Looking for recs for laptops! Pls let me know if you know anything durable enough for software engineering/mechanical engineering.
@sonder If you want something that'll outlast any mortal being, get a Thinkpad. T series for business (recommended), R for a bit cheaper, X for the really light ones.
If you want something closer to a Macbook, I've heard good things about the Dell XPS
@Project9501 hot damn that one's great
@noiob I would pay almost any amount of money for a netbook that had the butterfly keyboard. It's infuriating that the patent holder won't license the tech.
@Project9501 no alternative? I get that laptop keyboards are bad nowadays, but my plan for when I ditch this Macbook Pro is maybe a Surface and a 60% mechanical keyboard
@noiob I'm sure there are alternatives. I don't like BT keyboards because of the lag, I don't care for Android as a machine I'm going to do any actual work on, and I'll put out my eyes before I give M$ or Apple any money.
@Project9501 well, the Surface has USB A ports, but point taken
@noiob The problem isn't really the laptop keyboards, it's that if I want a netbook form factor I have to have a bitty keyboard, and if I want a full keyboard I have to have at least a 13" laptop. The butterfly combined a full keyboard with a netbook-sized screen. That was the appeal.
And the slidey part was really cool :D
@Project9501 ah, that makes sense
honestly part of wanting a Surface is just wanting to try putting some my obscure Linux setup on one and making it work with a tablet
@noiob That's fair. I've gotten old and soft and prefer my toys to "just work," with minimal bashing. Getting Qubes working on my laptop is about all the config-twaddling I care to do these days :D
@Project9501 heh, currently I'm just sporting pretty vanilla macOS, I even use Safari as my main browser (best support for gestures and I can't without gestures)… it's just not scratching that tinkering itch I have
My Linux setup was (or is, it's still in working condition on my R61 I found in the uni's trash) debian testing with i3 (a tiling wm), nothing too crazy, but fairly keyboard-heavy and lightweight
@noiob i3, you say? I shall investigate!
@Project9501 it's got good docs imho (http://i3wm.org), and my config for it can be found here: https://bitbucket.org/Noiob/dotfiles/src/42cba6ae3da42208e73229aaad771b97ebb37689/i3/config?at=master
@noiob I therefore salute those of you who do, and then carefully document, the hacking ;)
@noiob @sonder I have a XPS circa 2013 and I don't know how well the series is doing today (I think the design has changed quite a bit), but my laptop still suits my current needs fine. it's a little on the slow side now, though, but then again 4 years of burning through can do that... not fully aware of what mechanical engineering requires out of a computer but it types and compiles fine enough afaik for the software side
@noiob @sonder I miss my TP 701CS ;_;