Re:Realistic alternatives to Apple computers
by pmontra on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @12:30PM
(#12847381)
HP ZBook 15, first generation. I don't truly love it because they added a number pad to the keyboard which skewed the spacebar and the touchpad to the left, so I shift the PC to the right to get the touchpad aligned with the center of my body. There were no better alternatives when I had to buy it (I needed a 15" screen).
What I like is that I can replace almost anything, even the CPU and the GPU. I added RAM, 16 GB out of 32 now and swapped the DVD burner for a 1 TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I was using the 32 GB SSD cache of the HDD for the OS so it was already fast, but it's faster now. THD screen is good, the touchpad has 3 physical buttons. The battery lasts 3, maybe 4 hours with care, which is more than enough for me. It's 3 kg and the power brick is a brick but it's ok.
Ubuntu 16.04 works pretty well on it. Almost: it has two problems I can live with, shared by Ubuntu 12.04: 1) it doesn't shutdown, only suspend or restart. If I have to turn it off before going on vacation I press the power button when it restarts 2) plugging out the USB 3 HD I use for backups does something to the USB port and I have to reset the port or the PC won't suspend. Every other drive works. I have a script for that and it runs at the end of the backup script. I'm a developer so it's OK. If you're not, look at another hw.
Everything else is OK, support included. Next business day on site assistance was about 100 Euro for 3 years.
The second and third generation models look iteratively better. Maybe they work better with Linux too.
Edit: however any 15" model without the number pad will win me over.
What I like is that I can replace almost anything, even the CPU and the GPU. I added RAM, 16 GB out of 32 now and swapped the DVD burner for a 1 TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I was using the 32 GB SSD cache of the HDD for the OS so it was already fast, but it's faster now. THD screen is good, the touchpad has 3 physical buttons. The battery lasts 3, maybe 4 hours with care, which is more than enough for me. It's 3 kg and the power brick is a brick but it's ok.
Ubuntu 16.04 works pretty well on it. Almost: it has two problems I can live with, shared by Ubuntu 12.04: 1) it doesn't shutdown, only suspend or restart. If I have to turn it off before going on vacation I press the power button when it restarts 2) plugging out the USB 3 HD I use for backups does something to the USB port and I have to reset the port or the PC won't suspend. Every other drive works. I have a script for that and it runs at the end of the backup script. I'm a developer so it's OK. If you're not, look at another hw.
Everything else is OK, support included. Next business day on site assistance was about 100 Euro for 3 years.
The second and third generation models look iteratively better. Maybe they work better with Linux too.
Edit: however any 15" model without the number pad will win me over.