New Laptop

It is hard to believe that I’ve been at AWS almost four years, but it turns out that is about the amount of time one needs to qualify for a laptop replacement. When I joined I could choose a 14-inch HP laptop running windows or a 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 processor. I chose the MacBook. I could have pursued a third, Linux-based option, and some of my teammates use Linux laptops, but while I’m happy running Linux on the desktop for personal use I really don’t need the extra hassle of running it within a corporate environment, so I went Apple. The MacBook was a good little machine. When I’m at home I connect it to an external monitor, with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and when I travel it was nice and light. When I was up for a renewal, my choices had also increased. I ended up getting a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 processor. It is a beast. Of course as soon as I got my “Nov 2024” laptop they came out with a new M5 model, and I have the M4 Pro and not M4 Max, but I don’t think I’ll notice the difference. The new machine is both much larger and much heavier than my old laptop, and I’m wondering if made a mistake and should have gone with the smaller version. But there was one reason I went with the big one: GenerativeAI. While there aren’t much in the way of truly open source LLMs, I do like playing with open weight models you can run on your own equipment. I’ve played a lot with Qwen and I like it, although I’m not sure what’s currently going on with the development community. Running local models on the M1 can be time consuming, and I am hoping with the beefier hardware things will move faster. I don’t think I’m going to like the extra weight in my backpack, but then again my backpack usually outweighs my carry-on bag by a considerable amount. Having the much larger screen should make working from a remote office or hotel room better. Of course I didn’t get to play with it straight out of the box. Amazon put its own tweaked version of MacOS on the machine when I got it, and they shipped it with a generic 100W USB-C power adapter. One of the things that is kind of cool working at AWS is that if you need a backup adapter they are available from vending machines in AWS offices. You just use your badge to get one. But the downside is that the Apple adapter has a removable plug, and these do not. I travel to a lot of different countries and it is nice to be able to swap out the electrical plug to match the local style without having to deal with external adapters. So I ordered an actual Apple 96W power supply, as well as a MagSafe to USB cable. The MagSafe adapter is much larger than the USB-C connector, but it frees up a port and I am clumsy so if I trip over it the laptop shouldn’t fly off the desk. The transition so far has been painless, and I’ll be shipping my old laptop back soon. I can only imagine what will be around in four more years.