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Comment Re:And (Score 1) 122

Even people who don't upgrade their own stuff benefit by having upgradable devices. They can hire the 12-year-old down the street to do upgrades or repairs, take the device to Best Buy or Micro Center, or ask a family member or friend to do it. All of these options beat throwing away the entire device and buying a new one because the user needs more RAM or had RAM that went bad.

Comment Re:I don't get the Thinkpad fascination (Score 1) 39

The Fn and Ctrl keys can be swapped in BIOS (and they actually swapped them on the latest keyboards, so those of us who are used to the old layout need to swap them back). The old keyboard that had the Fn key to the left of Ctrl followed the original standard (an actual written standard) for laptop keyboards. The version with the Ctrl key to the left of Fn is a corruption, which somehow became more popular among laptop manufacturers. As a Thinkpad user, I don't get the popularity of Apple's laptops. I hate the keyboards and the buttonless touchpads (both of which are subjective, admittedly). I hate that they are basically unrepairable. I hate that the default LCD is glossy (I realize that they offer a matte option now). I hate that RAM and storage are not upgradable. I hate the limited port selection. I don't like the prices. Mac laptops only really win in three areas: battery life, LCD quality (resolution and color accuracy), and loudspeaker quality. If you actually need any of those three things, then you need a Mac. For everyone else, there are better options.

Comment Re:One fucking mouse button (Score 1) 39

I refuse to buy laptops without physical mouse buttons. I prefer the Thinkpad pointing stick, but can live with a touch pad that has physical buttons. I'm not sure why the bulk of the laptop industry decided that buttons were unnecessary, but it's a terrible move. At least Lenovo has kept them (3, even!)...for now.

Comment Re:All I want... (Score 1) 39

The current ones are actually still pretty solid, as long as you stick to the P, X, and T series. The biggest step backwards has been in keyboards, ever since they went to the 6-row chiclet design, then to the 1.5mm low-travel version. Make the damn thing 2-3mm thicker and give me back the non-chiclet 7-row keyboard, please. The annoying thing is that they are still better than the competition (with the understanding that all laptops are compromised and suck to varying degrees).

Comment Re:Yep (Score 1) 38

The problem with Windows on ARM is that, for now, it has exactly one selling point (better battery life on laptops) and lots of disadvantages. The product line is incomplete (no desktops, no GPU machines, everything has soldered RAM), and the future of MS support for Windows on ARM is an open question. I could see the laptops becoming popular with Linux users if the hardware were fully supported, but it isn't. The whole thing is kind of a dumpster fire. Meanwhile, Lunar Lake exists for laptop users who care about battery life, and there are brute-force methods (larger batteries) that work as well.

Comment B&W PCL/Postscript laser printer (Score 1) 92

Get a B&W laser printer. If you look at HP, avoid anything with "e" in the model number (those are the ones that require toner subscriptions) and get a business-oriented machine. The M501DN (for example) seems decent. If you need color and/or multi-function, look at Brother. I just got an MFC-L3780CDW for my parents (who wanted both color and faxing, for some reason), and they seem happy with it. Whatever you do, make sure to get a printer that supports both PCL and Postscript (or some emulated version of Postscript). This will ensure that the printer will continue to be useful even if manufacturer-supplied drivers are not available for some future platform or operating system.

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