum $1000.

Also I know the 8GB of RAM is kinda dumb but this is probably the best $600 laptop you can get new right now:


Only issue IMO is MacOS is actively degrading just like Windows, the last 2 releases have had some severe issues that don't get fixed.

 

[The Ugly One]

Have you seen the cost of good PC laptops lately? Something with a decent screen, a lid that doesn't wobble when you type, and a trackpad that isn't AIDS is minimum $1000.

People who think Macbooks are expensive have literally never owned a good laptop.

 

[An automatic clown]

Did you check your activation status? If you replaced the motherboard it would flag your activation and you would have to reactivate using their activation diagnostics tool (or re-running massgrave). I don't think Windows will allow you to upgrade if it's not activated, normally it should give you a warning but this being jeetware they probably don't have a proper warning

So after I restarted it, Windows update gave me the option to update to W11. Only after it installed W11 did it flag my activation status. It gave me the option for "I changed the hardware" then it brought up my account with the install that I was using and it confirmed my activation. I remember having to speak to jeets over the phone whenever I messed with my Windows XP build back in the day.

 

[The Ugly One]

then it brought up my account with the install that I was using and it confirmed my activation

Wait, I thought having an account to manage your license was supposed to ruin your life.

I remember having to speak to jeets over the phone whenever I messed with my Windows XP build back in the day.

RETVRN

 

[Betonhaus]

So after I restarted it, Windows update gave me the option to update to W11. Only after it installed W11 did it flag my activation status. It gave me the option for "I changed the hardware" then it brought up my account with the install that I was using and it confirmed my activation. I remember having to speak to jeets over the phone whenever I messed with my Windows XP build back in the day.

If it was Windows XP you may have talked to Canadians as a lot of American companies had their call centers in Canada on that era. I had a relative who worked for an AT&T call center in Edmonton

 

[An automatic clown]

Wait, I thought having an account to manage your license was supposed to ruin your life.

RETVRN

I mean all I do is play Counterstrike Source, a new game occasionally and torrent new TV shows I like (Beavis And Butthead currently, I'm old remember ?)I don't think the M$ 1337s really care bout me because I don't pay them anything

If it was Windows XP you may have talked to Canadians as a lot of American companies had their call centers in Canada on that era. I had a relative who worked for an AT&T call center in Edmonton

Idk man someone with a vurry thick Indian accent saying "my name is John I'm from Microsoft support" is pretty telling. I was a teenager and not racist like I am now so I never pried further ya know

 

[Air support]

I think Macos is a realistic replacement unless you're a gamer. Apple hardware is really good for laptops, and mainstream software is well supported. There are some edge cases, but in most cases its perfectly capable. Despite the issues I have with some of Apples design decisions, I think it speaks volumes that most normies I encounter genuinely like their MacBooks, while the ones on Windows simply tolerate it.

Windows is constantly 1 step forward 2 steps back, and it really seems to be catching up over the past few years. 11 wasn't even as bad as people made it out to be at first, but the forced adoption of garbage, incomplete features is clearly having an impact.

Macbooks are unironically the best laptops on the market because most other laptop manufacturers suck because they don't use ARM cpus and they are becoming less repairable by the day (much like android).

People who think Macbooks are expensive have literally never owned a good laptop.

Most decent laptops that are not made explicitly for gaming cost around the same as a macbook and half like half the battery life
and less repairable hardware every year.

 

[Slav Power]

Macbooks are unironically the best laptops on the market because most other laptop manufacturers suck because they don't use ARM cpus and they are becoming less repairable by the day (much like android).

I would honestly want to know what was the incentive behind mentioning modern laptops becoming less repairable while praising Macbooks in the same breath.

If an SMD component croaks, it croaks and you need to do surface soldering. Except the vast majority of x86 laptops, especially business ones like Thinkpads, will let you replace and expand the RAM and SSD on your own, while on ARM Macbooks it's all an integral part of the CPU, so when any one of those components goes, the whole machine goes. Those modern Thinkpads only take like 10 captive screws to pop off the bottom panel and have full access to the motherboard, not to mention how Lenovo offers you replacement parts as well. What does get less repairable every year are all the consumer grade wastes of resources, but even then they'll be more repairable than a Macbook. Plus, you get the freedom of installing whichever OS you want on those machines (even if the choice is either Windows or Linux) instead of locking yourself in Apple's walled garden. Also, AMD has been showing that x86 can absolutely have good battery life, maybe not 24 hours like Apple or Qualcomm, but still ~10 hours of work where you don't have to worry about juicing up. Sure it's "half the battery life", but we're not talking about 2 hours max like it used to be a decade ago.

