I am resisting the urge to detail my insane story with my most recent Dell XPS purchase. Long story short, I will never again buy a Dell laptop. I went months without my machine during a critical time. I kept getting it back in worse shape than it was before I sent it for repair. After months of pure insanity, I just accepted that I'll never have a properly function touchpad again. At least they finally got a working motherboard put in it. I'm feeling waves of rage and anger just thinking back to what they put me through. Never again. I won't even accept a Dell as a work laptop again. Never.
Its such a contrast to the Dell I used to know. Back in 2012 I had the hard drive in my Dell laptop sale and had the Dell small business service contract and they sent out a guy to replace it that afternoon, right there in front of me in the office. I was without my machine for 4 hours. That is what Dell used to be like.
That's really sad. Where are you located if I may ask? Some other commenters mentioned that Dell care is not great outside of the US (I'm in Canada so concerned).
I have a 2017 Dell XPS13 that's been hammered as a developer laptop and is still going great guns. It's on its third battery, and I've just replaced the screen. I bought a newer one in 2022 and sold it again a couple of months later because, although it had a faster processor and more RAM, it felt flimsier.
I'm also currently upgrading a refurbed Lenovo X270 for my granddaughter who's starting high school, and I am thoroughly impressed. Newer Lenovos are slimmer and slicker, but this thing will still be trucking after the cockroach apocalypse.
I would say yes. Having been a big fan of Dell and having used it's laptops for both professional and personal uses over many years, I have moved off it to Acer. Couple of reasons - the first is that there is a price premium which I cannot seem to justify and second is the teething / niggling issues which I have had to face in pretty much every Dell I have owned. Sometime, it will be too long a time to wake up from sleep or a random crash which requires me to fetch bitlocker key from my account so that I can boot it up again to driver update issues to the fan continuously running for no reason etc. I had, by chance, a good experience with Acer in the past and since then have purchased a couple fo them more and the experience has been seamless and pleasant. I do hope Dell ups its game as it was an iconic and innovative brand but there is less now to differentiate it from competition and so no reason for the premium to be charged.
I just bought a Thinkpad T14s a couple of months ago. It’s lightweight, has great build quality. I installed Ubuntu and it almost ran out of the box but I ended up having to tinker with it to get My Dell docking station and i3 window manager to work. But that is something I was willing to live with. So far, I have had no complaints. If you’re using Linux, the sleep and standby performance aren’t good. But much better than my previous laptop.
Coming to my previous laptop which I still have with me, I bought a Thinkpad L480 in 2018. It was then a dirt cheap version of a Thinkpad. But it did the job with no complaints. I had to replace the battery after 4 years but that wasn’t an issue. It did everything a daily driver is supposed to do, reliable and never threw a fit. I only had to change it as I felt I needed a better screen and performance. The Intel processor was showing its age.
I have only minor complaints running Thinkpad with Ubuntu. But if you start moving away from popular distros, then you have to accept you will occasionally have to tinker to get things work.
Thanks. Yeah my 470S is still holding strong and I only upgrade the RAM to some 24GB and replaced the two batteries. Now the battery lasts around 4 hours and I'm happy. I do agree that it's showing its age, e.g. having too many tabs in Chrome while playing HD videos in Youtube may stress it a bit, but so far no complaint.
I'll check out the T14s. One of my concerns is: it seems to be more difficult to replace batteries for modern laptops. I tried to remove the battery of the Dell 5550 last night and found it more difficult than the older models. How about the T14s?
Yes, it's a race to the bottom for most. Lots of plastic and soldered, non-upgradeable components, and a lack of ports. The used market is tricky to navigate thanks to the proliferation of model names and numbers, so little to no salvation there either. Spend a bit more for something that will last a bit longer (MacBook) and/or be upgradeable (frame.work), or accept a cheaper model (e.g. Dell Pro) that will likely need to be replaced in a couple years.
