transcript
tlirsgender:
Laptops are always so much more Fucked than phones in my experience. A laptop is like a beautiful horse that wants nothing more than to break all of its legs. A decently solid android phone will act normal.
A laptop is a living creature. It has weight to it. A laptop breathes and produces body heat. And it wants to die badly. Mobile phones are not sentient like that & that’s why they don’t experience mental illness. A phone problem is like “out of storage :(” or “charging port broke”. Laptops will cough weakly as they fade in and out of consciousness.
You will hold a laptop in your arms and it’s like “I can’t feel my legs”. And you tell it girl you never had any.
@flamingos@feddit.uk peep this article - long worthwhile read
On November 21, I purchased the bestselling laptop from Amazon — a $238 Acer Aspire 1 with a four-year-old Celeron N4500 Processor, 4GB of DDR4 RAM, and 128GB of slow eMMC storage (which is, and I’m simplifying here, though not by much, basically an SD card soldered to the computer’s motherboard). Affordable and under-powered, I’d consider this a fairly representative sample of how millions of people interact with the internet. […]
It took 1 minute and 50 seconds from hitting the power button for the laptop to get to the setup screen. It took another minute and a half to connect and begin downloading updates, which took several more minutes. After that, I was faced with a licensing agreement where I agreed to binding arbitration to use Windows, a 24 second pause, and then got shown a screen of different “ways I could unlock my Microsoft experience,” with animations that shuddered and jerked violently.
[…]
The computer pauses slightly every time I type a letter. Every animation shudders. Even moving windows around feels painful. It is clunky, slow, it feels cheap, and the operating system — previously something I’d considered to be “the thing that operates the computer system” — is actively rotten, strewn with ads, sponsored content, suggested apps, and intrusive design choices that make the system slower and actively upset the user.
So much more!:
Never Forgive Them
EDWARD ZITRON
DEC 16, 2024
42 MIN READMy experience is pretty much the opposite. Phones give weird problems and I can’t even properly diagnose.
Yeah and also with a laptop you just think what OS do I want to install or what application do I run? Instead of oh is this app in the app store? Will my phone ever get that new version of android?
A computer is like a pet. You need to care for it, clean it, feed it (cooling paste) If it’s left neglected for too long it will suffer.
Also, here’s your reminder to clean your keyboard. Properly, remove the keys and give a good cleaning. Take a picture first so you know where it goes back.
Laptop or just windows?
Try buying quality laptops.
Over the years iv learned more and more. Almost every fucking major problem with laptops everyone always has basically boils down to
People are cheap fucks.
It’s like my MIL, she bought a 150 euro android phone and always complained about it. At some point my wife got a new iPhone and gave her mom the old one. Now she is telling everyone how iphone is so much better than every android phone.
My phones have all been around that price range (250-300 CAD) and none of them ever had problems besides the basic hardware wear and tear mentioned in the OP. I don’t play games on my phone, but besides that, I think my usage is pretty typical.
Honest mistake. Never should have given her the iphone. Just get her a dumb phone if she is buying a 150€ smartphone
My MacBook Pro 15“ from 2013 still runs perfectly and all parts work. Had to replace the battery at some point and the charger cable is falling apart.
I’ve got a 23-year-old netbook that slowly perished under the weight of windows. I’ve got some lightweight Linux distro on it and its absolutely fucking fine.
I resurrected it specifically to use as a digital reference guide for electronics, and to program my new Arduino. It can even barely load Firefox (exclusive) OR play videos!
Tldr is: Buy old electronics. Use better software.
After much hesitation, I bit the bullet and installed Linux Mint on my old netbook from college, an HP Mini 210. It runs MUCH better than the stupid limited Windows it had, and it’s great for running old DOS games for my kid. Firefox is… another story.
The wild thing to me is a computer from 2005 running (a fresh install of) Windows XP feels more snappy and responsive than a computer from 2025 running Windows 11. Everything about the newer machine is somewhere between 4 and 10,000 times more powerful; processor clock speed, core count, cache capacity, RAM capacity, RAM speed, main bus speed, storage speed. I mean, that alone, in 2005 SATA hard disk drives were basically the only option, NVMe SSDs are considerably faster. But how is it that machines felt snappy back in the day but are now utterly useless?
Windows bloat has outpaced the ability of hardware to keep up.