 

[TerribleUser09]

Most decent laptops that are not made explicitly for gaming cost around the same as a macbook and half like half the battery life
and less repairable hardware every year.

And yet I am writing to you from Lenovo Legion laptop power by Intel 13th gen, integrated GeForce RTX 4050 and 32 GB of RAM which was still cheaper than Macbook. Oh, and did I mentioned that I can actually replace RAM, NVME, battery by myself without paying overpriced service in official iSpot or selected retailer?

Your argument is so wrong on so many levels.... but I get that. Macbook is fine for many people and I get that. It have a very decent battery life. Is definitely a lighter (in weigh) option for many who carry their shit along. But for me and many other folks buying Mac kinda enforces and locks options only to closed environment made by Apple.

 

[The Ugly One]

while on ARM Macbooks it's all an integral part of the CPU, so when any one of those components goes, the whole machine goes

On-package LPDDR5 isn't going to fail. You don't need to repair something that never breaks. But yes, talking about the repairability of Macs is silly. Instead of building them to be fixed, they build them not to break.

Also, AMD has been showing that x86 can absolutely have good battery life

AMD's still behind Intel from everything I could find. My Meteor Lake-based Lenovo Thinkpad can be used almost all day on battery.

And yet I am writing to you from Lenovo Legion laptop power by Intel 13th gen, integrated GeForce RTX 4050 and 32 GB of RAM which was still cheaper than Macbook.

Nobody said you can't get an energy-hungry mass of chips in a low-quality box for a discount price. I have a gaming laptop as well - the M1 Macbook Pro my wife has is simply a better machine. Lighter weight, nicer screen, better trackpad, far better build quality, and of course, much better battery life due to the infinitely better CPU. Comparing a gaming laptop to a Macbook is a little bit like comparing a Dodge Charger to a Mercedes-Benz.

 

[Fcret]

I think Macos is a realistic replacement unless you're a gamer. Apple hardware is really good for laptops, and mainstream software is well supported. There are some edge cases, but in most cases its perfectly capable. Despite the issues I have with some of Apples design decisions, I think it speaks volumes that most normies I encounter genuinely like their MacBooks, while the ones on Windows simply tolerate it.

Windows is constantly 1 step forward 2 steps back, and it really seems to be catching up over the past few years. 11 wasn't even as bad as people made it out to be at first, but the forced adoption of garbage, incomplete features is clearly having an impact.

Even MolochOS still lets you make a local account without too much kvetching in 2025.

Honestly, all my shit that isn't gaming is done on my Macbook now.

If an SMD component croaks, it croaks and you need to do surface soldering. Except the vast majority of x86 laptops, especially business ones like Thinkpads, will let you replace and expand the RAM and SSD on your own, while on ARM Macbooks it's all an integral part of the CPU, so when any one of those components goes, the whole machine goes.

The SoC on a modern Mac is probably the least likely thing to fail. Even the SSD is rated to last more than a decade with normal use.

My long experience with using laptops is that the screens, hinges, and keyboards are usually the first things to go long before the internal electronics. While you can replace keyboards somewhat easily on a Chinkpad, a screen or hinge replacement is not really any easier than it'd be on a Macbook.

 

[Slav Power]

My long experience with using laptops is that the screens, hinges, and keyboards are usually the first things to go long before the internal electronics. While you can replace keyboards somewhat easily on a Chinkpad, a screen or hinge replacement is not really any easier than it'd be on a Macbook.

Then again Chinkpads aren't constantly designed with glaring flaws that can do fun stuff like fry the entire M chip because a spec of dust shorted two lines, or screen cables that are too short so they break from regular use. You know, the type of stuff that Louis Rossmann has been dealing with all the fucking time because it keeps happening. Think Different™, design to fail.

