On laptops and sizes

For uninteresting reasons, I recently had the chance to try out a Lenovo T490s at home and compare it to my other laptops. The short story is that I won’t be switching to it, but the reason surprised me.

My other computers are a Lenovo x260 (12”) and a 16” M1-class MacBook Pro. I had hoped that the T490 with its quieter cooling and faster and more modern CPU would replace the x260, but despite being a 14” class computer, it’s too close to the 16” Mac to make a positive difference. In fact its screen is smack between my 14” work MacBook Pro and my private 16” one in width, while also having a slightly larger footprint than the 14” Mac when seen to its depth. The high-resolution Apple screens have spoiled me for screen real estate: On a 14” screen, the 1080p resolution feels like a waste, and combined with the significantly larger footprint for the same screen size compared to the Mac, this machine doesn’t make up for its drawbacks by being nimble and easy to pick up and bring along.

That said, Fedora on the T490s seems to work perfectly out of the box, just like you’d expect from a modern operating system in 2025. The machine is almost quiet in normal operation and has decent battery life for an Intel-based PC. Funnily enough, its perceived speed isn’t that much faster than the x260.

If I had worse eyesight this could absolutely be a machine I opted for, for my open operating system needs, but again: It’s simply not better enough than the x260 to make me accept the larger bulk of the computer. In this case, at least, size really does matter.