Yes it has screw holes and grills... it's a working-person's laptop :). The new ones don't, because they're becoming more like apple - which means I cannot as easily replace battery, hard drive, memory, etc as I do on the older Thinkpads.

You'll be disappointed by battery time and sometimes CPU whining/noise. Coming from there and love the price-performance ratio, silence and battery from the T460 now ;)

Similarly, I spend far more type writing software than with the soldering iron.

I'm also hungry for a macbook pro alternative (after Apple's courageous decision to remove function keys and magsafe and not meaningfully improve hardware), but I've yet to find something that isn't at best a flimsy clone -- I travel a lot and don't want to sacrifice look and feel for the 30 minutes every three years that I'd need to swap ram/hdd.

Seriously, I used to be able to tell from product spec sheets, but Wikipedia also used to have model lists for each major product line with detailed specs. Wikipedia doesn't do this any more? Not even as part of Wikidata?

Titanium?

walk over to my work T530, leaned up against the wall...

What 'cover' on this is made out of titanium? It's all black plastic. I've heard it has a magnesium skeleton...? Maybe you mean the hinges? I guess those could be titanium - they're some kind of metal.

Dude - the whole case on this thing is made out of plastic. I'm scratching the whole thing to find anything on this that's metal at all. What are you talking about?

Different people give these factors different weights according to their resources, needs and preferences.

There is one more factor - the image the laptop projects. To each his own, but if you give the image a high score compared to the other factors - be honest about it.

The body is made out of carbon fiber. Technically this is 'plastic', but not in the context of your comment.

Here's for example the maintenance guide for T560 http://ok1.de/thinkpad/HMM/t560_p50s_hmm_en_sp40k04930.pdf

The Carbon X1 is made from carbon fiber. It super-robust and light-weight at the same time.

It feels light years ahead of the super-heavy aluminium-nonsense Apple is trying to peddle. Count me happy my laptop doesn't double as a bench-press.

I wonder if it's the Valley culture? There is no way a Macbook can compete with a proper Thinkpad [2] for programmer productivity: the keyboard, the UltraNav, the swappable batteries (you can fly around the world with a x260 + spare battery), a nice docking station, upgradeable storage/memory and a trouble-free Linux distro. Plus, they don't burn you with ice-cold aluminum every morning.

The gap is huge! If a Thinkpad is a 100, the prev. gen Macbook Pro would be 60 and everything else lingering in misery under 10.

Full disclosure: I am 100% Macbook right now because Photoshop/Sketch, the struggle is real, I miss everything about Thinkpad, hence this passionate comment.

  [1] Another 100% Linux, 100% Thinkpad company was http://www.acunote.com 
  [2] Properly configured, i.e. IPS, Intel graphics, etc.

Cut the bullshit and just run Linux on the bare metal, your program will run faster, and your laptop battery life won't be halved.

You will have to claw my x201 out of my cold dead hands, I've not found a single notebook (even the newer ThinkPads) that are as comfortable to use. I've got no crummy trackpad wasting space and a 16:10 display that's designed for work, and not watching cat videos.

Spare parts are dirt cheap, and since the magnesium alloy rollcage is on the inside I don't have to worry about ugly dents, I just swap plastic panels out on the cheap when I think they are getting a bit too worn.

I run Linux on Linux via vagrant, it's not about my program running faster it's about isolating a client projects dependencies from each other so when I have to work on that system that is still in production on PHP Current-1 or Ruby-1 I don't have to fuck with my host OS at all.

In fact I have very few developer bits and bobs installed on the host (mostly just JetBrains stuff) and all the actual tooling is run in the VM, this makes for far easier deploys for myself since my process is

pull projectname/(site||name), pull projectname/vagrant, vagrant up.

It takes me less than 30 minutes from reinstalling to having half a dozen projects with all their weird dependencies and cruft installed and I never have to worry about breaking something else or needing to blow away a machine for some reason.

I'm happy to trade some performance for running damn near everything in a guest OS for that.

I have a Vagrant/Virtualbox workflow (on Windows host, so Docker not a great option yet) but curious: does Docker have shared folder support - via NFS or other?

It's been the getting stuff into & out of the VM that's most painful IMO.

