Not everyone uses computers the way I do, but I rely on heavy customization and tons of applications, so switching to a new computer is always a major, major hassle. I have no plans to do it until absolutely necessary. Meanwhile the current one has a fast i7 quad processor, a fast SSD for the OS, and adequate memory, and nothing short of a catastrophic and irreparable failure will make me give it up!
I’m not an OpenOffice person but Nisus Writer opens Word documents that have change-tracking and shows them, so I would anticipate that OpenOffice is clever enough to do likewise. It’s closer to being a Word clone in overall behavior.
^^^ Yeah this, exactly.
When it’s “absolutely necessary.” You may end up in the ‘dark’ for a week or two.
When COVID struck, and I was allowed to work from home. I looked at my current desktop, and said, Ummm no.
I bought a new desktop and monster monitor and am happily working form home. A lot of people got laptops to work from home. I can’t work on a laptop. No way. I have a laptop for the coffee table in the living room. But there is no way I could work on it. I’m often hooked up to multiple servers and their screens. Laptop won’t cut it.
I have backups and several other computers to get me by.
I plug my laptop into a monster monitor when i an working. Except i sometimes take teams calls from the kitchen table or the living room recliner.
For myself, team meetings are best done when every one has a dedicated camera and headset. Non of this “We will just throw a laptop on the table and use it’s speaker and mic.” The camera of the laptop is showing one person, or a light switch on the wall. When I share a screen and everyone sticks their face in the laptop so they can see the shared screen, on my end I’m seeing nose hairs.
Just buy a damn camera and good headset for your work computer please. We are professionals here. We each make good money.
I mostly work from home, as do most of my coworkers. So when we have a teams meeting, we each have our own laptop aimed at us. My observation is that the sound is better when my coworkers use the laptop’s microphone than it is when they use a headset with mike. Many of them DO use a headset, because they have a spouse who is also working from home or something. But there are many more “we can’t hear you” from the headsets, and worse audio even when it basically works.
I agree that a single laptop does not work for a roomful of people. But it works great for one person.
100%. I guess it works well for one person. In my job we really need multiple monitors. No way I could work on a laptop, I would question anyone in my field (GIS) that says they can.
Headphones with a mic allow me to have two hands for the computer. And folks typing on a laptop while the speaker is on, is a whole different experience. Also their hands often just fly up and back in front of the camera. Not to mention the clickety clack of the key board. Many of us are making around 100k. Buy a bloody camera and headphones and mic. I’ll buy it for you.
We are computer professionals. Hook up a peripheral or two. It’s no big deal.
We don’t usually talk and type at the same time. (Or if we do, we try to pretend we aren’t, and we go on mute.)
The peripherals i use most are monitors. 
i like the flexibility of using a laptop, including being able to bring it to the office and then bring it home. But i need more than that little screen, too. I can do meetings and email on just the laptop, but yeah, i need the extra screen real estate, too. At the office the laptop hooks up to two external monitors. At home it hold up to a single very large monitor. Plus its integral screen, of course.
But the new computer i plan to buy soon is for personal use, not for work. And yeah, right now I’m working on the schedule for a dance weekend I’m running, and i want to have my email, my discord (the two systems where the dance leaders told me what they want to lead) the actual schedule, and a spreadsheet of who is doing what when, all visible at the same time. But when I’m done with that, i might curl up in bed with the same laptop and watch a movie.
There do exist laptops with pop out extra screens and such. I don’t know how current they are, though. But I do know you can buy portable screens you can hook on.
Not saying it’s a good idea in general, but maybe in a pinch.
I had a Lenovo T410 run pretty darn well for my needs from 2014 (got used from a friend) until last summer when it finally took its last breath. I really loved the classic keyboard, so I got a refurbished/upgraded T420 for only $300. The displays on those machines aren’t so great, but I just use an external monitor. I miss Windows 7 (the T420 has Win10), but it’s basically the same machine with more RAM, bigger SSD and better graphics (i7 and Nvidia)…hoping to get some good mileage out of it.
Yep, that’s what I’m using currently, and I’m relatively happy with it, give or take a few minor things I miss about MS Word/Excel. I did have a few crashes with it when I was trying to pick a custom color in Writer (happened 2-3 times), but I don’t need to do that too often.
