I am the second one.
Battle scars are customizations.
Tech is a tool to me and tools shouldn't be pristine and unused.
That’s stupid, all my tools are in great condition. Just because it’s useful doesn’t mean it needs to be dirty and damaged and shitty.
You my kind of people!
A knight in shining armor never had his mettle tested!
Remember the old ThinkPad idiom: "If the cracks are just plastic, it's still fantastic!"
My Thinkpad has survived drops from the countertop, kids standing on it, and the USB-C charge port is wearing out from years of kids fighting over it. It's still running fine, though there's certainly some surface damage.
It's going on 8 years now and still running fine. Sucker refuses to die, and I refuse to replace it until it does.
There's a third.
I would argue this is the just the second kind
Is that a toaster?
No? A modded Deskmini. This cooler fits turbo mode of the Ryzen 7 5700G.
I took a dremel to my $20 case to install a front fan to cool my NAS drives. Taped that sucker right to the front bit of the face, and ran it that way for years.
It's not quite as hardcore as this, so I'm not sure if I qualify for the second or third type.
So I started going to University recently, and the amount of people I've had actively chastise me for how I treat my laptop has been shocking.
This is a tool to get things done, it's not some precious gem, I bought a cheap laptop with the expectation that it's going to get gross and crusty and I'll have to hose it down once a year, I'm going to wing it around and drop it and clean the screen with my sleeve.
Treating a telescope like a jackhammer isn't going to work well.
They just haven't figured out your jackhammer just looks a lot like their telescope.
Craftspeople treat their tools with respect and consideration.
My tap and die set sit on a shelf, my lathe is in the shop. I've dropped my hammer from 150 feet because the tether broke and the most upsetting part was climbing the ladder down and back up.
It depends on whether you view it as a lathe or a hammer. My nice computer is at home, my computer that I sit in the park under a tree and code on, then set it on the grass while it compiles is in my bag.
It may be news to you but generally people cannot tell apart semen from just crusty dirt.
It’s probably why your laptop has been such a hit around the campus.
I don’t think even the bioengineers are brave enough to take a sample
Crusty.....?
Jesus
Yeah man, have some self respect and wipe it down regularly.
There's a reason my CS department had to ban food from the computer lab.
My old MacBook was first too shiny and new to put stickers on, then it lived so long that I didn't want to waste stickers on a machine that I'd need to retire. It made it ten years before having weird bootloop issues.
To try to counteract my own neuroses I went sticker mad on its replacement immediately. It also helps with easily telling which way is up at a glance (I don't know how many times I had to rotate the old one when I went to open it).
You know, aside from the i9 MacBook pros, these are really resilient machines that will last quite a while. They don’t deserve the hate they get. They easily outlast gamer laptops that bake themselves to death.
The scratches on my thinkpad aren't flaws. They're battle scars!
A Thinkpad running windows is just disgraceful. Good hardware deserves good software
Exactly. Mine shipped w/ Windows, but it never ran Windows (at least I never did). Installed Linux day 1.
What are the options? Linux is meh on desktop. I love Linux and FreeBSD for servers but for desktop duty I still find Windows to be vastly superior.
Use Qubes like a normal person you freak! That's the option.
I am the left one until the first scratch appears, at that point i manage to do worse than the Right one.
Looks at hp stream that's been choking for 5 years in cnc shavings.
hp stream that's been choking for 5 years in cnc shavings
Now here is someone who knows how to treat an hp
One isn't a tech enthusiast, but a tech idiot.
Yeah, who hooks a portable generator up to their laptop without using a surge protector??
You're just gatekeeping.
ThinkPad with a generator? Nothing wrong with that --- maybe add LoRa, get a ham license and add some packet radio or digital modes and you have a neat disaster setup.
MacBook that you don't want to scuff? Well, I'm not that precious with my gear, but you do you. Many Mac laptops last a very long time, and the performance of modern Apple silicon is really, really impressive --- and you have UNIX out of the box. Plenty for a tech enthusiast to like.
I've actually ran a server for a few weeks with a heatsink just sitting on the CPU with a dab of thermal paste.
I was waiting for mounting hardware. Thankfully it was a PGA so mounting pressure didn't match much.
I ran over mine with my car (by accident, of course) and it survived, I'm still using it even though I had to take some acrews out to relieve the pressure from the fan because it was hitting the case and sometimes I have to fold it a bit to the other side so it doesn't make noises.
So I guess I'm the second one
The one on the right needs a surge protector.
Classic thinkpad battery health
this is not funny. the computer on the right is using windows. put both of those pieces of shit in the same left panel and on the right put a logo that isn't linked to some closed-source piece of trash
LONG LIVE LINUX
Secretly?
On the right, but with a solar panel.
I wouldn't even call the left side a "tech" enthusiast. More like a fad or clout enthusiast...
Oh so that is how PC users overcome their shitty battery life.
Now, how do you overcome the shitty trackpad and screen?
it's so weird seeing this kind of gate-keepy tribalism in the wild still. loving the leash that keeps you in the walled-garden is cringe as hell.
Use a mouse like a smart person? The only people who use the track pad have no alternative at the moment, or are brainwashed by apple ads.
Laptops have terrible ergonomics. Hunching over a desk like that is pretty bad for you. Use an external monitor, mouse, and keyboard and you'll remember how useless a tiny 16" screen and shitty unmoving glass pad can be as an interface.
Personal Computer? Aren't both images of a personal computer?
How do I overcome the trackpad and screen? Well I use VIM and I use VIM