Just my 2 cents: I run a tuxedo laptop, that is just a branded clevo device. It isn't as greatly build as a Mac, because nothing is. But my tuxedo works well, nothing broke, or needed any repair. Can recommend. Branded clevo pcs in Germany are used by Schenker, Nexoc, Wortmann, One Computer, MIFCON and more. Internationally, brands like System76, BTO and XNB are using clevo. I've never heard of BTO and XNB, so this might be false information. But I've heard good things from System76.
Are you really complaining about old battery packs and USB C ports as bad engineering? I think you should try the framework laptop because then you have no excuses about the trivial things.
I can live with the ports as many laptops are moving to it anyway. The battery and the charging port are the major concerns, especially the charging ports as I found out many Dell owners had to get a replacement motherboard, which is way too expensive for me. I'd expect the battery to live for at least 5 years and the whole motherboard should live at least 8 years.
I might mixed up System76 with Framework, I need to double check the subreddit
> Power management on Macbooks is unbeatable in my experience, both Windows and Linux have really serious issues dealing with sleep and low power modes.
I've been dealing with this recently. Linux won't hibernate if you have Secure Boot enabled, even if your swap is encrypted. So I either have to leave my laptop plugged in all the time or remember to shut it down before unplugging it so it doesn't completely drain its battery while sleeping.
Windows via BootCamp was my laptop nirvana. I'm not sure the emulated Windows experience on newer Macs is the same. No Nvidia inside is also a bit of a dealbreaker.
As someone also trying to get out of (or at least less dependent on) the Apple ecosystem, the laptop market sucks! Everyone but Apple is making the same garbage-tier, shoddy, plastic laptops with bottom of the barrel components that I'm sure are engineered to just barely work enough to avoid immediate product returns.
I'm starting to accept that if I want a development workstation class machine, I need to build a tower from components.
When you walk into a Best Buy, the small majority of non-Apple laptops seem to be made of metal, even the $300 Chromebooks. They look and feel more premium, but probably aren't.
The sad thing is that plastic should be the best material to make laptops from. It's lighter, and it gives when dropped. Think about the cases everybody puts on their phones. They're not made of solid metal, for good reason.
The old Thinkpads had it right, they used a magnesium frame surrounded by high quality plastic.
My MacBook Pro is well made, but it's also a pound heavier than it needs to be.
I don't disagree with you. I really really love the hardware -- and BTW it would be a dream if I get to work with OS/Hardware people in Apple. I don't like the software, especially the OS built-ins, but I guess I can find alternatives in App store.
I might eventually go down this route, if I can't find a reasonable good one. I use VMWare in Windows to access Linux on my 5550, so it's not a far stretch to switch the host.
I bought a Dell XPS M1210 laptop in 2007. About a year later the laptop died. From what I could gather, the soldering on the NVIDIA 7400 graphics card had failed. Some people were apparently able to reflow it but I had no such luck.
In my opinion Dell laptops have never been good. But I never bought another one since that happened, so maybe I've missed out.
Yes, Apple seems to be the only company that actually cares about the quality of their laptop in my experience. And I say that as someone who used to run Linux on my laptops in 2010~18..
If you already have a macbook why not just buy a PC at this point? You can change parts that break, you won't have to deal with battery issues and if you are on a budget you can only buy what you need today and upgrade later.
edit: to lenovo/dell question I'd say the quality varies by model - lower end thinkpads are better while expensive one got worse. But there are still a lot of differences between a small business series and enterprise. USB-C perfect as a connector, but if it is not replaceble it is a nightmare.
could try asahi? i think it's pretty good on the m1.
lenovos remain good if you get a high spec thinkpad. maybe get a few year old high spec thinkpad new/refurb off ebay with a three year service contract (search "p1 gen 6" on ebay)? i think you can always re-up the service contract on new ones as well.
Yeah I heard a lot of good things about that. I'm a bit reluctant but I think eventually I'm going to give it a try.
