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Does Smart make laptops?
Pixelbook (not Chromebook) – even used. Lightweight OS, excellent keyboard, everything web-based is easy. This suggestion is highly dependent on the backend you have to use to write for the site though.
It’s not a cheap or bad answer, but the Microsoft Surface is a great machine and works well on a plane. It also has amazing battery life. I love the pen for taking handwritten notes. If you don’t want Apple, it’s a great choice.
I have a great idea. Let’s all send all of our unused laptop computers to Mercedes care of the Autopian and let her decide on her own?
As a person who upgrades only when my computer breaks, I suggest go to staples.com and buy the computer that has what you need and the biggest discount.
looked at framework a few months back, but Walmart was selling MacBook air’s for like $600. Not the newest or best (in fact, the oldest and worst…in terms of MacBook Air) but the thing works great and does everything I need it to do.
Was also looking at higher end Chromebooks at the time, and the price of the air was just too low to justify anything else.
Was thinking about this to replace my MacBook. New puppy keeps spilling my coffee into the current one.
Starting to act up, despite taking it apart and several good cleanings.
Would you buy another? How long you had this new one?
Many thanks.
About 2 months – I had/have a Mac mini, but some things changed and I needed something portable.
Had a few concerns heading in, with newer silicon and bells & whistles available…but it’s fine…no complaints. Works just as well as the mini with the M2 chip, for the stuff I’m using it for (basic shit…no heavy computing or gaming). There’s been some pretty smoking deals on M2/M3 chip versions…but they’re still at least $200 more. For the price, I think it’s great. Would definitely buy again.
+1, thanks.
I have big Lenovo laptop from 2013 that is used daily still and works perfectly. I have two other Lenovo Yogas from 2016 that also work perfectly. I highly recommend a Lenovo Yoga. You should be able to get a decent used 13″ one for under $200. I LOVE having a back lit keyboard.
Jesus Mercedes. Just get a cheap ultra-book. You’re a journalist now. Duh. 🙂
I don’t know the first thing about laptops, but I do love my Lenovo ThinkPad X1. Light and very sturdy (and quite expensive). If you’re not going to be working on a plane all that much, then you don’t need anything near this. Others who actually know about this stuff may also be able to steer you towards something just as light, sturdy, and capable as this, too. But I’ve been through a number of others and this ThinkPad is by far the best I’ve used. I’ve been traveling a lot lately and have never regretted sinking the money I did into this thing.
I have the same as my latest work-provided daily driver. Great little machine, and I work on airplanes all the time with it.
For myself, I have been buying Dell refurbs off Amazon. These are generally corporate lease returns, 3yrs old, often with a year of warranty left for about 20% of the cost of a new one.This year I bought a couple of Dell Lattitude E5310s. 10th Gen i7, 16Gb/256Gb, thin, light, decent battery life, ~$300. It’s a bit of a crapshoot as to the exact spec, one came plain-jane, the other with the touchscreen, Hello camera, and fingerprint reader. I am reasonably confident both were actually brand-new and never used (not a scratch or a mar, and the battery cycles were non-existent), probably spare inventory from some big corp.
Wrong answer – https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Zenith_supersPORT_%281%29.jpg
I have an Alienware I use for gaming, work, etc. Granted it has 20 minutes on battery. Just enough to find another plug.
Real answer – put the hinge down on the table, with the keyboard and screen forming a V open at the top. You’ll have to make like a T-Rex to type, but this is the only way I’ve found to work in an economy seat. I also try to keep the travel laptop small – screen of ~14″. If the laptop has a numeric keypad, you’ve chosen poorly for plane use.
If our phones are capable of voice recognition at $69.95 why can’t a computer do it? No typing?
Can’t really do that on a commercial flight.
Fly business class, problem solved.
Works for me anyway.
I generally don’t even try to work on planes – but sometimes I need some information from the laptop. The only time I ever did any work on a plane would be if there was an open seat next to me. Even then I’d just use the time to file things on my desktop into folders. I don’t think i had an open seat next to me since the early 2010’s, though.
Business class wasn’t often available on my routes. I’d feel like the extra space may give someone the expectation that I would be productive. Time in the sky is for judge shows or Top Gear episodes I’ve already seen. I don’t need much leg room. I’ll eat a gummy and hang out in coach.
