Laptops
I am in the market for a new laptop. My current laptop is literally falling apart, as some of the case screws have fallen out. I could replace those, but that would only fix one small problem. Also problematic is the fact that my battery only holds about 25 minutes worth of charge. And lately, doing anything remotely CPU intensive causes the system to overheat and shutdown. I've taken the system apart several times, inspecting the system fan and looking for obvious problems that might cause overheating. Alas, I've found nothing. So I've been forcibly setting the CPU frequency to its lowest setting, which makes the whole thing more sluggish than I would like.
So I'm looking for something new. Through the OSU technology store I can purchase a Hewlett Packard 8510w laptop. This is the "workstation" caliber laptop, with a sturdy metal case instead of cheap consumer plastic. It also comes with a high-end Nvidia graphics card -- something I've really missed on my current laptop (I miss playing Quake, surprisingly). Other features include 2 GB RAM, roomy hard disk, Bluetooth, and a 3-year accidental damage warranty. That last is extremely appealing.
If I get that laptop, I'll install GNU/Linux onto it. Before I purchase it, I intend to take an Ubuntu LiveCD to the store to try it on the floor model, to get an idea of what hardware works and what doesn't work. I expect most of the hardware will work. Certainly the NVidia card will be supported by closed-source drivers. Bluetooth should work. The wireless chipset should work (though may require a binary closed-source firmware blob). Audio may require some fussing to make work; though I might be presently surprised. Assuming all the hardware works, after installing Ubuntu I'd have to install all the proprietary audio and video codecs so prevalent today (though I could consider purchasing the Fluendo closed-source GStreamer plugins).
I did use an Ubuntu LiveCD on the HP 8510p -- the consumer model of this laptop, with the ATI graphics card instead of the NVidia. Most everything worked just fine: volume control buttons, WiFi kill switch, touchpad -- including the scroll portion -- and Bluetooth. That was all very refreshing, and helped solidify my interest in the 8510w. This page about Debian on the 8510w leaves me more than a little concerned, though, as it describes considerable more hoop-jumping than I'm inclined to do.
In the interest of comparative research and being an informed consumer, I picked DrBacchus's brain about his satisfaction with his Apple laptop. A long-time GNU/Linux user, several years ago he purchases an Apple laptop and has been using a Apple ever since. He's mostly satisfied with it. He came to the conclusion that he was tired of trying to get all his laptop hardware fully supported and properly working with the various GNU/Linux distributions. I share his frustrations on this issue. He's grown to appreciate most of the iLife products (iPhoto, in particular), and he raves about Keynote for his presentations. I don't give many presentations, so that's not too big a deal to me.
My sister has been using a Mac for a number of years, and she seems fairly well satisfied. At least, I haven't heard her complaining about it lately. She purchased a Mac specifically for the ease-of-use when she joined the Peace Corps: she didn't want to suffer through system instabilities or application failures when she was literally isolated from any meaningful technical support. This seems to have been a good choice for her, and worked fairly well.
While chatting with Carina the other night, I admitted I was growing increasingly frustrated by all the hoop-jumping required to enjoy various multimedia in GNU/Linux, and that the ease of a Mac had a very strong appeal. She admitted that she intended to purchase an Apple when her current laptop expires. But then I remember that I don't particularly like OSX; nor am I keen to pay Apple every year for operating system upgrades. I'm also reminded of Mark Pilgrim's juggling oranges and when the bough breaks essays detailing his dissatisfaction with Apple. His comments really hit home for me, highlighting the subtle importance of "Free as in Freeom".
I don't expect to use iTunes, primarily for philosophical reasons; but also because I don't use my computers to listen to a lot of music (in fact, I don't listen to a lot of music). I might be willing to try iPhoto, but I've been working happily enough to date just making directories for groups of photos based on date, then manually selecting the ones to upload to Flickr and finally burning to DVD when I have several gigs worth of photos. I might enjoy using iDVD, since I find the GNU/Linux DVD authoring utilities to be more frustrating than they need to be most of the time. Time Machine doesn't interest me much; and the OSX Dashboard and widgets don't interest me too much, either.
The real value of purchasing a Mac would be the knowledge that all the hardware was absolutely supported by the software. Of course, I could also try running Ubuntu (or another distribution of GNU/Linux) on a Mac laptop, as I know folks do, but it would require time and effort to get everything set up. I expect that the latter would exhaust the former, and I'd be left with something that was almost but just not quite working perfectly. If I'm going to be in that situation, why should I pay the premium that Apple commands for their hardware? Better to save money and get less expensive hardware that is equally poorly supported!
