6 ms·
I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfrie
by spandrew 6mo ago
I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in).
Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch.
If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really sucks.
Want PC gaming? Steamdeck or Steambox.
- bushbaba 6mo agoThe neo is the Chromebook for education revolution. It’s cheap and better than 98%+ of windows laptops. I’d not be surprised to see further Mac penetration to the business sector
- TheRoque 6mo ago13 inch screen though.. it's really small And with 8GB of RAM you are quite limited in the business sector as you say
- longislandguido 6mo agoI'm seeing a lot of "8GB ought to be enough for anybody" here over the last week....
- bobbob1921 6mo agoI think it’s worth mentioning also- 8 GB ram on a Mac is not the same as 8 GB on a windows OS machine, given the poor state of windows as an OS as of the past few years.
- longislandguido 6mo agoI forgot about magical Mac memory. Just keep it under one browser tab, bro.
- aurareturn 6mo agoIt actually is magic Mac memory. No joke. 8GB on macOS is good enough for 80% of people.
- lukeschlather 6mo agoDo browsers and Electron apps magically take up less memory on Macs? What is "good enough?" I never notice problems on my 16GB Windows laptop, so just for fun I closed all of my 6 always-on Electron-type apps, all of the 10 browser windows I had open, a couple other ever-present apps, and it looks like without anything else Windows 10 takes about 4GB, which I think is in the same ballpark as OS X. And I probably have some stuff running that I didn't close, this is very unscientific. Anecdotally also, my one laptop that I've upgraded to Windows 11 is a lot snappier. As a rule I haven't noticed memory pressure on any device I've owned ever as a "regular user," it only really applies to gaming and heavy development with lots of VMs, especially these days.
- aurareturn 6mo agoSwap on macOS is incredibly good. Not sure how Apple does it. Maybe hardware compression?
- longislandguido 6mo ago> Not sure how Apple does it. They do it by prematurely wearing down the soldered SSD just in time for you to buy a new laptop.
- aurareturn 6mo agoAs far as I know, there is no M1 8GB SSD wear down complaints in 2026.
- spicySpy 6mo agoThere are - people are complaining about SSD health
- dymk 6mo agoI don’t see much “for anybody”, but I do see a lot of “for students / people who browse the web / word processing” which is still a pretty large set of people, and the Neo handles those workloads just fine
- longislandguido 6mo agoLiterally two comments above mine in this discussion: > The Neo is probably the best laptop for typical people. I rest my case.
- dymk 6mo ago"students / web browsing / word processing" == typical people, but maybe that's my own biases
- bombcar 6mo agoSteam report is a good thing to look at: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=mac https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=mac For Mac, 30% are at 8GB, 43% at 16GB. Windows has nearly nobody below 16GB (27%) and the biggest is 32GB (58%)
- dpark 6mo ago13” is not really that small. It’s a screen size many people choose. The Neo is also not a play for businesses directly. It seems pretty clearly a play for students who will eventually enter the business world with their personal laptop preferences.
- Sohcahtoa82 6mo ago> The Neo is also not a play for businesses directly. This really is the key point. The Neo is not a work laptop (At least, not for engineers). It's a low-end laptop designed to compete with Chromebooks.
- aurareturn 6mo agoI spent one year using an M1 8GB Macbook Air as a professional developer during covid. The A18 Pro flies around the M1. You can definitely use this as a dev - especially when we're just prompting AI nowadays.
- 999900000999 6mo agoThe Neo is probably the best laptop for typical people. I have an RTX 5070TI laptop. 95% I use it with Tumbleweed. Unfortunately with work I don't have too much to play with LLM training and such. The ultra poor person system is a used 200$ Thinkpad ( something about 2 years old) + your Linux distro of choice.
- jcelerier 6mo ago200$ ThinkPad...? The current best sellers on Amazon US are two 180$ brand new laptops. Intel Celeron N4020, 4Gb ram, 64 GB storage, 1366x768. This is what the average computer user is using to try to run your apps and websites. And remember - a cheap laptop bought today is going to be in use for at least five years.
- 999900000999 6mo agoUsed, on eBay you can find something very capable for 200 to 250. Around 300$ it gets better, specifically if you're open to Dell and other brands.
- bombcar 6mo agoThe only things I recognize on that are the CPU brand name (there have been times the Celeron has been good bang for the buck), the RAM, and the storage (I guess and the resolution). To me, all of those seem woefully underpowered, but $180 is $180...
- Teckla 6mo agoThe Neo is probably the best laptop for typical people. I don't think traditional desktop operating systems are best for most people. I believe a Chromebook, or an iPad with a keyboard, is best.
- longislandguido 6mo agoThe Neo costs $200 more than a comparable Windows laptop, but with half the RAM and storage as said comparable Windows laptop. They're fighting to seize the very specific market segment of "I don't like Windows and don't want to use Linux or a Chromebook, and I'm also poor, but still want to pay a premium price for an underpowered tablet with keyboard glued to it."