I’ve written some of my best documentation at 35K feet. Whatever I get done in the air is more time I can goof around on the ground.
About the only flights I have anymore that don’t have business class are short hops on American Eagle ERJ-145s. Those are too short to matter anyway.
My travel was mostly domestic and most of my flights were 3 hours or less. I was flying out of Logan and usually took JetBlue. At the time, they didn’t really have any business / first class. Company would pay business class for flights over 4 hours, but that would put me in CA or Ireland and I could find flights on large body jets where I could have the middle 4 seats to myself in coach.
I’m chronically cheap, even with company money. I think I’m still a millionaire in Jetblue miles.
I also fly all domestic for work, but on AA. Executive Platinum status and a very generous travel allowance (the clients are paying, and the travel expenses are a truly tiny percentage of the total cost of my projects) mean that I am very rarely not up front no matter the flight. My comfort matters to me, and I for damned sure don’t fly coach on my own dime, on the rare occasions I am not flying for work. When I am on vacation, I stay HOME the vast majority of the time.
Also a multi-millionaire in FF miles, and many times that in hotel points with IHG, LOL. The best perks of the job (IT consultant specializing in storage, backup, and virtualization)!
As I know it’s been said many times on this site:
Pete for the win!
Who is Pete?
I think we established a long time ago Pete doesn’t actually exist.
That’s exactly what they want you to believe.
If there’s one thing it’s worth spending money on, it’s things that help make you money. Which, for you, includes a laptop.
This
The tools of your trade are worth spending money on.
Especially when those things are deductible business expenses.
As someone who is also allergic to Apple, I have a Framework running Ubuntu and has Windows installed on a card for Versatuner. My gaming PC still runs Windows 10 because not everything on it will run in Linux and 11 is missing some QoL things from 10 that never should have been cut.
I totally vote Framework. It’s a great concept and it should be the standard.
I also like my Framework, although I never travel with it. Just my “around the house” laptop that my boy uses for Minecraft and so forth. Biggest drawback is lack of touchscreen.
THAT SAID, I used to travel frequently for work, and I almost always took *only* an LTE-enabled iPad with a keyboard cover. All day battery, very small and easy to use, but I could run all of the standard office applications. My new job doesn’t issue iPads and I really miss having one. I’m not an iOS user, but the iPad is a great tool for travel productivity IMO.
I won’t argue that. My brother is a graphic designer with work-provided Mac, Adobe, and iPhone. It’s much easier for him to use an iPad with a keyboard cover for a lot of things since it all links together.
I have a $400 Lenovo running Windows. It’s excellent.
It replaced a 10 year old Lenovo that cost about the same. I replaced that one because it had wires everywhere so I could use Zoom and the sound was non-existent, plus the case cracked.
They might be no fun to someone who wants to play with the innards, but I’m not that person. I managed to set a nice graphic for the lock screen and another for the home screen. That’s my extent of modification.
I was all excited that perhaps Mercedes had found a GRiD Compass! It’s on my irrational old computers I want list.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/nasas-original-laptop-the-grid-compass-2650280048
I wonder if my Tadpole sparcstation laptop still works.
You’d have to run Linux, but there’s also the MNT Pocket Reform for that post-apocalyptic vibe
https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform
If you want to have a little fun, don’t limit your choices to what’s for sale in the US. About 3 years ago I had a very specific set of components I wanted and nobody combined them the way I wanted as far as the US market, but Lenovo made exactly what I wanted for Germany, Poland, and Romania. Got it from amazon.de in I think only 2 days and cost about $500 less than comparable laptops here.
If you’re not demanding of performance or space, a Samsung 8″ tablet and bluetooth keyboard is a perfectly functional combo for basic use. I used one around Europe for three weeks last winter. Perfectly serviceable for email, web browsing, etc.
Seeing your proclivities for older, cheaper, and durable IT and you need a real laptop I’d strongly suggest you look for a 3-4 year old Thinkpad X1. Thin, light, capable, and with one of the best laptop keyboards ever made. As for durability, mine is 9 years old and still running great. Of course YMMV. When I eventually upgrade it, I plan to do so with another X1. You can pick up very capable machines off ebay for $500 – $1K. Or just hunt around the Galpin offices. I’m sure there’s an unused laptop floating around there somewhere that you could acquire.
