CF-54, thoughts on living with one??? Repairability??

[thewanderlustking]

My OLD MacBook is getting even older... It is a 2012 and has been a constant near daily companion. It says a LOT that it is still running well. Repairability is AMAZING too. But it is way past time to replace it.... Specs wise it is a 2.5 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 with 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 and Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB. Harddrive has been upgraded to a 512GB SSD. Keyboard and trackpad are absolutely butter and perfection.

I have a 15" Macbook here with a crazy Retina OLED or something screen. It is night and day difference from this one, and alone is probably worth the upgrade. It is an i7 and has 16GB memory (I believe its also soldered in memory). It needs a battery, not a big deal (about $100). It has a bunch of other specs making it pretty hard to compete with... But, it isn't a Toughbook.

I am contemplating moving to a CF-54 with 32GB memory. I can get one with an i7 for about $900-1000. Or I can get a slightly lower spec i5 Black Cobra Edition for $1200. But either one of these is signifigantly more than the $100-125 needed to get my 15" MacBook 100%.

Hardware wise I am concerned about 2 things, the keyboard feel (I type a lot) and the trackpad feel. Toughbook pads always feel "draggy" vs the glass smooth feel of a Mac. Keyboard is harder to describe. I always seem to drop letters on Toughbooks, but never ever do this on my Mac. I suspect the Mac keystroke is lighter and possibly shorter. I don't think I have an issue on the older non-backlight Toughbook keyboards, but I drop letters on the emissive/chicklet Toughbook keyboards. It is POSSIBLE I still drop letters now and then on the Mac, but it does seem to have way better auto spell correct.

Software and OS. The Toughbooks doesn't have OSX on them... Windows has perfected the art of wasting your time. I am dozing off, going to call this one done for now lol.

[KarlKlammer2]

MrMobile called the FZ-55 the "Anti-MacBook" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a5FnW8UP40

Whatever you do, get the one with the 1000nits screen. I've got the 400nits screen and it ... just ... doesnt ... feel quite right, coming from two cf19s.
It feels more like a very well build Thinkpad T series than a Toughbook. Maybe I'm just missing the grey color when opened up, don't know for sure ... something is off.

[thewanderlustking]

I know what you mean, I don’t like the “standard or” version. But the Black Cobra one has something just subtly different about it that the keyboard area looks 10x better. Maybe it’s the grey around the touch pad. Also I think for this laptop, all black looks way “Tougher” lol.

That video almost convinces me right there! Good review! Still going from OSX to Windows 11 is a pretty big jump…. That’s the hardest selling point. OSX is so so much more productive and built to be clean and not distracting. It’s utter BS how much effort you have to go through to get Windows to a point where it is even half as productive. I don’t want to be bombarded with crap and distractions. I like to have multiple desktops up to stuff random research projects on. And it’s pretty common for me to have 10-20 pages up with multiple tabs open. I love the way OSX lets me organize stuff. Sure there’s plenty of workarounds, but I don’t have to work on it with OSX lol.

Anyways. I’m about 60% sold on getting a CF-54. Going to finish fixing my CF-33 and spend some time with Windows 11. And also keep working on getting me CF-31 on OSX. If I can pull that off, it will add a good bit towards moving towards a CF-54.

What I LOVE LOVE LOVE about the CF-54, is it is at that midway point. Not thin and delicate like a Mac, but not massive and bulky like a CF-31.

And the x-packs are just AWESOME!

[KarlKlammer2]

I used to run Qubes OS and OpenBSD on my cf19 and t420. OpenBSD is a very very clean and highly purist unix system (and OSX is based on BSD based Mach kernel and partly BSD userland). Switched to a cf54 with Windows 11 three months ago.
I am a bit suprised that I'm actually fine with the OS. Only the size of updates annoyes me. 700mb every month over cellular ... that's a whole OpenBSD install iso. oh and the monthly reboots that go along with the update.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/com ... book_cf54/ suggests that the touchpad might be an issue for hackintoshing a cf54. and the cpu beeing a bit slow for recent MacOS versions.

[thewanderlustking]

Sadly that video was for the FZ-55 and not the CF-54... If I expand my search to all memory options, I can get a couple nice CF-54s as low as $450-500 with the i7 processors still. Memory is cheap enough to make this a smart way to get a much better deal, as long as I can still bump it all the way to the 32gb memory.

The FZ-55 isn't speed out as high on the processors either. If I was going to attempt to Hacintosh it, the CF-54 has similar, but slightly better, processor as my current MacBook Pro.

Linix and unix are fun, but not the OSX experience. I really like Apple and OSX because of the way it integrates with all Apple's hardware. Phones, iPads, etc. Everything is super seamless, and it just works. No fuss. Sure, when it breaks, boy oh boy does it ever break. But it's not a monthly occurrence like Windows... Ironically, I have found Apple products to be crazy rugged and reliable. Granted, I keep all my devices in appropriate rugged cases... But my iPhone is like 3-4 years old, my MacBook is 12yrs old, and my iPads are 6-8yrs old.

It would be super cool to get that level of integration, with a Toughbook. Possible? Probably. Easy? Defiantly not... But windows 11 is supposed to actually have some of that built in too. Whatever the case, I am not sure I can justify even $500 on a CF-54, unless I feel it can fully replace my MacBook(s). There are still a lot of unknowns, for now I am going to work on eliminating some of them. I will get some more keyboard time on my CF-33 and try to get it working with my iPhone at least. And I am going to work some more on getting my CF-31 Hacintoshed.