- kstrauser 6mo agoPlease, by all means do post a link to a comparable new Windows laptop for $400, including a fast GPU, reasonable amount of fast storage (and not counting an SD card or such), a high-DPI monitor, and non-embarassing build quality. I'd love to see this.
- chocochunks 6mo agoThe GPU in the Neo isn't particularly fast...nor is the storage. Neo makes loads of compromises to hit $600 with some of it's features. Even for $400 you can get Windows PCs with TWO whole USB 3.0 ports. $400 quickly hits diminishing returns territory. Like here's a $500 PC: https://www.amazon.com/Aspire-Copilot-WUXGA-Display-Processor/dp/B0DWNLN3KP https://www.amazon.com/Aspire-Copilot-WUXGA-Display-Processo... https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-14-AI-review-Basic-home-and-office-laptop-done-right.974950.0.html#c12912859 https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-14-AI-review-Basic... Twice the storage, twice the RAM, comparable GPU. CPU is a slower in single core, but comparable in multi-core. Faster storage. USB 4, HDMI, multiple USB A ports. Supports more than 1 external monitor. Yep, chassis and screen are worse but it's better in many other ways.
- philistine 6mo agoYou're proving the point. The computer you found wins on the specs page for sure. But the proof is in the pudding; Apple makes money hand over fist because they focus on reasonable specs, and quality. The thing that kills a modern laptop is not a slow CPU or RAM on the chip; it's a cheap chassis that breaks. That's what makes people change their computer.
- emptyfile 6mo agoMeanwhile every MacOS thread is filled with people complaining how everything is broken and only getting worse. Not that I'd know, I've probably seen <10 apple laptop devices in my life and never used one.
- alemanek 6mo agoApple is in the process of fixing Tahoe which was a regression from Sequoia the previous release. Tahoe is decent with 26.4 though from what I am hearing. Either OS version is far far better than regular Windows 11 though. Apple’s real differentiator is their silicon. M series chips are just incredibly good and you get a full workday out of them on battery. The M1 Pro I still have at work is easily the best laptop I have ever used. For side projects I use an M4 air with maxed out RAM and it has no issues with anything I have thrown at it.
- p_j_w 6mo ago> Meanwhile every MacOS thread is filled with people complaining how everything is broken and only getting worse. Having been using Macs for work and home use for the last few years, I have to say you’re right. And yet, in spite of that, I’d still rather use MacOS over Windows. The fans on my Mac never start spinning up as soon as the login screen appears or randomly when it’s sitting untouched on my desk, I never find MacOS to have rebooted in the middle of the night without asking me, it doesn’t constantly nag me to use iCloud more, and it never shows ads for Apple shit in Finder. When I use MacOS, the worst I feel is the developers are a bit sloppy. When I use Windows, I feel like the developers actively hate me.
- phendrenad2 6mo agoBuying a gaming laptop is like buying have a sports car. Sure, it looks nice, and you may even be able to wheel it around a bit. But it's not the ideal experience.
- tombert 6mo agoI bought my mother in law a Lenovo Thinkbook for Christmas; I didn't know that the Macbook Neo was coming else I might have waited for that. Anyway, I installed Linux Mint on there. She has been using it every day and at least according to her there hasn't really been any jank (and I told her to call me any time if something breaks and I'll fix it). At this point, I think Linux distros have gotten good enough to realistically start stealing users away from Windows. Linux Mint is easy to use, runs fine even on modest hardware, and doesn't push a bunch of shitty ads at you. I think there is an option for telemetry, but I also think that disabling it actually disables it. Wine and Proton have gotten so good that outside of modern MS Office, most Windows things just run if you need it, but if you're not using MS Office heavily then you likely can get by with web apps and/or the Linux alternatives. Maybe it really will be the Year of the Linux Desktop!
- seb1204 6mo agoGreat, I did the same some years ago with xubutu. Did you set up some remote control software to log in if needed? Which one?
- tombert 6mo agoI actually have just used tmate to log into stuff since most things can be driven by command line. We got her set up with Discord so she can screen share if she needs to.
- pjmlp 6mo agoOver here it is 800 euro for a 8 GB device, no thanks. I would rather advise XBox, Nintendo or PlayStation for gaming.
- noisy_boy 6mo ago> I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in). Buying a Windows laptop is a default even for a lot of Linux users because the alternatives are mostly too US-centric. In Asia, Framework only delivers to Taiwan - which is astounding given the technically advanced population of consumers in South East Asia. I'm not aware of System76 etc having any sales channels and after sales service setup in Asia either. Until Asahi becomes a stable choice on Macs, if you want to run Linux on a laptop of a reputable brand, a Windows laptop is basically the only option (even though you may just wipe it). I kept mine dual boot not because I actually use Windows at home but because I paid for the bloody license, even though against my wishes.