Windows seems to be gaseous, it expands to take up the available space.
and it stinks!
An Amiga 500 feels more snappy in many ways than current machines.
If you want to experience something like that try haiku-os.org
never forget, oh poweruser, what blind enshittification has robbed from you.e: whoopswhoopswhoops!
i remembered the phrasing from somewhere, and after a couple searches i realized it must’ve been here.
that specific wording is literally straight off a monument, erected by germany in 1933, at the polish border, which was a popular pilgrimage site for german nationalists.
big whoops.
Perhaps we can substitute “Abandon all optimizations, ye who enter here”?
reverse it, “abandon all bloat, ye who downgrade”
I wonder how many people glossed over “netbook” without understanding what your referring to That’s incredible 🤣
A laptop you can take apart and put back together and it’ll be fine. You take apart a phone and put it back together and it’s like haunted now. You can’t get it wet anymore, and it rattles sometimes. It says it doesn’t like its new screen, so it’s not gonna let you unlock it with your face anymore. It doesn’t trust you since you took it apart. The buttons feel different now. They still work, but they feel… different.
You just don’t know how to do it right!
(I’m replying this before anyone else does.)
It was a joke, relax.
(This too.)
Most laptops these days are not that far away from the glued together phones. It used for be you could swap out a hard drive or RAM in a laptop no problem, I even had a macbook way back that you could do it with like one screw. These days I won’t touch other people’s laptops anymore (I’m lucky enough to have a framework where I can, and have, upgraded it).
This person and I have had wildly different laptop experiences.
Yours actually have legs?
In french the word “marcher” can be used either for “walking” or for “functioning/working”.
The classic prank was to call random numbers in the phonebooth and ask “does your fridge work/walk?” Pretending you’re trying to sell them a new one and when they’d say yes to get rid of you, you’d suggest them to buy it some shoes (damn weren’t we smart in the 90s).
All that to say, there’s a joke around that concept somewhere in there.
In English the joke is “is your fridge running?” followed by “well you better run after it!”
Haha! I laughed. (My language is French)
We have the same joke in English: ‘Is your fridge running?’
Well duh. How else do you expect it to use chopsticks? Like cmon now.
And an intense will to live
My current laptop survived three phones and it was already refurbished when I bought it. And I can still install current versions of my OS (Ubuntu) on it.
Buy better laptops.
Dell Business :0
MacBook
Impressive longevity
I just threw Ubuntu on mine and my god it’s so much cleaner than Windows, but I have so much to learn.
Aside from the app installation process being different, what’s to learn? The rest of it works like every other computer you’ve ever used
If all you do is most use a web browser and bunch of electron apps, sure. But as soon as you get beyond that as a slight power user, which many are who are trying to switch
- different directory structure
- permissions / sudo
- config files instead of registry
- alternative drivers
- as you mentioned, app installs, but that’s huge. App not in snap? What’s flatpak? What’s a ppa? What’s an appimage?
- how do I encrypt my drive now? On windows I just turn on bitlocker or on Mac I just turn on filevault
- what’s gdm, I thought Ubuntu used gnome? Why is there gnome but also gnome display manager?
As someone who has helped a few people switch to Linux as their main driver, it’s usually the toughest transition for those who go beyond their web browser and tweak their OS a bit more to learn OS concepts they assumed before that they are now seeing how they can vary with a new OS.
different directory structure
For a normal user, it’s basically the same, no? When you open the file browser there are links to Documents, Desktop, etc.
- permissions / sudo
- config files instead of registry
When would the average user run into this?
alternative drivers
If you’re on Ubuntu, you click the button when it prompts you to install drivers. As long as users know to never install drivers like you would on Windows, it’s not an issue.
as you mentioned, app installs, but that’s huge. App not in snap? What’s flatpak? What’s a ppa? What’s an appimage?
Hopefully users switching to Linux know to expect software selection to be different. If you stick to your distro’s app store, you’ll be good.
how do I encrypt my drive now? On windows I just turn on bitlocker or on Mac I just turn on filevault
Don’t most distros have that in the installer?
what’s gdm, I thought Ubuntu used gnome? Why is there gnome but also gnome display manager?
What regular user is looking that deep?
