This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and I suspect it won’t be the last.
HP is probably the worst offender in this regard - their website is almost unusable. Lenovo is a close second, and I say this as a compulsive ThinkPad buyer.
Edit: I think a lot of commenters here aren’t reading the article. This isn’t about your favourite laptop, it’s about why manufacturer websites suck.
You seriously can’t go wrong with the lenovo thinkpads on eBay. I Got a thinkpad E14 ryzen 7 (7th gen), 48gb ram, 1tb ssd for $400 on ebay with a small hair crack on the hinge.
At the end of the day, a laptop is a laptop, and the cost difference between a $2000 brand new laptop and a $400 used laptop there really is no argument/justification to be made to buy a $2000 laptop in less-intensive tasks. Here’s a better instance of your money: find a $400 laptop with semi-good performance (ryzen 3 or intel equivalent) put $1600 to a gaming computer and setup a virtual environment with a radeon or rtx gpu at your fingertips.
Most companies still change their laptops’ keyboard layouts in random negative ways every year; ship with stupid screen resolutions, woefully bad speakers, and disappointing touchpads; and stuff the most powerful processor and GPU in there and don’t focus enough on tuning the cooling, power usage, and fan profiles.
I don’t really get these nitpicks. If you’re planning to use the laptop as your daily driver, do what every other power user does and get a set of good peripherals.
Walk into class
Pull laptop out of bag, put it on the desk
Whip out mechanical keyboard
Mouse, small set of stereo speakers
Pull out a large object wrapped in a blanket
Everyone else watches confusedly
Take off blanket, unveiling a 28in monitor
Whip out power strip
Put power strip on the adjacent desk, no one is sitting there anyway
20ft extension cord
The outlet is on the far wall, run the extension cord between the desks
Apologize to everyone bumped into a long the way
Play World of Warcraft the entire time
I have also been confounded by the situation.
It is even worse when you are on the secondary market. The company’s product pages are broken. Trying to compare across different release years is way harder.
I assumed the reason for this had to do with the production systems and supply chains. They can get a certain number of x parts at y price from a factory located in a given location. You get enough parts in proximity to each other and you make it a model.
Its one thing for a small company to have enough components to have only a few models but with the volume dell or HP moves, they would need to really invest in suppliers or actually make the components themselves.
I dont imagine the marketing people have come up with all the options, they’re just the ones who have to try to sell want they’re given.
Thankfully I have some requirements for laptops that very significantly narrow my options:
- It must have a good, ergonomic keyboard
- It must have a pointing stick
That only leaves Thinkpads for me to consider.
Yeah I opted for the Framework 13, even with the less than perfect keyboard and lack of touch. My hope is that touch will be an option in the future. otherwise its a near perfect option.
Am I the only one that literally never uses the touchscreen on my laptop?
Framework. It’s framework.
If not for the price.
And the battery life
And the ugly and cumbersome ethernet expansion card.
To be fair though, if you’re hooking up an Ethernet cord you’ve already lost in the “ugly and cumbersome” department.
