
Ask HN: Which Laptop to Switch to from Macbook? - poushkar
Reached the 2000 characters limit, please read the full text in the comment below.<p>Thank you
======
Tomte
> it simply is too much for a machine that I am going to use at home for a few
> hours a day.

A used Thinkpad. Maybe even one for as low as two or three hundred Euros.
Upgrade RAM, install an SSD (If not already present), and you've got a "good
enough" machine.

~~~
throwaway3627
Thinkpad T440 - T480

T490 is no good: soldered-in things and no dual batteries.

~~~
tutfbhuf
Some more hints:

T440 has a bad touchpad, but it can be replaced with the one from T450.

Get the s variant, e.g. T450s if you need it a bit thinner and lighter.

Get the FHD (or higher res) IPS variant, the low res TN panels are very bad.

Join /r/thinkpad.

------
ajflores1604
+1 for Thinkpad. I have an older yoga from Best buy back when they still came
with discrete graphics. Poor thing has taken a beating from me but still works
great. And thinkpads in general have great support for Linux. Even for the pen
input, which I use more than I thought I would. Usually for signing documents
or quickly mapping out an idea. Also, they're so ubiquitous, I was able to go
to several local tech recycling places and pick up spare chargers for super
cheap. I dont stress about keeping track of the charger now. Just leave one in
my bag, one by my desk, one in bed, one by the couch. It's a small thing but
it's changed my workflow a lot. Let's me treat the laptop more as a free
mobile device and less like a clunky combo laptop with rats nest to awkwardly
carry around.

Also big fan of the track point and the secondary buttons at the top of the
track pad. It's a meme for a lot of ppl but they definitely have their place.
When in the flow of typing, it helps a lot to not have to move your hands back
and forth off the keyboard. And most importantly, having a middle click button
right below the space bar makes it dead simple and quickly to open up a set of
links in a new tabs. That's a functionality that would be hard for me to give
up by going to another platform.

As for gripes, the one thing that makes me jealous of laptops like the
MacBook, surface book, and matebook x, is the screen aspect ratio. For being
"productivity machines" I wish Lenovo would put a 3:2 screen that gave more
vertical space to see more code or spreadsheet cells. It's absurd to me that
they still have consumption oriented 16:9. It's especially painful when using
the tablet mode in portrait. The only thing I can do is full screen an
application if it really starts to bother me.

------
maximente
i have a purism librem 13v2

it's expensive for the stuff inside, but:

\- i wanted to financially support a company aligned with values i share
(privacy, open everything)

\- because everything is open including hardware, there's no hardware/driver
issues with linux; things work nicely out of the box

\- it has a TPM which may or may not be fun to play around with in the future

\- because of its open nature it's easy to add memory and NVE disk

\- increased clock speeds don't really affect me - the most computationally
intensive things i do are software builds and parallel test suites, which use
all cores; servers do the actual experiments/compute

~~~
turblety
I have the 15v3 and can confirm it's a great laptop too. Really looking
forward to their Librem 5 phone too. The companies really going in a good
direction.

------
rixed
I would recommend to consider tuxedo laptops, especially the 14" which is
robust enough, reasonably priced and fanless. And all their machines come
preinstalled with Linux.

[https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-
Note...](https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-
Notebooks/10-14-inch/TUXEDO-InfinityBook-14-v2-passive-/-fanless.tuxedo#)

------
DanBC
Reading your post below I believe a Dell Latitude would fit what you want.
Something like the E7440 is cheap, reliable, repairable, expandable, etc. They
cost about £200 if you're not fussy.

That doesn't fit your display requirements though, so you'll probably need to
look around at newer models. Dell, as far as I can tell, make it hard to
search their laptops by display resolution.

~~~
bklaasen
Dell Latitude 7440s are terrific machines which run Linux beautifully. They're
better Linux machines than the XPS, which is severely over-rated in my
opinion. I've had an XPS laptop as my main machine since 2014 and I recently
replaced it with a generic small-form factor PC (I mean tiny) from AliExpress.
Delighted to be shot of the XPS.

------
lukaszkups
ASUS Zenbook series - got one (UX32LN) and worked flawlessly for many years
(on linux) - it still works, but now my wife has it (with Windows installed)

I switched to Surface Book 2 - it's awesome machine and development with WSL
works amazingly good (no issues found yet), but I wouldn't recommend this
machine to anyone who wants to travel with it due to its lids mechanism (I
would be scared of breaking it while keeping it in the backpack )

------
dhruvkar
I just got a Thinkpad P52S after using a 2012 Macbook for 7.5 years.

Installed Pop_OS! on it. Despite the quirky name, it's the stablest, least
needed configuration Ubuntu flavor, I've ever used and very similar to macOS
and very shortcut friendly.

------
infiniteseeker
An older Thinkpad till some decent Ryzen based 4K laptops come out next year.

I just got me a T440P. Put in 16G, SSD (can put 2 more SSDs for a total of 3),
its got a socketed i7 and a removable 9 cell battery for easier upgrades. I
upgraded the default display (garbage) to a 1080p display (really simple
..done with a screwdriver) and this thing is a beast with Manjaro Linux and
KDE or i3.

I also have an x230 with OpenBSD.

My old 2015 retina MBP is going to my dad who has a shitty old windows 10
spyware laptop.

