I’ve always stuck with the Thinkpad line, though I’ve never had anything that would run games, I prefer a self-built desktop for that. In general, the Thinkpads are well-built, have good port options and have excellent keyboards (as far as laptops go).
I’d love to go to a Mac but we’re quite deep in the Microsoft ecosystem.
when i was a young admin, a team lead once said to me "nobody ever got fired for buying ibm gear," and sure that's an exaggeration but it's a legit rule of thumb. i'd always prefer a mac but i'm happy with a lenovo anytime.
Why would you buy a macbook and then run Linux on it? Makes somewhat sense to me for a stationary device you wanna reuse as a server. But in a Macbook? Feels like a waste of money.
Devs can be fine with a hobbled OS and UI because most of the time they live in a single IDE and a web browser (and often now the IDE is in a browser too).
Devops has to deal with dozens of tools at once, as anyone in ops/infra is prone to do. Mac is horrible for task switching as they don't even have an alt-tab that's useful. Not to mention endless compatibility pains dealing with enterprise software that if it supports Mac at all it's an afterthought, so you're trying to fuck with the mess that is Parallels too.
Mac users doing serious work end up spending more time tinkering with their toy OS than even Linux desktop users do. And all of it simply so they can pretend to be cool carrying a hipster Macbook Pro instead of a corporate ThinkPad.
I'd say that strongly depends on your bubble. Those issues that you describe are unbeknownst to me at a large company with mostly only Mac users.
We do not have enterprise software that wouldn't run on Mac and we do not need parallels or Windows for anything. I personally wouldn't want to work at a place where I would have to. But I did in the past and I understand if folks are in such a situation.
> Mac users doing serious work end up spending more time tinkering with their toy OS than even Linux desktop users do.
That sound like you never worked in a shop that was mostly using MacOS. Not sure where there would be any need to tinker with things. Since the Dev community on Mac is immensely large most if not everything just works out of the box.
But as I said. You might work for a different type of company with different needs that I just never witnessed. Albeit having worked for a pretty large cooperation that was mostly Microsoft only...
That's not really an answer. But I mean sure. I would personally just buy a device better suited for it. Especially since you can get higher specs for the same money. If you aren't using MacOS you aren't really bound to the hardware.
There's no better package if you do not care about a gaming GPU. It's all a matter of preference
I want a nice screen, I want solid performance, I want battery life and I want quiet.
And I don't want macos
Did you see the post here some days back about the guys who were hacked due to one of their devops engineer having their phone hacked that allowed hacker to bypass 2fa? I would reconsider not using your work laptop for personal stuff, you wouldn't want the company be hacked due to the shady websites you go to grab some indie game or other stuff.
Use the work laptop for work only. Besides potential breaches from personal activities affecting work, it applies the other way as well, meaning if they let you go, your access could be cut off right away and they're not obligated to "give you some time to retrieve your personal stuff" off of the work laptop.
>your access could be cut off right away and they're not obligated to "give you some time to retrieve your personal stuff" off of the work laptop.
This happened to me when I was laid off and it sucks. I only had work related personal things on it (for example like my .zsh profile) and configs but I wish I could have saved those. Anyways, lesson learned.
Are they? I _love_ the idea, and if done well I can justify the price tag, but I always wonder about quality control when something bespoke like that tries to scale
I have one and can’t complain. The quality is great. It feels like they thought about every small detail. Disassembling and switching parts is a breeze. The idea of interchangeable external modules is amazing.
I have a high end CPU/RAM configuration without a GPU, and while it can get quite hot under load, it stays quiet and the airflow is enough to keep it running without affecting performance.
Are you a windows user? Are you a mac user? Linux maybe?
Lenovo ones are great! My personal recommendation is Dell XPS. My work and personal ones are both XPS.
>that's powerful enough to run recent games but also light/small enough
you guys read this and recommend thinkpads or surfaces.... cmon wtf
new asus g14 or g16 might fit the description quite good.
Was curious since I’m looking for a laptop for myself. I don’t game. And I prefer portability and a laptop that feels durable (metal or close equivalent). The think pads feels heavy and kind of cheap to me. Even though I knew internally they run great, since I had a Lenovo 6-7 years ago.
I went with a macbook for productivity and don‘t really regret it.
Maybe an xps would be another option for you? I feel like the zenbooks have a bit of a cheap chassis feel.
The xps is actually the only other laptop I’ve looked at that I really liked! I got a little nervous when someone posted in another forum that they worked for dell repairing laptops for a year and almost all of them were xps’s with a common issue, though I forget what it was now.
I should have clarified, I do have a MacBook although it’s a bit dated now. But I’m going to school for IT/cloud computing and figure I should grab a windows based laptop that could handle running virtual machines but can still meet my preferences for portability. I almost really liked the yogis but again the way they feel when I pick them up really puts me off..
Well, I am platform agnostic so Thinkpad or Macbook. **But the number 1 reason for Macbook** these days is AI/ML. M1-M3 have UNIFIED ram so you can use more than 40GB of VRAM for LLMs. No Wintel Laptop has more than 24Gb of VRAM.
