Are all laptops shit?

[CaptainAutism69]

Spectres are EliteBooks with gamer branding, and if you find them at a markdown they can be a decent choice.

That I didn't know...I was just going for something super light for travel, but also with a bit of power under the shell and saw the x360 in the shop. The metal frame sold me on it as well as the super slim form factor.

 

[volatile puar]

Try installing ChromeOS Flex on your laptop, since it's built on ChromeOS it ought to fix those issues you were having on Linux.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

The air does not have fans, which is gonna lead to thermal throttling if you plan on doing very intensive things on it, but for word processing, media consumption, etc you will never have an issue

I see Apple hasn't learned from the Apple III. Does it at least have vents?

 

[pyrinyx]

All laptops are indeed mostly shit and all the expensive models of laptops are just very polished pieces of shit at best.

I've always had a level of disdain towards laptops simply because what you buy is what you'll get, all of the time. There are always limited upgrade options, you can't mess around with the components too much or god forbid you'll break the whole thing. When issues arise that are hardware-related, good luck dealing with those as they are costly in the long run. You are essentially tied to a machine that is only "future-proof" for an average of 1 -3 years at best. As opposed to a full fledged desktop, where you can component-swap when your needs require it. Not to mention, how shitty I/O availability has gotten with laptops overtime, to where they once had to rely on those attachments with more I/O ports for a time.

I have a laptop though but the best I use it for is just for communications and as a white-noise machine next to my bed. It has no better purpose beyond that.

 

[asr]

I see Apple hasn't learned from the Apple III. Does it at least have vents?

I am not sure tbh, I haven't looked that closely at any of the modern M series airs, I got my M1 pro and never really looked back.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I am not sure tbh, I haven't looked that closely at any of the modern M series airs, I got my M1 pro and never really looked back.

Just looked it up. They do have vents. One of the reasons the Apple III had so many issues with heat was the lack of vents. It'd probably still be a piece of shit with vents, but it wouldn't be one that nearly melts if you look at it funny.

 

[volatile puar]

I think the M2 and M3 air had thermal throttling issues, but the M1 didn't really have issues with thermals. I remember seeing comparisons with the pro model and the increased cooling capacity certainly helped for strenuous tasks like video editing, but it was good enough for pretty much anything, which is why so many people consider the M1 Macbook air to be perhaps the best value laptop ever (certainly the best Macbook).

 

[Lovely Kin]

I usually understand laptops if you're constantly traveling between countries like my great uncle does, but yeah, they can be really crappy. The most I use mine for is gaming, listening to music, or if I need to take it somewhere if I'm going to be gone for a long period of time.

 

[YautjaWeeb]

Got a black friday Lenovo for the price of a new genuine HP battery on my aging EliteBook. Good feeling full keyboard/numpad, battery lasts 10 hours of surfing/shitposting/music/vnc/rdp. Locked down and cucked into oblivion with a chinky BIOS informing on you to the CCP and in no way upgradable or even openable without tiny delicate brown hands.

But 10 hours is 10 hours. Runs linux even longer. Next BF comes, throw it away and buy another one or a slightly better one. But I'd probablly be less confident about it if I didn't have an old elitebook battleaxe around as a backup.

 

[FMW13]

I got the m4 MacBook Air back in April. Fucking thing is awesome. having everything in sync and not dealing with window piece of shit os has been awesome. no rarest there. Traded in my M1 MacBook Air for it and having no regrets. Having MagSafe back on it has been an awesome feature.

 

[CaptainAutism69]

All laptops are indeed mostly shit and all the expensive models of laptops are just very polished pieces of shit at best.

I've always had a level of disdain towards laptops simply because what you buy is what you'll get, all of the time. There are always limited upgrade options, you can't mess around with the components too much or god forbid you'll break the whole thing. When issues arise that are hardware-related, good luck dealing with those as they are costly in the long run. You are essentially tied to a machine that is only "future-proof" for an average of 1 -3 years at best. As opposed to a full fledged desktop, where you can component-swap when your needs require it. Not to mention, how shitty I/O availability has gotten with laptops overtime, to where they once had to rely on those attachments with more I/O ports for a time.

I have a laptop though but the best I use it for is just for communications and as a white-noise machine next to my bed. It has no better purpose beyond that.

It's when manufacturers go out of their way to make laptops unfixable. Case in point, I have an MSI Raider from 2020, and after 2 years the keyboard started fucking up. In the good old days you could shimmy it out and drop a new one in, but this piece of shit is plastic rivited into the shell and basically impossible to replace...which is why I use a BT keyboard for it.

 

[Mojo Thief]

My last two laptops have been Toshibas (Dynabook now). Yeah, they're ugly and are uncompetitive performance- and feature-wise for their price, but damn they can take a beating, and the business models like the Tecra can be pretty easily taken apart for repairs and nothing is soldered down. My first one lasted 7 years before I replaced it, and even then I kept using it as a backup for 2 years when the motherboard finally croaked. My current one is 6 years old and looks not a day younger than 15 from all the damage it's taken, but it keeps going with almost no issues, besides inevitable software bloat causing it to struggle at times.

That said they're exclusively work laptops, I'm not sure if they even offer graphics cards. I have a gaming desktop for that anyway. I prioritize laptops that I can fix myself and can sustain the abuses of travel.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

My last two laptops have been Toshibas (Dynabook now). Yeah, they're ugly and are uncompetitive performance- and feature-wise for their price, but damn they can take a beating, and the business models like the Tecra can be pretty easily taken apart for repairs and nothing is soldered down. My first one lasted 7 years before I replaced it, and even then I kept using it as a backup for 2 years when the motherboard finally croaked. My current one is 6 years old and looks not a day younger than 15 from all the damage it's taken, but it keeps going with almost no issues, besides inevitable software bloat causing it to struggle at times.