Oh awesome, thanks! I looked when Docker for Windows came out and (thankfully) spotted the "After Hyper-V is enabled, VirtualBox will no longer work" (?!) warning before trying it. I didn't dig any deeper.

but I really miss the UltraNav.

(And here I thought the P-series was "just" what the W series morphed into...)

I've never really quite understood why, as I though ACPI is meant to handle this. But I'm not terribly au fait with this interface, so there might be good reasons, I know Torcalds criticised it early on as a "design disaster" and there were and I think still are concerns about the way that bytecode has unfettered access to the system.

the X201 has a trackpad. The X1 carbon (and several other models) have 2560x1440 displays.

http://mos6581.com/pictures/thinkpad/201-palmrest.jpg

What kind of working environment requires setting up Vagrant on OSX? It's a Unix-based OS, if you're doing any web development you can do it on the host system.

For one thing, you want the development environment to be as similar to production as possible – same OS version, same webserver version, same DB version, same dependencies, no unwanted extras that differ between environments.

For another thing, you don't want to have to solve conflicts between project A and completely unrelated project T if you need to work on them both.

MacPros have two descent AMD FirePro GPUs but much cheaper to rent.

yea. ok

edit: Why not watch cat videos?

Your criticisms are pretty almost all a matter of taste, and we're in disagreement just about throughout.

> I wonder if it's the Valley culture?

I'm not in the valley. I've never found any non-apple laptop with a good (or even decent) trackpad, and I like that OSX has a community of indie developers who actually care.

> the keyboard

I don't enjoy thinkpad keyboard.

> the UltraNav

Same as above but much stronger, I absolutely hate this thing, and I love Apple trackpad. In fact the trackpad is one a huge reason for remaining on Apple laptops despite other shortcomings: I can and even enjoy using MBPs without a mouse.

> the swappable batteries

have never been something I've needed, plus that requires carrying additional batteries.

> a nice docking station

Meh. "nice" is in the eye of the beholder, the thing's ugly as sin. And with type C/TB3, you can actually replicate it without being beholden to Apple (!).

> upgradeable storage/memory

That is indeed a really annoying "feature" of Apple over the last few years. Though of course you can get a maxed-out MBP.

> Linux distro

and I don't see that as an advantage.

> The gap is huge! If a Thinkpad is a 100, the prev. gen Macbook Pro would be 60

If you like thinkpads more power to you, but all my experiences with them were disappointing, I'd put the 2015 rMBP at 70 and the average thinkpad at 40, maybe 50.

Personally, I have a ThinkPad W540 for work and while it weighs like a brick man is it easy to work with. The UltraNav isn't as nice as the trackpad on my XPS 13, but I usually work with the TrackPoint on ThinkPad's anyway (killer feature for me to be honest, even Apple's awesome trackpad disappointments in comparison to a good ol' TrackPoint in my opinion) - upgrading the RAM and SSD required a couple screws for the appropriate bays in the base cover instead of needing to take the whole thing off like my old 2012 MBP. Also, while USB Type-C and ThunderBolt 3 "work" for a dock, being able to plop by ThinkPad down on my desk at home and have it start charging and connect all of my peripherals is still easier than plugging in a cable (even if it's just one cable).

Also, as far as Linux support I guess that all really depends on the individual. Most of my workflow is heavily dependent on Linux (Java/Python dev in JetBrains products, ansible stuff, administering a couple dozen Linux VM's) with the exception of our .Net apps (where I run Visual Studio in a Windows VM) - there's not a whole lot of benefit to me running macOS, and in fact, I'd really rather run Fedora (call me an oddball I guess) since anything not getting deployed to a Windows server goes to a CentOS VM, makes moving from development to production a lot easier.

Er… yes that's quite literally my entire point, and specifically spelled out as my first paragraph.

I have an older Retina Pro, and I have a dock that works exactly like this. I stick the MBP in, and it's charging and connected to a keyboard and mouse, two displays, and my printer, along with speakers.

Today's Dell and Lenovo laptops are good Linux dev machines. I've never had a problem with putting Linux one one, either my Dell Inspiron at work or my XPS at home. My old first gen carbon can even run FreeBSD-11 fine. Everything worked straight off with a stock kernel and the current linux-firmware package.

At one time, Macs were more cost effective for the specs you got. But with all the ram and SSD storage you can pack into modern laptops, they're really good dev machines.

This box, with a i7-6600U, routinely idles with the screen on at 5.5-6W with a current kernel (spending almost all of that in PC7 per powertop). Your ideas about Linux power management are just plain misinformed.

Tiny almost weightless (feels lighter than current-gen Macbook Air) laptop, and it runs between 10 to 11 hours on the battery when doing normal work (programming, mail, web, spreadsheets etc..) on wifi with pleasant screen brightness ...

Linux power management is fine today on modern hardware... (Powertop reports 5.2-5.5 watts)

Beyond that, run a current kernel (my measurements are on Fedora's 4.8.12 kernel). Also recognize that recent Intel SoCs have gotten a lot better at idle power draw. The "X1 Carbon" brand started with (I think) Ivy Bridge boards which obviously aren't going to perform like this.

I remember when Apple released it saying, 'no new features'. Just bug fixes and speed improvements.

We need one of those again.

I'm also a tiling WM fan. I found amethyst a resonable comprise when using macOS though.

Keyboard and UltraNav are more taste than anything else. I have a T450s for work and a 15" rMBP and vastly prefer the keyboard/touchpad on the latter. It doesn't help that Lenovo's QA is shit. My T450s keyboard is bulging in the bottom right of the keyboard deck, and several of the keys stick for a millisecond on the way down. As if they're not quite seated properly and hitting the key causes something to click into place. I suspect it's temperature related, because it goes away after typing for awhile, but comes back after a bit of non-use.

> upgradeable storage/memory

Programmers are expensive. No reason not to buy a maxed-out machine to begin with.

Also, it's hard to get over Lenovo's penchant for shit displays if your job is to stare at text all day.

Anyways, the 5th gen Yoga was just announced at CES 2017!!

It is pretty impressive and is my new dream machine, http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-yo...

And MacBooks have the best touchpad of all laptops.

More specifically, the stuff I don't want to mess with just works: peripherals and GUI stuff work without intervention, and the thing goes to sleep when I close the lid. And the stuff I want to mess with is still good old familiar Unix. I haven't tried out desktop Linux in awhile, but the Free Software model only seems to work for things coders like to work on in their spare time, like terminals, text editors, and command-line programs. For the rest, I'm willing to pay my fellow coders so I don't have to deal with it.

I read your first sentence and was like "wow, this guy hasn't used Linux in a while." Then I got to your second sentence.

So, yeah, maybe give it another go. In my experience most of the complaints I had 4-5 years ago are gone at this point, and the convenience gap has closed substantially. OS X is still more user friendly of course, and there's a little bit of configuration required to make everything work smoothly under Linux, but it's a lot better than you remember.

Importantly, I've seen some devs using OS X, and they spend way more time dealing with dev tooling issues than I spend dealing with printers, devices, and gui stuff.

For example I hate Finder, I dont like that I am not able to run lots of software, I dont like that its running an ancient version of OpenGL/there is no Vulkan.

Every long time Mac user I've asked says they just don't use those buttons. Maximising windows is a mess in mac. Multi monitor support is also rather poor.

Over all, I've had no real problems with OS X (at least after installing my own terminal program and own version of bash and such) and everything worked smoothly, which is great, but I certainly wouldn't hold OS X up as some example of perfect design because there are lots of things windows and Linux do better.

I just spent my entire workday struggling to figure out why `kernal_task` was constantly using 16gb of RAM. Whenever people say macOS "just works" I assume they do nothing but web browse. It's great at that.

I agree with your comment. Generally, OSX often means I am using more resources to do the same task than when I use my archlinux. But in the era of 16g+ ram and terabyte Harddisks, I find it simpler to just let OSX use extra resources so I can spend less time thinking about low level processes.

For that we have to go back about a decade:

http://betanews.com/2006/06/02/adobe-to-sue-microsoft-for-pd...

http://windowsitpro.com/windows-server/microsoft-strips-key-...

The long and short of it is that Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft for including PDF support as a feature in Office (despite allowing it on OS X and OpenOffice at the same time) so MS stopped doing anything PDF related. Adobe was widely derided in the software industry over the incident.

