I originally bought my MacBook Air M1 just as a transitional computer because my old, incredibly expensive Intel MacBook Pro had been stolen, and I was waiting for a newer MacBook Pro model. But I grew so fond of the Air that I couldn't bring myself to part with it again. It's lightweight, has incredible performance (more powerful than the most powerful Intel-based Pros), the battery lasts a long time, the keyboard is comfortable, and the design is more curved than the Pro (and the newer Air models), which means it doesn't dig into your wrists.
My favorite laptop has consistently been the one that I can buy off the second-hand business surplus market for cheap, and has a plethora of replacement parts available on ebay. Up until the whole PC market got stupid about a year ago, anyway.
My current daily driver is a Dell Precision 7550. It has a nice 15" display, touchpad buttons with a middle-mouse button, USB-C + Thunderbolt. Keyboard is not great, but not terrible. I did have to buy a new battery for it. I don't know what I'm going to do if/when it dies, because neither Dell nor Lenovo make a laptop now that I am interested in owning in 3-4 years.
As I have done more ai coding where I'm just reviewing a PR and giving feedback to a model that runs on a studio in my home, I wonder if eventually something like this as a thin client would be nice. Has anyone done something similar? I think most of the time I wouldn't have enough internet to access my server, I also might not be wanting to code in the first place.
I built my own web tmux type thing running on a beefy metal box (for rust builds) that I access over tailscale. I was using HAPI, but I wanted to simplify and use rust for the back end and my own elm-like front-end to improve performance. I haven't published it since it's pretty specific to my workflow (I ruthlessly keep it as simple as possible), but you can think of it like a Herdr type thing in the browser. It also has a phone interface and I generally use speech instead of typing as a lot of my compositions can be stream of thought.
I use an MBA and an iPhone, but a cheap tablet or phone would work just as well. I care about network, portability, screen size + quality, and speech to text. Pretty much nothing else matters, CPU / GPU irrelevant as long as it can run a browser. I might build a native non-browser version at some point for better resource management on the client, but it hasn't been an issue so far. I would love a pair of glasses I could render text on with speech to text.
I built a mobile client for agents called Cosyra. For this use case I'd say use chat to prompt an agent because it will queue the message for when you have internet and sends it as an https request so it's pretty lightweight. You can check it out here: cosyra.com
My "desktop" machine is actually an old T450 I bought used over a decade ago, running Linux Mint (Mate).
Weak processor, 16gb ram, but good enough for browsing and running daily tasks, and it's simple enough to connect to more powerful machines when the need arises. And the docking station has HDMI and displayport. Hardware H.264 codec, and also HEVC and VP9, but alas only with the windows driver.
My big rig desktop is now in the basement, sleeping until I need to run LLMs or diffusion or a heavy compile. I also sometimes use it for Steam gaming, connecting to it via moonlight (which works surprisingly well, even over WIFI).
I love the T Series Thinkpads... had several of them and recently did a RAM and SSD upgrade to one that is still running great. The only thing they need to improve is the trackpad. It's not bad, but the macbook trackpad is still king.
Macbook Air mid-2012 here. 8GB. I use Nixos without a desktop env, this little machine refuses to die or become obsolete. I have a 3090 in a desktop for messing around with LLMs but that's headless.
"I’ve opted for the largest after-market external battery I could find. When doing casual work the laptop will easily survive for north of 10 hours without a charge, stretching to 12 hours if I’m careful."
Does anyone have a good suggestion for an aftermarket battery? I have a few Thinkpads and I've tried so many batteries and they all last maybe 2 or 3 hours before needing a recharge. If someone is out there making high density batteries for these old laptops I'd love to pick one up.
I use a T480 as my daily driver and recently upgraded to a 72wh battery after the old 24wh pack died. I bought a Lenovo-branded Total Micro battery off of CDW to ensure I was actually getting what I paid for, as the last battery was a cheap knockoff that barely lasted a year. The 72wh battery was about a $10 difference to the 48wh battery and will easily last 10 hours but could last 14 hours with conservative use.
The author didn't list real mouse buttons as a benefit, and I see from the image it has them. I've been buying refurbished Dell business class laptops for a decade, the last one I bought, a Dell Latitude 7420, doesn't have them, which is turning out to be a big problem. It means that cut-n-paste went way up in hassle and inaccuracy. Why did laptop vendors quit putting in mouse buttons? Does the average Windows user only left click on things? Does any laptop come with mouse buttons these days?
My daughter got some low-end Dell laptop for her school machine and the touchpad w/o buttons is fucking excruciating. They had her using OnShape last year with that touchpad. I tried it and nearly gave the machine a toss in frustration. I had her use my older Dell machine w/ buttons to see how much less shitty it is (and then I gave her a USB mouse to use because OnShape with any touchpad is still difficult to use, IMO).
IMO, Dell Latitudes stopped being business-quality and started being consumer-quality _many_ years ago. Crap keyboards, crap touchpad, cheap painted plastic case, etc. You need to step up to at least the Precision line to get anything decent.
Although, Dell have refreshed all of their product lines lately, so even this is outdated advice. Looking through their current lineup and I don't see _any_ with real physical touchpad buttons or pointer sticks, unfortunately.
Even my very light Fujitsu U939 has two real mouse buttons. On the other side, I allways have a small mouse or a trackball with me. The cursor buttons are also in full size and he has also 2 seperate PgUp and PgDown buttons. I have no idea how people can work on a notebook without these buttons.
The trackpoint of old is my favorite input method for laptops. But the trackpoint of new is not like the trackpoint of old. I still prefer it to the trackpad personally, just because it's so ingrained in me, but I no longer try to convince friends and family. It's on its way out, culturally, because of said enshittification.
My current daily driver is a Dell Precision 7550. It has a nice 15" display, touchpad buttons with a middle-mouse button, USB-C + Thunderbolt. Keyboard is not great, but not terrible. I did have to buy a new battery for it. I don't know what I'm going to do if/when it dies, because neither Dell nor Lenovo make a laptop now that I am interested in owning in 3-4 years.
I use an MBA and an iPhone, but a cheap tablet or phone would work just as well. I care about network, portability, screen size + quality, and speech to text. Pretty much nothing else matters, CPU / GPU irrelevant as long as it can run a browser. I might build a native non-browser version at some point for better resource management on the client, but it hasn't been an issue so far. I would love a pair of glasses I could render text on with speech to text.
Weak processor, 16gb ram, but good enough for browsing and running daily tasks, and it's simple enough to connect to more powerful machines when the need arises. And the docking station has HDMI and displayport. Hardware H.264 codec, and also HEVC and VP9, but alas only with the windows driver.
My big rig desktop is now in the basement, sleeping until I need to run LLMs or diffusion or a heavy compile. I also sometimes use it for Steam gaming, connecting to it via moonlight (which works surprisingly well, even over WIFI).
Does anyone have a good suggestion for an aftermarket battery? I have a few Thinkpads and I've tried so many batteries and they all last maybe 2 or 3 hours before needing a recharge. If someone is out there making high density batteries for these old laptops I'd love to pick one up.
This is the specific battery I bought: https://www.cdw.com/product/total-micro-battery-lenovo-think...
Although, Dell have refreshed all of their product lines lately, so even this is outdated advice. Looking through their current lineup and I don't see _any_ with real physical touchpad buttons or pointer sticks, unfortunately.
The ThinkPads have them below the spacebar. They are conveniently placed if one uses the little red stick, not so much for the touchpad.
But I don’t pretend that any of these gestures make trackpads usable.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/th...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92bdOcsBVpQ