Daily Archives: 2021-12-09

Overkill?

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It comes as a bit of irony that I read this article on my Chromebook this morning.

Surface Laptop 4 15-inch vs. MacBook Pro 16-inch: Which is better?

Even before I read the article, I knew what the conclusion would be. It’s a comparision piece and I’ve seen so many of the years. It’s written in the US so I did a quick lookup to see what the pricing of the two products would be in Canadian dollars.

Surface Laptop $1 750 – $5 150

MacBook Pro $3 150 – $4 400

The Chromebook that I read the article on and am currently writing the post on came in at $500. To be fair, top end Google Chromebooks to match the Surface and MacBook Pro would be in the range of $880 – $1850.

Now, there was a time when those higher end Windows and Macintosh machines would have captured my attention and I would be drooling. Those were the days when there was an application that needed to be installed on the computer in order to be functional. It didn’t stop there. If you needed 10 things done, you probably needed 10 applications! Those applications are still there and I still have a few of them installed for specific purposes. My Chromebook allows me to install Linux applications and I do have Libre Office in particular installed but honestly I don’t use it. It was just fun to go through the process of enabling it. Ditto for Android installation but it is nice to be able to use Opera as an alternative browser to Chrome at times.

Instead, I have embraced the concept of the web based world and do any creation in online applications these days. Finally having decent internet speeds at home made a huge difference.

In actual fact, it seems less important for me to compare these very high end laptops. If you’re disposed to buy Macintosh, you’ll overlook the heavier machine and lack of scrolling or find some way to rationalize things. If you’re disposed to buy Windows, you’ll know that Windows 11 is new to the market and, while the foundation is built and ready, the rest of the ladder is being built while you’re climibing it.

I would doubt that anyone would be buying one of those machines as their first laptop and if it was an upgrade, you’re probably already vested in your particular platform and unlikely to change. But it still is interesting to read, compare, and think back to a time when specifications might well be a determining factor.

What’s so intriguing about the Chromebook is that it is rock solid with its Linux base and you don’t need to use it (unless you want to) because everything is accessed through the Chrome browser interface.

Of course, the Chrome browser is available for Macintosh and Windows. That’s the great leveler between all three of the platforms.

And, in a day when so much stuff is done online anyway, it makes the comparisons that I so valued at one time, really just an academic read.

OTR Links 12/09/2021

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.