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Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mactunes on Friday December 30, 2016 @03:05PM (#13286974)
I just recently bought a ASUS ZenBook UX360UAK with a 7th gen i7, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD.

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...

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by farresito on Friday December 30, 2016 @03:16PM (#13287060)
How's the keyboard? I'm so so sad that most laptops' keyboards are terrible... You can't imagine. I so much would love to buy an ASUS or similar laptop as the one you purchased, especially since they are affordable, but every time I check some laptops, their keyboards are beyond terrible. It's a shame, really. I will have to stick to Thinkpads.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by djsumdog on Friday December 30, 2016 @04:31PM (#13287645)
If you really cared about the keyboard, they all suck. Get an external mechanical keyboard. I've used one with Cherry MX blue switches at two jobs and no one has threatened to murder and/or fire me yet. Guess I'm lucky. :)
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by farresito on Friday December 30, 2016 @04:51PM (#13287774)
I've actually thought about doing so, but I'm always moving back and forth, so right now I think my best choice is to stick with a laptop. I agree that they all suck, but some (most?) of them suck so much they are out of question. I don't know what happened, really. 10 years ago you bought a laptop, no matter which brand, and you would get a decent keyboard. They have sacrificed quality for aesthetics too much, but maybe you are right; I should just buy a mechanical. I looked into the Happy Hacking keyboard. It's a bit pricey, but I've heard very nice things.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by gravypod on Friday December 30, 2016 @06:36PM (#13288459)
If you buy a 10-keyless keyboard they are usually small. You can pick up chinese cloan switches now for extremely cheap right now.

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.

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by pbowyer on Saturday December 31, 2016 @04:02AM (#13290249)
Thanks for alerting me to these, I've kept looking at the proper 10keyless keyboards like Topre [0] thinking "Really? Is it worth that much?".

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!!

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by gravypod on Saturday December 31, 2016 @07:14AM (#13290724)
Something is only worth how much you will use it. If you will use your keyboard every day from now until the cataracts and arthritis gets you then you'll probably find it worth the money to invest in good tooling. My keyboard was is actually and open boz/broken from manufacturer version of an OK one, I paid 37$. Worth twice that for how easy it makes typing and these are bad switches mind you.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by pbowyer on Saturday December 31, 2016 @11:50AM (#13291779)
I agree, but until I have tried one (never having used mechanical keys) I don't know how much it's worth to me :)
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by farresito on Friday December 30, 2016 @06:53PM (#13288529)
Thank you very much for the link! That one is pretty affordable. I might purchase it actually.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by scholia on Friday December 30, 2016 @08:03PM (#13288803)
> I don't know what happened, really. 10 years ago you bought a laptop, no matter which brand, and you would get a decent keyboard.

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

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by rayiner on Friday December 30, 2016 @11:02PM (#13289372)
There is nothing more "good" or "functional" about deep travel keyboards. They're just a matter of taste. You can type just as fast on something like a MacBook keyboard once you get used to it.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by scholia on Saturday December 31, 2016 @07:58AM (#13290837)
Sure. That's why Cherry went out of business years ago...
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by rayiner on Saturday December 31, 2016 @09:38AM (#13291187)
Lots of companies stay in business selling subjective experiences. But there isn't a functional advantage to keyboards with a lot of feedback.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by scholia on Monday January 02, 2017 @09:10AM (#13301197)
Got any research to show that? Or should I just assume that your personal opinion is worth more than everybody elses'?
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by rayiner on Monday January 02, 2017 @10:39AM (#13301696)
You're the one making the affirmative statement that high travel keyboards - which the whole market is moving away from - are functionally better than low travel ones. You prove that there is any real rather than purely subjective benefit.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by scholia on Wednesday January 04, 2017 @09:00AM (#13318287)
The whole market isn't moving away from high-travel keyboards. In fact, there's a lot of interest in them, and they are generally preferred by gamers.

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.

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by ianhowson on Friday December 30, 2016 @07:43PM (#13288744)
On Cherry Browns, my managers believed that I was more productive because they could hear lots of key noise.

