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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?

#471

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

emacsen wrote: post #305
Darmody wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hibernate is a tricky term that doesn't mean the same thing to all people. The working definition I use is all state is dumped from memory to disk and then retrieved upon startup. 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 "lo…

I remember it worked normally back at the end of 1990s with my first laptops, just close the lid, open and everything is back up instantly, no heating at all.

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

#472

Post by hutzlibu »

godDLL wrote: post #434
hutzlibu wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most batteries on laptops are worn out by heat. They really do not like heat, but will take lots of it, when placed and used in unfavorable conditions, which most laptops probably are.

Heat mostly matters when charging or discharging rapidly, if wear is concerned. So might be less significant than you'd think.

Well, I have a gaming laptop I bought quite new, but second hand, that was almost never used without cabel (I saw the formerly setup) - and the batterie was allmost dead and blown up in size after some months of use. But since it is a gaming laptop - it generated massive amounts of heat under load. I bought a new battery and took care of the heat: and it is still quite good, after roughly the same time and amount of use and I do charge till 100%.

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

#473

Post by Phenomenit »

otrahuevada wrote: post #469

I'm personally in the market for an as-close-to-infinitely upgradable laptop. Ideally, I'd like to be able to mod it as much as I can do with my desktop rig, in a format that I can carry around. - Need a bigger battery? Here's some OEM batteries for you. - Your chipset is getting old, here's motherboards you can buy - Need an OLED screen? Here's a couple - More memory? Sure, there's 4 easy to access slots in there Id…

https://frame.work?

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

#474

Post by darzu »

derefr wrote: post #457
grandpoobah wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was going to post the same thing (albeit far more poorly explained). Isn't Microsoft embarrassed about this? This has been an issue for my last two laptops over the last 5 years. How is it acceptable for this problem to still exist? My Lenovo supports S3 sleep, but I didn't discover it until probably a year into having bought it, so at that point my battery's ability to hold charge had already been sufficiently degra…

> Isn’t Microsoft embarrassed about this? Do Microsoft Surface devices have this problem (the heat/fans spinning/high battery drain while sleeping, I mean)? If not, then Microsoft has no need to be embarrassed; it’s the rest of the PC laptop industry that should be embarrassed for not shipping hardware that does the right thing when the OS asks it to. (Though, I mean, the rest of the PC industry should already be emb…

Yes, Surface devices have this problem. It was a frequent occurrence for me to put my Surface Book into my bag and later take it out completely dead or hot and drained.

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

#475

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

Darmody wrote: post #188
_Understated_ wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own quote mentions you can't hibernate it. And we recently could close laptops, have them sleep/hibernate and not wake up until you open the screen again so sticking them in a backpack was fine. Not sure if the issue is Windows or the hardware but it's a recent thing.

Unless Windows is doing something weird, hibernate is no different that shutting it down.

Problem is with the drivers, many devices don't support resuming after hibernate.

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

#476

Post by lee »

Since it doesn't seem to be listed often in this thread: noise and heat management

I have a Dell Latitude 7300 and it gets incredibly hot. They tried to optimize for size, so it has tiny fans that are incredibly loud when it spins up and they designed the aluminum body to act as a heat sink.

The problem is that when I close the laptop when it's docked, the screen traps the heat and the fans start to whine like a jet engine. Even when it's idling it's loud, so I have to leave the laptop open and on its side when docked to allow for proper heat dissipation.

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

#477

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

nyxaiur wrote: post #325
grandpoobah wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was going to post the same thing (albeit far more poorly explained). Isn't Microsoft embarrassed about this? This has been an issue for my last two laptops over the last 5 years. How is it acceptable for this problem to still exist? My Lenovo supports S3 sleep, but I didn't discover it until probably a year into having bought it, so at that point my battery's ability to hold charge had already been sufficiently degra…

The implementation of the none S3 sleep on most windows laptops these days is not microsofts fault. Critical updates (firmware) always have priority and even on mac's you get negging pop-ups for updates all the time. That said you can fix everything what you said with one checkbox. It's not the pc which sucks it's you the user. For all the people downvoting. He is the equivalent of people making "screenshots" with th…

The complaint was not that the firmware notification existed or was urgent, but that it stole input focus.

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

#478

Post by otrahuevada »

Phenomenit wrote: post #473
otrahuevada wrote: post #469

I'm personally in the market for an as-close-to-infinitely upgradable laptop. Ideally, I'd like to be able to mod it as much as I can do with my desktop rig, in a format that I can carry around. - Need a bigger battery? Here's some OEM batteries for you. - Your chipset is getting old, here's motherboards you can buy - Need an OLED screen? Here's a couple - More memory? Sure, there's 4 easy to access slots in there Id…

https://frame.work ?

Gave it some thought a while ago!

I'm still struggling with the customs end of getting one though.

Uruguay where I now live isn't exactly amazing at managing electronic imports, although if one ever showed up on Amazon I'd be jumping on that right away as there are companies that helps make this process easier over here.

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

#479

Post by bradleyjg »

eertami wrote: post #442
bradleyjg wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never used a mac until my current job starting three years ago. I don’t think I could go back to random problems requiring me to reinstall driver or futz around with registry keys (never mind recompile the kernel). I have better things to do with my time at this point in my life.

Anecdotal counterpoint, but as someone who had to use a MBP for work, OSX has given me way more random problems. Installing a system update on an MBP still gives me anxiety and I would avoid it for as long as possible, since I never managed to do one without _something_ inexplicably breaking.

I have had my MacBook break but it was just broken at that point. I returned it to IT and got another one. The fact that I couldn’t do anything (or at least that was my perception) is a relief.

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

#480

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

smoldesu wrote: post #450
mustache_kimono wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you feel like you're missing in userspace?

- A good (not Homebrew and not quite Macports) package manager. - Ways to permanently disable Gatekeeper - Some kind of quick setup. On Linux I use a bootstrapping script, MacOS does not offer the same extensibility. - Real virtualization support like QEMU - Real container support (if I set up another local Docker host on a Mac I swear to god...) - Up-to-date coreutils - A way to install Git without dragging along a…

- A good (not Homebrew and not quite Macports) package manager.

nix?

- Some kind of quick setup. On Linux I use a bootstrapping script, MacOS does not offer the same extensibility.

Apple mdm implies that the hooks exist, although I know notthing of using that and it very well might be insufficient.

- Real virtualization support like QEMU

Isn't hyperkit decent?

I agree with the general thrust of your comment, though; just unsure of some details.

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