I'll check with Dell and Thinkpad if I can buy extended service contracts. AFAIK Dell tops out at 4 years but maybe I can extend that later. I wouldn't mind if I have to pay half of the laptop price to get a 8-10 year contract because new laptops break up way too soon - and every time it is something small but critical, like the charging port thing that many people had to get a new motherboard from Dell.
idk. i don't think there's a good story if you're primarily interested in full-cycle e-waste minimization and avoidance. the mac hardware is good and is designed to live on timescales like that (probably because they are primarily aimed at building a good consumer brand) but it's also impossible to upgrade so there is some built-in planned obsolescence in that regard. (although it can be sold and replaced with other higher spec used gear).
the thinkpad and dell stuff is more upgradable, but is largely aimed at business markets where they plan on refreshing every 3-4 years.
i think maybe you get the most longevity (and possible warranty) out of thinkpad, but sadly none of this stuff is really designed to last that long.
e-waste sucks. unfortunately, our current dominant system of production doesn't really reward design for longevity. refreshing technology on the regular makes for a pleasant consumer experience, i wish it were less environmentally damaging.
framework has an angle on this, but i think in practice they're somewhat equivalent to thinkpads in terms of extendability. i also wonder how much you actually save when you start replacing everything over the long run.
The market is splintered into high-end work laptop, low-end work laptops, gaming laptops. Only Apple has the brand value to be in the first set. Everyone else is in a market for lemons.
I think Apple makes really nice hardware but you can get better specs in as light (or lighter) frame elsewhere.
I can compare AMD T14 Thinkpad to a Macbook. Thinkpad is faster, has more RAM (easy to get 64GB now), better keyboard. It's also louder, hotter and the screen is probably worse (mine is low end so it's significantly worse but idk how high end OLED compares). Macbooks have much better sound. Thinkpad runs Linux while Macbooks (the newest ones) still don't.
I think Apple is winning but not to the extent of being the only game in town.
“Better specs” is precisely why most laptops are garbage. There is no spec for “months until the screen starts visibly ghosting” or “percentage of the time standby doesn’t happen so your laptop is dead when you need it”. So you end up comparing the stats that are available, like GB/$, when for most people these are not the biggest factors in their day to day experience with the device. (If speed and memory are the biggest factors then a laptop is clearly the wrong device.)
I went with an expensive XPS (their "carbon skin model") with the top config 3 years ago. The touch screen failed in less than a year, the battery become useless in 2 years and I am now in my second charger which is failing. The unit feels tired/old though the performance on what matters (cpu/memory/nvme) is still solid so far. I guess anything not made by Dell is holding on.
That's frustrating. I wonder if it changes anything if you had purchased extended Dell care back then. I just checked online that their 4 year basic care costs about 270 CAD so I might go for it if I buy a new one. Did you speak to Dell about this? I'd argue my case even if I had not purchased Dell Care.
But still, failing in a couple of years is really unacceptable. I was thinking 5 years for the battery and another 5 years for everything else. If you and me have to spend some $2,000 every 3-4 years it sounds more like a subscription service.
The other issue is that price point does not guarantee quality for any non-Apple boxes.
I am not US based and Dell service abroad is a joke. I'd check if that Dell Care is "real" as in not similar to "flight insurance" kind of insurance. Since Dell doesn't have the same international service as Apple, the experience will be very localized. I'd see if there is a Dell center nearby and check the reviews.
I had a Dell laptop for work a while back where the MB died 3x in under 2 years... They replaced it all three times, and were a bit sus at the third one... but I literally left it in a locked drawer at work more often than I'd take it home.
The best experiences I've had with Dell hardware have been mid though... worse with HP, won'y buy their stuff at all any more.
I've had mixed to very good experiences with Lenovo... Even their cheaper IdeaPad options. My SO had an IdeaPad that lasted about 7 years, and she was pretty rough on it. Just replaced with another a few months ago. For what it's work, runs PopOS like a dream. On the down side are soldered ram, and shorter vnme drives that have apparently had higher failure rates, already have a replacement ready on a shelf.