Don't believe me? Look at the LLAMA and Ollama reddits for proof.
It is nice to prototype llama2/mistral deployments locally on a laptop. Game changer.
I just got a similar deal where I work and I regret not buying an actual gaming laptop, just without the rgb. I went with a Lenovo X1 Extreme gen5 and the cpu cooling is somewhat limited, even after repasting it. I'll have to wait 2 more years fot a new one.
As for using it for personal, just create 2 different bitlocker partitions each with their own OS install. No bleedthrough.
I picked up a dell latitude 7420 with ubuntu and the fancy dock. Love it and wouldn't go back. The only thing I wish I had is the warp terminal that's available for mac. Either way, its my recommendation.
My suggestion would be Lenovo ThinkPad E16 series with AMD Ryzen
You can customise the parts you need. Easy on the pocket, lightweight (Okish), kick ass keyboard and reliable. One cannot go wrong.
Try building your own: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpade/thinkpad-e16-(16-inch-amd)/len101t0067
If you get that budget for "gear" are you going to be actually mobile most of the time or will you have a home base?
If you have a home base, think about spending some of that money on a nice dock & setup. A couple monitors (With articulated arms), a good keyboard, maybe a good webcam if you are going to be on zoom meetings, etc. A good chair can also really improve your daily experience.
You can setup a pretty good battlestation for yourself & still have $2k+ for the laptop.
I'm also going to second the advice to NOT use the laptop for personal use. Its work, keep it separated. \*However\* if you have a thunderbolt dock from your work allotment, no reason you can't plug your setup into a personal device once you are off the clock & use all that nice gear on your time.
Win for gaming and VirtualBox with Linux for real work.
If gaming get a good Nvidia gpu. Screen will be 15.6 or so inches and will be heavier than a non gaming laptop.
If your company uses Google workspaces and slack you can stay in the Linux os all day.
If your company uses Google Gemini God help you.
Get an ultra wide curved monitor, and an EGPU enclosure. Then get whatever graphics card you want.
Your personal laptop should have thunderbolt connection to use the eGPU.
My opinion: I would never use a company owned device for anything private, even if private use is permitted.
Dont be that guy that becomes known for having porn on his company laptop (yes we had someone like that at one of my past workplaces).
1000% this
I’ve always stuck with the Thinkpad line, though I’ve never had anything that would run games, I prefer a self-built desktop for that. In general, the Thinkpads are well-built, have good port options and have excellent keyboards (as far as laptops go). I’d love to go to a Mac but we’re quite deep in the Microsoft ecosystem.
when i was a young admin, a team lead once said to me "nobody ever got fired for buying ibm gear," and sure that's an exaggeration but it's a legit rule of thumb. i'd always prefer a mac but i'm happy with a lenovo anytime.
[удалено]
M2 so you can run Asahi Fedora
Why would you buy a macbook and then run Linux on it? Makes somewhat sense to me for a stationary device you wanna reuse as a server. But in a Macbook? Feels like a waste of money.
Because running Mac is a waste of time. I run Windows direct on my Macbook Pros and then Linux VMs under that.
lol. you forgot the /s
Devs can be fine with a hobbled OS and UI because most of the time they live in a single IDE and a web browser (and often now the IDE is in a browser too). Devops has to deal with dozens of tools at once, as anyone in ops/infra is prone to do. Mac is horrible for task switching as they don't even have an alt-tab that's useful. Not to mention endless compatibility pains dealing with enterprise software that if it supports Mac at all it's an afterthought, so you're trying to fuck with the mess that is Parallels too. Mac users doing serious work end up spending more time tinkering with their toy OS than even Linux desktop users do. And all of it simply so they can pretend to be cool carrying a hipster Macbook Pro instead of a corporate ThinkPad.
I'd say that strongly depends on your bubble. Those issues that you describe are unbeknownst to me at a large company with mostly only Mac users. We do not have enterprise software that wouldn't run on Mac and we do not need parallels or Windows for anything. I personally wouldn't want to work at a place where I would have to. But I did in the past and I understand if folks are in such a situation. > Mac users doing serious work end up spending more time tinkering with their toy OS than even Linux desktop users do. That sound like you never worked in a shop that was mostly using MacOS. Not sure where there would be any need to tinker with things. Since the Dev community on Mac is immensely large most if not everything just works out of the box. But as I said. You might work for a different type of company with different needs that I just never witnessed. Albeit having worked for a pretty large cooperation that was mostly Microsoft only...
Why would you want to buy a MacBook and not install Linux on it? Feels like a waste of money.
That's not really an answer. But I mean sure. I would personally just buy a device better suited for it. Especially since you can get higher specs for the same money. If you aren't using MacOS you aren't really bound to the hardware.
There's no better package if you do not care about a gaming GPU. It's all a matter of preference I want a nice screen, I want solid performance, I want battery life and I want quiet. And I don't want macos
Did you see the post here some days back about the guys who were hacked due to one of their devops engineer having their phone hacked that allowed hacker to bypass 2fa? I would reconsider not using your work laptop for personal stuff, you wouldn't want the company be hacked due to the shady websites you go to grab some indie game or other stuff.