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

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mjolk on Saturday December 31, 2016 @09:01AM (#13291032)
Macbook/Macbook Pro/Macbook Air keyboards are probably the highest quality laptop keyboards I've found (I have 2x cherry red mechanical keyboards at home). Every other laptop keyboard I've tried feels like _garbage_ in comparison.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mactunes on Friday December 30, 2016 @03:30PM (#13287167)
To be honest it's not as good as my MacBook Air's. I have very low requirements when it comes to that. If it is of importance to you I guess you might not be happy with the ASUS...
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mgazzer on Friday December 30, 2016 @03:51PM (#13287344)
My GF has one and I was surprised when I used it, as it was great for a slim laptop. I'm used to using a mechanical keyboard or a MBP keyboard.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by babyrainbow on Saturday December 31, 2016 @12:57AM (#13289732)
According to this page, the asus laptop costs around 2500USD. If you buy a MBP (Mid 2012 non retina), it would cost around 900USD and then you swap out hdd for ssd and max out RAM at 16 GB so the total price would be something around 1250 USD.

Can't beat that.

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

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mactunes on Monday January 02, 2017 @08:18AM (#13300975)
In Germany it's 1300 euros which is half of what the new MB Pro without touch bar costs: https://www.notebooksbilliger.de/product.php/asus+ux360uak+b...
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by lobster_johnson on Friday December 30, 2016 @03:52PM (#13287348)
I took a look at the ZenBook range. The range looks decent, but the 15'' has a hard drive (!) (no option to choose SSD only, apparently), a numeric keypad (!!) and the highest-performing model is a dual-core i7 with 16GB RAM — so aside from the price, not a good alternative to a MBP.

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

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by hedora on Friday December 30, 2016 @10:12PM (#13289225)
I bought one of the first gen zenbooks. The trackpad was completely unusable due to terrible windows drivers (dragging didn't work right). I vaguely remember failing to install linux on it.

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.

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by temac on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:18PM (#13289051)
Sadly, most recent 15", of all brands, have a numeric keypad. IIRC I only found one non-MBP beside the XPS15 that still have no keypad, but it has way worse issues (very bad heat issues). So you pretty much only have the choice between an MBP and an XPS if you don't want a numeric keypad(and an off centered touchpad, beurk!) on a recent 15"
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by lobster_johnson on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:31PM (#13289109)
Really? The Asus and some ThinkPad models are the only ones I have seen this in. For example, none of the models offered in this Verge article [1] have a keypad.

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

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by temac on Friday December 30, 2016 @09:38PM (#13289131)
Actually I just found that some Samsung Notebook 9 "pro" 15" have keypad-less keyboard. However, they seems to be limited to 8GB, and I don't want to be sent 6 years in the past. I also don't exactly know what the "pro" in their name is for, given they ship with Win10 home...
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by sydd on Friday December 30, 2016 @06:43PM (#13288482)
Not true, you can find them with SSDs. For example heres a revieew for one: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ZenBook-Pro-UX501VW-Notebo... Also unlike in Macs you can buy extra RAM to go above 16GB.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by lobster_johnson on Friday December 30, 2016 @07:51PM (#13288767)
Thanks. Weird, I didn't find that model on Asus' site.

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.

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by innocentoldguy on Saturday December 31, 2016 @01:41AM (#13289865)
I looked an the ASUS ZenBook, but the screen was too dim and the trackpad not functional enough for my tastes. I've grown less enamored with Apple since Job's passing, but I've yet to find anything that really compares, even with Apple's current warts.
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mactunes on Monday January 02, 2017 @08:20AM (#13300984)
This is the first one that comes more than close enough for me to make the switch. Was worried at first but am really happy with my decision now :)
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by bulatb on Friday December 30, 2016 @11:04PM (#13289380)
> the fan always runs

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.

Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by svennek on Saturday December 31, 2016 @02:14AM (#13289961)
On my X1Yoga, the fan almost never runs.. When it starts up I look at the running processes (because something is likely wrong)
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mactunes on Monday January 02, 2017 @08:21AM (#13300988)
My 2013(?) MB Air is not running its fan at all...
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by ElijahLynn on Friday December 30, 2016 @03:34PM (#13287204)
Linux or Windows?
Re:ThinkPad X1 Carbon by mactunes on Monday January 02, 2017 @08:24AM (#13301000)
Currently running Windows with Bash installed though. I briefly tried Xubuntu, but occasionally it froze while booting up. Didn't have time to check what was wrong (needed to hurry for a project) so decided for Windows.