Why I bought a new laptop 💻

I just updated my Hardware Uses page. Recently, I bought a new notebook and today I reset my Surface Go and sent it to a trade-in portal.

Why?

For at least the next two years, I will have two households. One household shared with my girlfriend in her university town, and a second “commuter apartment” (my previous primary residence).

So far, I’ve mostly used my desktop PC at home and my Surface Go on the road. When I do some programming, I mostly do it over SSH on my home server anyway.

My Surface Go has been fine for basic stuff, but the poor performance is sometimes noticeable when you want to use more complex web apps or an external 4K monitor. It’s tablet hardware and I don’t want to have more powerful hardware only in one household. Sometimes I need enough power for more multitasking and compiling, or I want to watch 4K videos. I also don’t need a tablet since I no longer study where I had to take handwritten notes.

Now that there are heaps of discount promotions everywhere throughout November (Singles Day, Black Month, Black Weeks, Black Friday…), I snapped up a promotion and secured the GIGABYTE U4 UD with an 11th-Gen Intel Core i5 processor. For 449 and about 8 Euros shipping. I still had a Windows license and installed Windows 11 Pro manually.

The device is a real lightweight, it weights less than 1 KG, which is definitely a plus point for my upcoming commutes. The battery isn’t that big, but it lasts 3 to 4 hours and I’m usually not without a power outlet for that long and still have my powerbank that can also charge the notebook via USB-C Power Delivery. The processor with 16 GB of RAM and a PCIe 4 SSD are quite fast and allow me to use the mentioned applications without problems. The speakers are really bad, but headphones can be connected via Bluetooth or the jack.

Last year I mentioned that if I were to buy a new notebook, it would probably be a Framework Laptop, because they are so easy to upgrade or repair, but considering the price, I changed my mind. A Framework Laptop would be at least twice as expensive.

Because of the new notebook, I wouldn’t need my desktop PC anymore, performance-wise it should be on par with the notebook, but I don’t want to sell it either. Maybe it can serve as a second home server in the second household? Certainly quite handy for things like offsite backups.

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