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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?

#421

Post by godDLL »

dhosek wrote: post #362
godDLL wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I don't have my hopes up. Their keyboards have been atrocious for the last few years. Everything in their current lineup has the stuck-by-dust-particle problem.

Anecdata but: I bought the 16" MBP when it was first released and have never had a problem with it (or with any of the work-issued MBPs I've been issued in the interim as well). I had a butterfly-keyboard MBP from work for a couple years and while I didn't like the feel of the keyboard (I'm happy with the post-butterfly MBPs' keyboards), I never had the dust particle issue with it.

When you leave home for a day, come back and slide a cup over your table – does it screech?

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

#422

Post by salamandersauce »

flowerlad wrote: post #391

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…

Apple doesn't even do 200% scaling on most of their laptops by default. My 2018 15" MBP has a native resolution of 2280x1800 but the default is looks like 1680x1050 not looks like 1440x900.

Do you have difficulty viewing 1080p at 15" at 100% scaling? I found that very viewable on my old laptop so 4K at 200% should be fine. You can adjust the scaling if you're really bothered by fractional scaling. It's improved a lot too. Much better than it was in the Win 8 days.

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

#423

Post by krapp »

shawnz wrote: post #419
sgc wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just install a physical off switch for the battery, along with physical switches for the camera and networking.

What's wrong with the current solution of having a software switch, aside from lack of use/knowledge about it? What's the advantage to making it physical?

Software switches can be controlled remotely without your knowledge. A physical switch requires physical access to the device.

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

#424

Post by shawnz »

krapp wrote: post #423
shawnz wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the current solution of having a software switch, aside from lack of use/knowledge about it? What's the advantage to making it physical?

Software switches can be controlled remotely without your knowledge. A physical switch requires physical access to the device.

I am just talking about the battery. I don't see any privacy issue there.

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

#425

Post by gravypod »

bo1024 wrote: post #324

1. FOSS support and free + open + user-controlled, user-repairable, user-upgradable hardware. 2. Webcam and microphone with kill switches. 3. Battery life. 4. (added) Portable: about 13-14" screen, not too heavy. 5. Longevity, durability (sustainability). 6. Other factors: keyboard, touchpad, screen, wifi, quiet. I'm fortunate that I don't need a GPU or extreme power for my daily laptop driver (and if I do, I have a…

Once there's a framework keyboard with a standardized arrow key layout I'd probably buy one. It's an amazing step forward and I want to support the company's effort.

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

#426

Post by sfotm »

gadiyar wrote: post #88
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…

So which laptops do a good job of reliably supporting S3 standby/suspend? Any idea if the Framework laptop does?

The Framework Laptop does not support S3 suspend. I have it running with S2deep in Linux, which works okay, but it isn’t a fantastic scenario. Hibernation is the way when the processor doesn’t support S3, unfortunately. Even Windows would fall back to it after a short duration.

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

#427

Post by Tempest1981 »

microtonal wrote: post #160
bestouff wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ! Support forums from all brands (big ones like Dell or Lenovo, but also niche brands like Framework) are plagued with requests from unhappy users with their laptop dying in their bag. All because of the Modern Suspend feature. Let's hope AMD mobile processors will work better, and that we'll be able to find decent laptops using them.

I had an AMD Ryzen ThinkPad. It has all the same issues with modern sleep. The solution is to enable S3 sleep in the firmware. Unfortunately, even in S3 sleep, the battery would drain in a day. I am now back to a MacBook Air (M1) and sleep works perfectly. Life is to short to deal with the terrible state of sleep on Windows/Linux laptops.

Thanks for the tip. I had a Lenovo Ryzen that would require a Win10 reset of WiFi after each resume. Frustrating. Finally got an Intel Lenovo -- no WiFi issues.

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

#428

Post by krapp »

shawnz wrote: post #424
krapp wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software switches can be controlled remotely without your knowledge. A physical switch requires physical access to the device.

I am just talking about the battery. I don't see any privacy issue there.

Maybe the concern there is devices appearing to be turned off but really still running in low power mode? The only way to be sure is to physically interrupt the power supply.

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

#429

Post by frosted-flakes »

zweifuss wrote: post #267
bloggie wrote: post #246

Earlier 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.

You don't need to manually edit the registry for this. There's a checkbox in Explorer's settings.

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

#430

Post by TacticalCoder »

uxp100 wrote: post #395

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 ol…

This. For when I'm on the go I've got a 17" LG Gram laptop with 24 GB of RAM. This thing is incredibly light.

That's the most important thing to me in a laptop: ultra light.

If you don't care about how light your laptop is, you may as well use a desktop (I'm ofc using a beefy desktop at home).

Something else: I've got a M1 Mac too, for the living room basically. The physical edges are way, way, way too sharp and it's simply not a comfortable laptop to use when slouching in the couch. The edges are so sharp you feel like you may actually physically damage your wrists. It's a long time standing complains about Apple laptops: I simply cannot understand how they can still get that so wrong (I'm sure, at some point, they'll come up with smoother edges but it's 2021 and we're not there yet). Now the trackpad on the M1 is way better than the trackpad on the LG Gram: feels way more sturdy. I like the very long battery the M1 has too.

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