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

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

#151

Post by Leherenn »

Const-me wrote: post #48

Latest-generation AMD CPU No discrete GPU, I don't want to pay neither money, electricity or weight for a thing I don't need. Reparability. Removeable SSD is absolute requirement. With a soldered SSD, broken laptop = lost data. Upgradeable RAM is less important but still very welcome. If I needed a new one I'd look at HP Probook, check their support channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxMMjSF4QFw

The only issue is that no AMD laptop has Thunderbolt support. It's supposed to come next year but currently it's a deal breaker of you want to use a dock.

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

#152

Post by OJFord »

XiJinpinggg wrote: post #120
agd wrote: post #5

I’m gonna add good webcam and sound to the mix. These are essential for remote work. If the rumours are true, the new M1X MacBook Pros being announced this Monday look perfect: - high performance + battery life - exceptional build quality - great screen, sound, and webcam - decent port selection

Webcam is rumored to be 1080p. At the price point of a Macbook Pro it should be a 4K webcam. We'll see, maybe the rumors are wrong. We know how long it takes Apple to upgrade their webcams so we might be stuck with 1080p until 2030.

Didn't film and TV make-up departments infamously have to do more/differently when higher definition cameras started to be used? I'm not sure I want a high resolution webcam...

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

#153

Post by harry8 »

yodelshady wrote: post #36

XPS 13 currently, and probably next as well. I look for: - track record of linux compatibility. If it's Windows or out, I'm out. - good keyboard. - good screen, > 1920x1080 although 4K is overkill, preferably 16:10. Macbooks look tempting, but I just don't trust Apple to not break any workflow that isn't editing videos about how great Apple products are. The current keys are good but - sorry, the (pre-butterfly!) key…

I have a Dell xps and will never buy another laptop from dell. It's an embarrassment how awful if is. Close the lid without full shutdown, warranty voided bad.

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

#154

Post by Leherenn »

tendencydriven wrote: post #92
BadJo0Jo0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guessing he means laptops where the camera is below the display and is pointing up at your nose when in use

I wasn't aware there were any laptops like that, I wonder what the reason for that design choice is?

Smaller bezel. Most manufacturers want an "edge to edge" display because that looks nice (and reduce the overall size of the laptop) but then they don't know what to do with the webcam.

Some remove it entirely (some Asus), some put them under the screen and Huawei even has a webcam under a fn key in the keyboard.

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

#156

Post by Topolomancer »

godDLL wrote: post #100
yibers wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest (gen 9) Thinkpad x1 carbon is 16:10

I hear they have keyboard flex and aren't great with Linux.

Bought an X1 recently and the Linux support is amazing: all components work more or less out of the box, and with `fwupd`, you even get firmware updates.

This is my first Linux notebook after ~4 years and I am really blown away by how easy it was to set up!

Not sure what you mean by keyboard flex, but so far, typing is really good...I am mostly using this for text work (research papers, proposals, presentations), so the keyboard sees a lot of use.

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

#157

Post by wheybags »

sircastor wrote: post #87
michalf6 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to that, I'm afraid of the world moving away from the PC as a standard. Through a lucky set of circumstances, we were able to enjoy a relatively open and universal compatibility standard of computers for the last several decades. I'm afraid of the computing world fragmenting again into several walled gardens in the likes of Amiga/Atari of old, nothing being compatible with each other, unable to run code not si…

Seeing that, it seems like this is likely cyclical. We’ll have 20 years of siloed hardware, and then some competitors figure out a way to get a foot in the door, or signed-only systems will become distasteful to consumers and Companies will revert, interoperability will become the norm again. There are always barriers in computing and society will respond to it.

You dismiss 20 years of darkness like it's nothing...

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

#158

Post by julienfr112 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #56
yread wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point the current Thinkpad T14 and P14s and super difficult to open without breaking the plastic tabs

What's the solution if you break them? I broke some (if we are speaking about the same thing - I mean those little things that click and keep the bottom cover in place after you remove the screws) on one HP ProBook, now the trackpad-push clicking works unreliably. I thought of buying a whole new bottom cover on eBay but the serial number and the Windows sticker is on it so replacing it would probably void the warrant…

At first, you broke some, but with some practice, you are better at this... Took me 5 or 6 to master this art ! But to get this kind of practice, you have to manage the laptops of a small company, that is only fun for the first day, after that, not that much.

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

#159

Post by kasabali »

a-dub wrote: post #86
kbob wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are the parts they're selling. (A lot of them are "coming soon", though.) https://frame.work/marketplace I'm not familiar with current ThinkPads.

i dunno. honestly it looks like a regular intel laptop made to look like an old macbook with bays for inverted usb-c dongles. the whole "it's modular! here's your screwdriver! you can service your laptop by yourself and replace the ram! don't forget your coveralls, you're a hardware technician now!" thing seems a bit.. theatrical? but who knows, i've never owned a laptop with fixed storage and ram so maybe i'm not in…

> honestly it looks like a regular intel laptop

That'd be true for laptops from 3-4 years ago. That's also what I thought about framework until I saw the recent crap Lenovo etc. are pushing in consumer segment. They have basically tablet motherboards. Everything else is soldered. No ram slots, no sata, no connectivity, only a single M.2. If you're lucky it'll have 1 ram slot. This'll only get worse and spread to all segments.

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

#160

Post by microtonal »

bestouff wrote: post #53
hiisukun wrote: post #27

1. S3 Standby/suspend support. If your laptop supports that, you can close the lid and it will power ~everything except the RAM down (sometimes a USB port still charges). In 'new' laptops, including almost everything Tiger lake and Intel, S3 is being phased out for Microsoft's "Modern Standby", known as S0ix (or sometimes InstantGo). This is much more like a mobile phone, where it stays on but attempts to use as litt…

This ! Support forums from all brands (big ones like Dell or Lenovo, but also niche brands like Framework) are plagued with requests from unhappy users with their laptop dying in their bag. All because of the Modern Suspend feature. Let's hope AMD mobile processors will work better, and that we'll be able to find decent laptops using them.

I had an AMD Ryzen ThinkPad. It has all the same issues with modern sleep. The solution is to enable S3 sleep in the firmware.

Unfortunately, even in S3 sleep, the battery would drain in a day.

I am now back to a MacBook Air (M1) and sleep works perfectly. Life is to short to deal with the terrible state of sleep on Windows/Linux laptops.

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