For about a year until about a week ago, my Linux laptop was a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen11, mainly because of Linux support. I’ve recently got an HP OmniBook Ultra Flip mostly for the OLED display. Well, and the X1 Carbon Aura was $500-800 more.
You may ask why give up a laptop series known for good Linux support and rock-solid build for a brand known for Hinge Problems?
The funny thing is, ThinkPads are the least reliable laptop series I owned. Yes, Lenovo warranty support beat HP, but then the events were seven-and-a-half years apart.
For instance, my ThinkPad had a dim left display before it got replaced by warranty. Apple, Dell and HP never had this issue, and the latter two had dead pixels at most.
My prior employer’s Yoga Gen3 was worse, it started to fall apart around the
2.5-year mark, combined with a CMOS battery failure. Although both HP and
Lenovo had problematic 8th Gen Intel systems. And you thought the i9-13900K
was bad? My 2018-model Spectre didn’t fall apart since it went out of daily
use years before I left my old $DAYJOB the Yoga was returned.
Historically, I’ve been a fan of HP’s Spectre line of laptops. Each generation got better, except for so-so Linux support. When I ran FreeBSD support sucked period, but even when I went Linux suspend-and-resume was still broken. And the last Spectre models (that I didn’t own) couldn’t even boot Linux initially.
After dumping FreeBSD for Linux, I tried both XPS and ThinkPad models with an open mind, and I was never a fan of either. I like MacBook hardware, but macOS is only okay and Asahi isn’t exactly in the best position post-M2. As much as I tried to like macOS, sure it beats Windows but isn’t as good as Fedora.
I mean, Linus Torvalds couldn’t end up handling Asahi either. And I’ve basically given up on dev work despite having worked at Microsoft whereas he’s been a developer years before I was even a fetus. I’m 28 now.
With HP’s rebrand of the Pavilion, Envy and Spectre to OmniBook (previously the business line pre-Compaq merger), HP brought over the EliteBook UEFI onto their consumer line.
Well, at least for the Intel Flip (the non-Flip AMD model is different from when I tested it). I can tell by the UEFI setup. And the better Linux support.
I don’t know if the EliteBook UEFI will stay or not. Maybe it won’t, but I hope it does, but consumer PC laptops are less consistent than business laptops and MacBooks.
Yes, many people are fans of ThinkPads, my brother included. He even uses a P1 Gen6 (that I gifted him) for gaming. And he’s not a Mastodon and Linux user, he’s a X/Twitter and Windows user.
And I’m sure many of you reading this will buy ThinkPads anyways. I’m not
saying that you should buy HP’s flagship OmniBook Ultra instead of a ThinkPad
or Dell XPS Premium. But ThinkPads aren’t for me, and neither are XPS
models.
And yes, HP’s lower-end hardware does suck pretty hard. I’m more of a fan of Lenovo or Dell in the low-end than HP. But I went back to HP because I wasn’t a fan of ThinkPad or XPS no matter how hard I tried with an open mind.
I don’t have any experience with a Lenovo IdeaPad or Dell Latitude/Pro, and haven’t used an HP EliteBook in years. My dad owns a modern IdeaPad and had many Latitudes from work before he retired.