My personal laptop is an M1 Air 16gb... it's been a pretty great little box, though with my vision what it is, has been very hard to actually use for much.
I don't know about Lenovo but Dell is so cheap, they've shrunk the diameter of even the case screws. All their laptop touchpads fail to draw a straight line over time. On their Insiprions, I know if the CMOS battery dies, the laptop will no longer turn on. Dell is absolute junk.
>The other issue is that 5550 uses USB-C ports. I blame on myself not checking it closely before the purchase. I really hate those ports. Why is everyone copying from Mac?
It's not copying Apple. It's that every port does everything, including charging. It is standards-compliant.
As just one example, you no longer need to lug a laptop charger with you; there are no longer "computer chargers" and "phone chargers", but one charger that can charge everything, often simultaneously via multiple ports. When you combine this with a docking station, one cable truly does all.
The thing is, everything I bought don't use those ports. I have to buy a new keyboard and a new mouse (wireless mouses also need a driver dongle) for the ports.
And what is worse? New laptops have less ports than the older ones. That 5550 only has 3 ports and 1 is for charging. If I want to mount an external hard drive, I need to bring a hub.
What again, looks like everyone is doing that, so yeah, better embrace it.
I am resisting the urge to detail my insane story with my most recent Dell XPS purchase. Long story short, I will never again buy a Dell laptop. I went months without my machine during a critical time. I kept getting it back in worse shape than it was before I sent it for repair. After months of pure insanity, I just accepted that I'll never have a properly function touchpad again. At least they finally got a working motherboard put in it. I'm feeling waves of rage and anger just thinking back to what they put me through. Never again. I won't even accept a Dell as a work laptop again. Never.
Its such a contrast to the Dell I used to know. Back in 2012 I had the hard drive in my Dell laptop sale and had the Dell small business service contract and they sent out a guy to replace it that afternoon, right there in front of me in the office. I was without my machine for 4 hours. That is what Dell used to be like.
That's really sad. Where are you located if I may ask? Some other commenters mentioned that Dell care is not great outside of the US (I'm in Canada so concerned).
I have a 2017 Dell XPS13 that's been hammered as a developer laptop and is still going great guns. It's on its third battery, and I've just replaced the screen. I bought a newer one in 2022 and sold it again a couple of months later because, although it had a faster processor and more RAM, it felt flimsier.
I'm also currently upgrading a refurbed Lenovo X270 for my granddaughter who's starting high school, and I am thoroughly impressed. Newer Lenovos are slimmer and slicker, but this thing will still be trucking after the cockroach apocalypse.
I would say yes. Having been a big fan of Dell and having used it's laptops for both professional and personal uses over many years, I have moved off it to Acer. Couple of reasons - the first is that there is a price premium which I cannot seem to justify and second is the teething / niggling issues which I have had to face in pretty much every Dell I have owned. Sometime, it will be too long a time to wake up from sleep or a random crash which requires me to fetch bitlocker key from my account so that I can boot it up again to driver update issues to the fan continuously running for no reason etc. I had, by chance, a good experience with Acer in the past and since then have purchased a couple fo them more and the experience has been seamless and pleasant. I do hope Dell ups its game as it was an iconic and innovative brand but there is less now to differentiate it from competition and so no reason for the premium to be charged.
I just bought a Thinkpad T14s a couple of months ago. It’s lightweight, has great build quality. I installed Ubuntu and it almost ran out of the box but I ended up having to tinker with it to get My Dell docking station and i3 window manager to work. But that is something I was willing to live with. So far, I have had no complaints. If you’re using Linux, the sleep and standby performance aren’t good. But much better than my previous laptop.
