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I’ve been really happy with the Acer Swift 3. It won’t really work for gaming, but for basic mostly-browser laptop stuff it’s more than adequate. Decent build quality, great battery life, very reasonable price. If you want a notch more portable there’s the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus with a 12′ screen and the Dex multitasking.
The Apple M chips are really good. I have an M1 Pro for work and have been really impressed by the performance and battery life. Not sure I’d get one if I were paying the Apple Tax myself, though. It’s only moderately better than the Swift 3 that’s a fraction of the price.
I’ve had a framework 13 since their first version and it’s a good laptop. If you’re looking for a cheaper one they have factory seconds which have some small defects but you can get an 11th gen i7 for like $500. You’ll need to add an SSD and RAM and battery life won’t be awesome, but it’ll be better than what you’ve got.
Also if in 2 years you need more HP it’s only a couple hundred bucks to buy the new motherboard and upgrade it vs a whole new laptop.
Until recently I was a fan of the MS Surface Pro devices. They’re not serviceable at all which is quite the downside, but the format is good, they’re real portable, and came without any third-party bloatware. Unfortately MS is going all in on AI bullshit now so when my current one dies, that’ll probably be the end of that.
Ugh, laptops. I have a range of hooptie laptops for the same reason, but I think it might be time to hop to a Mac with Microsoft’s overagressive ads for AI cluttering up the joint on their newer machines. Every time I look at my buddy’s system, I just think, “screw that.” Ads! On a computer you own! I don’t care if they’re for other Microsoft services or things accessible on the computer. That’s worse than Clippy. Eat turds.
We have MacBook Airs for work and aside from some corporate spy-tech making it glitch early and often for a while (it no longer does that after they moved to something else), it’s been fine. It’s not a high-powered, high-end machine by any standards, but for our kind of work, it does the job.
A number of years ago I figured out that my laptop doesn’t do that much heavy lifting anyway (I have servers for that) so hauling a desktop replacement laptop around was dumb. I switched to an X1 Carbon on my next refresh and haven’t looked back. It hasn’t been perfect – I got one with a flaky touchpad, and my most recent one had charging problems until they replaced the motherboard, but overall the hardware is solid and they’re much easier to travel with.
^This. X1 Carbons have been my Windows go-to for years. They can get very expensive, but Lenovo frequently has equally ridiculous deals online if you keep your eyes peeled. Or.. you could get a MB Air and run Windows via something like Parallels.
So many good suggestions here. Not sure about the hatred of the Mac OS – I jumped when it was closer to Windows NT than whatever the new Windows was (Windows Vista? 7?) and have never looked back. Since everything today is done on the web, you do not need OS-specific tools for most things – I have a Windows laptop where I keep an old version of my favorite 3D CAD product that was long ago paid for, but if I was doing more paid work I would probably move to a SAAS subscription service like OnShape or Fusion 360 which I think will work well on the native Mac.
You should take David’s MacBook Air – these are great computers and my early M1 version has batteries that are good for a cross-country flight. If he is taking too long, let me know – it is about time for me to upgrade (to a MacBook Pro) because of some data science projects it looks like I am going to be working on soon and I could give you my old one. One nice thing about the Mac products is that they have fairly consistent builds – which means it is fairly easy to buy used (or even) new parts on Ebay if anything goes wrong (like you accidentally pierce the screen with a knife…).
I also like the idea of a tablet (iPad!) with a keyboard – this is the preferred home/travel setup for many of my friends.
Finally, pay for the Economy+/Extra Legroom seats – it is usually $50 to $100 per leg and worth every penny if you plan to work on the plane. First/Business is much more hit or miss on pricing, but always check it out before buying your ticket – there has been times where first is less than the extra legroom seats – which, for you, would likely be preferable (for my long legs, it can be a toss-up if First or extended legroom is better). Also fly JetBlue if you can – their standard seat spacing in the same as Delta’s extra legroom spacing (United’s extra legroom spacing is close to JetBlue’s – if you have a choice take United over Delta).
I’m guessing you mean “per leg of your flight”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if an airline tried to charge per physical limb.
Haha, yes flight leg ????
Hi Mercedes. Yesterday the Netflix screen saver advertised something that blew my mind: there is a GTA San Andreas app for iPhone! Also Vice City. I’ve only spent a minute on the first level/mission/tutorial and it’s darned difficult to navigate, but holy crap it’s CJ on my phone!
I can empathize with this situation- having to jam myself into my mom’s jetta tdi with my 12-year-old Dell laptop to run VCDS was not fun.