------
univalent
A vote for the Thinkpad P51. For those that get headaches from laptops and
other displays, I found this one that you can spec up and does not use pulse
width modulation.

~~~
paulddraper
And it doesn't have that damned unibutton touchpad that every laptop seems to
have nowadays.

------
saluki
Go with a macbook air, last generation has the old style keyboards, it's
light, 12 hour battery life and plenty of power for programming.

------
poushkar
I am selling my gaming desktop and considering buying something for work/study
purposes only, preferably (I am 80% sure about it) a laptop.

Having a 2017 MBP at work, I am really disappointed in it's keyboard. To the
point that I don't want to buy a Macbook for personal use.

Having used Macbook laptops for years, I was sure I will be able to quickly
find some good alternatives. But after spending some time on Google and
Youtube, I am really confused at this point. Let me explain why.

All I need is a laptop with around-the-house mobility to browse Web, to learn
and experiment with different programming languages, and to work on some side
projects (web/backend) of mine. No heavy video/photo editing, no more gaming.

I need it to be able to connect to an external screen without any weird
dongles, to have a really good, comfortable keyboard and touchpad and not to
cost a fortune.

It should run Linux smoothly, but maybe I could also use WLS on Windows as I
don't have any strong preferences for UI because in the end it's only me,
browser, terminal and an editor.

Now, it has confused me a lot that these simple requirements are very hard to
satisfy, apparently!

What I've found so far:

1\. Thinkpads X/T series Seem to be very solid machines, nice keyboard and
specs. But in the new generation, Lenovo went the "anorexia" path which not
only increases the price but also makes them less upgradable with the
solidified RAM slot. Also, the line of T machines with the "s" suffix doesn't
make sense to me as they are so similar to the X series. I don't get the
point.

The price tag easily climbs up to almost 2k euro with i5, 16Gb RAM, 512Gb SSD
and WQHD (2560 x 1440) display .

2\. Surface Book 2 Looks super good, but as I've mentioned above I am still
not sure about developing on Windows with the WSL and considering that
realistically prices start from 2k for this laptop - it simply is too much for
a machine that I am going to use at home for a few hours a day.

3\. Dell XPS Seem to be solid machines, mostly. But same issues as with
Thinkpads - everything is optimized for the size and weight, which makes it
less upgradable and more expensive. And let me tell you that I owned Macbook
Air for 5 years - I know that a low thickness is a very nice quality, but it's
nowhere in the list of my priorities. I can easily trade it off for better
specs.

Also, I keep reading about their coil whine problem.

Price gets easily close to 1,7k euro for the 4k version, which is much better
than others on this list, but how good is Linux handling 4k if I decided to go
with it?..

4\. System76 Not expensive, a bit boring looking (not necessarily a problem
but counts), and I am reading a lot about a not so good keyboard which
collects dirt and is hard to clean. Don't know how true it is, though.

Battery life is also rumored to not to be good, even though it's not that
important to me.

Not convinced by what I've learn about them so far.

5\. Purism I really like the idea but at 1.5k euro with specs matching those
of others mentioned above, I am actually not sure it's a good deal,
considering the low battery life and an average display quality.

Is it?

It's probably not a full list but as you noticed, no laptop here costs less
than 1,5k for very unimpressive specs as for today's standards. Maybe I am
just spoiled but a Macbook Pro with such specs costs ~2k. And if the keyboard
hasn't ruined it - it's a very high quality machine made of solid aluminum
with 4k display and superb trackpad. So how can these alternatives cost almost
the same with their 1080p screens?..

But it's ok, I would go with the price if it was a work laptop that I need to
use for 8+ hours a day.

But as for a secondary machine, sitting at home for most of the time, I really
don't want to spend this much!

If you had needs and struggles similar to mine, what have you gone with? And
how happy are you with your choice?

~~~
nao360
I stopped buying new and started buying second hand about a year ago.
Honestly, it's worked out just fine. I got a 6th gen i7 Lenovo T460S with 20Gb
RAM, 512Gb M.2 and 1920 x 1080 display, all for about USD 700, about a year
ago on eBay. It's still going strong today, and pretty much using it for the
same purposes as you listed. It runs most modern linux distros flawlessly. WSL
wasn't a great experience for me, but maybe things have improved since last
year. Considering the specs of cutting edge vs., 1 or 2 generations ago, it's
rarely ever more than 30% bigger/better/faster/brighter/etc. It just doesn't
make sense to me to pay 100% to 200% more for a 30% improvement. The other
huge plus (for me) is that I really don't care what happens to the laptop. I
treat it with as much care as I treat my 2018 15"MBP, but at $700 (or $2 a day
spread out over the last year), I really don't stress about it. Keyboard is
THE BEST. Touchpad, on the other hand ... well, PC trackpads suck so very
much, especially if you're used to Apple touchpads, which are just such a
pleasure to use.

Do consider buying second hand, especially if it's a secondary machine.

Best of luck!

~~~
moioci
In that vein [https://www.backmarket.com/refurbished-macbook-
air.html?gcli...](https://www.backmarket.com/refurbished-macbook-
air.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwscDpBRBnEiwAnQ0HQHrWCR8VMMvZtOLYwkqqETRF6mvY14IOHtAprrXp2zVc2TX1kpA8qxoCGr8QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)

------
igolden
Just bought a Thinkpad T480, put 32GB ram and an SSD in it. Runs amazing with
linux and the keyboard is a huge upgrade from my 2016 MBP.

------
Railsify
Thinkpad P51

------
xrd
I love my System76 KUDU 17". PopOs is surprisingly awesome.

~~~
xrd
And I love this keyboard. I have a work MBP that gives me cramps after an hour
of use, but this one (System 76) is spacious and feels great.

The biggest downside is I had to buy a new backpack from Chrome since it
didn't fit in anything I already owned!

