Fast cpu, quiet fan, and huge amount of ram. 512G SSD of any kind.
Plus if there’s dual video output.
Yes I would use it as a workstation always plugged in sitting on my desk.
Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
381–390 of 731 posts
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
My tastes are fairly similar to yours. I'm curious which boxes aren't ticked by the more recent X200 series Thinkpads since the X230 in your view? 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 ru…
The X270 has a 6th or 7th gen dual core CPU. If you get an 11th gen i5 like you'll find in the sub-$1000 laptop range you'll get something that is literally twice as fast as even the highest end 7th gen i7. That is a lot of performance to leave on the table.
you'll find in the sub-$1000 laptop range you'll get something that is literally twice as fast
That's true, but it would require some combination of major compromises on the SSD, RAM, hot swappable battery, build quality, form factor, and keyboard/trackpoint. I'm almost never CPU limited in my day to day workflows, even on a 2nd gen i5, and I have cloud resources available when I need to do something CPU intensive like model training for work. It's a tradeoff that isn't right for everyone, but those other factors are far more important to me than the CPU.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your battery is likely worn from keeping it charged at 100% constantly, lenovo have an option to limit max charge to something like 80% which will greatly reduce battery wear, you just have to turn it off if you are actually planning to run it without AC for as long as possible.
This is really a poor software solution to an old hardware solution that disappeared for the sake of thinness: removable batteries. In the past with easily removable battery packs you could simply pop them out once they're fully charged and pop them in when you wanted to make sure they were charged up. When manufacturers started touting long life cycle batteries to justify internalizing them and making them difficult…
They should just install a physical off switch for the battery, along with physical switches for the camera and networking.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#384An exceptional trackpad. I heard windwos laptops are coming close to the Macbook trackpad, but I've gotta try it first.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#385One that DOES NOT have those ridiculously small up and down cursor keys. So many modern laptops are like that now.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#386* AMD cpu that supports S3 sleep * At least 16GB of RAM * 1kg auw * 16:10 screen, that’s not 4k * 14” * Metal body * Repairable * NVMe ssd (not soldered) * USB-C charging (and video etc) * No gamer LEDs If someone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them!
I just ordered yesterday a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 PRO AMD Ticks a lot of that, except Not sure about S3 and repairable Its 1.4kg not 1kg but tradeoff is high build quality and not flimsy and beautiful 14" high res not 4k oled 2880x 16:10, and with 90hz refresh rate. Wish it had a matt touch screen but thats the one thing missing for me. Processor Up to AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor Operating system Windows 10 Home…
Awesome, thanks for the suggestion!
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#387For me the laptop must have at least these minimum features if money is no objection: 1) Weight about 1 kg. I do carry another e-ink reader in my bag thus a lighter laptop is a big plus. 2) Minimum 2K resolution. Once you have used 2K screen the Full HD just don't cut it anymore. 3) Military grade certification for drop. I once dropped my laptop bag from shoulder height containing less than a month laptop but because…
>128 GB RAM What do you need, a mainframe?
Not sure you are trolling or not, but I will bite. One of the very RAM intensive stuff I'm doing with my laptop is that I am using many VMs in GNS3 set up for networking simulation with Linux VMs running Quagga, LiSA, etc thus the more RAM I have the faster and smoother the simulation.
Why so many people go berserk when you say you need more RAM? The new workstation CPU from Intel namely W3300 can support up to 4 TB RAM, RAM amount of 128 GB is practically peanut compared to that.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#3881. 4 USB-C ports minimum
2. Thunderbolt on both sides
3. touchpad as good as Apple's
4. Built in cellular
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#3891. No soldered ram or disk.
2. Bulky, heavy with 17" screen and good cooling.
3. CPU has to be XEON with ECC support.
4. Lots of USB-A ports and other ports (HDMI, etc).
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#390> 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…
The TDP of the M1 is between 15 and 20 Watts: I use one third of that with Intel...
Crunching some numbers, some benchmarks seem to place the M1 as three times faster. Through raw numbers, the M1 seems not much more "performant per watt" than the Pentium Silver - only slightly better. And, for a laptop, the importance is (in general) more on energy efficiency than in speed.
Edit: danieldk rightly noted below that TDP is a "high load consumption estimate". Official data for the "situational" consumptions are a bit harder to find.