Right so I started using the GUI interface for all of ten minutes, then as soon as I started looking for “how to” anything it’s all terminal commands. Especially since I switched specifically to make an environment to learn computer vision. So I spent an hour yesterday learning the difference between pip, pip3, and pipx then did something with snap. Tossed all that in the “figure it out later” bucket when I realized I needed to relearn how to modify my path and what that actually means.
It’s so nice having everything accessible to me as the user instead of locked behind some windows registry I can’t look at or some oversimplified settings panel. But I’ve also got 20 years of Windows conditioning to unlearn. It can be a lot to dive into at all once.
Having said all that, I’m excited and enjoying it
If you’re playing with computer vision, you’re going way further than the typical computer user. My parents, for example, just need an office suite, a browser, and a file browser. My brother also needs a few games to work, but otherwise is the same. My SO also needs streaming stuff to work.
All of that can be handled without touching the terminal or leaving the built-in app store. Even a gamedev setup could largely be done that way as well (Godot, blender, and a 2D graphics editor). Quite a lot of people could switch today and not need any hands-holding.
Yeah, some things require more extensive knowledge, but the common things are simple enough.
Installation, settings are probably something to learn. File system layout. Small things but enough of them can create a barrier to some.
Tell me about it. My daily driver is 12 years old and the only time I even remotely feel it is on websites designed by imbeciles.
Mine is ~8yo and it’s still a solid dev machine.
A Linux laptop has, like, three souls
Inside you there are 3 GRUB entries
Buy better laptops.
More like, get rid of trash OSes
Mobile phones are so locked down from regular users that those usually just physically break before the operating system becomes unusably slow.
Laptops can be destroyed by software. Give a regular user permission to install programs, and suddenly there are a random purple monkey sitting on the desktop telling jokes and multiple crypto miners.
In my experience it’s the opposite. It starts behaving unreasonably slow way before it physically breaks, unless I do something very stupid, and there is no way to free it from creeping bloat or even diagnose what’s actually wrong. Old laptop will behave like new again when I get it clean and install fresh OS on it. With phone there is nothing can be done, I have like 5 perfectly working old phones that just became too slow at performing the same tasks
Oh no, I haven’t thought of BonziBuddy in a long time!
Not really destroyed though. Do a fresh install, or rollback to a previous OS image, and everything is back to normal.
Anecdotal, but I’ve never had a phone break on me. Every phone I’ve replaced still technically worked, but was just older. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of people are the same.
Surprised everyone is blaming windows. Maybe I just have bad luck but almost all of my laptop problems have been hardware or firmware related. Although windows certainly doesn’t help the battery life when it decides to just ignore power rules and I open the laptop to find it never reacted to closing the lid and it has just enough charge left to flash ‘battery low please plug in’ before dying on 0%.
My Arch install is still chugging along on my Dell XPS 13 from 2017, and I’ve noticed no difference whatsoever.
Windows machines definitely don’t last as long, though I think a massive part of that is the ever increasing piles of steaming shit they keep piling into Windows every update. That’s bad down to make any machine appear like it’s slowing to a crawl.
I haven’t owned a MS Windows laptop in more than a decade. The ghosts exist on Linux, too.
But, I feel like I have more control over my Linux than I ever did over MS Windows, so I’ve been able to keep a Debian installation on my desktop working great (not without problems, but still my preferred computer to use) since Nov 2007. (Sometimes the filesystems are live migrated to other storage, sometimes the storage is moved to a different case or main board, but the installation continues.)
Laptops, I honestly use less, but I often swap out whatever distro (if any) the come with to Debian (because I know it best), acknowledge any limitations that brings, and use them until the battery life gets too short or the CPU gets too slow. Even then, they still always feel more “haunted” than desktops. I think that mostly comes down to less control/planning on components specifically for Debian. (I built my own desktop.)
Maybe you feel you have more control because Linux doesn’t rearrange the whole OS behind your back, and surprise now it doesn’t go to sleep when closed and chokes to death in your non-ventilated backpack …
debconf does take time during upgrades, but at least it tells me before it messes with the OS configuration. So, yes, there’s something to be said for that.
(Of course, technically a dpkg can do anything, as root, during pre/post-install/removal so it’s a social convention more than a technical difference.)
Gaming laptops break surprisingly fast. All that heat is not good for any part in there
Gaming laptops put the budgets in fast processors and graphics cards. They skimp on everything else.