I’m not one to recommend modern hardware, most of my PCs are around 10 years old, but also because I absolutely refuse to work on flights. Flying coach already sucks enough as it is, I’m not about to compound that suckage.
Ditto. If work wants to spring for a seat where I have enough room to work then I’ll consider it, but as long as they only pay for poverty class I’m going to do whatever makes that time pass quickly (so, not work).
Also, the one time I tried it, the wifi was so bad it was just infuriating, even if the ergonomics of the situation hadn’t been atrocious. That was when I made the decision that my laptop stays in my bag while travelling.
I had one of these 10″ Toshiba mini laptops passed down from my father, running windows 7 https://www.ebay.com/itm/326238832327 it was tiny but completely useless in every other way.
At home I have a big-ass gaming laptop I bought in 2015 that is basically just a mobile desktop. It does not move from where it sits on my desk any more. I have upgraded its RAM and hard drives to keep it going.
On the couch on on the go I use the 100-dollarest 11-inch netbook I was able to buy at the store on sale (an HP 11 Stream), which I then wiped and installed Arch onto so I can use it without overstraining its little systems (it doesn’t even have an in-built fan to move air through it). I love my little manlet of a laptop.
I would rather spend my money on motorcycle parts.
Something small but stylish and not an Apple? How about a sweet Dell Inspiron Mini!?
Intel atom processor let’s it run for hours(which it will need a couple of just to boot)
2GB of Ram! That’s literally thousands of rams!
250GB HDD! Why have a solid drive? That sounds heavy, this HDD just spins and spins most of the time. As for more space, most things are the cloud now anyways right? Perfect for airplanes cause they fly through clouds!
Also you can swap the lids to like zebra prints and what not, so stylish!
I own one of these pieces of shit.
Lives in an old bag in the spare bedroom. Just too lazy to throw it in the trash.
So did I say it was a total piece of fecal matter? Like the Dell Mini, my RAM is starting to suck in real life also…YMMV
Yeah we bought one for my wife when they were ‘new’. It was HORRENDOUS. I wanted it to be good, love tiny computers, years before I had a Toshiba 12″ that could barely play things like Age of Empires, but I loved it. But the Dell Mini felt so much worse than that. That was actually the last pc she ended up using, has had tablets ever since and work perfect for all she needs.
A tablet with an auxiliary keyboard would be inexpensive, lightweight, and functional.
If you get a tablet case that has a slim carrying strap, you can hook that over the tray-table-latch-hook dealie on the back of the seat in front of you. This will elevate the tablet – basically hanging it like artwork on a wall – and leave the tray space available for the keyboard. This should allow you to see both simultaneously.
Or you can search eBay for a Toshiba Libretto. For under $300 you can have a compact laptop with your choice of Windows 95 or Windows 98, but battery life may be somewhat limited. 🙂
And with that sweet Windows BS operating system, you can spend your life waiting for those great Updates and Critical Update patches to eventually break it totally.
Good times. Microsoft can eat shit and die…
How about a folding keyboard with an integrated mini-pc?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1482776406/lunar-2-in-1-foldable-keyboard-and-mini-pc-for-all-your-needs%20F6RJJ0
Just need to add a display. VR goggles would be perfect!
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804826645775.html?src=bing&aff_short_key=UneMJZVf&aff_platform=true&isdl=y&albch=shopping&acnt=135095331&isdl=y&albcp=555014097&albag=1295225841515632&slnk=&trgt=pla-4584551179348577&plac=&crea=80951670505926&netw=o&device=c&mtctp=e&utm_source=Bing&utm_medium=shopping&utm_campaign=PA_Bing_US_PLA_PC_%E9%AB%98%E5%AE%A2%E5%8D%95_ECPC_20240710_AESupply&utm_content=%E9%AB%98%E5%AE%A2%E5%8D%95&utm_term=monitor%20goggles%20for%20pc&msclkid=8aac557469d11b7e03a83267a6e09519&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa