Edit: Jesus Christ, people. If you buy a $150 Thinkpad made by slave labor instead of a $1,200 MacBook made by slave labor, you’re still supporting a capitalist economy based on slave labor. We all do. We have no choice. The number of smug liberals in the comments saying “well I buy a cheap used laptop” or “well I buy coffee beans and make my own coffee” are completely missing the fucking point.
Don’t tell yourself your consumption is moral. All of us make unethical choices every day because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Accept your shame and guilt and let it drive you to do better.
It’s because they aren’t using a used ThinkPad
I AM using an old thinkpad! Huzzah!
Asus > Lenovo
They’re very similar, but you get to support Taiwan with Asus. You don’t have a pointing stick, though; if that’s something you care about. The hardware is also similar, but Lenovo generally has better cases/ outershells, but Asus also outperforms them on price point and internal hardware and software.
Not really supporting either business by buying a used laptop tho?
When people make memes about you using it, you’re supporting the company with good exposure. They should be grateful.
I’m down with that, too. Depends on your needs, though.
Are there Asus laptops out there that support the same level of reparability/upgradability as ThinkPads?
Yes! Here’s one example: https://www.asus.com/us/laptops/for-students/br-series/asus-br1402c/
Like I said, they don’t offer as many external accessories, but they’re pretty close.
This is coming from someone who grew up using thinkpads. If I were to buy a used laptop for something personal, I’d go with a thinkpad. If I have to buy something new, it’s Asus.
That’s kind of neat. At that price point it seems kind of in between a ThinkPad and Framework laptop.
Cool but kinda slow. Would be okay as a Linux machine I imagine, but so would a used ThinkPad.
“artificially inflated in value”? I’d like to see someone’s proposal for how they plan on making a high end laptop and a fancy drink made by someone else, which also comes with wifi and a nice place to sit any cheaper.
I wouldn’t buy them but they’re not artificially inflated.
Edit: wait where is the Starbucks? I don’t see it in the pic
Artificially inflated as in the way that the price of a taco at Taco Bell has doubled since 1990 when accounting for inflation. If things were more expensive to pay workers better, people wouldn’t care. But the federal minimum wage is currently set at 2 McDonald’s hashbrowns an hour and prices have increased faster than inflation in most sectors in the chase of infinite growth.
“fancy drink”
Bitch it’s a latte, it’s bean water and milk
Bean Water and Moo Juice
these starbucks mfs are always putting weird stuff in their drinks. I bet it’s almond milk and cream on top or something
Bean water and nut water
“what are you drinking?”
“Mostly water”
I’ve only ever seen the last panel of this, delightful.
This is really daft.
It’s possible to participate in society in such a way as to uphold our beliefs about how society ought to be.
If you want to complain about Apple’s abuse of employees, don’t buy their stuff.
If you want to abolish slavery, don’t own any slaves.
If you want to smash capitalism, buy a used thinkpad.
Sure, there are some instances where this just isn’t possible in a complete and absolute sense. For example, I despise google, have invested a lot of effort in degoogling, but there remain some google components I rely on.
However, the existence of these instances does not mean we don’t need to invest any effort in supporting the changes we want to see.
Both points sort of miss the mark, though the lower one moreso imo.
You don’t need and $7 coffee and you don’t need a $1200 laptop. You won’t die without either. They are conveniences, and relying upon or expecting them is consumerism, a social manipulation tool of capitalism. Nothing is stopping you from directly opposing consumerism through your actions-- you don’t need to buy their coffee, you don’t need to buy their laptops.
If you’re truly against late-stage capitalism, you should be exploring actions you are comfortable taking to disempower it, not complacently feed into it. Maybe make your own coffee, or quit the stuff. Maybe buy an old laptop and install FOSS software on it. Maybe just buy recently-last-gen parts second-hand and build exactly the computer you need for less money than you’d spend on something you only sort of like from a manufacturer whose monopolistic behaviors you disagree with.
All I’ve got to say in the end is that there are options, and doomer complacency is meaningless and counterproductive.
Least wordy leftist meme.
Paying $7 for very shitty coffee is still a strange decision to me, but I understand
Different people like different shit. Live and let live.
Pretending you forced to and comparing it to slavery is even stranger
To be fair, no system is perfect. Allowing people to both disconnect and be better at least acknowledges that the society needs both an eye inside and an eye from outside in order to improve
Vaguely related… reminding me of my struggle as I research investing in new laptop.
Looking for something powerful enough for live DJ, live music production performance with groove box, keyboard, etc, ideally graphic design sufficient as well. Want ability to move my crafts to a buddy’s studio or a proper gig.
Big needs of course are robust processing power/ram, loads of storage ideal, battery life a big plus, quieter than gaming PC preferred, lots of ports a must, and goddammit I want it to last more than a few years before it declines sharply.
I really don’t want an Apple. Been there; done that; over it. College graphic design machine had a graphic card that crapped out extra early. Plenty of spots would recommend Apple. Haven’t gone too deep on Linux so no idea if software and live performance will work on that consistently and reliably. Generally use mostly Windows 10 these days.
If anyone has any insights or recommendations on a lappy that checks my boxes I am all ears and eager for discussion!
now, i really only recommend this is if you dont mind spending a while getting yourself familiar with the lineup, and the used market, but i would recommend looking for a solid used thinkpad. I’m preferential to the t/w 420 or 520 series, you can get them in pretty decent condition for pretty cheap, though some of the newer ones are quite a bit more modern. They aren’t super flexible on ports, but they have a significant variety, as well as a number of integrated features. And of course docking stations, though im not sure if those disable on board ports or not.
the t480 does also have a really cool feature where it has two batteries, one internal, and one external, and you can swap the external one as needed, so you basically have infinite battery life lol. The newer ones are alright, they don’t adhere to the design language of the older thinkpads though.
The framework is a very solid bet if you want a no frills machine that’s modern though, can rep. They cost money though.
Big ups for the thoughtful write up! I’ll be sure to add that to my list as I dig in deeper.
I’m graciously able to say I’m finally, finally at a stage where I have a lil extra fun money to play with. No Daddy Warbucks, but we can actually think about toys I’ve had on the wish list for ages. For something that I’ll be using for gigs I’m absolutely able to see value investing in something that will help me hone my craft.
Certainly in no rush; I’d rather measure twice and purchase once. (Well maybe a bit of a rush lol that summer fomo will kick into high gear any minute now fuck me it’s basically April lol)
Appreciate you, have a great weekend! 🤙
yeah, i’ve only just recently gotten involved in older thinkpads, and they certainly live up the reputation. A lot of them even have some pretty unusual features, which is highly welcome. The t480 battery swapping for instance.
Personally im not too big on spending lots of money, i just hate spending obscene amounts of money on things where something cheaper and more interesting will do what i want. Though i dont mind spending money on things when the investment is clearly there either.
If i had the money to spend, and i was going to run the ever living hell out of one, i would definitely be buying a framework. Otherwise i’d probably buy an old thinkpad, they’re cheap due to the volumes of them that were sold to businesses.
Though it is also worth noting, a few OEMs now are doing similar things to framework, i know HP is, i want to say dell is? Dont quote me on it. But there are more things appearing in the market, that are bringing repair-ability back, which is good. Though im sure framework is still going to have a better community around it, especially if you like linux. That’s the other reason thinkpads are particularly popular, they’re out there, and lots of people have them, and lots of people use them. There’s tons of information on them, from thinkwiki, to the thinkpad community forum, and reddit of course.
I wish you luck in your adventures, and perhaps some fun as well. (maybe pick up an older thinkpad just for the hell of it, give you something to work on as a side project) oh and if you do get into thinkpads, and you want some knowledge on the t/w 520 and possibly 420 series, as well as some of the later models, feel free to hit me up, i have some pretty good resources under my belt.
Damn decent of you, cheers! 🍻.
I very well may take you up on that. Shouldn’t be too hard to justify a second new toy either 😂
Take a look at the Framework 16. You can add a graphics card and the whole laptop is designed to be upgradeable in the same way a desktop is. Basically you buy the laptop and then replace or upgrade parts as you need to, no more need to buy a whole new rig every few years.
Macs naturally can not be stolen or obtain second hand as a gift or in some other sort of deal.
Huh? You can absolutely change mac ownership if the current associated account holder is involved. It’s a very simple process.
Now, if you need to remove an activation lock without the involvement of the registered account holder, it’s a huge pain in the ass (had to go through this with a work laptop a year ago).
