Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#11

Post by qwerty456127 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

> Bluetooth has to be good

Does this even exist? Never met a reliable (even in context of using within a single meter of range) BlueTooth in my life. Only Apple seems to offer reasonably good.

For this very reason (although my experience comes solely from earphones) I hesitate to buy a BlueTooth keyboard which I would normally prefer over occupying a USB port with a separate wireless KB dongle.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#12

Post by timpattinson » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 9:50 AM UTC

Good thermal management. Doesn't throttle down to unusable speeds under high CPU load or combined CPU/GPU load.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#13

Post by qwerty456127 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 9:54 AM UTC

chaz6 wrote: post #9

High up my list is repairability, which is why I am a big fan of the Framework laptop.

Number two in my list. Hard to open? Hard to reach some parts? memory/ssd soldered on the mainboard? Go away.

Number one is immediate global availability so I won't have to deal with the customs or pre-order. Sadly the the Framework fails both.

Excellent hardware compatibility (full Linux support) is "number zero". I can only possibly forgive the finerprint scanner for being unusable on Linux (because these are not really necessary and the reality is they mostly are so I accept this).

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#14

Post by dna_polymerase » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 9:55 AM UTC

AMD CPU & Repair-ability. Framework looks promising, but I'm not eager to buy an Intel processor.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#15

Post by nojito » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 9:56 AM UTC

Thin, quiet, fast, and a good touchpad.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#16

Post by jacknews » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

chaz6 wrote: post #9

High up my list is repairability, which is why I am a big fan of the Framework laptop.

Particularly with anything that wears. Batteries, fans, keyboard, flash storage. and maybe ports, need to be easy to replace.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#17

Post by johanneskanybal » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 9:58 AM UTC

- unix-based under the hood so normal dev work is easy peasy

- low maintenance so I have more time and energy

- popular so app ecosystem works

- unbreakable

For work I haven't seen a competitor to macbook pro's in a decade.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#18

Post by qwerty456127 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 10:01 AM UTC

> two fast external storage ports

At least 4 USB ports (2-3 USB-B, 1-2 USB-C).

At least one of them full USB-4 Thunderbolt unless the computer is very cheap.

100% USB-C with no USB-B is a serious annoyance. Lack of a head-set jack is an extreme annoyance I would only excuse if the computer is really great otherwise.

Built-in Ethernet port is very nice to have but not necessary.

Built-in SD card reader is also very nice to have. I actually dream about every computer to have such so people would just use SD cards instead of USB-attached thumb-drives.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#19

Post by CogitoCogito » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 10:02 AM UTC

A lot of ports. A few usb of a few flavors (add one more if one is needed for charging) plus hdmi plus whatever I'm forgetting. Personally I'd even prefer a built in rj45 port.

Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?

#20

Post by qwerty456127 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 10:04 AM UTC

As for the laptops built-in screen 1920×1080 resolution is the only I want, also reasonable colors and preferably anti-glare screen. For external displays it must support 4K unless very cheap.