Payed 550€ for my laptop ( 8 gb, ..) 2 years ago, everything is still working fine and it's still enough ( Visual Studio is supposed to be a "heavy" program). = 23 € / month till now and still dropping... And it's hardly game over with my laptop. When i'm at 3 years, it will cost me about 15,2 € / month.

I'll probably use it for longer. But let's say i don't have any costs and sell the laptop for 150 €, that makes it 11,2 € / month.

PS. No repairs required untill date

Edit: You can install Linux on it too or dualboot it ( i did this a long time, but didn't feel the need for it now)

Microsoft would really do well supporting a truly great UNIX layer.

I wouldn't say stupidly. Open source projects just don't prioritize Windows development.

Total cost (including the Intel SSD) was £726 or $1049 at today's rate (exc. VAT). So didn't cost a bomb and gives me a lightening fast machine, windows for desktop duties, debian for dev, a 1920x1080 display, easily replaceable battery/ram/disk and no issue driving multiple monitors.

It's also stupid to assume that your application will work seamlessly between Windows and Unix-like systems just by making sure that the path separators are OS-agnostic.

And once you know how the C++ compilation works with VC++, the problems are minimized. ( i mostly come this accross with Python)

It isn't a hassle free road though

Edit:. The Pi is just for experimenting, no GUI required ;)

There are tools like docker-machine facilitate running Docker under Linux VMs non-Linux platforms though.

Trade money for things that save you time, to spend that time on what's important to you (if you've got the money).

This saves me time for my wife, my children and my hobbies. It also saves me money. Time, and money, to spend on what's important to me. It also sends a signal to companies: there is a market for upgradable, repairable hardware.

Because of the depreciation curve, a $500 computer is almost worthless after several years while a $1000 computer might be worth a hundred or two hundred dollars. Do you spend $200-300 on your $500 computer for say memory + SSD or put that $200-300 towards a new $1000 computer?

As far as time is considered, engineered solutions are generally read-to-go, Apple or Windows, but the Windows world still seems to be rife with bloat. Navigating the hundreds of models & manufacturers is overwhelming for the non-technical user. For many technical folks, it's much simpler to just say, 'Get a mac' or 'Get a Dell', nut the Dell option will be a small pain with navigating the choices.

Non-engineered solutions (building your own) do cost a little bit of a time investment in research, assembly and tweaking. For the technical folk here, it's merely a couple of extra hours. For the uninitiated, it's a lot of hours for knowledge that may not be readily applicable to them on a day-to-day basis.

I absolutely guarantee you that there simply are not enough of you to make hardware manufacturers cater to the upgradable/repairable market.

The only way upgradability/reparability will continue is if people like yourself form a non-profit or B Corp that makes open hardware that allows for it. The vast majority of people don't care.

I don't get the comparison.

It's like apple users think the only options are buy apple (expensive, but "allegedly" rarely needs fixing, works 99% of the time, lasts a long time, etc) and a PC ("allegedly" breaks all the time, requires more maintenance, requires more time to keep up with, "cheap", etc...)

Those are not the options -- it's a false premise. There are laptop PCs which have the exact same performance & reliability as apple, but for a fraction of the price. I've gone through 4 PC laptops since 1996. My first 2 laptops, I admit, I spent a lot of time repairing but that was due to my own youthful tinkering, experimenting and the general instability of earlier OSs (DOS, Win95, Win98/ME, etc).

But my last 2 have lasted me 7+ years a piece. And I only decided to upgrade because they were beginning to show their age (slower compared to newer stuff). You can buy PC laptops with the same "just works" fidelity as apple. More options open up, and you can save yourself a fortune, if people would just eschew their brand loyalty.

What do you consider a fortune? $1000? $1400? That's about two days of my time consulting. I'm fine paying the premium for what I consider a better experience. It's not brand loyalty, that's for sure. I've had a terrible, terrible time trying to get work done on Windows 7, Windows 10 looks like a train wreck, and there are no Lenovo stores I can walk into same day and get a replacement like I can with an Apple store (which is in every major metro I visit).

Build a better experience, and I will gladly pay for it. Until then, Apple (grudgingly) gets my dollars.

It wasn't until after I bought a new replacement laptop that Apple finally acknowledged the issues and started a repair program. I wasn't able to just walk into my Apple store to get it fixed (I live in a major metro), so I ended up going to a local authorized dealer instead.

It was basically the last straw for me. I'm happily on Windows. I don't miss the OSX Terminal because I've got CMDer, and just about everything else I was using on Mac for work is either available for Windows or has a decent equivalent. Windows is not the wasteland it was when I switched back to Mac a decade ago.

On my home country people get paid 1000 euros a month!

Even phased like that that is a lot of money.

EDIT: I know people who spend more than that on Starbucks each month.

- 9 € / month ( Google Play Music)

- 3 € / month ( Netflix shared with 3 other people)

- 3€ / month for Google Apps ( actually, this is business... But i also use the mail for private use..)

= 15 € / month.

If i'm not mistaking, you're OS X device costs you 4 times more every month then the sum of every online webservice i use.

( this is another comparison than yours.. Some people just throw out money, others don't :) . Earning a lot of money doesn't automaticly mean you have to waste all of it )

Well.. you need something to run those things on

Is that any better? ;)

It turns out I spend far more on internet access than I do on hardware, and I wouldn't have thought that to be the case.

I think that's more than worth it. Why the hell haven't I bought a backup machine yet just in case this one breaks?

Because you're leveraging credit in the event of a failure! No need to let equipment languish when you can simply pop into the store!

Also because it has so far only died about once every two years. Every time due to human error (spilled things). I can afford a two day outage every two years :)

And mind you that just two years ago, I had the same kind of reaction to that sort of comment. It's not that hard to step up a few pay grades as an engineer these days.

And no, not on Windows because in my experience it's the most terrible system for developers. Might've improved in the last 15 years.

And no, not on linux. In my experience it requires constant tinkering with the system. According to my friends still on linux, this hasn't changed in the last 3 years.

So yeah, I guess only mac is left. Which often still requires too much tinkering, but feels like less than linux. And I honestly haven't used windows in earnest in 15 years so hard to say.

Then again, it's cheaper than a month of rent for a 1-bedroom in this damn city (San Francisco).