Oh shit, I wonder if that means then person in the original picture could have gotten that Mac secondhand for less than $1,200
I don’t know how fancy that one is but I’ve pulled at least five working MacBooks from corporate ewaste. All were out of their absurdly-short OS support but Linux Mint (and I’m assuming a bunch of other distros) run great on them. I’ve handed all of them off since reinstalling but I liked the hardware enough to use one as a writing computer until someone needed it.
Ugh, corporate eWaste. I do tech work for a company, and outside of getting verbal approval from someone high enough up to take home two monitors when we acquired another company and we were doing an all hands on deck full replacement of their gear, there’s never been a way for me to recycle waste gear for personal use that wouldn’t put my employment at risk.
No process for letting employees recycle or reclaim gear. Chuck it in the dedicated bin, once a month a third party recycler comes around, takes it away. Supposedly they wipe or destroy the drives, but no word on what they do with the rest of it. Can’t find a damn thing on where/how they resell it, and I’ve spoken with the person in charge of purchasing and depreciating our hardware. Seen way too much hardware tossed that could go to great use, just not as a desktop anymore.
Like, my own collection of old hardware doesn’t have anything in it newer than a decade old, and it’s all budget stuff acquired from family.
Meanwhile there’s four year old business grade desktops being effectively thrown away that I’m seeing go for $300 used. Just let me build my home network without going broke dammit!
Yup, my last 2 MBP laptops have been from a junk pile and came to me free/cheap from a buddy who was able to grab a bunch.
All in all, everything I do on a laptop is in a webui, a terminal or within a remote VM so I mostly dgaf about what it can natively run, but the hardware is great and it can load the nix (and brew) package managers, so I really haven’t found much that I want it to do that it can’t. Hell, even games I can just Steam Link to another machine and play if I want.
My last job was disposing of a 2021 model and I was dumb enough to ask if I could have it rather than just taking it and got told no … Sold for scrap by the pound! I could have left a 10$ bill in it’s place and theyd have gotten more profit, fucking ridiculous.
Sarcasm, friend
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But Apple is one of the good embodiment of capitalism. It is a symbol of excessive consumption, surveillance for profit, and customer abuse.
That being said, is not like most popular alternative is any better. If people don’t have time to switch to or even heard about better alternatives (upgradeable open hardware running an open community-driven OS), I guess it is not their fault.
is not like most popular alternatives are any better
Not in the ways you mentioned. Apple is the most profitable of them all though (due to their horrendous prices, duh), which doesn’t fit an anti-capitalist attitude. I guess, it could be a second hand laptop but they are still supporting that ecosystem.
Also a product isn’t a bad product, just because it is produced under capitalism. A computers ability to compute does not depend on its mode of production.
i understand what you’re saying, but technically a computers computing ability is entirely dependent on how it’s produced. Especially in the case of apple, where with intel they really like not giving you any cooling at all, i guess they thought it was funny or something? Or with the new M series macs where they dont give you any ram, because god forbid people use normal amounts of ram.
“It’s okay to resist capitalism on an iPhone. The feudal lord who owned the pitchforks the peasants killed him with probably observed the irony too.” -Ben Stiller
Like fighting against the fur trade in a Canada Goose jacket.
… or maybe she thought it’s an edgy sticker and fits her style?
Idk. But if you really were serious about smashing capitalism, it’s kinda irrelevant how much stuff you buy, there’s a lot of groundwork to be done, organizing and educating. For all we know, that may be what she’s doing in that photo.
If she dressed in rags, owned nothing and was homeless, I fail to see how that would accomplish anything more.
Although I prefer to support local businesses, not a fan of massive corporate chains. My city has dozens of local coffee shops that serve fair trade products. I can walk to a half dozen of them, whether or not I bring my ancient 2011 laptop. But I do love my principles being questioned by smug internet randos so 🖕
Eh, never fear your principles being questioned even by “smug internet randos”. Lest you become the smug internet rando yourself.
Introspection is a never ending task.
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Nobody is forcing you to buy a mac and a Starbucks 🤣
Lmao participate in capitalism or die! That means you should spend all your money on the most expensive version of all your luxury items instead of using an old PC and making coffee at home. Internet hard-lefties need to take a look in the mirror, go outside, and readjust their priorities. Its these jokers that leftists get lumped in with that make us look bad. Yes, the original picture in this post is hilarious and ironic for all the same reasons it was originally posted, and I say that as someone who might agree with most of the laptop person’s political views
Bait post