I wound up ordering an iPad Pro with the 13" display.
While I like my laptop - after all, I was thinking of another copy - going over my usage patterns since I retired, I don’t need it. I now mostly watch videos via streaming, browse the web, read using the Kindle app, and type the occasional post here or on Reddit. I’ve never used the DVD drive or most of the ports, the webcam, I’ve used less only 70GB of the 2TB of drive space, etc. I focus on desktop-replacement laptops because that’s what I used back when I was in banking (20 years of Thinkpads), but most of what I do now could be done on my iPhone so… a really big iPhone seems feasible. We’ll see.
Like… an iPad? Personally, i found typing on an iPad to be horrible. Too big to swype, and shitty for touch typing. But i understand you can buy any external keypad for an iPad that is okay too type on. Since i mostly want to have the keyboard, a laptop with a dedicated keyboard works better for me. (and i DO use those ports, to attach an external monitor, to back up my data, to import files from a chip…) But if you mostly don’t need a keyboard, an iPad might be good.
I’ve got an old Bluetooth keyboard around - the Apple keyboard case’s price is just nuts - so what little writing I do should be covered, though it occurs to me now that it’s at least 15 years old. While writing had me consider a Macbook Air for about the same price as the iPad, it wouldn’t have meant adding a new OS to the mix. I’m okay with iOS, but I don’t even know what the full-fat OS is called. I vaguely remember a bunch of animal names?
Generically it’s called MacOS. Versions used to be cats, and are currently places.
The Macs don’t have touch screens. If you like being able to grab a window and pinch it, or whatever, you might prefer the iPad. Macs also have the best touchpad in the industry. If you like to use a keyboard and touchpad (my preference, and what i use for work – i even bought an external touchpad to use when my Windows laptop was in its docking station) you will enjoy the MacBook Air.
Given my screen-focused use, the only way a Macbook Air would have won me over is if there was a 2-in-1 version that flipped into a tablet. Something Windows laptops have been doing for years, but I don’t think any Macbook ever has. I could default to a Macbook if the iPad strategy doesn’t work out, but most likely I’d go that route in Windows with a Thinkpad Yoga or similar.
My desktop PC is about 6 years old at this point. It’s finally at the point where it can’t run the latest games (e.g. starfield is out of the question). Also, I have an oculus quest 2, but my PC wasn’t powerful enough to drive games like Alyx at a decent framerate.
So I looked at getting a new PC, but what the hell…budget gaming PCs are still slower than what I already have. My ancient computer seems to still compare favorably to what’s out there (Geforce 1060 GTX 3GB, 16GB DDR3, maybe the processor is the slow part: E5 Xeon E5-2689 @ 2.60GHz)
So either I’ll sit it out for a while longer, or maybe do some investigation of whether I can just swap out the CPU and motherboard.
You can’t do that without a touch screen. And Mac’s don’t have touch screens. Yeah, not for you.
Okay, i actually own 3 laptops. I have a MacBook Pro, which is my “computer of record”. I regularly back it up, use it for email and spreadsheets and dealing with my mom’s estate. I also have an hp spectre that flips into a tablet. It’s my travel laptop. Small, light, and i don’t lose any important records if i lose it. (Nor give away access to my bank accounts.) I actually never use the tablet mode, but i love “tent” mode, which is like a tablet except it stands up. Great for watching movies on an airplane. Or in bed. And i have a big Dell thing i bought for gaming. I regret that purchase, mostly because the touch pad is wonky in ways that weren’t obvious in the store, but also, i paid too much for what i use it for.
Oh, and there’s also my employer’s laptop that i use for work. It’s a commercial-grade HP, with mediocre specs but better durability than the consumer versions.
So if you are looking for how to limp along without buying anything, don’t ask me. But if you are curious about what’s out there, i may have tried it.
Sure or a docking station for it. We have at a minimum 2 20" screens. I have one 43" screen. Laptops can work when you are on vacation and need to check on something.
But my primary complaint was using a single laptop for 3 people to join a Teams or Zoom meeting. At least on the one they use, the mic sucks. I I don’t get to see the person speaking. Well, one in three chance.