12 Years ago I had a Sony Vaio. I quite liked it. Then in my next job, 2017 or so, I went for a Toshiba Portege, and absolutely loved it.
Guess what the above two have in common? Yup, they stopped making laptops for the professional market. So now I’m a bit at a loss. Any recommendations?
Requirements:
- Lightweight and easy to carry around.
- 13-15" display, preferably
- Decent battery life
- It absolutely must have an RJ45
- Works well with linux
- Good keyboard quality
- ISO keyboard availability
- Touchpad. Bonus points if it has the touchpad buttons ABOVE the pad itself.
Lenovo seems to be pretty solid but fuck… I still have a grudge over how much shittier they are than the old IBM ThinkPads.
We have nothing but problems with the ThinkPads issued by my IT department. Multiple models. They’re not what they used to be.
Look into the Framework 13. There are no touchpad buttons but otherwise it has everything you need and is fully upgradable and customizable. The laptop has four expansion ports that can hold a variety of hotpluggable expansion cards. The manufacturer offers USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort, 2.5G ethernet, microSD, audio and SSDs. There are also some community-made ones like LTE and dual USB-C.
Framework if you want to repair it yourself and Lenovo if you don’t. Lenovo makes a good machine and has very reasonably priced on-site support options.
Hobbists and home devs I think.
Edit if anyone can link an example of a real sized business going with framework I’ll eat a delicious lunch very quickly so I become slightly uncomfortable
I’m genuinely asking, bought prebuilt what would be the difference from a normal laptop?
Cause I could see lower longterm costs being a great benefit to a business, and if one part fails not losing 100% of your data, just let the IT guy replace that part
Long term costs aren’t an issue, framework costs 2x as much as a comparable enterprise laptop.
With a warranty parts are replaced if needed by the vendor, the IT guy doesn’t need to do anything. They even come to your home.
Drivers are regular updated tested, verified, packaged together and deployed through a repository and management apps.
since many companies have the ability to switch vendors, costing a company like dell or Lenovo $100k+ per year by doing so, the vendors pay attention to issues.
Thinkpad T, W, X series.
We found the carbon to be okay, but the fan ramped up to TOGA mode super fast.
Glued or soldered components, lots of issues as far as I’ve heard. You don’t find them refurbished (or rarely) which is a bad sign.
