I obtained an hp Chromebook free of charge recently. Honestly it's just so stress free to use. I don't need any special applications so it works just fine.
Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
281–290 of 731 posts
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#282macOS
I’ve tried going back to Windows and it’s just a terrible OS. macOS has its faults but nothing in that scale.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#283- decent design; no gamer laptops, blinking led monstrosities, etc. for me. - decent performance; I'm an engineer. I actually lose time when things run slowly. Lots of time. Kills my flow and I bill a premium rate. - decent screen. I look at this thing for the better part of a day. Also, I dabble with photography once in a while and occasionally some frontend stuff. So, HDPI/250 dpi or better. - Decent ssd storage. I…
Besides some of the led bling I find gaming laptops work pretty well as work machines (and some are toned down so much, they’re not embarrassing for adults).
I also know a couple professionals that use them as their main machines (one does ed visualizations so the gpu..)
They tend to have lots of ports including wired Ethernet. Have great performance. Decent video cards. Are somewhat fixable/ upgradable.
Downside is power consumption. Sometimes the screens are just ok.
I ended up going with a system76 machine which comes with Linux so I didn’t have to futz with it. This model is a rebranded “Clevo” gaming machine too, but you wouldn’t know by looking at it.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and if Visual Studio ran on Mac I'd probably switch my PC out also Not sure if it supports all the features you need, but it exists. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/
Note that if OP expects anything like the "real" Visual Studio that runs on Windows, this is really nothing compared to it. I'd even go further and actually prefer Vscode with the right extensions compared to this "Visual Studio".
sounds like when we try to run iTunes on Windows - each competitor is intentionally crapping on the other's users
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would absolutely expect warranty to cover damage from overheating. It’s supposed to have adequate protection to avoid such damage. Leave it completely turned on, cover its fans, stuff it in a warm blanket and load its CPU until it overheats (slowly, quickly, doesn’t matter) and if it sustains any permanent damage it is not fit for purpose . Dell’s attempt to disclaim warranty in a situation like that won’t fly in A…
I guess you can always claim it didn't overheat in a bag but I still think that storing a turned on laptop in a bag or sealing somehow its ventilation it's a misuse and it shouldn't be covered by the warranty.
I agree, but shouldn't any computer's bios power everything off if temperatures get too high?
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#286Thunderbolt Port(s)!
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
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(me typing on a mac keyboard)
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#288Look for non-Intel solutions. There is absolutely zero reason to adopt Intel CPUs until Intel has proven that they can ship CPUs that do not contain expensive-to-fix security bugs year after year after year (you're on a laptop, every CPU cycle counts to keep heat down and battery life longer). Several companies make Zen 3 APU (Ryzen 5000 series models)-based laptops that have good keyboards, good screens, and the usu…
> There is absolutely zero reason to adopt Intel CPUs until Intel has proven that they can ship CPUs that do not contain expensive-to-fix security bugs year after year after year (you're on a laptop, every CPU cycle counts to keep heat down and battery life longer). this is simply not fair. other architectures and CPU manufacturers also suffered from security issues.
It is absolutely fair. The ballpark figure for losses over Meltdown/Spectre fixes is about 20%. This means, on a laptop, you produce 20% more heat or your battery's charge lasts 20% less.
AMD's worst fix for Spectre/Meltdown lost about 3%, and that was for the original Zen 1. Would you rather have 20% of your CPU/battery just evaporate without warning, or 3%?
On top of this, Intel does not make any really competing parts: Intel laptops cost more and flat out perform worse per dollar, with a lower upper limit on maximum performance.
The next chance Intel has at being competitive is with their first full scale Cove family core (instead of the Lake/Cove hybrids, which isn't going to be out until Series 12.
Side note: Series 12 is already shaping up to be bad, the most cost-effective desktop part is going to go toe to toe with Zen 4 per "real" thread, and have 4 big SMT2 cores and 8 little Atom-like SMT1 cores (so 16 threads, with half of them on smaller and slower power efficient cores, so like how ARM does it), but the competing Zen 4 Ryzen will be 8 real full scale cores (and also 16 threads), which ends up putting it in the ballpark of being around a third faster with the same power usage and pricing.
Intel must compete, and I hope Pat Gelsinger can turn the ship around. CPUs take about 3-4 years, from early planning to retail shelves. He became CEO this year, so I don't think they have anything they can do (other than drop pricing significantly) until the Cove that goes up against Zen 6 comes out (which is 2025+).
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#289I just buy a MacBook Pro that’s upgraded within my budget.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
nor Windows Explorer.
For the File Explorer it's HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced Value PersistBrowsers set to 1.
Thank you! This reminds me of the old annoyances.org that listed a bunch of little tricks to improve your Windows 95 experience.