 

[Baraka Obama]

AMD's still behind Intel from everything I could find. My Meteor Lake-based Lenovo Thinkpad can be used almost all day on battery.

Apple's battery life advantage didn't come from ARM, it came from designing for low power use first AND being on much more advanced TSMC nodes. Remember they made the tech for phones first and ported it upward.

Intel didn't tend to do anything close to that power efficient outside the Atom line/successors, you can see the advantage Gracemont (Intel's most recent ground up processor design) gave them -- it's why Meteor Lake is in any way power efficient. AMD doesn't have anything really competitive with this design, their "c" cores aren't made the same way they're more layout optimized.

And of course being late on every process node has been a millstone around their neck. AMD has had big advantages in performance but also caught up on efficiency mostly because of that, even if they're usually a couple years behind access to TSMC's best work vs Apple.

I don't know how sustainable any of this is though because TSMC's newer lines are insanely expensive. Maybe 18A can be enough competition to bring down prices?

You know, the type of stuff that Louis Rossmann has been dealing with all the fucking time because it keeps happening.

Man who fixes broken shit sees broken shit.

I wonder what %age we're really talking about. Anecdotally the last few years of macbook seem much, much more reliable than what they were selling 10 years ago.

 

[The Ugly One]

And of course being late on every process node has been a millstone around their neck. AMD has had big advantages in performance but also caught up on efficiency mostly because of that, even if they're usually a couple years behind access to TSMC's best work vs Apple.

Even with the process node advantage, they were still behind Intel in laptop battery life. It turns out that a major part of real-world laptop battery consumption is how much energy the chip consumes while not working, and Intel was (perhaps still is) miles ahead of AMD in clock management. When I was trying to figure out why my AMD laptop was burning so much power, I dug around online and found a chart showing that its idle clock speed was over 2x faster than a comparable Intel, plus it would spin up to higher clocks and stay there longer. I found that in use, it would not drop below 2 GHz under any circumstances other than closing every single application and not touching it. Meanwhile, the Intel desktop I'm using right now is frequently dropping under 1 GHz on the P-cores as I sit here and spergpost.

 

[Baraka Obama]

Even with the process node advantage, they were still behind Intel in laptop battery life. It turns out that a major part of real-world laptop battery consumption is how much energy the chip consumes while not working, and Intel was (perhaps still is) miles ahead of AMD in clock management. When I was trying to figure out why my AMD laptop was burning so much power, I dug around online and found a chart showing that its idle clock speed was over 2x faster than a comparable Intel, plus it would spin up to higher clocks and stay there longer. I found that in use, it would not drop below 2 GHz under any circumstances other than closing every single application and not touching it. Meanwhile, the Intel desktop I'm using right now is frequently dropping under 1 GHz on the P-cores as I sit here and spergpost.

Oh of course, they've been doing that well for a long time even. My previous 2018 laptop the CPU would downclock to 400mhz when it wasn't doing anything stressful. It spent a lot of time at 400mhz.

 

[Fcret]

Even with the process node advantage, they were still behind Intel in laptop battery life. It turns out that a major part of real-world laptop battery consumption is how much energy the chip consumes while not working, and Intel was (perhaps still is) miles ahead of AMD in clock management. When I was trying to figure out why my AMD laptop was burning so much power, I dug around online and found a chart showing that its idle clock speed was over 2x faster than a comparable Intel, plus it would spin up to higher clocks and stay there longer. I found that in use, it would not drop below 2 GHz under any circumstances other than closing every single application and not touching it. Meanwhile, the Intel desktop I'm using right now is frequently dropping under 1 GHz on the P-cores as I sit here and spergpost.

Bringing things back to the topic of this thread, a major contributing factor to battery life problems on Windows laptops is... well, Windows itself. Microsoft and application vendors continue to tack on more and more background services that randomly wake up and ramp the CPU to 100% even when it's not needed. Windows scheduling has always been a massive clusterfuck and it continues to underutilize e-cores. And on top of all that, the Windows Modern Standby problems that have persisted since like 2018 have not only not been fixed, but often made worse thanks to Windows 11 finding more reasons to wake your laptop up so it can try to call home.

