Jump to content

iRandomize

Member
  • Posts

    146
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation Activity

  1. Agree
    iRandomize got a reaction from whoisjaya in Is 1280×1024 near to 1080p resolution?   
    No reason to upgrade then! Yes - FHD is significantly higher resolution than your current monitor, and your performance will most likely drop. But it's hard to say by how much, we would need full system specs to make an educated guess.
    Ahh! I get what you were saying now! That we can agree on! Basicly - if your CPU is the bottleneck in your current system, the framerate will stay roughly the same. But if the gpu is the limiting factor, the performance will decrease as you up the resolution.
  2. Agree
    iRandomize got a reaction from dalekphalm in Firefox 57 (aka Quantum) out now. Huge performance improvements.   
    I've been using Firefox 57 (Quantum) exclusively since launch. On both Windows and macOS. Long story short, on Windows its amazing. I see no perceivable difference between Chrome and Firefox, except for much less ram usage in Firefox. I do not switching back to Chrome or Edge. And on top of that, i really like being on an independent browser.
     
    However, on macOS it really sucks. It may be really snappy at times, but sometimes it really bogs down. And i have no idea why. I had to switch back to Chrome which just seems to perform much more consistently. I'm probably the only one on these forums finding myself on a mac at times (and btw, i prefer Windows 10, and spend like 80-90% on Windows!), but if anyone else have any experience with sluggish performance on a mac, please let me know! I would really love to switch to Firefox, and completely leave Chrome behind! Also. I like the look of Firefox 57 better
     
    On the entire 1080p vs 4k discussion: I do see a difference between 4k, 1440p and 1080p Youtube content, and i have nowhere near perfect eyesight. Someone should make a poll on this, and when it turns out 99% to 1%, it has to be more than just placebo...
  3. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from The Benjamins in Bitcoin: It's over 9000!!! (Edit: Now it's over 20,000!)   
    When money was bound to gold, it had value because it could always be exchanged for gold at a known rate. Back when the gold standard was still used, there weren’t that many practical uses for gold - except for it being pretty. So gold mainly got it value because it was a limited resource. As gold fluctuated in value, so would money. Not a great attribute. 
     
    Today, regular currencies are valuable because everyone agrees that it has value. The fluctuation in the value of regular currencies are (mainly) controlled by the interest rates and thus controlled by central banks / governments. 
     
    Bitcoin has value because it is a limited resource in much the same way gold was. And in the same way gold did, bitcoin can fluctuate in value as the demand for bitcoin changes.
     
    I am very fond of the principle of a limited-resource based currency. I think there are some significant shortcomings of the current central bank system (the Austrian School raises some very valid concerns in my opinion) and think the potential for alternative measures of value is interesting - and the apparent interest in bitcoin/etherum would suggest I’m not the only one. I do however not believe that bitcoin is a perfect solution. The power usage and significant transaction time are reasons why bitcoin will never be a viable alternative to cash for everyday transactions. Not to mention the huge fluctuations (increases) in price. But as a proof of concept that currency/money does not have to be run by a government I think bitcoin is very fascinating, and opens some very interesting possibilities for future currencies. 
  4. Funny
    iRandomize got a reaction from vanished in AMD Radeon RX 480   
    My YouTube front page right now.

  5. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from RezidentSeagull in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  6. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from elfensky in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  7. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from Nup in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    About 30 minutes i guess. It was based on notes i have made the last 3 months, so it was mostly a matter of translating it.
  8. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from WaterproofBeanie in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  9. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from PlayStation 2 in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  10. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from farhanorakzai in Retina 13' Macbook Pro Mid 2014 + Anti-Apple Rant.   
    Nope. 2560x1600 as pointed out by farhanorakzai
     
  11. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from BurgerBum in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  12. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from rambi36 in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  13. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from blueballs in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  14. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from paps511 in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  15. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from razor767 in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  16. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from jdjeffs in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  17. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from ALwin in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  18. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from Mapsle in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    There are a couple of reasons i was very disappointed with the X1. My friend has one, and within the first week of owning it the screen cracked down the middle, just from carrying it in his bag. And this was literally the first time he ever broke a computer. He has always been very careful. The screen flexes more than i like it to, and the overall built quality just doesn't seem like a ThinkPad to me. Its all made from plastic (with some Carbon stiffening on the inside). Lenovo claims it's the most robust ThinkPad they ever made, but that's really not the feeling i took away from using it.
     