So we all can thank Adobe for that.

Well, except for all those dongles you need to drag around with you.

Right now I'm the only programmer in my department that has a Thinkpad (and the only one that has Linux on a Thinkpad). Which is a strange thing for me, I always thought that Macs are more for designers or endusers not programmers/hackers (as you mostly are very limited at hacking on Mac, quite the opposite of Linux).

For myself, instead of a laptop I ask for a custom workstation. For the same price, I get four fast cores, lots of RAM, lots of ports, huge monitors and lots of (fast) disk. I have a good sound setup there and developers usually don't do meetings or when we do it's whiteboard only and quick. I think it's very satisfying to use a minimal xmonad setup with a proper workstation, then running cmake and seeing your CPU and RAM is used in stuff that actually matters.

If I need to do home office, I use my own laptop. But I prefer to be in the office, otherwise some of my time goes to the cats, who want attention the whole day. :3

Maybe they are better these days, but I need to spend more time with one. But they changed the keyboard, the trackpads were almost laughable, and the battery life was an utter joke - not even enough juice for a MSP-LAS flight. Not to mention (at the time) laughable resolution, and miserable build quality compared to the IBM nameplate T-series.

I'm looking for a nice 14-15" laptop like an old T60 that is built like a tank with amazing battery life.

It's tempting for me to try the T-series line again, especially if they bring back the classic keyboard they so stupidly did away with. But for some time it was utterly stagnant and more or less unusable trash.

I want to like the X1 Carbon

Isn't this one of those YMMV kinda things that really depends on the person, though? It seems equally wrong to say that no one could be productive on a MBP as it is to say that no one could be productive without a MBP.

the Carbon X1 doesn't have swappable batteries.

Macs are beautiful, hermetically sealed devices that work perfectly until they explode.

Linux (or thinkpads) are like M1 Abrams tanks you can service yourself, run forever on a nuclear battery, and people think you're weird if you have one.

You completely missed the most important productivity tool for a programmer, the display and no thinkpad can compete with a macbook in that regard.

In addition new Mac keyboards are better than new thinkpad keyboards. Mac trackpads are better than thinkpad trackpads, the ultranav is not good, battery life on macbooks are better than thinkpads and you don't need to carry extra batteries, and macbook docking solutions are better than thinkpad docking solutions.

Also why would you want to use linux when that will 100% give you shorter than 4 hours battery life along with a host of other issues when you can use OSX and get good battery life along with a fully posix compliant os?

If I'm honest I have no Idea why there is an ad for the X1 on hackernews today. The page itself is 404-ing for me.

That said, I held an X1 carbon last september when shopping for a new laptop with my girlfriend. It was a fucking glorious machine.

In the end we wound up buying the lenevo yoga because it comes with an i7, SSD, & 8gigs ram (the three checkboxes I need on a laptop) - this was the cheapest with all my boxes ticked.

X1C was a lot more expensive, but you could feel why when you held it. What a beautiful machine.

(Again, why is it listed as a link on HN? Just so we can moon over it? Fair I guess)

It has been my main laptop since release and it is by far the best laptop I ever owned...

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-yo...

There's still some give when I pick it up one handed. I'd happily trade some weight and thickness for a more durable feel, but I might be in the minority.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon: Starting at 2.6 lbs (1209 g)

MacBook Pro 13: Weight: 3.02 pounds (1.37 kg)

I think that's a pretty stone-age point of view given modern material technology.

One of my friends has dropped his Air out of his lofted dorm bed numerous times and you couldn't even tell by looking at it, it's totally fine. One of my other friends has a ThinkPad Yoga and the fancy hinge was fucked within two weeks of purchase.

My X1 yoga has no trouble what-so-ever and I dropped it a few feet.. (and it rattles along unprotected in a leather bag every day)...

You may have dropped it a few feet, but I drop my MacBook Pro all the time because I'm a terrible person. This dorm-bed fall has happened several times now too. The durability is simply off the charts, and I can't say the same about ThinkPads. They just feel so flimsy, everything bends or flexes on them.

In all seriousness four comments:

- I bend my X1 fully around all the time, not problem with the hinges

- all X1's I have ever seen have 3-year ON-SITE warranty, your friend should call support and get it fixed next business day (where s/he is).

