[NFBCS] Laptop Recommendations

Wed Oct 8 16:42:26 UTC 2025

I’m skeptical about the Optima. There has been one delay after another and the product is still not available. The idea of a laptop with a built-in Braille display has been done before and these products were expensive and quickly became obsolete. People say the Framework environment is different which may be the case. I still see a lot of unanswered questions about the Optima. Who will support and repair it?

Dan

From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Joe Orozco via NFBCS
Sent: Wednesday, October 8, 2025 11:36 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Joe Orozco <jsorozco at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] Laptop Recommendations

Elijah,

Do we have it on good authority that the Optima is finally coming next year?

I’m always intrigued by the prospect of running Windows on a Mac. I hear conflicting information about VmWare, but my research says Parallels is a smoother experience. Putting aside the subscription model of Parallels, what are your thoughts there?

If Mike’s priority is battery life, do you think M4 Pro Max would be advisable considering the way it would devour battery? Wouldn’t M4 Pro be a more reasonable compromise if paired with sufficient unified memory? I’m interested enough to hold out for M5 since we’re already so close to a release date.

I recommended the Lenovo ThinkPad series to Mike off list. It’s served me well, good steady product line. The Carbon One is a good model, but honestly, for the price difference, the T series is not bad. The Carbon One is just their luxury business package.

Joe 

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 12:44 AM Elijah Massey via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:

I think it would be a good idea to consider the Framework laptops, because when you have hardware problems you can likely fix them by replacing parts. You can even upgrade the motherboard and CPU without buying a new laptop if you want to upgrade the hardware; the processor cannot be separated from the motherboard but everything else can be replaced and the motherboard can be swapped. You can get Intel or AMD processors up to the most powerful laptop models, and up to the maximum amount of RAM the motherboard can hold. Also, if you don't need a screen, when the Optima comes out next year you could transition to that possibly reusing a lot of parts since its based on the Framework, and get something more portable but just as powerful. When I look up what the battery life is, people get widely varying results, but mostly people seem to say it lasts at least 6 or 8 hours.

Also, I know you mentioned you need an X86 processor, but for others reading this I would also recommend looking at the MacBook Pro, which is based on Apple Silicon (which uses the ARM archetecture). It gets up to 24 hours of battery life, probably more than any X86 laptop, and the M4 Max is significantly more powerful than the Intel Core I9-13900K, the most powerful Intel desktop processor, in both single-core and multi-core benchmarks according to Geekbench. You can run Windows and Linux in virtual machines using VmWare Fusion or UTM, and MacOS and Windows both have good built-in X86 emulators that can run most X86 applications well, and there are a few high performance X86 emulators for Linux as well.
Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 7, 2025, at 15:41, Michael Forzano via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org <mailto:nfbcs at nfbnet.org> > wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I've been using HP Elitebook 840 laptops for work for years, and have had to replace one on average once a year due to various hardware failures (USB C ports, headphone jack, and keyboard were the most recent). I have the opportunity to purchase something different and wanted to ask for recommendations from fellow blind developers. I feel like I've heard good things generally about ThinkPads so was primarily looking at those though i'm open to other suggestions. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon seems to have good reviews across the board, but I'm concerned it won't be powerful enough for developer use cases. I use VSCode primarily and typically have up to 2 or 3 workspaces open at once, and I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open at any given time. Good battery life is important to me (at least 4 hours with practical usage). I also took a look into the T14S (Intel version as an Intel processor is a requirement for me) and the reviews from PCMag etc. were mixed.
> 
> Does anyone have personal experience with these, or other premium laptops in a similar class that they can share?
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
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