    I also had some trouble adjusting to the trackpad clickyness. The TrackPad is responsive and feels great, until you press it. It feels mushy and the travel distance is too long for my taste.
     
    Although those multi-function buttons along the top may seem awesome, they are really terrible in every day use. I find myself spending way to much time cycling between the three modes. This feature has however been removed in the newest version.
     
    I get that much of this is personal preference, but i could never really fall in love with this notebook. If you go for the HiDPI display, the price is on par with the XPS 13, and the XPS 13 is a far better notebook in my opinion - only let down by its mediocre keyboard.
  19. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from mikeeginger in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  20. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from Stefken89 in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  21. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from TheGeeker in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    About 30 minutes i guess. It was based on notes i have made the last 3 months, so it was mostly a matter of translating it.
  22. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from Speedyv in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    Why I switched to The Dark Side
    My thoughts behind the 2015 13” MacBook Pro Retina.
    Introduction
    During my search for a replacement laptop for my ageing Sony Vaio 13" i have been taking down notes of every option and all my thought processes along the way. This turned out to be quite a long one. I do fully understand that people are not willing to read this long thread, but at least read the conclusion before arguing with the title.
    My use case scenario and what I’m looking for in a notebook
    Since my trusty Sony Vaio 13” from 2008 finally gave up on me, I found myself in the market for a new notebook. The primary purpose of this notebook would be to get me safely through my economics studies. Portability and battery life was a priority, but I can never compromise on the quality of the keyboard – the one thing about the Sony notebook I really loved, and kept it alive for almost 7 years.
     
    Like Linus – and many other tech enthusiasts – I put a heavy workload on my ram. I often run 20+ internet taps open, and my economics studies often results in some pretty demanding excel sheets, easily taking up 2+ GB of ram if not more. I therefore often found myself using up most of the 8GB of ram I had installed in my Sony laptop. I also realised that the 7 year old Core 2 Duo was long overdue, and could no longer keep up with my increasingly demanding multitasking expectations. Excel calculations was simply becoming to cumbersome for the aging CPU, bugging down the entire system.
     