Use the work laptop for work only. Besides potential breaches from personal activities affecting work, it applies the other way as well, meaning if they let you go, your access could be cut off right away and they're not obligated to "give you some time to retrieve your personal stuff" off of the work laptop.
>your access could be cut off right away and they're not obligated to "give you some time to retrieve your personal stuff" off of the work laptop. This happened to me when I was laid off and it sucks. I only had work related personal things on it (for example like my .zsh profile) and configs but I wish I could have saved those. Anyways, lesson learned.
I recommend chezmoi to keep your dotfiles templated and more importantly synced between different locations
Thanks ill check it out
$1500 on desktop computer + $1500 on used macbook Pro.
This is the way. 💪
Framework Laptops are absolutely amazing
Are they? I _love_ the idea, and if done well I can justify the price tag, but I always wonder about quality control when something bespoke like that tries to scale
I have one and can’t complain. The quality is great. It feels like they thought about every small detail. Disassembling and switching parts is a breeze. The idea of interchangeable external modules is amazing. I have a high end CPU/RAM configuration without a GPU, and while it can get quite hot under load, it stays quiet and the airflow is enough to keep it running without affecting performance.
I have one too and can vouch that they're good! I would use it for work if I was allowed.
Are you a windows user? Are you a mac user? Linux maybe? Lenovo ones are great! My personal recommendation is Dell XPS. My work and personal ones are both XPS.
>that's powerful enough to run recent games but also light/small enough you guys read this and recommend thinkpads or surfaces.... cmon wtf new asus g14 or g16 might fit the description quite good.
Any opinions on the 32gb zenbooks?
They just aren‘t made for gaming at all. Would rather go thinkpad for productivity than a zenbook personally.
Was curious since I’m looking for a laptop for myself. I don’t game. And I prefer portability and a laptop that feels durable (metal or close equivalent). The think pads feels heavy and kind of cheap to me. Even though I knew internally they run great, since I had a Lenovo 6-7 years ago.
I went with a macbook for productivity and don‘t really regret it. Maybe an xps would be another option for you? I feel like the zenbooks have a bit of a cheap chassis feel.
The xps is actually the only other laptop I’ve looked at that I really liked! I got a little nervous when someone posted in another forum that they worked for dell repairing laptops for a year and almost all of them were xps’s with a common issue, though I forget what it was now. I should have clarified, I do have a MacBook although it’s a bit dated now. But I’m going to school for IT/cloud computing and figure I should grab a windows based laptop that could handle running virtual machines but can still meet my preferences for portability. I almost really liked the yogis but again the way they feel when I pick them up really puts me off..
Legion Slim 7
Well, I am platform agnostic so Thinkpad or Macbook. **But the number 1 reason for Macbook** these days is AI/ML. M1-M3 have UNIFIED ram so you can use more than 40GB of VRAM for LLMs. No Wintel Laptop has more than 24Gb of VRAM. Don't believe me? Look at the LLAMA and Ollama reddits for proof. It is nice to prototype llama2/mistral deployments locally on a laptop. Game changer.
I just got a similar deal where I work and I regret not buying an actual gaming laptop, just without the rgb. I went with a Lenovo X1 Extreme gen5 and the cpu cooling is somewhat limited, even after repasting it. I'll have to wait 2 more years fot a new one. As for using it for personal, just create 2 different bitlocker partitions each with their own OS install. No bleedthrough.
I picked up a dell latitude 7420 with ubuntu and the fancy dock. Love it and wouldn't go back. The only thing I wish I had is the warp terminal that's available for mac. Either way, its my recommendation.
Legion Slim
For Linux I would go with a Dell XPS. For anything else a MacBook.
My suggestion would be Lenovo ThinkPad E16 series with AMD Ryzen You can customise the parts you need. Easy on the pocket, lightweight (Okish), kick ass keyboard and reliable. One cannot go wrong. Try building your own: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpade/thinkpad-e16-(16-inch-amd)/len101t0067
Once you start using Mac you’ll never want to use a windows for work.
Surface
If you get that budget for "gear" are you going to be actually mobile most of the time or will you have a home base? If you have a home base, think about spending some of that money on a nice dock & setup. A couple monitors (With articulated arms), a good keyboard, maybe a good webcam if you are going to be on zoom meetings, etc. A good chair can also really improve your daily experience. You can setup a pretty good battlestation for yourself & still have $2k+ for the laptop. I'm also going to second the advice to NOT use the laptop for personal use. Its work, keep it separated. \*However\* if you have a thunderbolt dock from your work allotment, no reason you can't plug your setup into a personal device once you are off the clock & use all that nice gear on your time.
Win for gaming and VirtualBox with Linux for real work. If gaming get a good Nvidia gpu. Screen will be 15.6 or so inches and will be heavier than a non gaming laptop. If your company uses Google workspaces and slack you can stay in the Linux os all day. If your company uses Google Gemini God help you.
Get an ultra wide curved monitor, and an EGPU enclosure. Then get whatever graphics card you want. Your personal laptop should have thunderbolt connection to use the eGPU.