Are mostly unhappily taken care of by the Thinkpads. The brand has gone downhill since IBM sold to Lenovo, which has steadily eroded the level of quality that can be expected from a Thinkpad-branded laptop. Modern Thinkpads aren't nearly as serviceable or as durable as the Thinkpads of IBM's era.
People who stick with Thinkpads today tend to do so because a) the enterprise support is still relatively solid, b) no real competitors for the Trackpoint, if you want one you need to get a Thinkpad, c) the keyboard, while not as high quality as it used to be, is still great relative to most of the market, d) Thinkpads are still basically reference laptops for Linux, and as a customer, it's reasonable to assume that there will be good hardware support.
If System76 wanted to go after Thinkpads, they probably could.
Edit: I just popped over to System76 to look at their laptops and I must say I really prefer the way Thinkpads look when compared with System76. I realize that this a dumb reason to choose a laptop but I have encountered no better judge of build quality than how a laptop looks. Every stupid looking laptop I've ever bought has been a disaster (parts break off, camera dies, weird crashes), whereas laptops who had a physical design which I liked (macbooks, thinkpads) have held up much better.
>the enterprise support is still relatively solid
That's not the experience I've had with my own company's support requests with Lenovo, and the lousy support relative to Dell is a prime reason why most clients I work with are dropping Lenovo for Dell.
> it doesn't have a "click anywhere" touchpad (it's still a mechanical hinge-based design)
Looking at the pictures, I'm more interested in the physical mouse buttons and trackpoint. I miss the buttons I had on my last computer.
Сlose to what?
FYI https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-2017... Among other things pay attention to the weight - 1.144 kg and don't forget ThinkPad's still have the best keyboard ever.
A recent ultrabook selecting topic https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/66ad57/why_i_went...
If you're going to get into the laptop market with a focus on maintainability, your competition is the T470, not Ultrabooks in general or the Thinkpad X1 Carbon in particular, which, as your Reddit link pointed out, has a downside in that the memory is soldered to the motherboard.
Soldered memory is not a real downside if 16GB is enough to run all needed tasks, as it helps to make laptop more lightweight and portable (1.144 kg !! and in the same time Carbon has a decent set of ports). So Lenovo provides a good choice for the folks that need to maintain something - T470 and for the users that do not do any hardware upgrading - X1 Carbon (gen5).
Also looks like the X1 is capped at 8GB ram? 16 GB is a minimum, and you can easily get on an XPS 13.
It does
https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/657ene/linux_work...
https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/5vh2by/arch_linux...
My goal is to have a 16 GB ultrabook for when away from my desk, and a 64 GB workstation when at my desk.
I always try to find the beefy laptop to replace both, but I am never that happy in either place. Too heavy for the road, too slow for the desk. Been trying for like 10 years, and sad every time at the laptop I end up with.
* In theory the CPU in the XPS-13 supports 32 GB says Intel, but I have never seen a true Ultrabook with 32 GB. Which is a bit sad of course...
So XPS 13 has a similar problem where you need to buy the max CPU to get the 16 GB upgrade.
So comparing side by side..
XPS 13 with 512 GB SSD, 16 GB ram, i7-7560U CPU, 3200 x 1800 screen is about $1900.
X1 Carbon with 512 GB SSD, 16 GB ram, i5-7300U CPU (a touch slower), and 1920x1080 display, and force shipped with Windows (could not find ubuntu version) is about $2800
X1 does look nice, but not sure it is $1000 nicer than XPS 13.
I'm not sure if the link[1] will work, but there is a version of the XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu and 16 GB of memory for $1,949.99. I find the slightly largest display of the X1 Carbon appealing (seems like a good mid-point between 13" and 15") but it would be hard to justify the price difference, especially since it's lower resolution.
(The X1 Carbon 4th Gen had an option for a high-DPI display; seems weird that the 5th Gen apparently doesn't.)
[1]: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?3x_n...
Linux will even tell you the charge for each battery (Ubuntu Gnome 17.04)
Maybe they could have a tiny low power battery that could last 5-10 mins to reboot-less battery swaps
Companies sometimes say "Yeah but $90* X is too much" ... But it costs a lot to have people wiring/unwiring chargers all the time. 3 minutes at $1 a minute adds up to $90 really fast.
