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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Not that I’m advocating for Apple’s inexcusable behaviour, but as someone who’s worked in IT managing fleets of hundreds of Thinkpads (among others like Apple, Dell, Acer, HP), respectfully, they are far less reliable and durable than a MacBook. The only devices I had with higher failure rates than ThinkPads were Acer laptops.
They are certainly more repairable, but so are others like Dell and HP. Lenovo were one of the earlier manufacturers to pull some anti-repair moves such as soldering memory to the mainboard (on the Yoga models).
I think your statement is far more accurate in the days when IBM owned the ThinkPad brand, but unfortunately Lenovo have run it into the ground as far as quality goes.
All that said, I certainly hope we see more projects like Framework so that these big manufacturers can get some sort of reality check.
You’re just flat out wrong on this.
There’s a Wikipedia article for each series of thinkpad/idea book or whatever and it’s got a color coded chart you can scroll through to see the progression from more user replaceable to less.
Lenovo still has some lines that are modular, but they’re doing what everyone else is.
The e series and non-yoga L13s after 2019 (no surprise there), the t-series is available with partial soldered ram and a bunch of other stuff after 2013 (O.O) and only has a few configurations without soldered parts after 2020. Even the p series has partial soldered skus and one fully soldered one.
Oh yeah and all that is true for cpus as well. I didn’t feel like deciphering the two incredibly close colors they use on that chart for “socketed” and “soldered” so I’m not making specific claims but there’s a lot of soldered cpus in the thinkpad line now.
There has been a movement industry wide towards soldered components and Lenovo hasn’t completely committed the thinkpad line to it but they’re absolutely dipping their toes in.
Not sure that's true. I have a pretty top-of-the-line ThinkPad (3 years old) and it started falling apart after like a year of regular use. Maybe years ago that was true but nowadays I feel like everybody except maybe Apple has crap build quality.
Falling apart after a year? Maybe it was a lemon? What is your use case?
I've had pretty much the opposite experience. My friend has a macbook that he drops all the time and still works.
Also it's not like other brands are immune to denting, it's just kind of the nature of the material.
Kinda agree on the keyboard but I got used to it and also most brands have that type of keyboards nowadays anyway.
I dropped my Dell inspiron and watched it plinko its way down an entire set of stairs and still worked fine, too.
and its a (comparatively) cheap plastic crap bag.
Build quality vs. The aluminum build materials are not equivalent comparison
I'm a PC person, I do NOT like apple, however about 7 years ago I started traveling for work more and had the option to get a MacBook (at the time way way better battery, screen) than our windows laptops. I was just carrying a thin closed laptop with me around, and others had their laptop, a charge cable, and a mouse to achieve the same level of use.
I fell in love with the thing as a whole. Could go 8h on battery, didn't need a mouse, didn't use a mouse or external monitors like I did when "home" with my windows laptop.
I still do not like apple, own/owned many generations of Pixel phones, I build my own windows PCs (last winter the most recent)
But we replaced our old HP 360 which was also aluminum, flip/touch screen (still a nice laptop) with a MacBook Air M1 when they came out because of my experience in both longevity, quality, ease of mobility use (the touchpad).
Still a PC guy but the three (2 from work) MacBooks I've had have been pretty amazing.
My analogy was not flawed. I was referring to my experience, while at work in / around warehouses while doing large installs between 2015-2017. What I wrote, was my experience. I literally watched people having to carry their charges out with them knowing their laptops were not gonna make a couple hours, much less a full shift. Also had their mice because we'll, windows touchpads are not a replacement for a mouse.
I'm not saying there were not better windows machines available, I'm saying at work what windows laptops they were using always seemed to struggle with battery life, were "ok" screens at best.
I've also still never owned a windows laptop that has a touchpad as good as a MacBook. I've also not searched for one. The HP360 I had had a "decent" one but still not as good as my experience with MacBooks.
I still don't like apple I still build use windows PCs as my primary device and 100% it's easier to use a windows machine for it's general compatibility of apps, both old and new.
I still like my MacBook Air, and my work MacBook pro (s) more than any previous work or home LAPTOP I've owned.
