I charge 1000 Euro per day when I'm consulting. That would be in Berlin. For that money, I need a laptop that is fast and works. I spend most waking hours using it so it also needs to be comfortable to use. So, I value quality and performance.

That being said, my expensive 2017 Macbook Pro broke a few weeks ago and I picked up a very nicely discounted Samsung Galaxy book for about 700 Euro because the only macs available were obsolete and the new ones had 4 week delivery times. It's a 16GB, i5 with a surprisingly decent Iris XE graphics system on a chip thing and 512GB ssd. Nothing fancy but good enough for the money and great value at that price actually.

I put Manjaro on it and was up and running in a few hours. I only had 4 hours to configure it in the evening as I had a customer meeting the next morning and needed a working development environment. So, I was pretty pleased all of that worked out fine. That means that laptop earned itself back in under a day. I even managed to revive some of my 32 bit Steam library and get playable fps (with that intel XE graphics!). And unlike the mac, it does not have thermal throttling issues. It was always unusable for gaming.

I'll probably buy one of the new fancy macs when delivery times improve a bit and when we get some clarity on the inevitable early adopter issues (which bits are going to break this time?). But I'm not in a hurry. This thing works well enough and I'm kind of liking Manjaro so far. Lots of rough edges but nothing I can't deal with. Definitely not for users not comfortable using a command line.

I'd totally spend 3000-4000 Euro on a laptop regardless of the OS if it is good value for money. My last mac book pro was 3500 Euro. Money is not the issue for me when I literally spend a lot of my billable time waiting for this thing to do stuff for minutes on end many times a day and interrupting my flow (which is priceless). But I expect performance for that money as well as a decent keyboard (so definitely not my Macbook Pro) and a nice screen. Apple fixed all of those things with their latest iteration but the configuration I'd want puts me close to 4000-5000 Euro this time. I'm actually considering doing that. But it's a lot of money and Apple tax this time. And the build quality of the last one was terrible, which makes me more hesitant. The worst I've ever seen from Apple. Hence, the cheapo emergency replacement.

So, this laptop looks like a great deal. Twice the memory (or more if you upgrade), ssd, and better CPU than what I picked up for just 700 Euro a few weeks ago. Close to good enough for me. I'd like a proper screen though. Not having retina/HDPI feels like going back to the stone age a bit. Yes, Linux needs a bit of work on that front but Wayland seems capable of this at least. But other than that, not bad. If they do a more expensive version with a better screen, I'd consider getting one.

Finding decent laptops is actually a problem. There are not a lot of premium laptops that are nice enough for my criteria. I don't want a gaming laptop monstrosity that sounds like a vacuum cleaner. I don't care for Thinkpads with a nipple and shitty touchpad. Dell has support issues though their XPS is pretty nice. But I want something premium, with a nice screen, keyboard and touchpad that doesn't feel like a huge compromise. This Samsung is quite nice on this front actually considering the price. The touchpad could be a bit bigger. But it does multi touch and it works (after lots of fiddling with settings). The 1080p screen feels like a huge leap backwards after having used a Retina screen for the last few years. Not loving that.