- Strength and "flexiness" are not related, often materials are allowed to flex to keep them from breaking. The X1s are made of carbon fibre and have sufficient strength even if our ape-brains prefer something that does not flex...

- and even if not, there is always next-day onsite warranty (mine is upgrade to 5 years - not having the option of onsite for Macs is alone a disqualifying trait for me)

ThinkPad X1 Carbon: 2.51 lbs (1.14 kg)

MacBook Pro 13 ......: 3.02 lbs (1.37 kg)

or about 17% lighter

The light weight actually makes it feel flimsy / cheap at first, but having used it for the best part of a year, I realize there is a stiffness to it that you don't get with cheap plastic.

It's made out of aluminium, has a glass touchpad and costs around half of what a similarly priced MacBook pro costs in Germany.

It's my first non-Mac after 20 years. I've owned it for a good week and so far I'm very happy. It has superb battery life, great build quality and is fast. Only 1 minor con: the fan always runs, but it's not too loud and I can live with it...

This one looks good enough: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Water-Resistant-VicTop-Mechanical-W...

IF you're concerned wrap it in some kind of cloth but for under 30 bucks it's not a major concern if you get a decent lifespand out of it. I'd say anything over 2 years is a huge win.

Be good to try something cheaper, though the single-height enter key would drive me CRAZY.

[0] http://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard/realforce-88ub-45g-key-bl.... £192!!

THIN became a much more important marketing tool than GOOD, or even FUNCTIONAL.

How do you explain the widespread perception that laptop keyboards used to be good but are now crappy?

> real rather than purely subjective benefit

Subjective benefits are real benefits.

I have Cherry Blues at home but wouldn't dare use them in an open-plan office environment - far too noisy.

Can't beat that.

[1] http://www.amazon.in/ZenBook-UX360CA-13-3-inch-Touchscreen-W...

(I find the shiny brushed aluminium look to be embarrassingly tacky, though not quite as bad as the rose gold model.)

They had two models of ssd, but one laptop sku. One model went to review websites, the other's performance degraded to actually be noticably slower than a hard disk. You could replace the ssd, but it was a non-standard form factor, so you needed to buy an expensive m.2 converter.

The keyboard dropped keystrokes.

The screen was meh for the time.

This was their flagship laptop that year.

After it has been a full decade, I might consider buying another asus laptop.

The 14'' Razer Blade [2] also has a normal keyboard, and comes close to being a MBP replacement, though it's not perfect.

Apparently a lot of these laptops have issues with heat and noisy fans. Some articles say i7 laptops (the quad-core ones) tend to have low battery life. I'm getting about 4 hours from my MBP 2015 using only Safari, Terminal and VSCode, and I can't imagine these other laptops would be worse than that.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/2/13497094/be...

[2] http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade

Shame about the keyboard not coming in different variants, though. I am sure that some people like numeric keypads, but ever since my first PC cirka 1992 I've always hated them. It's the last thing I need on a small laptop.

Are there laptops where it doesn't? I've had 4 different models from 4 different makers, including a MacBook Pro, and every one has run the fan 100℅ of the time.

Is this really a serious reason to buy a laptop, or not, the design? You buy a computer because of its performance, not its appearance- which is something completely subjective in the first place.

I agree about the toughness requirement, but, like others said below the X1 Carbon is called "Carbon" as in "carbon fiber", which it's made of (although the fourth gen model has a lid that's a mix of carbon fiber and plastic).

I've stepped on my second gen. Carbon a good few times and I've dropped my fourth gen on its lid from a coffee table, and they're both hale and hearty.

My job provides me with an HP Ultrabook. When I type on it, the plastic near the trackpad creaks. If I bought it retail it's something like $1400. And it creaks.

If I'm spending $1400 on a piece of technology I expect to have for 3-5 years, and I'm going to be hauling it between locations (on-call schedule) I really need to feel like "Yeah, this won't get broken if I accidentally put something a little heavy on top of it (e.g. in my bag)".

It's partially a performance story, but I rather pay an extra $100-200 for a solid chassis that makes me think the motherboard won't bend when I put pressure from my wrists on it.

Yes.