My work laptop at 4yo still had about 6h battery, and I was not wanting/needing a replacement. Most of my coworkers, including my personal experience were counting the days to get a new laptop once the warranty expired at 3y.
I do know that after I started using a MBP at work the windows laptops did get significantly better battery life and overall didn't seem to wear out as fast as the old ones, but I had no desire to switch back.
Keep in mind that my use case / experience with laptops is only as a primary device at work. At home all our laptops have been portable devices for general use, taking on a trip etc. So the need (at home) for it to do everything doesn't exist for US.
No doubt, owning a MacBook in a windows house has its challenges. It was quite a pain getting printing working. Ultimately had.ti spin up a docker print server that supported airprint so I could print to my Multifunction Brother printer. That doesn't, however change my general opinion of the MacBook hardware and ease of use as a laptop compared to my experience with Windows machines.
Again, my point was initially in response to you associating build quality with the materials chosen. I don't believe those are related how you represented them.
My two MBPs I used for work, (including a windows 10 vm on parallels) managed to get a lot done over the years well beyond browsing the web.
I was/am not arguing about which OS has more compatibility, programs etc. That's a completely different topic. Hell, the M1 was very limited with native apps for a long time.
As you conseeded, the touchpad is superior. Since I literally use that 95% of the time I'm on a laptop, that's a pretty big factor in usability. My HP360 was around $1200 (HP Spectre 13t x360) the MBA was $950.
My HP36 after a few years had to be returned to have it's motherboard replacement., The one bonus there was they upgraded it from an i5 to an i7 which was nice.
My second work MBP did have the infamous butterfly keys, and eventually one key started having issues last year. Again as NOT an Apple fan, the machine was under an extended warranty and with permission from work I dealt directly with apple to get it fixed. They sent me a box overnight, I returned it on a Monday, had it back the following Thursday with a new keyboard and battery.
Everything has good and bad, I think what apple is going to prevent consumers repairing their own stuff is terrible. I still like / have generally had a more pleasant experience using their laptops over Windows machines.
Completely unrelated, I absolutely hate iPhones though!
I'm definitely not trying to sell MacBooks or convince others of that.
I just like them better then windows for general day to day use especially if you have a windows machine as a backup :)
I loved the touchpad so much I only ever used that on my work laptops at the office or traveling. I also stopped using secondary monitors in lou of the extended desktops with the ease of swiping to a second, third or whatever all with a easy flick in the touchpad it became unnecessary to have an external monitor for 99% of the time (for me)
I'm also a long time Linux user so being able to drop into a native shell is pretty nice
I'd never call myself a Mac guy though :) I just like MacBooks haha.
I have tried running various desktop Linux versions over the years, just never stuck with this.
I ran Debian on my own server, then VPS for years. I currently run Rocky Linux on it.
But windows definitely has a strangle hold on the market.
This is the opinion of someone who has not used a Thinkpad nor a MacBook built within the past three years.
That's my thought, too. My IBM T20 is still in great working order (with the original hardware, except for the PCI card, which I lost). My Lenovo T440 just died a couple months back. The T20 had Win98SE then Win2000 then XP and was used as a daily driver for about 5 years, before I had to retire it due to hardware specs (I still use it occasionally, but it now has antiX on it). The T440 had Win7 then Win10 and was a daily for about 3 years before it started having mechanical issues, then finally fried. I got an E595 and stuck Fedora on it. Hopefully, it will last long enough to get me saved up for a Framework, but I doubted. A part of me believes that the old IBM ThinkPads will outlast humanity, along with cockroaches and McDonald's fries. Honestly, I should learn my lesson and stop buying Lenovo (used or otherwise), but I had to have something since the T440 letdown and the E595 was on a liquidation sale.
The L14 Gen1 I have must be an exception then. The fingerprint reader isn't compatible at all (I feel kinda taken for a ride there since it's seemingly the only Synaptics reader without Linux compatibility) and both Bluetooth and USB are very buggy. I haven't used it with Windows, so the latter two may also be down to crappy firmware. Either way I'm rather disappointed for the price tag and probably not buying Lenovo again any time soon.
T14 Gen 2 (AMD) has Linux compatibility issues with the touchpad of all things.