Coming to my previous laptop which I still have with me, I bought a Thinkpad L480 in 2018. It was then a dirt cheap version of a Thinkpad. But it did the job with no complaints. I had to replace the battery after 4 years but that wasn’t an issue. It did everything a daily driver is supposed to do, reliable and never threw a fit. I only had to change it as I felt I needed a better screen and performance. The Intel processor was showing its age.
I have only minor complaints running Thinkpad with Ubuntu. But if you start moving away from popular distros, then you have to accept you will occasionally have to tinker to get things work.
Thanks. Yeah my 470S is still holding strong and I only upgrade the RAM to some 24GB and replaced the two batteries. Now the battery lasts around 4 hours and I'm happy. I do agree that it's showing its age, e.g. having too many tabs in Chrome while playing HD videos in Youtube may stress it a bit, but so far no complaint.
I'll check out the T14s. One of my concerns is: it seems to be more difficult to replace batteries for modern laptops. I tried to remove the battery of the Dell 5550 last night and found it more difficult than the older models. How about the T14s?
Yes, it's a race to the bottom for most. Lots of plastic and soldered, non-upgradeable components, and a lack of ports. The used market is tricky to navigate thanks to the proliferation of model names and numbers, so little to no salvation there either. Spend a bit more for something that will last a bit longer (MacBook) and/or be upgradeable (frame.work), or accept a cheaper model (e.g. Dell Pro) that will likely need to be replaced in a couple years.
Just my 2 cents: I run a tuxedo laptop, that is just a branded clevo device. It isn't as greatly build as a Mac, because nothing is. But my tuxedo works well, nothing broke, or needed any repair. Can recommend. Branded clevo pcs in Germany are used by Schenker, Nexoc, Wortmann, One Computer, MIFCON and more. Internationally, brands like System76, BTO and XNB are using clevo. I've never heard of BTO and XNB, so this might be false information. But I've heard good things from System76.
Are you really complaining about old battery packs and USB C ports as bad engineering? I think you should try the framework laptop because then you have no excuses about the trivial things.
I can live with the ports as many laptops are moving to it anyway. The battery and the charging port are the major concerns, especially the charging ports as I found out many Dell owners had to get a replacement motherboard, which is way too expensive for me. I'd expect the battery to live for at least 5 years and the whole motherboard should live at least 8 years.
I might mixed up System76 with Framework, I need to double check the subreddit
George Hotz is unpacking his new Framework right now and he's not happy: https://www.twitch.tv/georgehotz
Using Macbooks spoils you. They're so well made that almost everything else feels shoddy.
There's also the software/hardware integration side.
Power management on Macbooks is unbeatable in my experience, both Windows and Linux have really serious issues dealing with sleep and low power modes.
On the Lenovo side, the only one I'm still reasonably happy with is my Thinkpad, but it pales compared to a Macbook (Air, Pro or whatever).
> Power management on Macbooks is unbeatable in my experience, both Windows and Linux have really serious issues dealing with sleep and low power modes.
I've been dealing with this recently. Linux won't hibernate if you have Secure Boot enabled, even if your swap is encrypted. So I either have to leave my laptop plugged in all the time or remember to shut it down before unplugging it so it doesn't completely drain its battery while sleeping.
Windows via BootCamp was my laptop nirvana. I'm not sure the emulated Windows experience on newer Macs is the same. No Nvidia inside is also a bit of a dealbreaker.
As someone also trying to get out of (or at least less dependent on) the Apple ecosystem, the laptop market sucks! Everyone but Apple is making the same garbage-tier, shoddy, plastic laptops with bottom of the barrel components that I'm sure are engineered to just barely work enough to avoid immediate product returns.
I'm starting to accept that if I want a development workstation class machine, I need to build a tower from components.
When you walk into a Best Buy, the small majority of non-Apple laptops seem to be made of metal, even the $300 Chromebooks. They look and feel more premium, but probably aren't.
