Hello Comrades,
I am overwhelmed! have to get a new laptop for work stuff. And everything is horribly riddled with AI and unwanted features and planned obsolescence, etc. I am feeling so old and lost; and stuck with paralysis! Can someone help me with just a simple recommendation on a laptop or laptop series or something? Need: video calling, decent battery life. Wants: could play RDR2 (I realize now this ask is too much- the purchase will be a write off so, I was being greedy and trying to treat myself)or some equivalent. This felt so simple 10 years ago! Stupid Crapitalism grumbling old man noises
Edit: Wow, thanks so much, this is so helpful! Guess, I’m realizing I’m gonna need to start on windows and hopefully switch over to Linux next year(going make time to start a 30 day intro mid Jan). And, looking at Thinkpad T series. All the new ones have MD ryzen ai pro processors- does anyone have thoughts on these??? (I’m really wary of ai on the computer because I work with HIPPA compliant stuff, so I just generally want to avoid it because if it isn’t managed right its a potential violation.)
Update 11 days later: I went with a ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 Intel with Ubuntu preinstalled, a ThinkVision monitor and a Thunderbolt docking station. I am beyond pleased, the laptop is realistically the most impressive piece of hardware I’ve personally owned. The docking station and monitor turn it into an all in one super versatile set up. Very lightweight compact powerful laptop. Easy to connect comfortable desktop, and can link with other equipment. Getting away from the alphabet- microsoft/google/apple has always been interesting but now feels like both a moral and practical imperative, so thanks to your encouragement I made the jump! Thinkpad models coming with linux options pre installed- making it easy. With Ubuntu, its familiar to navigate the device while I learn, and it also naturally encourages me to learn cause its different. Thank you everyone so much!! Hope this helps someone else jump to linux!
So a gaming laptop?
You could try finding a gaming laptop with a dedicated AMD graphics card. AMD’s drivers are open source, so their devices work much better with Linux than NVIDIA’s, in case you want to install Linux (you can even buy Lenovo laptops with Linux preinstalled, at a reduced price for some reason, but maybe not the gaming models). You can play a lot of Windows games on Linux, but you can also always dual boot and use Windows when you want to play a game (I do this with a desktop computer, a bit of a PITA though, and might be more of one if the laptop BIOS user interface is clunky).
Yeah, I really appreciate how you said that cause on reflection I guess I don’t actually want a gaming laptop- I think I just wanted to imagine having one. dedicated AMD graphics card sounds like a great idea, I am swamped right now- but hoping to start learning linux in Jan, so it would be great to be able to move a laptop over to Linux next year, thanks for the input!
AMD and Intel integrated graphics also work great with Linux. And they also make beefy laptops aimed at video editing and stuff too, but they’re just as expensive as gaming ones I assume.
because they are not including the price of a Windows license, when you buy a laptop or prebuilt desktop, you are also paying for a Windows license as well essentially
The thing is as far as I know the Windows license is only like $30 for OEMs.
Yea, Microsoft gives OEMs a fairly large discount on licenses, but this is capitalism after all, may as well charge the full $150 or whatever Windows costs these days! I’m surprised they even give you a discount for choosing Linux in the first place to be honest.