this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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8 gigs of ram for some shitty laptop is fine. Like the air shipping with 8 gigs of ram is fine (not great, but fine)
But for a "Pro" machine, let alone a 1600 dollar computer is insane.
MacBook Air is a $1000 computer too though :/ I bought a Thinkpad t480s with 8gb of (upgradable) ram for less than that back in 2019. currently running it with 24gb.
Even Lenovo is starting to drop upgradable ram from their machines. T480 was the last T*4 series with dual upgradeable ram slots. T490 and up all have at least 1 soldered stick, and the AMD machines now don't come with any upgradeable ram. Their prices to upgrade are at least reasonable unlike Apples.
Shit I got a T16 gen 3(?) for my mom a few months ago and it came with only 8 gigs of soldered ram. That machine is even worse than Apple because AMD locks away 1.5 gigs of ram for just the APU. Intel at least only hard reserves like 256MB or something. Apple gives you the full 8 gigs of ram to play with, no duplicates in CPU memory and GPU memory, plus their really fast swap.
Lenovo isn't exactly a consumer friendly company themselves. Weren't they the ones with the hardware set up to reinstall their preinstalled spyware if you removed it?
You can change this allocation from the BIOS if you are so inclined. Not that it makes it any better. Sharing 8 gigs between cpu and iGPU is only acceptable when you are doing nothing but web browsing on the laptop/pc
I looked and it's either 1.5 or auto, and auto only does 1.5
Hmm must be that different manufacturers allow for different allocations. I am on an MSI laptop and I have the options of Auto, 256M, 512M, 768M and 1024M
My kid grabbed an 8/256 M2 Air when they first launched last year, and is still overjoyed with its performance. He has a PS5 for gaming, so the Mac is for uni work and downloading shit. 8gb RAM isn't inherently bad.
It's just as you said though; it's bad for a "Pro" machine.
$1000+ for basic word processing and web is bonkers to me.
Fair. But he likes using it and there’s more to value than the monetary cost of a device. For a start, there’s the build quality, but also the integration with his iPhone.
Oh it's entirely up to him how he spends his money, didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
1000$+ for uni shit is the most astounding thing I've ever heard
Man, you should watch new series of Planet Earth then, because there are some significantly more astounding things on that than someone spending their own money on a computer they wanted.
🚑🚑🚑
No thanks. People making dumb financial decisions will be always more astounding.
Maybe because I didn't grow in rich family but okay carry on, I wasn't judging. It was genuinely fascinating to me
What is someone likely to use a shitty laptop for? Open a web browser to run ~1080p video?
Basically, yeah.
Anything you'd do on a basic Chromebook, I guess.
My exeperience is lot of people just want an ipad they can type on. The m2 air is basically the same size and weight as an ipad pro, and the screen is more protected if you carry it in a backpack. It's also probably cheaper, especially if you want any of the accessories that make it "pro" ipad.
You'd be surprised by the amount of people who do video processing on laptops.
I have a Chromebook that I put Linux onto. It's got a Celeron and 4gb ram. It's fine for web browsing email, etc on the go. It can play a ton of older games just fine, too; half-life 2 and episodes run surprisingly well. Minecraft with sodium and all settings turned down works okay, too.
This is the same as the air, but with a better screen (basically).
The M3 Pro MacBook Pro has a minimum of 18GB of ram.
Maybe you’re not supposed to do any pro stuff with it. Just watch youtube videos and browse FB or whatever it is that grandmas do these days. Many apple products don’t really feel as pro as you’re lead to believe by the marketing team.
Just today I ran into a strange issue with the iMovie on iOS. You literally can’t edit a vertical video in any sensible way. Either you shoot horizontal video or you don’t shoot at all. These are the only options Apple gives for you.
You can't use iMovie for 1:1 video either. You have to edit clips with fat borders at the edges, then export it to Photos in order to crop it square. It's such a weird thing to miss out.