301–310 of 731 posts
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PC-compatible hardware and software is not going anywhere...
Until everyone stops buying it and it becomes a premium thing which the little man like myself simply cannot afford.
Laptops maybe, but the framework laptop is exactly what you want, seems pretty decent, and has a decent chance of taking off.
0. Linux compatibility, I am not super picky about getting everything to work perfectly but I should be able to trust that the software I prefer to use will run and my laptop will connect to wifi and play audio properly and so on. 1. IPS screen (mostly a given nowadays, but this wasn't always so) 2. Trackpoint, I hate trackpads. Pretty rare option so I could possibly be convinced otherwise if the trackpad is particul…
I recently purchased one, and I did a bunch of research before deciding which to get. I settled on an X270 because it's user upgradeable, supports two SSDs, has two batteries, has hardware VP9 encoding/decoding, includes a USB C port, and is hopefully much closer to the ruggedness of the impeccable X200-X230 range than the newer models. The only thing thing I felt like I compromised on was the lack of support for 32 GB of memory. I was able to purchase an i7 X270, 4TB SSD, 16GB RAM, and replacement batteries all for under $1k, and it blows any new laptop that costs twice as much out of the water for my needs.
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Anti-consumer behaviour. Multiple hardware design faults in macbooks. Actively working against repair, against software freedom, against the user (see recent CSAM fiasco). Non-removable storage. Preference of thin&light vs upgradeability/cooling. I wouldn't mind that as I'm not their customer, but all the crap they introduce gets mindlessly copied by all their competition.
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…
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> 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…
But that is only true for the consumer product line, isn't it? I have a Thinkpad T series and you can replace virtually everything and you can buy replacement parts super cheap on eBay because Thinkpads are so common.
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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…
Sadly Hibernate is very complicated and has largely been deprecated from both Windows and Linux in favor of Sleep.
Since Hibernate is gone, let's take it off the list.
Sleep (S3) has been largely removed from these laptops in favor of a "low power mode" that emulates but does not actually sleep the device.
This is why it was previously very safe to keep your laptop in sleep or hibernate mode in a bag, but now isn't- not because user behavior has changed, or that software has changed, but because Dell's hardware has.
A shutdown and startup incur significant setup times, not just for the computer but mental workflow- remembering to open your applications back to where you left them, etc.
In the past (5 years ago) it was normal to expect a laptop to go to sleep when the lid closed and then wake itself back up.
If Dell is telling people not to expect to be able to simply sleep their laptop by closing it and then putting it in a bag, then they're not expecting people to treat the laptop as a laptop. Back in the 80s, we called such computers "Luggables".
A $2,000 laptop in 2021 should not be assumed to be a glorified luggable, it should be a laptop with the same functionality as laptops had in 2010.
2. [must] HDMI, RJ45, >=2x USB-A, >=1x USB-C (2x if it's also used for charging), headphone jack, card reader (preferably one where the sdcard clicks into, so I can leave the microsd adapter inside and always handy; currently my laptop has it half sticking out so it would break off). I can understand that a serial cable requires a dongle, but network cables I still use daily. Install one of those openable ports if you must, but I won't buy your laptop if it doesn't have a network interface built in.
3. [must] Changeable RAM so I don't have to buy an overpriced 32GB laptop, but can just buy a regular laptop costing half as much and spend 70 bucks on an upgrade.
4. [must] Changeable SSD. Same story: large SSD with no HDD (because with an additional HDD you again have all its downsides like noise and power draw) is overpriced, and I don't feel like reinstalling everything anyway, so I prefer to just transfer the SSD from my previous laptop and toss whatever they stuck in the new one.
5. [must] 1080p screen so no scaling bugs or larger-than-necessary power draw. I don't see more pixels anyway and 95% of the time I'll be looking at an external screen; if you work 8h/day on a laptop you should probably be looking to change that.
6. [should] Fast CPU cores. When I selected my most recent laptop in 2018, CPUs had actually nearly gotten slower than the previous one in 2012. But they draw less power! Whoop tee doo... good job intel on power saving by just doing less. I'm buying a daily computing driver, not a phone, and I am very rarely more than 1.5 hours removed from a power socket. Also, I still can rarely use more than one core per task (and am doing just one thing in the foreground; dual core would be fine), but I suppose it's the only way these days to get any sort of performance. Still, I'd rather have 4 cores with 100 benchmark points each than 32 cores with 75 benchmark points each. (And hyperthreading counting towards the number of cores is misleading, as it adds only a few percent performance.)
7. [wish] WiFi 6
8. [wish] Buttons above the touchpad are nice. Keyboard: the more buttons the better, basically. I actually use home/end/pgup/pgdn/scroll lock/printscreen/pause/menu/function keys/media keys/etc. unlike what laptop designers seem to think. There's so little choice in this that I guess I'll just live with whatever I can get at this point. Also, death to the combined up/down arrow key.
9. [mkay] GPU is cool but, often, time thermal restrictions make it only a little faster than the nowadays pretty performant and efficient integrated graphics. Useful for hashcat though.
A. [wish] My current laptop has taught me that not all LCD displays are made alike. The vertical viewing angle on this one is so terrible that the colors are always distorted on at least one part of the screen no matter your viewing angle. I have no idea how to objectively look for this, but a nice screen is a bonus. Then again, as before: I won't spend 95% of my time looking at this screen anyhow.
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…
However I am still on a 2015 MacBook.
Comment not related to OP's wishes but I miss the 16:10 laptop screens of 2010 extremely hard. It's the one thing I miss about my HP 8740w.
> if I'm missing on any new developments since 2015 Yes, you missed something huge. Apple Silicon M1 or nothing. It's just too good. Low power consumption allows the laptop to actually be used as a laptop. The power use-to-performance ratio is unmatched by anything on the market. Apple is breaking us free from decades of stagnation on the hardware front. Nothing else on the market comes close. I expect this to change…
Also, the M1X laptops (probably) release Monday and will be even more ridiculous.