Hello Comrades, I am overwhelmed! have to get a new laptop for work stuff. And everything is horribly riddled with AI and unwanted features and planned obsolescence, etc. I am feeling so old and lost; and stuck with paralysis! Can someone help me with just a simple recommendation on a laptop or laptop series or something? Need: video calling, decent battery life. Wants: could play ~~RDR2~~ (I realize now this ask is too much- the purchase will be a write off so, I was being greedy and trying to treat myself)or some equivalent. This felt so simple 10 years ago! Stupid Crapitalism grumbling old man noises
Edit: Wow, thanks so much, this is so helpful! Guess, I'm realizing I'm gonna need to start on windows and hopefully switch over to Linux next year(going make time to start a 30 day intro mid Jan). And, looking at Thinkpad T series. All the new ones have MD ryzen ai pro processors- does anyone have thoughts on these??? (I'm really wary of ai on the computer because I work with HIPPA compliant stuff, so I just generally want to avoid it because if it isn't managed right its a potential violation.)
thank you! I like the look of these T series, a lot! Seems like most of them could go to Linux pretty easy(gonna try and start learning in jan!) any take on this AMD ryzen ai processor? I'm especially concerned about AI stuff, because work stuff has to be HIPPA compliant and if I cant manage the ai correctly, thats a felony- so i'm mostly just trying to totally avoid out of abundance of caution
I was pretty dissapointed in the p14s gen 2 build quality considering thinkpads reputation and past quality. I returned this due to potential hardware issues, but it could have been an amdgpu driver on linux or lenovo bios issue. I got the T14 gen 3 for the magnesium bottom chassis but build quality was actually worse. In any case, if I were you, I'd consider the T14s which supposedly uses more premium materials. Lenovo laptops are confusing... But pretty sure these are also supposed to have better battery life. Although they aren't upgradable.
There's also a few laptop brands built specifically for Linux. I'm aware of system 76, framework, and tuxedo. You could look into these as well.
I think the "AI processors" are just the AMD marketing department jumping on the bandwagon. MAYBE they have caches sized appropriately for certain workloads. They don't change anything about the relationship between the operating system and the hardware it's running on. They don't make software behave any differently. They are just ordinary amd64 (a.k.a x86_64) CPUs.
All bets are off with Microsoft Windows however. They seem hellbent to cram Copilot into every nook and cranny of the operating system.
"AI series" just means it has an NPU for on device inference. This can be ignored.
I have a thinkpad t14 gen 5 intel and it's working wonderfully, hands down the best laptops. I also use Linux. The "AI" processors just mean it has a NPU to make running LLMs and such, easier it doesn't have a literal built in "AI"