> You buy a computer because of its performance, not its appearance

For a desktop/workstation maybe, and even that is debatable (I would not buy a desktop computer with plexiglas panels and LEDs all over).

For a laptop though, the design is part of the function and has an impact on it. Design is part and parcel of a laptop's usability and usage, and impacts its effective lifespan (you can get mileage out of a laptop while it's falling to pieces but that's not an enjoyable experience).

And of course a laptop is not stashed away in a corner of the desk (or under it hidden from you), it's usually right in front of your face and right under your fingers, liking how it looks is a pretty good idea.

> which is something completely subjective in the first place.

That just means the design you want is different from the design I want. Maybe you like the Surface Book and I don't (I do, but bear with me).

I don't think that's a fair characterization of the thinkpad experiance. I own one, and every other owner I know, hasn't had these things crap out. Also, if they do crap out there are guides telling you exactly what to do. The case also exposes the screws you need to take out to fix certian problems.

Spill coffee on your laptop and need to order a new keyboard and trackpad module? Flip over the laptop and the screws are labeld with pictures of a keyboard and a trackpad.

> And of course a laptop is not stashed away in a corner of the desk (or under it hidden from you), it's usually right in front of your face and right under your fingers, liking how it looks is a pretty good idea

A computer is a tool. Would you buy a shovel if it was very bad at shoveling and had a pre-determined lifespan just because it was colored to match your khakis?

In that sense, a car is just a tool to get you from A to B. So buying a Porsche would be completely pointless.

Clothes are just tools for keeping you warm. It's pointless to take pride in how you present yourself.

So many of my engineering friends think this way. Too many. In fact, most of Sweden thinks this way about cars, and most of Germany thinks this way about clothes.

Are we talking cars and clothes now? I'm Greek and I don't drive, but I certainly like my Italian fashion as much as the next fashion victim. Brains just don't come into it. But a computer is a computer and a coat is a coat- you can't think the same way about both.

Even so, in fashion too there's a lot to be said about building stuff to last, even as you make them look and feel good. Terry Pratchett has a bit about this in a couple of the Discworld novels, where he notes how cheap shoes end up being more expensive because you have to buy a new pair every year whereas expensive ones are made to last for decades, so you may pay a premium once, but it turns out cheaper on the long run (and I think he goes on to comment how this is another way rich people keep their money etc).

I think you'll find that the most highly valued (and therefore, most expensive) fashion tends to be made according to this ideal, of beauty that lasts.

A Porsche is a different class of car in quality of construction and maximum speed achievable. That's the only reason I'd buy one. My car is a Subaru Forester and I love it.

> Clothes are just tools for keeping you warm. It's pointless to take pride in how you present yourself.

Some clothes keep you warmer or cooler depending on the environment. I guess I'm a minimalist but all of my shirts and pants are either single colored or a line pattern on a button up. They work fine as shirts, the only upgrade they need is pockets.

>So many of my engineering friends think this way. Too many. In fact, most of Sweden thinks this way about cars, and most of Germany thinks this way about clothes.

I guess some people are just fine with presenting themselves as a person and don't want to look special. I personally thing my winning personality will keep people away if my cloths don't so I'm already set.

I buy a laptop to use, and if I have to use a spongy keyboard, a stupid pointing nipple, a subpar trackpad, or deal with a creaking, bendy case, then the 8 to 10 hours I spend in front of that damn thing every day are not going to be very pleasant for me, and I cannot stress the importance of that enough.

They're always some sort of plastic, feel flimsy and bendy, have grills and screw holes and uneven surfaces and stickers everywhere.

The "flimsy and bendy" feel is more than just aesthetics, but owning two generations of the Carbon, it really doesn't apply to it. For the second gen. the term "brick shithouse" comes to mind. The fourth gen. has more plastic on the lid (which though feels "smooth as a baby's butt" according to a colleague) but its innards are tough as nails and knowing that's enough for me.

In any case, like I say what I need from a computer is performance: fast processor, as much RAM as you can fit on a laptop and plenty of storage. If I really cared about durability and toughness that much, I'd get a Toughbook [1].

_____________

[1] http://business.panasonic.co.uk/computer-product/products-an...