One thing that doesn't get talked about often with why Apple Silicon transition was so successful is that Apple controls the entire stack. They know exactly how to schedule background tasks on their e-cores because they wrote the software and designed the hardware. They've basically told incredibly intrusive application vendors to go fuck themselves by curtailing their ability to add more misbehaving background processes. And they've also banished the jeetchinkslop driver issue by simply not allowing most third-parties to easily produce kexts anymore which forces device drivers to conform to their standards for well-behaved userland software.

Honestly, if Intel or AMD owned Windows, they could probably get similar results to what Apple has done.

 

[The Ugly One]

Windows scheduling has always been a massive clusterfuck and it continues to underutilize e-cores.

12th-14th gen Intel CPUs prioritize the P-Cores and only downshift to E-Cores when internal metrics say to. All the Core Ultra-branded processors do the opposite. Applications launch on E-Cores and only get promoted to P-Cores if the metrics say to. Pretty sure the developer can override this prioritization scheme, though.

 

[Overly Serious]

I think Macos is a realistic replacement unless you're a gamer.

Or your work processes are moderately complex and you don't want to single-task something all day long. God I hate doing anything professional on a Mac. Trying to work effectively on multi-monitor set ups compared to Windows and all its nice little features and shortcuts for window handling just makes MacOS a continuous frustration to me. I used to think MacOS vs. Windows was just a question of what you were used to until I started using a Mac. I gave it a real good go, too. I would sooner work on Gnome and the fucking DE of MacOS. It's practically a phone OS with bolted on multi-tasking.

Have you seen the cost of good PC laptops lately? Something with a decent screen, a lid that doesn't wobble when you type, and a trackpad that isn't AIDS is minimum $1000.

Good =/= Latest. I've a laptop from five years ago that still works well for daily tasks. I've got a laptop from 12 years ago that is fine for actual use. You just wouldn't want to carry it around all day or rely on battery life.

Speaking of, I think the laptop industry has lost its way in pursuing the almighty Battery Life metric. Sure, it's a nice to have if it can run for 18 hours but when was the last time I was away from charging for more than a few hours. Even on trains and planes I can just plug it in if I want to. And I'm not working up a mountain with no WiFi. I'm happy enough if a laptop will give me 8hrs. That's a whole working day (theoretically).

Anyway, about cost. I get that people are in the habit of comparing not like with not not like on Macs and PCs. If you get a good quality Windows laptop then it gets you up nearer the range of a Macbook, but... laptops are now at the point that for most people even a low end one is fine. Yes, even the trackpads are usually okay on cheaper laptops these days. Most people don't need anything more. If you do, then Windows laptops are still better value, imo. Couple of comparisons:

Macbook Air starts off at 256GB SSD version, 16GB RAM, 13" screen (about the same as a Surface Go for 2/3rds the price). Screen real estate is one of the primary things that contributes to practical utility working on a laptop. That's also with a 16:10 aspect ratio which on a screen that small is just plain bad. They're designed to work with a monitor and working on the go to be a back up. In which case any astronomical battery life is a red herring (and its cheaper rivals rate around over 12 hours anyway.). At least the Surface Go has a 3:2 aspect ration which makes it a little better for actual production work at small screen sizes.

If you want something that's really practical to work from independently you really should be looking at the 15" model. The price begins to climb. Meanwhile over in Windows land I can get a 10th Gen Yoga 14" with AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 for less than the Air, it has twice the RAM (32GB), twice the storage space (512GB), WiFi 7 (vs. Air's 6E), touch screen, tablet configuration, stylus... Oh no - it only scored 11 hours battery life in tests. Well that takes out at least two people from the target market. I'm not saying it's better in every way, it's not. But pound for pound it's cheaper and still meets nearly everybody's needs so in my book, that makes it (and all the comparable Windows laptops) cheaper than Macs.

AMD's still behind Intel from everything I could find. My Meteor Lake-based Lenovo Thinkpad can be used almost all day on battery.

Cheaper for equivalent performance or better, though. Sticking with that Lenovo Yoga 10th gen they do an Intel and an AMD version for around the same price. In fact the AMD one is cheaper than the Intel version whilst the performance of the Ryzen AI 350 over the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V at the equivalent price point is substantially weaker than AMD's.

If both of them have 10+ hours battery life, what matters to me is performance and cost.