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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?

#501

Post by daxfohl »

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…

Reasonably fast boot time. Yes my XPS seems to be booting about half the time I open it, due to power management or windows updates, which is annoying. But what makes that extra annoying is that it spends like 45 sec each time just in the BIOS step. What on earth does the BIOS do that needs so much time to run?

(Other than this I do actually quite like my XPS. Though I do wish I had gone without the touchscreen. It's just annoying because you can't wipe grime off without it causing a touch.

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

#503

Post by ufmace »

Things I actually care about these days that aren't already basically universal:

Good screen. Bright and High DPI, and an OS that takes good advantage of that.

Good keyboard. I'm gonna type a lot at least sometimes and use Vim, I don't want some mushy accessory keyboard.

Good trackpad. Reasonably big, but not so big your palms constantly make it do things despite software that tries to prevent that. Highly responsive and supports scrolling and dragging without trying to hold down a physical click mechanism.

Can run both a real modern web browser, as in with rapid automatic updates, and as good of a Unix-y command line as possible.

A good selection of ports is a nice plus. As is touchscreen and flexible orientation.

Having regular security updates is good, though it should also not be too pushy about forcing restarts for them. Ideally, it would never lose state, short of me rebooting it by direct command or being unplugged and letting the battery run flat.

It's also nice if I can leave it in "sleep" unattended and off the charger for a week+, open it up, and it's ready to use with the battery still pretty full.

I like a Unix-y command line, but I'm pretty meh about trying to keep a bare-metal Linux install running and updated.

What I actually got recently is a mid-high end Chromebook. I'm pretty happy with it - the current Linux it now supports turns it from a basically browser-centered thing to a very practical developer workstation, assuming you live in the terminal like I do.

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

#504

Post by mdp2021 »

ksec wrote: post #493
mdp2021 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The M1 is an SoC with CPU + GPU + NPU + NAND Controller and many others, being used in a Fanless condition under 10W on MacBook Air. >Official data for the "situational" consumptions are a bit harder to find. A single HP Core uses ~4W at peak. It's performance per watt is quite far ahead than anything in x86 at the moment. Intel AlderLake might help a bit. But will still be behind in pref / watt.

This system for example, according to `powerstat`, seems to work at around 3.5W, with minimum values below 3W and maximum around 7.5W.

It would be interesting to get a "powerstat database" of different systems for comparison.

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

#505

Post by spicybright »

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…

Wouldn't put all the blame on hardware. It's a back and forth sometimes to get the OS and hardware working together.

It's not a 50/50 responsibility split, but it's definitely not 100% on hardware.

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

#506

Post by spicybright »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #344
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…

I actually just want them to fix connected standby and properly be able to do these things with low power. My phone (a oneplus 6) can be on standby for nearly a week. That windows laptops attempt at this mode drains the battery by the end of a workday is just pathetic. Instant resume should be available with no practical compromises.

That is seriously bad.

Just as a data point, my 2019 mac sleeps perfectly for multiple days, no problem.

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

#507

Post by godDLL »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #244
shocks wrote: post #146

* 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…

This is about 80% there for me, thanks. I'll keep an eye out for when they get matte screens, or for after-market options.

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

#508

Post by GordonS »

AMD processor, support for 32GB of RAM, matte 16:10 FHD display with >300 nits (14" - 16"), less than 1.8kg, camera in the lid, at least 2 USB-C ports (with at least one supporting DisplayPort), not too loud under load, good battery life, thin bezels to reduce the footprint and improve aesthetics.

Apparently this is a big ask though :(

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

#509

Post by pieix »

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…

The M1 Air not having fans is the real game changer for me. If you haven't used a laptop without fans you probably don't realize how good things could be.
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