The sad thing is that plastic should be the best material to make laptops from. It's lighter, and it gives when dropped. Think about the cases everybody puts on their phones. They're not made of solid metal, for good reason.
The old Thinkpads had it right, they used a magnesium frame surrounded by high quality plastic.
My MacBook Pro is well made, but it's also a pound heavier than it needs to be.
The quality you get for the money from Mac's is truly unmatched by any other laptop out there - why not use a VM on it for other OS & software?
I don't disagree with you. I really really love the hardware -- and BTW it would be a dream if I get to work with OS/Hardware people in Apple. I don't like the software, especially the OS built-ins, but I guess I can find alternatives in App store.
I might eventually go down this route, if I can't find a reasonable good one. I use VMWare in Windows to access Linux on my 5550, so it's not a far stretch to switch the host.
I bought a Dell XPS M1210 laptop in 2007. About a year later the laptop died. From what I could gather, the soldering on the NVIDIA 7400 graphics card had failed. Some people were apparently able to reflow it but I had no such luck.
In my opinion Dell laptops have never been good. But I never bought another one since that happened, so maybe I've missed out.
Yes, Apple seems to be the only company that actually cares about the quality of their laptop in my experience. And I say that as someone who used to run Linux on my laptops in 2010~18..
I'm having a lot of fun running Fedora in a VM with UTM on my MacBook (an old Intel one). You might try that if you already have an M1 MacBook.
If you already have a macbook why not just buy a PC at this point? You can change parts that break, you won't have to deal with battery issues and if you are on a budget you can only buy what you need today and upgrade later.
edit: to lenovo/dell question I'd say the quality varies by model - lower end thinkpads are better while expensive one got worse. But there are still a lot of differences between a small business series and enterprise. USB-C perfect as a connector, but if it is not replaceble it is a nightmare.
could try asahi? i think it's pretty good on the m1.
lenovos remain good if you get a high spec thinkpad. maybe get a few year old high spec thinkpad new/refurb off ebay with a three year service contract (search "p1 gen 6" on ebay)? i think you can always re-up the service contract on new ones as well.
Yeah I heard a lot of good things about that. I'm a bit reluctant but I think eventually I'm going to give it a try.
I'll check with Dell and Thinkpad if I can buy extended service contracts. AFAIK Dell tops out at 4 years but maybe I can extend that later. I wouldn't mind if I have to pay half of the laptop price to get a 8-10 year contract because new laptops break up way too soon - and every time it is something small but critical, like the charging port thing that many people had to get a new motherboard from Dell.
idk. i don't think there's a good story if you're primarily interested in full-cycle e-waste minimization and avoidance. the mac hardware is good and is designed to live on timescales like that (probably because they are primarily aimed at building a good consumer brand) but it's also impossible to upgrade so there is some built-in planned obsolescence in that regard. (although it can be sold and replaced with other higher spec used gear).
the thinkpad and dell stuff is more upgradable, but is largely aimed at business markets where they plan on refreshing every 3-4 years.
i think maybe you get the most longevity (and possible warranty) out of thinkpad, but sadly none of this stuff is really designed to last that long.
e-waste sucks. unfortunately, our current dominant system of production doesn't really reward design for longevity. refreshing technology on the regular makes for a pleasant consumer experience, i wish it were less environmentally damaging.
framework has an angle on this, but i think in practice they're somewhat equivalent to thinkpads in terms of extendability. i also wonder how much you actually save when you start replacing everything over the long run.
The market is splintered into high-end work laptop, low-end work laptops, gaming laptops. Only Apple has the brand value to be in the first set. Everyone else is in a market for lemons.
I think Apple makes really nice hardware but you can get better specs in as light (or lighter) frame elsewhere. I can compare AMD T14 Thinkpad to a Macbook. Thinkpad is faster, has more RAM (easy to get 64GB now), better keyboard. It's also louder, hotter and the screen is probably worse (mine is low end so it's significantly worse but idk how high end OLED compares). Macbooks have much better sound. Thinkpad runs Linux while Macbooks (the newest ones) still don't.