Nearly every time I travel I'm working on a PowerPoint or some kind of documentation for an hour or two in the airport, then two hours on the plane, finishing it up at a coffee shop when I meet up with my coworkers, then presenting it for several hours at the client. None of those places are guaranteed to have power available to me.
Sure a lot of people have laptops that sit at their desk always plugged into an outlet, only running on battery when they pop into a meeting for an hour or two, but plenty more people actually need portable devices. That's the entire reason the MacBook Air was such a smash hit, you see them everywhere with both traveling businessmen and college kids, both of whom need something light and portable with amazing battery life. Both of whom are willing to forego an octo-core i7 and 32gb of RAM in exchange for 10 hours of battery life in a device that weighs less than 3 lbs.
Luckily difference devices exist for the different use cases that different people have.
Yes, almost literally every day.
My typical schedule is to show up for standup at 9, then be at a diner by 9:30. I work from there until noon, then back to the office until 2 to charge my laptop. At 2 I leave and work from a hammock in a park or something similar.
That's ~6 hours every day of working where there isn't a power outlet nearby.
Hell, even the Apple browser is more respectful of battery life than its competitors. Power draw seems to be considered carefully at every level at Apple, and it shows in their results.
Looked at the layout of one, and the right shift (the one I use most) is crossed with the arrow
My laptop is plugged in almost 100% of the time. If it needed to be plugged in a full 100% of the time, that would be at most an extremely minor hit to usability. I need a laptop that I can move, not a laptop that I can use while it's being moved.
I always use my laptops with a mouse plugged in, and disable the trackpad (and pointless touchscreen on my work computer) as one of the first things I do.
I would love to have a laptop with no trackpad at all (or maybe just one of those tiny nubs), leaving more space for a better keyboard.
It at least ships with a draft-n-capable Wi-Fi card, so you could use it for remote desktop? :P
T9300 (2 @ 2.5GHz); 4GB; Intelgrated GM965; 2xMiniPCIe (1 for Wi-Fi); 1024x768 :(
(For reference: I push mine WAY too hard. This is tab 406... I do use The Great Suspender, but, um. It does great (genuinely does hold up) with <15 tabs though, and the GM965 handles 1080p through mplayer and 720p in Chrome really nicely.)
You nailed it. I'm someone who only works in Linux but admires (and desires) the form factor of a MBA.
Then - we got on a video call. To compensate for the bezel, the webcam is on the BOTTOM of the monitor... which meant looking up his nose.
OK, you have lots and lots of pixels that are too small to see individually or in combination. Put in a cheaper screen with the same functional resolution. Lower price, same quality.
Scaling of vector fonts in modern desktop systems doesn't work that way. Scaling is done before rasterization, and you would get perfectly sharp edges with 250% scaling.
The HP Spectre (W2K28UA) I have has three type-c ports. One is USB 3.1 Gen 1, is not Thunderbolt, is power. Two are Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1 Gen 2, no power. (No power icon anyway, I haven't tried plugging the power adapter into either of them, maybe it'd work.)
Does it really? I say slap anyone that implies that until they stop doing it.
Like others have said, Lenovo's Thinkpad contract with Red Hat is tenuous at best and their quality has only been getting worse. Its not a default install, its not first class, and Lenovo is not dedicating staff to driver support in consumer products. We have the XPS developer edition program making great ultraportables for Linux. We need a business class workstation notebook in the 17" form factor with ruggedness and great features that has complete and total Linux support and inclusion out of the box.
I _love_ the bezel or lack thereof. The only weirdness is that "bottom of screen" webcam, but I barely use it.
And if you get the 9560... wow. 4K display, GTX 1050M, i7 w/ 32GB. I'm very happy.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/pc-oems-ditch-the-cu...
I think that's an often overlooked detail and one of the pieces of "sexiness" that makes it very difficult to want to switch away from an XPS 13: it's so damn portable.
System76 needs to come out with something comparable to that before I can switch. The market of people who want something rugged/durable/functional are already taken care of by the Thinkpads. The market that is still untapped is that of the Linux ultrabooks. Developers and other Linux enthusiasts basically just want a MBA/MBP that runs Linux natively. Do that, and people will flock to it.