    Although I would consider myself as a casual gamer, with a long time close relationship to the Battlefield Franchise, I have never found laptop gaming appealing in any way. Gaming is left to my desktop with a dedicated monitor, mouse and keyboard. Gaming was therefore never a priority for my laptop.
    In summary my laptop should live up to the following requirements:
    Battery life Good quality keyboard At least 8GB of ram 13” has been the perfect size for me My maximum budget was 1500 USD A display resolution of 1440x900 or greater   The laptop market – as I see it
    Obviously a lot has happened in the previous 7 years. I have been following the evolution of the notebook computers fairly closely, especially the last 6 months as my current notebook was giving up. The most notable change has been the entry of the Ultrabook. These computers offer long battery life, great portability and performance that puts my trusty old Sony to shame. When you step back, its quite impressive what has happened to power efficient performance, and how much performance Intel has been able to squeeze out of such a tiny power envelope. I was instantly in love with this category of computers, and quickly decided that this would be the primary focus of my computer hunt. Although it seemed that every time I found an Ultrabook that seemed excellent, I could always find that one little flaw, that turned out to be a deal breaker for me. The budget listed above made virtually every Ultrabook an option, and I set out to experience all of them.
      Asus UX-series
    This was possibly the most intriguing option in my searches, but I quickly found the series very confusing. There is almost an endless number of different configurations, models and focus area for these notebooks. Every single notebook seemed like a different compromise in my eyes. Either it would have a low resolution display, not being able to fit enough information at the screen at once to make my work comfortable, or it would have some sort of discrete graphics card, ruining the battery life, and make the computer noisier than it had to be. What I needed was a high resolution display, a lot of memory and no discrete graphics, and I could simply not find this option. I was constantly on the lookout for a version of this computer that would fit my needs, but it just never showed up.
      Lenovo Yoga-series
    This truly is an amazing machine, everything about this computer seems very well-built and thought through. The keyboard is great, the display is nice and it is an overall nice experience. I couldn’t care less about the 2-in-1’ness, but as a dedicated laptop this one did just fine. The laptop had only one shortcoming – the battery life. Although 6.5 hours was better than my Sony ever did, I decided to keep looking and if nothing else, this would be the one.
      Lenovo X1-Carbon
    The Lenovo ThinkPad series has always been known for their built quality, excellent keyboards and overall a great experience (or at least so I’ve heard). But how the hell did they manage to mess this up so badly then? The built quality feels horrible, the keyboard is a mess (I mean seriously, for productivity use, you remove the function keys?). Although it looks nice, weights nothing and has a decent battery life, this computer quickly lost all of my interests. I feel bad for everyone who was tricked into buying this by the Lenovo ThinkPad branding. This computer is just terrible. I’m sorry Lenovo but you need to get back to the drawing board on this one.
      MacBook Air
    This notebook had two aspects – I could either run Mac OS X on it, or I could be more reasonable and Bootcamp Windows onto it. Although the entry level model seems very competitively priced, the price quickly gets up there once you choose the mandatory 256GB SSD and 8GB ram (mandatory to me at least). The built quality is excellent though. There is something about this all-aluminium construction that just works. The keyboard I quickly found quite appealing as well, this was an excellent computer in most aspects, and I always jumped the gun on this one, but then the XPS 13 was released.
      Dell XPS 13
    This one is interesting. My dad found this and bought it on the spot, although he wasn’t really in the market for a new notebook. This was like love at first sight to me. I had never been to fascinated with HiDPI displays, and always prioritized screen real estate over screen quality. But suddenly the MacBook Air just didn’t seem very interesting anymore. My dad let me use this computer for a huge assignment at school, and this is when the one flaw I just couldn’t get past appeared to me. I could simply not agree with the keyboard. I don’t know if it’s the flex that Linus talked about in his review of this computer, or if it’s just they layout of the keys that messed me up, but I found my fingers to become very fatigued when writing on the keyboard, and I could simply not get used to it. Had it not been for the sub-par keyboard, this would have been the computer for me.
      Why I now love HiDPI displays
    My experience with the HiDPI displays – that I had earlier not cared about – I started to value a high resolution display noticeably higher. The main thing is of course the added sharpness to everything. The natural look of text is simply amazing, and hard to live without after having tried it.
    I did however underestimate the flexibility of the screen real estate you gain from a HiDPI display. Both Windows and Mac OS X offer different scaled resolution to allow for different levels of screen real estate and readability compromises. The scaling options for Windows are as follows:
    125% scaling – make everything 25% larger 150% scaling – make everything 50% larger 200% scaling – make everything 100% larger 300% scaling – make everything 200% larger Scaling on a Macintosh works a little differently. Mac OS X doubles the size of everything by default, making the 2560*1600 display on the 13” MacBook Pro seem like a 1280*800 display. The way Mac OS X handles scaling is through outputting to a larger resolution, and then downscaling or upscaling to the display resolution (a bit like nVidia Dynamic Super Resolution). The options on a 13” MacBook Pro is as follows:
    2048*1280 – seems like 1024*640 (upscaled to 2560*1600) 2560*1600 – seems like 1280*800 (default setting) 2880*1800 – seems like 1440*900 (downscaled to 2560*1600, my personal preference, same as the 13” MacBook Air) 3360*2100 – seems like 1680*1050 This level of customizability is simply not available in a low-res display. I have seen people scale a 1080p 13” display by 125% in Windows, but its not that common.
      The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina
    Having initially ruled out this option, because I didn’t feel I would get what I paid for in this price range, it started to warm up to me. A high resolution display, with great colour reproduction. Performance at a level that exceeded that of an Ultrabook and battery life on par with the Ultrabook counterparts. The decision not to go with dedicated graphics fit very closely with my preferences in a notebook. This seemed to be built for demanding office work like no other notebook on the market. The built quality is immaculate. I quickly fell in love with the form factor as well. What puzzles me the most is that there is simply no Windows counterpart to this computer.
     