Originally my CAD station in college, still kicking along to this day.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/XroY5wg8oXs6rDGH6
Adverse to Mac OS? me too
Get yourself a Dell.
I little trick I’ve been doing for awhile. Check out the Dell Outlet. These are usually ones that have just been ordered and then canceled by larger companies in many cases. They all have warranties.
https://outlet.us.dell.com/GDOOnline/Online/InventorySearch?c=us&l=en&cs=28&s=dfb&buid=11&brandid=2801&pFilter=eyJNZW1vcnkiOlsiNzQwMjkiXSwiU2NyZWVuU2l6ZSI6WyIzODcwMjAiXX0%3D
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It took me a minute to realize that toy car on your desk wasn’t a SMART-themed mouse. I don’t know what computer you should get, but I do think you should too much of your time tracking down a SMART mouse.
The Mac Mini can use an ipad as a screen, so you just need to 3D print an enclosure, get an power source, and a wireless keyboard.
Eazeepeazee
https://www.tiktok.com/@scottyujan/video/7384098068846759211
My 93 year old father still has my brother’s Osbourne II in a closet downstairs. I keep meaning to see if it boots, and, if it does, play one last round of Adventure on it. After that, I will sent it to you if you want. I will pay the shipping!
Or maybe Torch would like it to back up his Trash-80.
Surely Torch has a spare TRS-80 Model 100 he’s not using?
Domestic business class upgrade is usually reasonable and can be even cheaper if you keep an eye on their offers every so often. The extra space allows me to run my 16″ laptop and external mouse, and still have room for drink and snack. The extra productivity paid for the upgrade several times over.
I’ve also discovered it’s possible to join online meetings while in the air. Just use headphones and respond via text instead of speaking.
Props to avoiding Apple/IPhone/IJunk…they’re such a ripoff and Android/PC’s are better anyway
I already sent my Canon X-07 to Jason a while ago but maybe you can borrow it from him next time?
https://www.theautopian.com/a-well-known-car-on-a-very-poorly-known-computer-cold-start/
As an unrepentant cheap bastard who occasionally goes off-script, for years I bought old, used ThinkPads. 90% of the reason was the keyboard, the old T models with the absolutely perfect keys. Throw on a Linux distro, off we go. Eventually they just became too old and I didn’t want to futz with upgrading things, so I said the hell with it and bought a M1 MacBook Air. Think someone said this model is $600 at Wal-Mart now. Is it the latest? No, but after all those years of old ThinkPads it just…works.
Put it this way. After putting miles and money into an old car I finally bought a mostly-new car. All the things just work. It’s small and light enough it goes anywhere. No freaking out because I don’t have the right charger with me, as it uses USB-C.
Walled garden? Yeah, sure, but after years of sudo-apt-get it’s nice to just have things work.
This cheap bastard still uses a T61p “desktop replacement” on Win10* I bought several years ago for $50. It’s heavy and slow by modern standards so not so great for gaming (unless you are a hard core retro game player) but its fine for basic office stuff. Upgrading to a SSD, faster CPU and throwing in a USB 3 card helped. One nice these systems is the modding community.
*I expect running Linux on it would speed things up but Win10 works well enough…for now.
A fellow cheap bastard! T61’s were so damned good. And I always used the TrackPoint or whatever it’s called. Maybe that’s a project for later, modding one up. I think I still have 4 or 5 in a box somewhere. Can’t throw those away.
A fellow cheap bastard!
What gave it away? ; )
I read of a mod to replace the original CCL with an LED strip. Its supposed to be much better for light control and battery life. Might be something to put on your mod list.
Get a thinkpad.
More detail: they’re all I’ve used since 2011. Sturdy, repairable and often upgradable at home, abundant parts, good keyboards (not as great as IBM era but still good). They run most Linux distributions perfectly out of the box. A hardcore old school Unix coworker uses Pop!OS and he’s pleased with it.
I second this. I adore my Thinkpad. I bought an i7 model that was a few years old which is plenty for the office software I use. The one thing I hate is the fn key in the bottom corner where control usually is. Drives me up the wall when my ctrl+ shortcuts don’t work the first time.
I bought a surface pro with similar specs as the Thinkpad to compare and it just doesn’t work for me. Since your primary mode of interaction is with the keyboard, I wouldn’t recommend it.
At least the modern Thinkpads have a BIOS setting that swaps the fn and ctrl keys so you can fix this absolutely braindead design. I have no idea who thought it was a good idea, but it gives me carpal tunnel having to curl my pinky under to get to the stock location of the ctrl key. And I very rarely use the fn key so why it got the prime location in the corner I will never understand.
You can flip fn and Ctrl!