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Cake day: February 18th, 2026

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  • In most cases, for that you’re looking at refurbished. Which I am a proponent of, it is a tried and true method to get a deal. But it comes with its own risks and limited warranties.

    The chipset has benchmarked really well, mostly just the thermal throttling that you alluded to, and that will limit what workflows you can accomplish to a certain extent, which can also be said about 8 GB RAM.

    But again that’s not who is buying the machine. It’s the best value for a general use machine out there. It will excel at that, and have longevity due to how good the chipset is when not throttled, build quality, and because macOS is both lighter and more optimized.

    Yep I also am a Linux truther. But some people are too scared to make the jump/to try to install an operating system themselves, or need specific programs that aren’t on Linux. And for those people, I’m not going to recommend them a Windows laptop in almost any situation because it just doesn’t make sense anymore at almost any price point. We’re even breaking into Chromebook price range here, and Chromebooks are going UP in price across the board.

    I’m well aware lol, I just don’t have the specs memorized, I just remember it was a gen newer than the M2.


  • I’m not going to disagree with most if what you said, but I’ll simply say this: look at what it costs for a new Windows laptop these days. Look at the chip set. Look at the build quality. If you can get me even ONE of those two things that matches the Neo for 500 dollars, let me know. This isn’t even mentioning how garbage Windows has become. You can get higher RAM easy…but Windows needs 16 GB minimum to do jack shit, 32 GB is more realistic to do anything interesting. My work M2 Macbook with 8 GB RAM feels about the same or better as my (newer) work Dell with an i7 32 GB RAM.

    That’s why the Neo is such a big deal. Am I going to buy it? No. I’m a tech enthusiast with various needs, and prefer desktops & Linux when I’m at home. Would I recommend it to a large amount of people? Yes.



  • Yes they do, which I said above.

    Yes they are more optimized, that’s how they are able to keep up as well as they do. A 3070 completely blows away the current console gen specs wise. Due to optimizations, it is a lot closer than it looks on paper but 3070 is still ahead by a sizeable margin.

    I’m not here to shit on consoles. I said they are the base experience. The “good enough” experience. If OP’s card is outdoing that by a significant amount still, he doesn’t need to upgrade. If he’s getting the same performance of consoles, that’s still good enough. If he’s starting to dip below consoles, maybe consider buying a new GPU or CPU, or maybe just get to more of your backlog for a while. Realistically he’s got around 4 more years, maybe more the way pricing for electronics will affect how fast requirements go up.




  • It’s literally still above the requirements for high graphics at over 60 FPS. I assume this is not even considering DLSS or frame gen, which would double performance.

    Consoles are the base experience. On Series X, Horizon 5, which is 5 years old, runs at the equivalent of medium graphics settings at best, with resolution scaling. Performance mode for a constant 60 makes even more compromises. Horizon 6 will likely be worse.

    3070 is crushing that, you’re good. For a while in fact. And that’s just assuming you’re playing only brand new games.




  • They got pretty bad in the mid to late 10s, but build quality is a lot better now. No iPhone bend-gate level stuff in a while.

    This did happen. Supposedly they stopped after they got fined. You can say liquid glass is a less blatant version of that hidden as a feature, but as far as I can tell they don’t directly do the “slow down” button for new hardware. And if we’re going to talk bloat, Microsoft is far worse. Linux is holding out for us.

    You can get an M5 Air for under a thousand bucks with an education discount, which isn’t verified. I’d go for the 24 GB RAM 512 storagw version which would bring you to 1200. Might be able to snag an M4 for even cheaper if they’re trying to dump inventory. The Neo has a better chip than anything close to its price range of $500. You won’t be able to find better build quality OR specs for either of those 2 price ranges, let alone both. Believe me, I remember when they were overpriced 2k Intel machines. They’re not that anymore, they’re the gold standard, and looking even better with how Windows laptop manufacturers have gotten so greedy. You can barely find anything at all decent that’s x86 for under 1k. There’s a point where it doesn’t make sense to go Apple if you need a ton of RAM and local storage, but most people aren’t going to get a 128 GB RAM Macbook Pro.

    macOS is demonstrably better for privacy than Windows. Better than Linux? Of course not. Sabotaging apps? Huh?

    At the end of the day, I try to get whoever I can convince to go to Linux. I try to convince whoever I can to get a desktop instead of a laptop, especially for gaming. But if they NEED a laptop, or if they NEED apps that aren’t on Linux, especially creative apps like Adobe and CAD, I’m sure not going to recommend Windows, from any perspective, hardware or software. Microsoft is just awful these days, and has no redeeming qualities left, with Proton being as good as it is for games. So its going to be a Macbook. If they’re a student or general user with a budget that doesn’t need a lot of performance, get whatever refurbished business laptop you can get a good deal on with 16 GB RAM, 32 if you can swing it, for like 300 bucks, and put Linux on it.


  • Lol definitely not a bot. I’ve always been more of an Apple hater due to the ecosystem and business practices, but they’ve turned it around a lot in the 2020s. They’re still a trillion dollar company and not to be trusted, but yeah, they make great laptops.

    I main Linux on my desktop and old laptops, like I mentioned. You can say ARM doesn’t belongin laptops but Apple has proven that’s not true. They outperform just about any chip, with battery life efficiency that is not even approachable by any other laptop chips. That’s just the facts. You can spend 3k for a laptop chip that is as good in performance as an M5 (which costs 1k), or you can get a Snapdragon chip that is almost as good as an M5 for efficiency, for over 1k. But not both. That’s where we’re at. Intel especially is asleep at the wheel. At least AMD is making good desktop CPUs still.

    I’m also excited for RISC V, I’m considering getting one on an SBC to make a CyberDeck out of. It’s not come as far as ARM yet but it’s promising and we need an open standard.


  • I’d say it’s sort of the opposite. When I first looked into the Fediverse, Lemmy.ml was the juggernaut sub. They were and sort of still are filled with tankies (literally stands for Marxist Leninist). Now there is more variety of instances, Piefed has better moderating tools and combines cross post comments which is why I used that, and user base is slowly growing over time as Reddit and everyone else continue to fuck up. Sure there is still a lot less content, but that’s infinitely more preferable to liking a comment and then someone pointing out the comment was stolen from an 11 year old post by a bot.





  • For sure, it isn’t even only the corporate or specifically beginner focused distros that are like this these days either. Most distros have gotten with the program of having GUI choices for most things, easy ways to install proprietary drivers if they weren’t allowed tk bundle them already, and even their own ecosystem like an app store.

    Some FOSS software does not work as a full replacement for missing professional software, but that’s about all that comes to mind as far as issues.


  • Hardware specs have gone up, prices have come down, competition prices have gone up, competition software has gone way down. The only way I’d recommend a laptop besides a Macbook is if you can find some nice second hand or refurbished laptops, preferably lightly used business class and/or from an auction. And even then, I’d only recommend it if they’re wanting to commit tk Linux and need a laptop specifically, or need a Windows only application. Vendors are really out here selling Windows laptops with 8 GB RAM, horrendous build quality, at damn near 1k. My work provided Windows machine is an i7 (2024 I think, maybe 2023) 32 GB RAM and sits at 16 GB RAM with my basic set of Office applications and browser tabs open. My work provided Mac has an M2 and 8 GB RAM, sits at a little under 7 GB RAM, and feels less laggy with the same programs and tabs open.

    Desktops are a different story, though in specific use cases, Mac Studio/Mini/iMac are decent options too.