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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?

#211

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

tomp wrote: post #178
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…

> get critical Windows Updates So you mean Microsoft can force your laptop to restart and lose all your work even when it's "off"? Amazing.

Not all windows updates require reboots.

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

#212

Post by hnfong »

Darmody wrote: post #169
harry8 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not exactly like that. Under no circumstances should you leave a laptop powered on and in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag, backpack, or in an overhead bin. The laptop will overheat as a result of that action. Why would you put a laptop on a bag if it is still running and expect the warranty to cover any damage if it overheats? What's next? Expect the warranty to cover you taking showers whi…

Seems like the GP summarized what you quoted perfectly.

Not sure about user expectations but it’s the first time I heard about laptops overheating in standby mode.

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

#214

Post by mavhc »

tomp wrote: post #178
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…

> get critical Windows Updates So you mean Microsoft can force your laptop to restart and lose all your work even when it's "off"? Amazing.

Quite a lot more stuff supports auto resume after reboot, including unsaved Notepad files.

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

#215

Post by tomp »

mavhc wrote: post #214
tomp wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get critical Windows Updates So you mean Microsoft can force your laptop to restart and lose all your work even when it's "off"? Amazing.

Quite a lot more stuff supports auto resume after reboot, including unsaved Notepad files.

But not REPLs and Jupyter notebooks.

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

#216

Post by jonathanlydall »

tomp wrote: post #178
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…

> get critical Windows Updates So you mean Microsoft can force your laptop to restart and lose all your work even when it's "off"? Amazing.

No, not when it’s actually off. If you’ve shut down, then it won’t do this, but if you put it to sleep it can.

That being said, I hate this, with my old laptop I could close the lid and pop it in the bag and it would lose maybe 5-10% battery per day, with new laptop it happily unsleeps itself in the bag which has zero ventilation.

So for safety reasons I have to shut my laptop down before putting it in my bag, then have to wait for it to start up (which is slow due to corporate software) before being able to use it again.

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

#217

Post by HanaShiratori »

adamfaliq wrote: post #163
HanaShiratori wrote: post #145

Just a portable (13—14 inch) device that has a powerful, but efficient CPU, supports Linux and has a dedicated GPU for occasional gaming / video editing. I bought the Asus G14 over a year ago and this model fits my needs most - at least back then, things have probably changed until now...

When I read you first paragraph, I was like, "This guy's gonna love an Asus Zephyrus G14". Glad to read that you already have one. How has it been for you?

After a couple of months my motherboard got fried while using the power adapter and left power delivery slot simultaneously - which apparently was an issue other people experienced as well last year. But this got fixed pretty quickly by the official repair partner and I haven't experienced that since then (around a year of usage since the incident), even though I still use both ports at the same time. ASUS probably solved this problem with a BIOS update.

Other than that I'm more than happy with this device and it works much better than expected - especially the Linux support. I'm running arch as my main distro and never had any issues. Power consumption runs at around 7-11 W in regular use using my energy efficient profile (dGPU off). CPU temp during normale use sits at around 35-40 degrees celsius but can bump up during heavy gaming.

Looking back I'd definitely buy this laptop again.

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

#218

Post by ddek »

beermonster wrote: post #210
glenarma wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just a rebranded Xamarin IDE - but for .NET development on Mac, I’ve found JetBrains Rider does most of what the full Visual Studio package does

Yes it's just Xamarin modified to look like a native Visual Studio for Mac. Much better off using Rider (also works nicely on Linux).

IntelliJ is still a little broken on wayland I think. Last I checked they were waiting on a patch to Swing, so right now it's only running under XWayland, it's fairly buggy and doesn't scale nicely. You also need to set some env variables or you'll get a blank screen. It still works pretty well though, which is better than any other similar IDE.

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

#219

Post by meragrin_ »

hnfong wrote: post #212
Darmody wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly like that. Under no circumstances should you leave a laptop powered on and in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag, backpack, or in an overhead bin. The laptop will overheat as a result of that action. Why would you put a laptop on a bag if it is still running and expect the warranty to cover any damage if it overheats? What's next? Expect the warranty to cover you taking showers whi…

Seems like the GP summarized what you quoted perfectly. Not sure about user expectations but it’s the first time I heard about laptops overheating in standby mode.

> Close the lid without full shutdown, warranty voided bad.

That does not convey "placed in a bag, backpack, or in an overhead bin" in any way.

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

#220

Post by fao_ »

Topolomancer wrote: post #156
godDLL wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which X1 did you get?
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