Complicating my decision making process is my intense aversion to spending money. I particularly hate to spend large quantities of money, as I almost always experience buyer's remorse. I know that as soon as I purchase a laptop it will be largely out of date. I don't intend to purchase another laptop for at least three years (preferably longer), so I need to make sure that I can be content with whatever I purchase for at least that long. I expect the Apple to work through that time frame, and be well supported. I imagine that the HP hardware would last that long, though I'm not entirely keen on the way Ubuntu has been developing lately, as features and services continue to be added that I don't use and which will only suck up battery life (things like the Tracker service: I don't lose files, so I don't have a need for a file indexing service -- yes of course I can turn this off, but that's more hoop-jumping, dammit!).
And then I keep remembering that the overwhelming use of this laptop will be for low-resource tasks like email and news reading. Occasionally I'll record something for LibriVox, or produce a DVD of video of the kids. As previously mentioned I would sometimes like to enjoy the diversion of Quake and similar games. I could invest in a (reasonably) powerful desktop computer for these more demanding activities, and then continue to make do with my current laptop for mobility when reading email. I would prefer, however, to minimize the number of computers in my home, and using a laptop exclusively seems like the best way to do that.
This is the first time I've ever seriously considered purchasing a computer and not running GNU/Linux on it. In some ways I feel like I'd be selling out, but that's not a particularly compelling reason to avoid the Mac. I've certainly enjoyed the benefits of Free Software for many years, and in that time I've almost entirely ignored any benefits I might receive from proprietary software. I wonder if I could be happy using a proprietary system for three years? The fact of the matter is that I'm not a developer, I'm a user. What little development I do do is entirely web-based. So while I appreciate the benefits of Free Software, it's not something to which I am fundamentally connected.
I had hoped that distilling my thoughts into this post would help me reach some sort of conclusion; but I'm afraid all I've done is ramble! I guess that should be indicative of the fact that I'm not yet ready to make a decision. If anyone has any input on the matter, I would like to hear it.
As you probably are aware I'm 100% apple and always have been. That said, I don't just preach apple for the sake of it being apple (anymore at least!)
I think in this situation you would be better off getting a macbook, it would do all you require from it, even in terms of running open source programs to stop yourself being tied into a vendor's product.
The main reasons I use and would suggest apple for you are:
* Hardware support: not having to mess around with drivers/config for most stuff is just so great you forget other OS's have to install stuff to work with hardware.
* Developer Ethos: As crazy as it sounds, developers for OS X tend to be a nicer bunch in terms of supporting freeware, releasing code and just generally being a cool bunch of geeks. Plus you tend not to find the windows problem I run into frequently, which is that simple apps are $10/$20 just for the sake of someone charging, whereas the mac equivalent of that small app will be freeware because the dev sees it as giving back to community.
* Updates: I know linux is fairly easy to upgrade, and apple have had a few upgrade issues over the years (iTunes 2 erased your HD I think. Stupid mistake.) But software update does work, and works well (and in the background if you want which is nice.)
* Virtual Machines: Due to macs being intel machines you can run windows/linux in a VM when needed, so its not as if you're choosing apple OR linux/windows, you're choosing apple WITH linux/windows if needed which is just damned cool. And when you're fed up of configuring linux you just shut the virtual machine down and return to OS X to do some more work!
(This last one is going to sound crazy.)
* TextMate: http://macromates.com/ is seriously the best text editor I have ever used. The amount of bundles and power it has is just mind-boggling. I love the way I can run shell commands within a document by just hitting ctl-r, its column editing support is just freaking cool. (You can edit the end of every line in the selection at once for example.) And yes, I would seriously move to whichever OS allan released TextMate for, even windows!
So yeah, I'd suggest a macbook. It sounds like you're just getting a little fed up with linux configuration, but the macbook provides linux/windows when needed and a logical, stable main OS when you need that.
I dont know if you have considered this, but how about dual booting with windows? Wouldnt that let you run ur occasional power hungry games on windows while letting you do other routine stuff on linux? And of course would be cheaper. But you might need to jump some additional hoops to get windows XP on it.
If you do feel like you are selling out, it doesnt matter if its apple or microsoft ;)
I know from experience that dual-booting is a waste of time. It uses up an inordinate amount of disk space, and it requires too much time and effort to keep two systems up-to-date. If I absolutely needed a Windows installation for something, I could always use VMWare or Parallels, or some other virtualization solution.
I'm ultimately not interested in using any version of Microsoft Windows. I support XP at work all day long, and it doesn't offer me the flexibility or conveniences to which I've grown accustomed. Windows Vista doesn't appear to offer me anything I need, either, while bringing with it a lot of new headaches.
A Mac, while proprietary, still has UNIX-y underpinnings, which provides a great deal of flexibility. I like using the command line for a great many common operations, so it's not something I'm eager to give up.
I am very happy with my ThinkPad R61. It runs for about 2.5 hours on a charge. I did a dual-boot install but I never use Windows at all. Really, I only did the dual-boot because I hadn't yet received my restore disks and didn't want to be out of a laptop in case something went wrong. I installed Fedora 8, and there was lots of advice online about getting the hardware working. The only things I didn't pursue long enough to get working yet are the fingerprint scanner and the function keys that switch video output. The latter has been a pain when I want to use the projector at work: I have to come up from a cold boot. However, that problem is solvable, I have read, with some effort. I spent a lot of time on the fingerprint scanner and never had any luck.
