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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?

#391

Post by flowerlad »

A high resolution screen. Meaning 200% scale — nothing else looks good. This is also a rarity these days, even though my 5-year-old Samsung ATIV Book 9 has it.

In the Windows world, sadly, things are a mess. Most new laptops including Microsoft's newest Surface Studio have fractional scaling, i.e., scaling set to a number other than 100% or 200%. As Steve Jobs said when he originally introduced retina screens on the iPhone, the only scale that looks good after 100% is 200%. Any other scale will have display artifacts. If the scale is 150% or 175% then horizontal lines on a web page will appear to have different thicknesses even when they are all actually the same thickness. This is a deal breaker for web developers and graphic artists, and for folks who just want the best looking screens.

I tried the screens of the newest laptops on display at BestBuy. Even 4k screens have this rendering artifact. Surprisingly, even when scaling is set to 300%.

Microsoft's now-obsolete Surface 2 and Surface 3 screens are one of the best. They have 3000x2000 screens and the dpi is 267. Most importantly, the display scale is set to 200%. Everything looks perfect. Sadly, Surface Laptop 4 and Surface Studios no longer use this screen. Their scales are set to between 100% and 200%, which means they have the aforementioned display artifacts. That's sad because the Surface Laptop 4 is one of the best Windows laptops in terms of industrial design.

Samsung Ativ Book 9 first released more than 6 years ago has 3200x1800 13 inch screens... one of the best in the industry. Sadly Samsung is no longer making Windows laptops with that DPI anymore.

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

#392

Post by Keyframe »

mazone wrote: post #320
Keyframe wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the best thing I found and I am truly satisfied with it. Keyboard is good, especially coming from (good version) macbook pro ones, build quality excellent, battery great (for intel), screen great.. I would like to see an SD slot on it, but hey, and maybe one more USB-C or two. There are two of each, and you can charge on either side which is cool. No need for USB-A anymore IMO, maybe they'll go full four USB-C next gen.

I didn't go with X1 because I do occasionally need discrete graphics, it works with Razer Core out of the box as well (on linux, but probably X1 would too), no proprietary charger (it's USB-C), and I don't like Lenovo's trackpad - neither the feeling of it nor the two (for myself) unnecessary physical buttons and a trackpoint. I understand there's a cult following for that however, so to each their own I guess.

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

#394

Post by esclerofilo »

mkr-hn wrote: post #353
LindyTalker wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visual studio running on Mac? I’ve been using visual studio code on it for years no problem. I’m now realizing there’s a difference between the two. Care to explain a little more why you use VS and not VSC?

Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are completely different things. VSC can do a subset of what VS can do, but some people really need the full power of a traditional IDE. VS vs VSC is like the difference between a smartphone camera and a full camera platform. You can rig up an iPhone (VSC) to do everything a D6 (VS) can do, but it won't be as usable.

But Visual Studio 2019 is available for mac.

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

#395

Post by uxp100 »

I don’t see many mentions of weight, and that’s my number one. There are some incredibly light laptops available now, and that’s my number one criteria, how light can you get with a 13 inch screen. I’ve currently got a monster “workstation” laptop at work and having a haul a 6 lb laptop around is particularly irritating, but once I felt 2.5 lbs, any more than that was irritating. In practical fact I have a 12 year old laptop and a little netbook, and with sdd replacements for the spinning platter drives they continue to be just fine, so I’m not buying anything at the moment. But if I did, I’d choose by weight.

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

#396

Post by sysadm1n »

- Hardware kill switches, to disable mic & camera.

- Hardware kill switches for both the bluetooth radio and the built-in wifi adapter.

- Needs to look good at 1024x768 resolution (I only code at that resolution, because although large resolutions are great, I have to put in extra effort to see code at higher resolutions)

- Built in camera cover that slides closed, which, alongside a kill switch gives me extra peace of mind (incase my OS gets compromised through silly mistakes like running malware laced office documents). Yes, some would call this paranoia, but paranoia does not work retroactively; you have to be proactive.

- Don't care about the keyboard, since I have only ever used external USB office keyboards.

- If the processor is an Intel, I want the Management Engine removed, preferably by someone else as I am at a loss as to how to disable that thing

- I only ever use the mains power supply to power my laptop. Why let a battery degrade over time from being constantly at 100% charge? It would be cool if I could just take out the battery and have the laptop still work with a mains supply.

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

#397

Post by _mitch »

tomrod wrote: post #327
yodelshady wrote: post #36

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…

I recently picked up a Mac for client work. I have a hard time with the muscle memory on keyboard mapping. I get there are legacy reasons for the differences, but would love a toggle option to switch mappings to Linux.

I'm the same way (switch between Linux, MacOS, and Windows) and use Karabiner-Elements on Mac to remap keys and standardize shortcuts.

https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/

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

#398

Post by codetrotter »

sysadm1n wrote: post #396

- Hardware kill switches, to disable mic & camera. - Hardware kill switches for both the bluetooth radio and the built-in wifi adapter. - Needs to look good at 1024x768 resolution (I only code at that resolution, because although large resolutions are great, I have to put in extra effort to see code at higher resolutions) - Built in camera cover that slides closed, which, alongside a kill switch gives me extra peace…

> I only code at that resolution, because although large resolutions are great, I have to put in extra effort to see code at higher resolutions

You can increase font size on the system, without using a low resolution.

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

#399

Post by loonster »

browningstreet wrote: post #371
t_von_doom wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Mac user with the same gripe of the ctrl key placement: Remapping it to the caps lock works wonders :)

I use so many keyboards, not all of which are under my control.. I wish I could, but it would bring chaos to my typing world.

Something like that exists for DVORAK. Maybe someone else makes a similar product that works like an any keyboard.

https://www.keyghost.com/qido/

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