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Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#121

Post by musicale »

fmajid wrote: post #118
Redoubts wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I developed on it just fine, and that’s certainly not the only task a laptop is useful for.

This is *Hacker* News. I had a Docker build that would take 4 hours on mine when it completed in under 15 minutes on my Mac Mini.

> Docker

Many people use/need Docker, but of course it requires a Linux kernel (often running in a hypervisor if you're running macOS.) VMs can easily eat up a lot of resources, especially memory. Alternately a VM without enough memory will also perform abysmally.

I've also heard complaints about poor performance (vs. native Linux or even WSL on x86 hardware) of x86 Docker images running in emulation on an M1 MacBook Air.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#122

Post by fmajid »

musicale wrote: post #121
fmajid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is *Hacker* News. I had a Docker build that would take 4 hours on mine when it completed in under 15 minutes on my Mac Mini.

> Docker Many people use/need Docker, but of course it requires a Linux kernel (often running in a hypervisor if you're running macOS.) VMs can easily eat up a lot of resources, especially memory. Alternately a VM without enough memory will also perform abysmally. I've also heard complaints about poor performance (vs. native Linux or even WSL on x86 hardware) of x86 Docker images running in emulation on an M1 MacBook…

Those docker images were not light, and the max 8GB RAM on the MacBook didn't help, but emulation was not the problem, this was x64 on x64. It's just the Intel m CPUs are just slow, here's the MacBook compared to my Mac Mini:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/12140024?baseli...

and here versus the 2013 MacBook Pro that I normally used instead for development:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/1965771?baselin...

You should run arm64 images on your M1 Mac, in fact at my company we are shifting all the workloads we can to Graviton2 on AWS because of the substantial cost savings, but yes, porting is not a completely trivial exercise and migrating our development environment over to Docker on M1 is still work in progress, and in the meantime we have scrounged up all the Intel MacBook Pros in the company and reserved them for developers.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#123

Post by pappeyrome »

bytehowl wrote: post #97
guilamu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web browsing, office apps, media consumption on the excellent (for the price) IPS panel. Also to be noted : one of the lightest 14 inches on the market with an excellent battery life.

Yeah, for those kinds of tasks they should be fine. I think OP was asking about laptops useful for more involved workloads, though.

I do in fact have that acer swift N6000 bought for €200 - it is perfect for all my tasks (usually CI/CD, ssh) except may be Zoom. It does not allow changing background owing to paltry CPU/GPU. My boss therefore gave me €1000 to get a better device and I cannot find anything silent.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#124

Post by wccrawford »

davidgerard wrote: post #41
wccrawford wrote: post #17

I just bought a little HP laptop that has no fans. It was super cheap, too. So what I'm hearing is that you don't want the devices that are already on the market, probably because you think they're underpowered. If nobody is buying the existing devices, why would they make more varieties?

One of those recent Windows netbooks? How are you finding it? (I got one and Linuxed it. The wifi was so crappy I had to compile a driver from source, for an authentic early-2000s Linux experience. Need to test 22.04. https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/608064.html Love it for writing on, not so great as an actual netbook.)

I haven't used it much yet. I plan to use it to control my CNC Router and CNC laser. I had another laptop doing that, but it died, so I replaced it as cheaply as possible. But as I'm in the middle of rebuilding those things, I haven't actually had a reason to finish setting it up.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#125

Post by bytehowl »

pappeyrome wrote: post #123
bytehowl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for those kinds of tasks they should be fine. I think OP was asking about laptops useful for more involved workloads, though.

I do in fact have that acer swift N6000 bought for €200 - it is perfect for all my tasks (usually CI/CD, ssh) except may be Zoom. It does not allow changing background owing to paltry CPU/GPU. My boss therefore gave me €1000 to get a better device and I cannot find anything silent.

Well, either you can remove the noise, or you can remove your ability to hear it. Have you considered just using headphones? Computer fans are usually quiet enough that you won't even need noise-cancelling ones.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#126

Post by davidgerard »

wccrawford wrote: post #124
davidgerard wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of those recent Windows netbooks? How are you finding it? (I got one and Linuxed it. The wifi was so crappy I had to compile a driver from source, for an authentic early-2000s Linux experience. Need to test 22.04. https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/608064.html Love it for writing on, not so great as an actual netbook.)

I haven't used it much yet. I plan to use it to control my CNC Router and CNC laser. I had another laptop doing that, but it died, so I replaced it as cheaply as possible. But as I'm in the middle of rebuilding those things, I haven't actually had a reason to finish setting it up.

With mine I was most surprised to find that LibreOffice had somehow become comparatively lightweight and fast in the last 20 years, lol.

If you're not running a web browser with serious intent, it should be a perfectly capable little box.

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