Post #2374466

2026-03-04 14:43 UTC

Honestly I’m expecting this to take up most of the mid-range laptop market. 8gb RAM and only 256GB storage is lame, but the rest of it probably makes it really good value (especially with components getting more expensive recently). Unless you’re buying used or refurbished, most laptops I found at ~$600 or less kinda suck. Either it has terrible specs, or uses cheap plastic, or has a terrible screen, etc. I don’t like Apple, but hopefully this is a wake-up call for other vendors. Lower end laptops should stop being cheap garbage.

Replies (7)

@homes@piefed.world 2026-03-04 14:50

It’s important to note, and is often overlooked, that macOS is especially good at memory management. That 8 GB will go much farther than it would on it another PC. Not to mention that the vast majority of people using these will be using it to browse the web and other very minor tasks. For the price, it’s pretty great.

Open ##2374468
@woelkchen@lemmy.world 2026-03-04 15:08

makes it really good value An iPad Air costs the same but comes with a much better M4 processor. The main difference is a less crap operating system in macOS.

Open ##2374470
@deltaspawn0040@lemmy.zip 2026-03-04 15:45

I got a laptop from 2017 off eBay for $50 with those same specs. Installed Linux on it and it was good to go. 600 is absolutely outrageous in a world where used hardware exists.

Open ##2374486
@ComputerAbuser@piefed.ca 2026-03-04 17:31

8GB RAM and 256GB SSD isn’t great, but it’s not surprising at this price point with the price of memory and storage right now. Anyone who has built a system recently can attest. If RAM/SSD pricing wasn’t so god awful I could imagine double the capacity at this price point.

Open ##2374501
@mrmaplebar@fedia.io 2026-03-04 17:39

Honestly, it might be a wakeup call for laptop vendors, or it might just put a lot of them out of business. This is not a good economy for them to suddenly have to compete with Apple on value…

Open ##2374502
@in_my_honest_opinion@piefed.social 2026-03-04 18:44

Always buy refurbished laptops, including MacBooks.

Open ##2374507
@BladeFederation@piefed.social 2026-03-04 19:59

That is so true, and can’t be underestimated. The budget laptop market absolutely blows these days. I got a 1300x768 screen, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB storage (albeit HDD), and ~2 GHz CPU in 2016, for $500. That was at Best Buy, who tried to sell $100 HDMI cables at the time, and wasn’t even a great deal, though I was fine with it. Now the budget market is…pretty much the same. Slightly better 1080p screen, same RAM, 1/4th the storage (but usually an SSD), a significantly better CPU that has most of that CPU progress kneecapped by Windows 11. It’s GRIM out there.

Open ##2374516