Comment by internet2000
3 months ago
> But the thing that got me, in all honesty, was the brand. “Fujitsu laptop” sounds like colour in a William Gibson novel: “crawling into the avionics bay, Case took out a battered Fujitsu refurb, and stuck a JTAG port in the flight computer—”.
It's kind of hard to take this opinion seriously after that.
I actually find this rather interesting.
Gibson knew dick about computers in 1984, which makes his early cyberpunk works more interesting because so much of the technical stuff is pure imagination and guesswork. He peppered his 1980s prose with Japanese-sounding brand names because he assumed that the Japanese would dominate computing the way they dominated electronics for things people like William Gibson do—things like listening to music. And it didn't quite work out that way, because Japanese computer manufacturers tailored their output to peculiar Japanese needs (specifically, needing high resolution displays and lots of memory in order to draw kanji well and needing Japanese language support in the OS) rather than hewing to emerging industry standards. This kept prices of NEC, Epson, and Sharp gear high, and allowed American manufacturers like IBM, Dell, HP, and especially Apple to get a significant foothold in the emerging industry worldwide. Toshiba emerged as an early leader in laptops, but laptops wouldn't really find their market niche until the mid-90s or so. So these days, you go to like Den-Den Town in Osaka, and you will find Dells and HPs for sale, and of course all the pretty Japanese girls are all about their Apple gear, just like here. Even so, Japanese buyers tend to prefer Japanese brands, followed by other Asian brands, and Western brands (except for Apple) third. So I can totally see a Japanese executive rocking a Fujitsu laptop, but I haven't seen Westerners in possession of one.
I found myself using Fujitsu tablets for a long while because I prefer using a stylus, and there was a long while they were the best option --- in particular, the Stylistic line and the ST4100 and ST4110 were perfect for my needs, esp. the latter w/ its daylight-viewable transflective display. Still worked last time I needed to scan something.
The Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was a nice replacement (save for daylight viewability), but when it was time to replace it, wound up w/ a Book 3 Pro 360 convertible.
Windows 11 has annoyed me to the point that I am contemplating a Raspberry Pi 5 and a Wacom display, which feels like a much easier way to get a Linux laptop (modulo the need to make a shell and source a battery and wire everything together).
Lenovo ThinkPad Yogas are also an excellent choice. Be sure to get one with the "ThinkPad Yoga" branding (not just Yoga). You get the high Linux compatibility of ThinkPads, tablet/hybrid modes, and a stylus. I found a used one for $300 and it's my new art machine.
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This website is called Hacker News.
Suit yourself. I think a little whimsy is refreshing.
I came here to quote that section for the opposite reason, what a lovely, romantic reason to be drawn to a laptop; made me smile :)