That said they're exclusively work laptops, I'm not sure if they even offer graphics cards. I have a gaming desktop for that anyway. I prioritize laptops that I can fix myself and can sustain the abuses of travel.

Laptops with the mobile Ryzen CPUs have fairy decent graphics, due to being lightweight AMD GPUs on the die, they can do some fairly decent lightweight gaming, but don't expect to run on high settings.

 

[Death of an Ego]

I've always liked laptops, even from the earliest days when they were usually monochrome and if the battery lasted an hour you were impressed. Modern laptops suffer from corner cutting and shitty heat dispersal, as well as being mostly, if not totally unable to replace something faulty that renders one inoperable. I still run an Ideapad Y700 from 2015. At one point the overly stiff hinge springs caused the bezel and the screen frame to crack and I had to replace those and loosen the hinge spring bolts a few turns to where it was smoother, but after replacing the noisy HDD with a 2TB SSD and dual booting with Xubuntu after Mint shit the bed on me one too many times, the thing is both a good work laptop, and it can hang well with some older games in 1080p with some eye candy on. I usually hook it up to a tv when I'm on the road for gaming, and I never use it for gaming at home because I have a gaming desktop and a little Beelink HTPC that can handle a fair amount of controller based games. I would have been far more pissed when the screen mounting stuff broke on the laptop if I didn't have any experience fixing laptops, however.

For OP, as much as I utterly hate to say this, if all you need to do is run a browser, music software and word, just get a chromebook. As long as you get one with some balls, you'll save some money. If you want a windows laptop, wait till a business in your area upgrades and see if you can finagle a used biz class from one (if they still do that), or just buy a used biz Lenovo. I don't have the hate for Apple that some kiwis have, if you get the right laptop they are decent to good, but I personally would never buy them because I don't like their OS much, and I'm just used to windows/Linux.

 

[Shroom King]

laptops are le homo

t. extensive travel has forced me to use laptops instead of the far superior desktop

I hate typing with my thumbs but smartphones can do a lot of grown-up stuff now and you don't really need a laptop for personal use.
"But muh gaming!" Lies, you can get a CD-i for a good price on ebay.

 

[CaptainAutism69]

Years ago I used to have a THICC Acer Predator G9 with a 1080 in it. The sound the speakers made were BASS as hell thanks to a built in subwoofer, and the performance for the time was excellent. Fan noise was ok because this bad boy had enough space inside to let shit circulate.
It died after 2 years when the motherboard shat the bed; this is a common fault and something to do with the charger killing it.
Sad.
I bought another Predator, took it home, and ended up with non-stop crashes because the Ram was faulty, so I sent that shit back and ended up with a MSI GE-75 with a 2080 in it, which I am currently using.
The sound is shit, the hinges are shit, the keyboard stopped working because it's shit, and it's plastic rivited in so you can't change it so I use a BT keyboard. The thermals are also shit and it throttles like an abusive husband.

I want a new gaming laptop as I travel a lot due to my job, and lugging a desktop everywhere is a no no...

BUT

They all seem like ultrathin, plastic shit that's going to get so hot, I could fry an egg on them.
Are there any big CHONKY gaming laptops where they didn't try to end up as thin as a gnat's pubes, and have shit like, ok cooling, and easy, user replacable parts, or am I longing after a product that doesn't exist in this day and age now?

I notice the prices for a 2080 of the day (5090?), are through the roof, with 2 large barely getting you something modernish.

 

[The ATF Disliked That]

I want a new gaming laptop as I travel a lot due to my job, and lugging a desktop everywhere is a no no...

I'm using an Acer Nitro 5, bought it in 2020 for college as Covid lockdown bullshit was going on. Reviews have called it the Nissan Altima of gaming laptops, which I agree with. i5, 3050, 144hz, 1080p. Works great for me though. I was able to run Arma 3 a few times pretty well. I mean yeah the thing was spewing out heat, but that's nearly all gaming laptops.

Charger is clunky, but that's anything with "gaming" involved. Speakers aren't the best, but I'm always using headphones, so not a concern for me. Battery lasted me about a week when I put windows into sleep mode. Running off of battery only gets a couple hours.
Has ethernet jack, couple USB 3.0s and a USB-C. Also has an HDMI out.

I definitely overpaid at the time, but it was a necessity purchase, because of college that I mentioned above.

 

[CaptainAutism69]

btw this channel is great now that it's back from 'Youtube banned it for no reason' hell

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-hVma59VPGb0bjHBn0XAaleyFQREZm6L

 

[KYSing myself brb]

The problem that bothers me the most with laptops is that they don't allow for multiple SSDs being installed. I'm aware that some old MSI/Alienware laptops have two SATA ports, but no laptop has more than that, and I certainly need at least three SSDs at any given time to not feel limited, better yet four to five though. Solutions like USB-to-SATA adapters also suck, thus only leaving the desktop computer as the only reasonable choice if you want a data hoarding and backup drive.

 

[Almighty Space Duck]

Got a Dell Pro 16 Plus with a Lunar Lake chip. It’s pretty okay as far as work laptops go, even if the name is retarded. Would never have spent my own money on it.