    After using it, I could not find any flaw with the hardware. They keyboard is great, with just enough key travel to make typing a joy. Performance is great. The computer is silent almost all of the time and the battery life easily gets me through a day of moderate use. Not only is this a great Mac, but it is possibly the best computer in this category when running Windows 10 as well. A point several of my fellow college students have figured out and some are even running Windows 7/8/10 full time on their 13” MacBook’s.
     
    Lastly, the configurability options on the Apple website is just unrivalled. As Linus mentioned in his Dell XPS 13 review, not having the option to go with 16GB of ram is just ridiculous. Dell were the inventors of configuration your computer on their website, but today, Apple is in a category of their own in this regard. My MacBook is configured with the stock i5 CPU, 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of ram – which is just perfect. Other computer manufactures simply have to step up in this regard.
     
    The choice of the 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13” as my new daily driver is therefore made from a purely hardware standpoint, not with a single thought on the operating system. My initial plan even was to just install Windows on the computer, and run that as my daily driver, but even that changed as well.
      Mac OS X
    Having worked on a Mac before, I actually do like the operating system. I used to have a white MacBook and was actually decently satisfied with the user experience. The window management is just better than on Windows 7/8, with the virtual desktops and Exposé feature for switching windows. Although Windows has now caught onto those features (finally), I still find the execution on Mac OS X to be better. The multi-touch trackpad is just satisfying to work with, and makes every windows trackpad seem very badly executed. The precision-trackpad initiative by Windows, moving the trackpad features to be a part of the OS instead of the drivers, has been an improvement, but its still not there.
    One thing however, has always kept me away from OS X; the Microsoft Office suite. There has always been a huge gap between the quality of the Windows Office suite and the Macintosh counterpart. This, however, has changed. Although I still find the Windows version better than the 2015 version of Office for Mac, the gap has now closed markedly, to a point where I like the two versions equally. This suddenly made Mac OS X a viable option.
     
    For now, I am still using Mac OS X as my primary operating system. I rarely find myself booting into Windows anymore. Although Windows 10 has made a giant step, and is by far my favourite version of Windows, some things still annoy me. The default mail application is just terrible. Being a universal app is an inevitable compromise and does not seem to be optimal for use on a notebook. The Apple Mail application is far ahead of the Windows counterpart.
      Conclusion
    The 2015 MacBook Pro Retina seems to be the perfect notebook for my use case scenario. I enjoy every moment of working on this notebook and have not had any chance to regret my purchase. Although it was expensive, I really feel like its worth spending the extra money on a nice experience for my primary tool for both work, studying and entertainment.
     
    The main frustration behind this thread however, stems from the current direction of the Windows notebook market. The manufactures seem to be increasingly focused on specifications and less focused on the general user experience. With computers pushing screen resolution to meaningless points, and attempting to force 2-in-1 features, discrete graphics and benchmarks down our stomach. These benchmarks does not make a great experience - a nice, well built, thought through computer does!
  23. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from Arty in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    About 30 minutes i guess. It was based on notes i have made the last 3 months, so it was mostly a matter of translating it.
  24. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from Arty in Why I switched to The Dark Side   
    I expect i will get quite a few of those, however this part may be relevant to your comment.

  25. Like
    iRandomize got a reaction from HardstyleHorse in Upgrade the i7-2600K?   
    ASRock has been know to be very good overclockers on the Z68 and Z77 chipsets, with a high quality power delivery. They are very well documented on overclock.net (many guides are written for these boards). Im running an ASRock Extreme3 Gen3 and i have nothing but good things to say so far. ASRock is very underrated. ASRock og Asus would be my recommendations.
     
    The 2600K (and Sandy Bridge in general) are probably the best CPUs intel has released in a long time. The performance is still amazing. Most CPUs will hit 4.4ghz on stock voltage. Ivy Bridge and Haswell are not that much faster and by no means worth an upgrade. I have yet to find a game that is truly bottlenecked by my 2500k @ 4.7ghz.
×