I've come very clost to buying one, several times. I just like the idea of a computer I can take with me on the beach and use to browse the 'nets while lying on an inflatable mattress in the sea. That'd be cool and it'd border on "design" trumping specs even in my book. On the other hand, I'd look a bit of a pillock so I've never gotten round to it.

This Touch Bar is the worlds worst idea. I literally now have to look at the keyboard to type again, like I'm 10 years old. I haven't looked at a keyboard in decades. The machine is going back this week. What a disaster.

And, don't tell me to learn to use Caps Lock for ESC or to type control-[. I've been using VI since 1988, I'm not about to retrain that length of muscle memory.

For any reference, there are hundreds of sub-references with different combinations of hardware.

New:

  * 818$: cheapest T460 on the website
    * +270$ for i3-6100u => i7-6600u
    * +390$ for 500GB HDD => 512GB SSD upgrade
    * +470$ for 4GB RAM => 32GB RAM

  * 700$ for a T460 with an i5 on eBay (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_Sold=1&_udlo=700&_dmd=1&_ipg=200&LH_Complete=1&_sop=15&_nkw=t460%20i5)
  * 170$ for a 500GB 850 EVO (https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E500B-AM/dp/B00OBRE5UE)
  * 108$ to 170$ for Crucial's 16GB RAM kits (depending on specific specs)

  * <800$ for a T460 with an i7 on eBay (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_Sold=1&_udlo=700&_dmd=1&_ipg=200&LH_Complete=1&_sop=15&_nkw=t460%20i7)
  * 340$ for Crucial's 32GB RAM kit (http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/thinkpad-t460/CT8304418)

They have a model with an i7, sometimes they have 3G sim readers, and has a touchscreen + touchpen (you can disable one, or both of these in software). These are great for taking notes, more then enough power to survive a day of real programming.

Looks like you can also only get the GPU with the i7-6820HQ, so out of all the T product line there's a single CPU/GPU combination that's not using the Intel graphics. That may in part be related to the significant improvements in Intel's graphics capabilities in recent generations - starting around the HD4000 in the third-generation processors the GPUs are actually reasonably capable, and they've improved rapidly even from that point.

The keyboard was very nice. Though the trackpad was terrible. The #$*(# thing is a damn sticker. And I had to replace the sticker twice because it would wear smooth where I used it most.

In short, this is the good non-Apple laptop that you're looking for.

I've been researching into the XPS series, and online there are plenty of reports of problems with Linux.

Can anyone here confirm first-hand that they have an XPS 13/15 that's running Linux flawlessly?

I also had suspend/resume issues occasionally, a recent bios upgrade fixed that, I think.

Apart from the original WiFi, I'm very happy with the XPS 13.

I have a 3x3 broadcom now, but it occasionally disassociates with the access point (and the box suffers from undiagnosed kernel hangs whether I plug an nvidia or amd video card into it...)

Except maybe they explicitly removed linux support:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg110852.html

I can't find a hardware rev number on on the amazon page (was 1.0 ever sold to the public?). Also, the amazon page says it is for engineering samples only / contact vendor before ordering. Hmm.

https://communities.intel.com/thread/108092

I'll probably buy one anyway.

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-13-linux

With Ubuntu 16.04 (or more specifically kernel < 4.8) the only issue I had was dynamically adding a Thunderbolt 3 (to DP) monitor.

With Fedora 25, Ubuntu 16.10? No issues.

Wifi is great. Sound. Performance. Display (I have the QHD version).

They are almost too good to be true. What's the catch?

Have you had any issues running Linux on them?

Performance is great.

It is very well built, I would say on almost on par with a Mac, except for thin grills covering the cooling fans on the bottom. Grabbing the laptop in the wrong spot can easily push the grills up against the fan.

Battery life is terrible. Lucky to get 4-5 hours running a nothing but a browser and ssh client. (On windows 10. I haven't tried, but remember reading that power management on linux is even worse)

The trackpad gestures are not as accurate as on a Mac. I don't know how much of that is Windows vs the hardware.

Cooling fans are always on, and they are kind of loud even at low rpm. Not noticeable in a noisy office environment, but annoying in a quiet setting. The black chassis is a fingerprint magnet like no other laptop I've seen. The lit green logo on the lid is a bit obnoxious, and would not fit in at a very corporate environment. The actual display size is somewhat smaller than that of many similarly sized notebooks.