Sounds like Windows laptop problems.
As someone who has worked in both refurbished consumer electronic resale as well as enterprise systems administration, for me it’s the Consumer-grade hardware. Thin plastic, no reinforcement in the weak spots, and if you need to open the thing, clips that break, hidden screws, nonsense. Enterprise laptops on the other hand, survived my sales reps throwing them or running them over. A thinkpad’s shell may crack, but it’s innards are stronk
Last thinkpad I had went through 4 failed displays in the first year, all replaced under warranty until it failed again 1 month after the warranty expired and they told me to go pound sand. I’ll never buy another Lenovo again.
Well that’s some BS. To be fair I’ll never buy a Lenovo again either lol
Yeah I can see that… I guess I’m just spoiled since I got a Framework a year or so ago, and it’s built like a goddamn tank lol
“Was I good laptop?”
“You were weirdly cheap, entirely made of plastic, and had very little cooling…so no not really.”
I’m afraid to even hear what this person thinks about a desktop.
If I were to guess
"A desktop computer is like an elephant. Goes forever, respectable, venerated. All have their own personalities and we mourn them when they go.
Some are weird lean elephants, almost like horses, as they also want to go fast and explode.
But most people have their elephant they will only replace when it finally slowly lays down to rest. And never get up again. "
Y’all’re talking about this as a windows problem but for my old laptop it was the USB ports started dying then some keys stopped working and finally the frame began dying. It didn’t last 5 years.
There’s definitely a ring of truth to this. Not for me personally - as others have commented, I know what I’m doing and tend to look after my tech well - but for plenty of friends and family who are seemingly incapable of taking care of a real computer with a desktop OS.
Happens all the time: they buy a new laptop, probably without asking for advice first, and within weeks they’re asking for help because it’s on its last legs. The fans spin up like jet engines, two dozen random apps open as soon as it boots, the desktop is a landfill of icons, normal actions cause error messages, etc.
‘Oh yeah, it just does that.’
Some people can’t be trusted with full control over their hardware.
I miss the old days when you needed to actually understand the machine to use it. Using the terminal wasn’t something reserved for “tech wizards,” it was the primary way to use the machine. Things weren’t as capable, but at least the average user understood it. Also, back in those days, devices came with schematics and whatnot so you could repair it yourself, and many did! It was a magical time when people cared enough about their stuff to learn how it works.
It’s tempting to agree but I think we should be careful about gatekeeping technology through that kind of nostalgic lens. The improvements to ease of use in computing have, broadly, benefited everyone.
You can be a good driver without knowing how to rebuild an engine.
Sure. My point is that if everyone understood a bit more about the tools they use, they’d have fewer problems, need to spend less money, and get more out of them, and that goes for pretty much everything.
If you know how to do basic car maintenance, you could swap a few parts now and them and save the trips to the mechanic for larger problems. It’s not hard and the tools for most jobs are minimal. If people were capable of that, they’d prioritize things like Right to Repair, which benefits everyone and can help reduce waste (i.e. prevent harm to the planet).
Likewise for laptops and phones. You shouldn’t need to replace the whole thing just because the screen got cracked or the storage is going bad. If the average person was capable of basic repairs, repair would be a much more common thing. It wasn’t that long ago that places carried computer parts (not just drives and RAM, but board level components like caps and connectors). I get that things are more complicated these days, but if people understood how their devices worked a bit better, they’d demand that tl be available at shops and repairs would be cheap.
The same goes for software. If someone knows how the system is oit together (kernel, userland, apps, etc) at a high level, they can do a much better job diagnosing problems and determine if an issue is likely hardware or software, and be able to follow guides online to diagnose further.
I’m not saying everyone should be an expert on everything, I’m saying I wish people knew a bit more than “press this button to see funny videos.” Teach it in schools to demystify things a bit, so people feel confident in digging in and learning more.
That’s fair. A little bit of a deeper understanding can indeed go a long way in terms of knowing how to take care of something properly, not to mention saving on minor repairs!
And for something like computers, it can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of scams. If the support person asks you to do something fishy, you’ll immediately recognize it’s a scam if you k ow a few things about how computers work (or hopefully you’ll never get in that situation).
There was a good middle ground, and we passed it like 20 years ago