I had a $1200 Mac for a while, and while I liked it, I didn't like it enough more than my Thinkpad to pay nearly double for it.
If I had it to do again, I think I would have sprung another $200 for the T61 with Suse preinstalled. Because, the case is made of that suave rubberized stuff, and frankly it just has more cache than the hard black plastic.
The best part is all Lenovo's linux laptops are free right now:
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/webca/LenovoPortal/en_CA/special-offers.workflow:ShowPromo?LandingPage=/All/US/Landing_pages/Info/08/Linux
(If you don't see $0.00 prices, they have fixed their site by the time you looked. I just went all the way through to a shopping cart out a free laptop.)
As you know I love my MacBook. I will never buy another machine with Windows again. I may be persuaded to buy something in the future in order to install some version of Linux, but someone would have to sell me on the advantages over Mac OS. Yes, there is a price difference, but it's one I'm willing to accept.
The Mac just works and works well. My system has never - never - crashed. (Except recently because I'm running the OpenOffice Aqua beta. Hey, it's a beta). Any applications that I might need I can get for free. And if it's not made for Mac OS, it will run via X11.
If you're willing to spend the money, I vote for a Mac.
buy a mac. I went from Windows to Linux to Mac and haven't looked back. As long as my back ends are *nix of some sort and my daily OS is OS X, I'm happy. As "open" as Linux is what, in the last few years, have you done with that openness? While it's fun to recompile your kernel - and you can do that in OS X - the real thrill is having something that works daily without the traditional "day of shame" you experience when something in Windows fails and you end up reinstalling the OS five times until things fix themselves or the "week of shame" when you can't get your printer to work under Ubuntu and have to troll the boards for a solution.
Just do it. If no, Lenovo is doing a good job recently and Dell. I'm not seeing much good out of HP recently but if you found something solid and usable they're solid and, well, usable.
I just went through this exact same exercise. For me, budget was a big issue. I ended up scouring Craigslist for days until I found an older dell inspiron 5100 for $250. I installed Ubuntu Linux on it with ease and had to do some minor tweaking to get the desktop effects working properly. It was a great introduction to working with Linoux on the desktop. I highly recommend keep an eye out for a Dell. They seem to be everywhere.
John Biggs: you raise a good point. I don't think I consciously use the freedoms afforded by GNU/Linux on a regular basis, but I greatly benefit from them in those situations where I need it. If you read the links to Mark Pilgrim's posts I provided, you'll get an indication of how proprietary applications can really bite you. One could easily flip the question around: how often would I use the flashy proprietary applications bundled with a Mac? As I stated, I'm unlikely to ever use iTunes; iPhoto doesn't provide too much workflow improvement to me; and I suspect I'll quickly bump against the limitations of iMovie and iDVD for my uses.
John: budget is a concern, but I'd rather spend a little more for prolonged life and utility from the laptop. Through my employer, I can get a great price on an expensive laptop (it'll still be expensive). The real clincher is that it includes a three-year accidental damage warranty. That's got a lot of appeal for me.
I've eyed Dell pretty carefully for a long time, and I've been extremely close to purchasing from them on a number of occasions. I really wanted to buy one of their laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed, as a way of showing my support for their support of GNU/Linux.
As we all know this is basically a religious argument but I've found that the proprietary apps in Apple are better than, say, the proprietary apps that come with most other devices and/or OSes. Take iPhoto for example. You connect your camera and it imports your photos into human readable directories that you can easily drag anywhere else or even export into another application. Editing is built-in, web sharing is dead simple and with me.com launching, should be considerably more compelling than .mac, and the slideshow function on AppleTV for, example.
iMovie is also quite useful for simple editing although they did screw it up since the last version.
And then again you can also install open source ports of your favorite warez so you're not missing out.
My 2 cents. I'll go back to stroking my MacBook Pro idly.
I sold my iBook a couple years ago, and got a Lenovo laptop, installed Ubuntu, and never looked back. Almost everything "just worked". The only things that didn't (and still don't) are the built-in web cam, the fingerprint reader,
I clicked a box to install the proprietary video drivers to get the desktop Compiz effects working (I love my rotating cube desktop -- not because it's cool, but because it's very useful.) Video & Audio codecs are auto-installed once you try to play one & it detects you need it. I compare Fedora 9 to Ubuntu 8.04, and here were my results: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pLRx6JDYmSp6-p06taePYFQ&output=html&gid=0&single=true
...skippy.net/hp-8510w" title="HP 8510w">HP 8510w July 20, 2008 4:41pm I mentioned awhile ago that I was looking for a new laptop. Folks who commented -- online, and off -- had good points to make about their preferences, and I t...