Additionally, you can’t count on the basic being correct. It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful, keyboard doesn’t suck, and display isn’t a 300nits POS unusable even in a bright room.
You want the same performance as a MacBook Air without one of these fatal flaws? You’ll hand to spend $1500+ anyway so you save nothing. Then the OS is full of ads and pre-installed garbage “gaming-optimization-tool” or driver tools taking up 99% of a single core while being riddled with security holes.
This, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually know which ones are these!
And I would be very much in the Apple Camp for personal laptops, if Gaming was in any way shape or reasonable. Thats the only downside of apple. They tried to fix this before but that really did not work out.
But for that I still have my Bazzite or Steam Deck. I really encourage you to try Linux for gaming. It's incredible what Valve has achieved on that front.
> Additionally, you can’t count on the basic being correct. It takes a hour of research to know if ...
Truer words were never spoken!
I gave up on PCs years ago because of this very reason. The irony is that it is well known from psychology that giving consumers too many choices is actually counter-productive. Most people do not have the time nor the knowledge to research and configure their "perfect" PC. They just know their usecase and want the best for their money.
I had hoped Microsoft Surface series would become the standard in the Windows world (i still have a 1st gen model) but they don't seem to read the market.
> Reception was mixed, focusing on the difficult installation process and the significant performance costs of the Mach kernel. Reviewers noted its potential as a "Unix killer", but that it required users to abandon the user-friendly Macintosh experience for a pure Linux environment.
It comes down to Microsoft not doubling down on "let's make Windows as annoying as possible" (with ads, with telemetry that can't be turned off).
The Neo is such a perfect replacement and easier than fixing the Air.
In fact, depending on the model, the battery replacement may well have also entailed replacing the whole top cover (including the keyboard).
I bought my parents Asus laptops years ago, and can't wait to replace them with a Neo.
Microsoft has spurned and scorned users. Now it's time for computer makers to push back and reject its shit. I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.
At some point the XPS 13 dev edition was the almost perfect laptop. Then they ruined it with the following generations of it.
I've been of the firm opinion for a very long time that Macbook's are the best productivity laptops and now even more so once Apple moved from Intel to their own M chips. Their entry level Macbook before the Neo you could buy and it would be a laptop that would see you for many many years.
He was referring to the supply chain. The shock is that Apple was able to build something like this with current component costs.
edit: also on a tangent, Apple's pricing has become weird. It actually feels like it's a really good bang got the buck. Regular iPads are under 400 now, and they're just better than the competition. MacBook Pro is about the same price as it ever was, but it's just so much better than it was etc.
nudge/"help" people to join the party?
trying to ride something around the windows-bullshitization , recent memory-prices etc..