Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Best Laptops For Fans Of Pre-Retina MacBook Pro?
stigmato writes "Once upon a time the MacBook Pro line was well-regarded amongst IT professionals for their quality, performance, serviceability & upgradeability. As appealing as the new Retina displays are, I don't want a device I cannot upgrade or repair. Glued in batteries and soldered in RAM with high prices have made me look to other manufacturers again. What are you buying, /. community? System76? Dell? Old article but still rings true with the latest models. I post this from my 2010 MBP 13" with a 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD in the optical bay, 8GB (possibly 16GB soon) and a user replaced battery."
I really like my Lenovo T-series laptop. Sure, it may not live up to the legendary build quality back when it was an IBM, but it is still pretty good. It has all the user replacement options that are standard, a good keyboard and screen. It's not getting an award for its looks, but well, who cares.
I bought a MacBook air a year ago. The first one exploded to blew my hand off. The next one killed my dog. It wouldn't run DR-DOS at all. The wifi screwed up and sterilized my nuts.
Overall I was left with a really bad feeling about all Apple products, which obviously must all have similar defects. Anecdotes by unverifiable semi-anonymous internet posters prove that to be true.
If I can fix sealed phones surely this laptop is repairable.
This sounds like hyperbole. Ungluing a battery is not impossible. If the ram goes, sure you are out a mobo, but that is pretty normal for ultrabooks. Either you want it small or you want it easy to repair.
Since I have a really slow upgrade cycle, I am mostly just holding out hope that Apple releases a more maintainable MBP again sometime over the next few years. I found my 2006 MBP to be surprisingly maintainable, with parts easy to get and swap out, but nothing was glued in place. Every once in a while I poke around to see if there are any others that I like but so far not much luck.
Apple has realized that making serviceable devices is a dead end when the processor hardware is good enough to be future proof. And their solution is the same solution many sectors of the economy face. Our automobiles are disposable consumer oriented devices, our kitchen appliances are as well, washing machines, you name it all service and repair departments are being down graded to expedite product end life.
Obsolescence is not just planned it has become a manufacturing industry mantra. With essentially slave labour doing the recycling of these goods, either that or illegal at sea dumping operations turning over the used goods we are headed down a technical path to environmental and consumer driven stupidity!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
As far as the RAM, meh. It's not windows, there's not a lot of cases when you would upgrade the RAM for OSX.
Battery on the other hand is a real issue. Yeah, the "new batteries" aren't supposed to have recharge issues, but PC makers have been using that line for over a decade.
It's not like Apple spends it time having a Seance to talk to Steve's ghost just to figure out how to piss people off. You want an ultra-thin notebook and you're going to sacrifice serviceability. You look at windows based ultrabooks and the serviceability is better than Apple, but not by that much. It's still a hassle to fit a battery into that space and an even bigger hassle to replace the battery. You start making the laptop more modular and a few things will happen. 1) You'll compromise on size and weight. 2) You start getting flex issues issues in the case (like it or not the glue on apple products has more to do with durability and case flex than it does with repairs). It become even more pronounced with plastic cases. 3) You end up with design compromises that make the overall experience horrid.
So where does that leave the IT professional? Well, if it's for work there's likely a service contract. The glue is the problem for some guy at the referb factory. For home? Either put up with it/get applecare contract, or hackintosh one of the cheaper ultrabooks out there and live with what that entails.
"Do you want to stick with OSX or are fine with a different OS?" If the former you are stuck. If the latter then decide on a feature set must haves and price point and buy what meets those needs. Dell, HP, Leveno all make good machines so it really comes down to what meets your needs.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'm in the same boat as you. I have the same year MBP as you, but I have the 15" and I went out of my way to get a matte screen on it. And THOSE are no longer available, which is MY biggest problem. Those retina screens are all glossy.
I could almost live with the non-upgradable stuff.
Here's my problem, though.
I need OS X. And no other laptop will give me that.
Now technically the apps I use can be run on Windows, too, but I am NOT using Windows as my daily driver. Sure, I can get a Lenovo or Alienware (both of which have matte screen options) and dual-boot, but I don't want to do that. I often leave Photoshop open for days (or weeks!) while working on stuff, while I do other things. I do not want to have to shuffle.
So, for me, the choice is really no choice at all. Apple have kind of taken away some features we've become used to, but I am a little bit tied to the platform.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Well, even the retinas have a removable SSD so that can be upgraded quite easily.
Memory, not so much - by the time "a few years later" comes around, memory can be hard to find especially in the denser modules as everyone migrated to the new memory standard. If you buy the laptop that's using cutting edge memory, then yes, it makes sense to wait (e.g., DDR4). But if' it's using mainstream memory modules (e.g., DDR3) then buying now means not having to hunt for it when DDR5 is mainstream and DDR3 is now horrendously expensive. (Try finding DDR modules that are denser than 1GB per DIMM for any reasonable price. Even DDR2 - I have a laptop that's got 4GB of RAM, to upgrade it to 8 requires spending serious money. Even back when it came out it was expensive, and it's not much cheaper now years later).
Batteries are controversial - you get people claiming one thing and another, but the sad reality is, save business laptops, 99.99% of consumers don't not replace the battery at all. Once it dies, it's dead and sits there in the battery bay while the PC may still be in use. Sure they could re-cell them or buy a new battery or whatever (though new is iffy - given the speed of which new models come out). but most people don't give a damn or care.
Small
Cheap
Easy to repair
Pick two.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.