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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?

#311

Post by Keyframe »

mazone wrote: post #262

1. 13" , 14" laptop 2. IPS matte good quality display with similar resolution to 2560x1440p, Superb colors and peak brightness. 3. At-least 32GB RAM but pref up-gradable RAM to 64GB 4. Linux full support, preferable AMD 5. Keyboard similar to old thinkpad 7 row style. General going back to retro style with proper keys, Topre switches or why not a mechanical keyboard if possible. 6. Trackpad of high quality. Atleast s…

Similar to what I was looking for after I ditched macs altogether. Closest were Razer Blade Stealth and X1 Carbon. I opted for stealth and linux just works on it (Pop).. and there's a discrete gfx when I need it. I opted for FHD instead 4k since I didn't see it as newded on 13".. colleague opted for 4k. I wish there was 32 gigs though. That's only thing I miss. Apparently there's an AMD 14" now available too.

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

#313

Post by harshitaneja »

ayushnix wrote: post #300
Smithalicious wrote: post #166

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 did look into the Framework laptop recently but while it's probably the closet things in a long time the keyboard doesn't look good and there's no trackpoint (nor even physical mouse buttons) It also has a screen that needs fractional scaling which makes Framework a deal breaker for me, no second thoughts about it. I'm not buying anything with a fractionally scaled display if I can help it.

Why not? Waylanyd has gotten to a stage where I can use it as a daily driver and have a better experience than with X.

Is it X support or something else?

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

#314

Post by bo1024 »

foobarbaz33 wrote: post #119

> 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…

What are you doing on your laptop where you can see such a big difference? My x86 laptop (Purism Librem 14) has an all-day battery and plenty more performance than I need. But I don't do things like compile code all day. If I were running a really big compute task I'd use a desktop or cluster.

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

#315

Post by formerly_proven »

yread wrote: post #54
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…

You can mitigate it by configuring the power settings so that after 30 minutes the laptop hibernates. You lose your connected standby of course

That's hibernation though, so it takes way longer to wake up and also does a lot of I/O on the probably not replaceable SSD.

(Also, why does your post show as being made on the 2021-10-14 when this "Ask HN" is from today? Wat)

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

#316

Post by dorfsmay »

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…

Also Linux does not work well in this mode (problems to wake up), so it is important to be able to switch it to S3 in the BIOS.

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

#317

Post by bo1024 »

mavidser wrote: post #257

It feels like I have no laptop to choose form right now in the market, but here's what I'd like: 1. WiFi+Bluetooth and graphic cards which don't suck on Linux. No Broadcom or Nvidea. 2. Good body without any deck flex, and no flex in the trackpad either. Love the taptic keypads on macbooks. 3. Good power management. Since I expect to lose some battery performance running Linux, I'd prefer to have the laptop be slight…

I respect #5 but what even exists at non-16:9 besides Framework and Apple?

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

#320

Post by mazone »

Keyframe wrote: post #311
mazone wrote: post #262

1. 13" , 14" laptop 2. IPS matte good quality display with similar resolution to 2560x1440p, Superb colors and peak brightness. 3. At-least 32GB RAM but pref up-gradable RAM to 64GB 4. Linux full support, preferable AMD 5. Keyboard similar to old thinkpad 7 row style. General going back to retro style with proper keys, Topre switches or why not a mechanical keyboard if possible. 6. Trackpad of high quality. Atleast s…

Similar to what I was looking for after I ditched macs altogether. Closest were Razer Blade Stealth and X1 Carbon. I opted for stealth and linux just works on it (Pop).. and there's a discrete gfx when I need it. I opted for FHD instead 4k since I didn't see it as newded on 13".. colleague opted for 4k. I wish there was 32 gigs though. That's only thing I miss. Apparently there's an AMD 14" now available too.

The Razer Blade stealth looked okey, looked like good quality build? Still chiclet keyboard and unnecessary few ports.
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