I apologise if this is the wrong community to post this in, I wasn’t sure which one was ideal.
I’m suffering a difficult decision of choosing between a Framework laptop or a Macbook Air (M1, 2020). I really like the ethical principles of Framework, i.e. you actually own it and can repair it any time, leading to an increased longevity. At the same time, I have heard people claim Macbook is superior in almost all aspects (especially battery life).
I know both Apple and Microsoft are greedy CorpGiants, but seeing as I have an iPhone, I figure it would be easier using a Mac? But then again, the prices really are not worth it, especially considering it costs a lot to repair them. I have 0 experience with Linux, and this computer will be used at school, so I suppose it stands between macOS and Windows.
I guess I just want some advice? Or some guidance and comparisons. Is 8GB enough for a Framework laptop? The 16GB version costs nearly as much as the Mac I’m looking at, hence my hesitance. If anybody has some experience using Framework and / or Macbook, I would love to hear about it. What are some pros and cons? Which people are better off with FW and Mac respectively?
Thank you!
*Edit, forgot to mention: I need a Swedish keyboard on the computer, and Framework apparently only offers English. This is the largest obstacle preventing me from leaning towards FW.
Apple claims their OS needs less RAM (I have no clue) but for OP running Windows 8GB is no where near enough.
They can claim that all they want to, but once you actually start running stuff on the computer that’s BS. Accessing the same website in the same browser on different platforms will use the same amount of RAM. Opening the same files on different platforms will use the same amount of RAM.
RAM is where things are put for active use, and it turns out that all files are the size of their content regardless of platform and thus take up the same amount of space in use.
While the base OS of one vendor might have a smaller foot print than the other, that doesn’t matter once you actually start using the damn thing. If you spec your machine on the misguided marketing that “you need less RAM” your gonna have slower load times and longer waits when switching between apps as the OS needs to access the storage.
My work laptop is a MBpro with 32gb of RAM. It is very easy to max out it’s RAM and with an unbounded swap system very easy to max out my disk space too. When that happens it’s a bad crash and lost work.
My personal computer is a custom built desktop running Windows and Linux with 64gb of RAM. It is harder to max out it’s RAM though I have done so and it frequently uses more than 32gb of RAM.
Well except in Linux’s case when you use zram anyway. It compresses a pool of RAM. I usually compress almost all of my RAM and generally hover around and 2:1 ratio with lz4.
Windows 10+ also compresses a pool of RAM but it is a terrible ratio and seem to hover around 1:1.1. Nothing to write home about.