I'm okay with the trade offs (though the battery hurts...) but its definitely not a clear-cut winner compared to the competition.

Edit: the Blade Stealth may fare a little better battery wise, but even it doesn't have a stellar battery life.

What happens when you need hardware support? Lenovo gives you (shitty in my experience) on site service - if you pay. Apple has the Apple Store, superior if you have a store nearby.

What's Razer got? Depot service for my main money making tool? Unacceptable.

That's just poor thermal design. You know you just don't get that with MacBooks (you don't get a 970M either of course).

Personally I'm passing on this generation of MBPs. Will Apple wait another 2 years to update them? I'm just not convinced that this isn't now an iPod market for Apple.

Instead I ended up getting a Dell XPS 15. Having a Linux subsystem is pretty nice. It's nowhere near as polished as the Apple experience but for $1300 (including upgrades) I got the base machine and put a Samsung 950 Pro and 32GB of RAM into it, so that's nice.

https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/razer-blade-...

Razer has superb thermal design.

http://penguindreams.org/blog/msi-ws60-running-linux/

I'm running Fedora on my Razer Blaze Stealth.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-S306-Subnotebook-Revie...

The X1 is actually really impressive. First gen had a short battery life and the display wasn't high resolution, but they addressed that pretty quickly.

If you're just using Adobe's software every now and then, you just need a dedicated GPU and enough RAM. Many alternatives to the MacBook Pro have that. And you'd probably want a desktop sized screen anyway.

The most heavy duty stuff today's software devs would commonly use that their own laptops would need to power are VMs. By the time you get to really heavy duty stuff you'll get much closer to your hardware needs for cheaper with actual workstations anyway.

This is the sort of stuff I meant when I was talking about very specific requirements. For most developers having either Linux or OS X is usually plenty for work purposes, but OS X is nicer designed.

+1 to the Chromebook Pixel being amazing hardware. Thinkpad touchpads drive me nuts.

Especially because it is aluminium an Linux just works on it.

I have an HP Folio 1040 G1 which is a few years old now and is just as sturdy as a MacBook air, nearly as thin, but has better specs. Also much cheaper. The only place the Apple really outshines it is the tracked (and OS X if that's your thing.. it isn't mine).

[1] http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows-laptops/15-18/no...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-notebook-9-spin-13-3-tou...

I've been doing research, looking to replace this Macbook some time in the new year, and it looks like the new T470 is keeping the abysmal displays of the T460.

I use a Surface Book as my main computer and it's absolutely wonderful. I get a PC in tablet form with a pressure-sensitive stylus when I want a tablet and I get a moderately beefy laptop with a dedicated GPU when I want a laptop.

I've heard that it's fantastic hardware but had lots of software and driver teething problem, what's your experience with that?

All of these issues have been resolved with firmware updates by about 3 months after launch - reliability has been rock solid from then on out. Can't recommend it enough.

For me, the ultimate deficiency is the Surface Book's inability to drive two 4K monitors at 60 Hz. Although not promised in so many words during the launch event (they said "two 4K monitors" without specifying the refresh rate), I had assumed it would support 60 Hz rather than 30 Hz. This limitation convinced me to retire my Surface Book to a purely mobile role and use a proper workstation for 90% of my computing.

I expect that a second-generation Surface Book will resolve that specific hardware limitation.

The only two (small) downsides that I run into regularly:

1. Some important software doesn't handle high DPI mode in Windows 10 well. Specifically Adobe offerings. Visual Studio 2015 has some small issues too.

2. The 3000x2000 pixel screen makes gaming a bit finicky. Games rarely support 3:2 ratios other than the native 3000x2000. The dedicated GPU is pretty capable, but not always 3000x2000 capable, so you're often stuck with 16:10 ratios that approximate 1500x1000.

Build quality is outstanding, tablet is great for browsing on the sofa and multi-pressure pen is awesome for photo editing. Chews through heavy compiling/development very well. Decent gaming for what it is.

I feel like Microsoft was trying to do the whole tablet PC back in early 2000s and I think that the surface book is the actual realization of what they were trying to achieve.