I think Apple is winning but not to the extent of being the only game in town.
“Better specs” is precisely why most laptops are garbage. There is no spec for “months until the screen starts visibly ghosting” or “percentage of the time standby doesn’t happen so your laptop is dead when you need it”. So you end up comparing the stats that are available, like GB/$, when for most people these are not the biggest factors in their day to day experience with the device. (If speed and memory are the biggest factors then a laptop is clearly the wrong device.)
I went with an expensive XPS (their "carbon skin model") with the top config 3 years ago. The touch screen failed in less than a year, the battery become useless in 2 years and I am now in my second charger which is failing. The unit feels tired/old though the performance on what matters (cpu/memory/nvme) is still solid so far. I guess anything not made by Dell is holding on.
That's frustrating. I wonder if it changes anything if you had purchased extended Dell care back then. I just checked online that their 4 year basic care costs about 270 CAD so I might go for it if I buy a new one. Did you speak to Dell about this? I'd argue my case even if I had not purchased Dell Care.
But still, failing in a couple of years is really unacceptable. I was thinking 5 years for the battery and another 5 years for everything else. If you and me have to spend some $2,000 every 3-4 years it sounds more like a subscription service.
The other issue is that price point does not guarantee quality for any non-Apple boxes.
I am not US based and Dell service abroad is a joke. I'd check if that Dell Care is "real" as in not similar to "flight insurance" kind of insurance. Since Dell doesn't have the same international service as Apple, the experience will be very localized. I'd see if there is a Dell center nearby and check the reviews.
I've had very good experience with Dell support in the UK.
With the on-site option, they come to your home or business next day and fit any required parts.
I had a Dell laptop for work a while back where the MB died 3x in under 2 years... They replaced it all three times, and were a bit sus at the third one... but I literally left it in a locked drawer at work more often than I'd take it home.
The best experiences I've had with Dell hardware have been mid though... worse with HP, won'y buy their stuff at all any more.
I've had mixed to very good experiences with Lenovo... Even their cheaper IdeaPad options. My SO had an IdeaPad that lasted about 7 years, and she was pretty rough on it. Just replaced with another a few months ago. For what it's work, runs PopOS like a dream. On the down side are soldered ram, and shorter vnme drives that have apparently had higher failure rates, already have a replacement ready on a shelf.
My personal laptop is an M1 Air 16gb... it's been a pretty great little box, though with my vision what it is, has been very hard to actually use for much.
Thanks for the tip!
I don't know about Lenovo but Dell is so cheap, they've shrunk the diameter of even the case screws. All their laptop touchpads fail to draw a straight line over time. On their Insiprions, I know if the CMOS battery dies, the laptop will no longer turn on. Dell is absolute junk.
Dell really seems to have taken a nosedive in quality the last few years. My wife and father both have an XPS and have had nothing but complaints.
Meanwhile my M2 MacBook pro is still going strong
>The other issue is that 5550 uses USB-C ports. I blame on myself not checking it closely before the purchase. I really hate those ports. Why is everyone copying from Mac?
It's not copying Apple. It's that every port does everything, including charging. It is standards-compliant.
As just one example, you no longer need to lug a laptop charger with you; there are no longer "computer chargers" and "phone chargers", but one charger that can charge everything, often simultaneously via multiple ports. When you combine this with a docking station, one cable truly does all.
It is wonderful. Embrace it.
The thing is, everything I bought don't use those ports. I have to buy a new keyboard and a new mouse (wireless mouses also need a driver dongle) for the ports.
And what is worse? New laptops have less ports than the older ones. That 5550 only has 3 ports and 1 is for charging. If I want to mount an external hard drive, I need to bring a hub.
What again, looks like everyone is doing that, so yeah, better embrace it.
Rapid change and new things are an integral part of tech especially laptops. This is a strange complaint