this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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Is there a particular model you're thinking of? Not just the line. I usually find that Windows laptops don't have enough cooling or make other sacrifices. If you want good cooling, good power (CPU and GPU), good screen, good keyboard, good battery, good WiFi, etc., the options get limited quickly.
Even the RAM cost misses some of the picture. Apple Silicon's RAM is available to the GPU and can run local LLMs and other machine learning models. Pre-AI-hype Macs from 2021 (maybe 2020) already had this hardware. Compare that to PC laptops from the same era. Even in this era, try getting Apple's 200-400GB/s RAM performance on a PC laptop.
PC desktop hardware is the most flexible option for any budget and is cost-effective for most budgets. For laptops, Apple dominates their price points, even pre-Apple-silicon.
The OS becomes the final nail in the coffin. Linux is great, but a lot of software still only supports Windows and Apple; Linux support for the latest/current hardware can be a hit or miss (My three-year-old, 12th-gen Thinkpad just started running well). If the choice is between Mac OS or Windows 11, is there much of a choice? Does that change if a company wants to buy, manage, and support it? Which model should we be looking at? It's about time to replace my Thinkpad.
Running LLMs is not a feature that 99% of users need or want. Look at all the AI laptops flopping in sales. People don't care about RAM soldered to the motherboard to squeeze a milisencond on a feature they don't use. It's a money grubbing strategy, plain and simple.
Did you purposely miss the first and last questions: Which laptop is the good value?
I never said people need to run LLMs. I said Apple dominates high-end laptops and wanted a good high-end to compare to the high-end Macbooks.
Instead of just complaining about Apple, can do what I asked? Best cheaper laptop alternative that checks the non-LLM boxes I mentioned: