Geohot: Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop
Tldr: he wants a non-upgradeable laptop that is maxed out from day one. I'd want a bit more upgrade path than he does, but he has some interesting thoughts.
Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop
I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels Apple’s quality is degrading. I spend 10 hours a day on my laptop and would spend any amount of money within reason for a better one. However, everything comes with tradeoffs.the singularity is nearer
tomalley8342
in reply to solrize • • •Helix 🧬
in reply to tomalley8342 • • •Em Adespoton
in reply to Helix 🧬 • • •pastermil
in reply to solrize • • •Yeah, he lost me in this paragraph.
skuzz
in reply to pastermil • • •Yeah, amazingly dumb. I have a ThinkPad x201 tablet from 2010 that still works to this day. I upgraded it and added a cellular modem. It still has a dial-up modem. It has gigabit Ethernet. I upgraded the RAM to the eventual maximum 8GB. I replaced the hard drive several times and it now has a 1TB SSD. I replaced the battery once, and only once, because it is so old, I found a surplusser with old OEM batteries, that will eventually fail and I'll probably have to crack it open and rebuild. It has a CardBus slot that had various things including PCMCIA camera readers, an ExpressCard/34 memory card that had an entire Linux OS on it at one time.
It has a dock with a slot for an optical drive I never ended up purchasing. It has tunnels designed in the keyboard tray so if you spill a drink, the liquid is routed through safe holes, and the dock even has secondary safe holes. You could pour a gallon of milk on the keyboard and it'd end up on your desk, bypassing all of the computer and dock circuits. Oh it also has a VGA port on it, DisplayPort on the dock, it basically has every com
... Show more...Yeah, amazingly dumb. I have a ThinkPad x201 tablet from 2010 that still works to this day. I upgraded it and added a cellular modem. It still has a dial-up modem. It has gigabit Ethernet. I upgraded the RAM to the eventual maximum 8GB. I replaced the hard drive several times and it now has a 1TB SSD. I replaced the battery once, and only once, because it is so old, I found a surplusser with old OEM batteries, that will eventually fail and I'll probably have to crack it open and rebuild. It has a CardBus slot that had various things including PCMCIA camera readers, an ExpressCard/34 memory card that had an entire Linux OS on it at one time.
It has a dock with a slot for an optical drive I never ended up purchasing. It has tunnels designed in the keyboard tray so if you spill a drink, the liquid is routed through safe holes, and the dock even has secondary safe holes. You could pour a gallon of milk on the keyboard and it'd end up on your desk, bypassing all of the computer and dock circuits. Oh it also has a VGA port on it, DisplayPort on the dock, it basically has every computer interface spanning 30 years. It even has a USB port that has BIOS settings for iPhone or BlackBerry charging when the computer is off, (they both had different USB charging protocols back then) and it's marked in yellow plastic in the port so you can charge your phone off your computer.
Oh, and it has a headphone jack, a microphone jack, a camera on the screen, stereo mics on the screen for video calls, trackpad, TouchPoint, I can't even remember all the things it has. A similar-sized modern MacBook has 1/10 of what that old computer can do. It's currently running Debian and still used on my workbench to this day.
I didn't have to build it, I actually bought it on a "black friday" deal when the model was being discontinued.
Oh, and the tablet part, the display spins around and you can eject a stylus from the body of the computer. Wacom tablet surface overlayed on the screen. With eraser accessory on the other side. Screen lays flat on the keyboard backwards. Dedicated buttons in that mode. Whole thing can be services with Phillips screwdrivers, even field-stripping the hard drive or RAM.
Also has fingerprint scanner to boot with TPM. 15 years old, it still knows my fingerprint. Not even sure I have the software to reprogram the TPM anymore.
Avid Amoeba
in reply to solrize • • •utopiah
in reply to solrize • • •Sounds absolutely stupid... and yet my (gaming) desktop (model CORSAIR ONE i180) remains untouched after nearly 6 years. I still play indies to AAA to VR with it. I still work with it, specifically VR prototyping, so dev.
If I were to give it away or use as a self-hosted server with GPU used on e.g Immich or video transcoding it would still do pretty well.
So...IMHO it's not a bad take but damn I remembered I paid a LOT of money back then. As other pointed out if you can afford it, sure. If you are not a professional then probably not.