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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?

#561

Post by finalfire »

pw6hv wrote: post #519
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…

> As I was typing this, a great example of said broken crap, is Lenovo popping up a MessageBox asking me to reboot to update my firmware. Didn't software developers all agree well over a decade ago that windows stealing focus was not a good thing? So why then is a top of the line brand in the PC world writing shit like this? Don't think that MacOS spares you about that either. Update notifications are equally distrac…

> Don't think that MacOS spares you about that either. Update notifications are equally distracting.

You're right but if I recall correctly notifications do not steal the focus.

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

#562

Post by manmal »

cehrlich wrote: post #484
foobarbaz33 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1X will be a trade off. Trading battery life for speed. It will still have great battery life relative the dumpster fire of x86 laptops.

If the M1X 16" keeps the battery size of the current model, which is the largest possible battery you can take on an airplane, it will run a bit shorter than the M1 Air at full throttle (but get more done in that time), but significantly longer than the M1 Air for casual use, because it's presumably using the exact same efficiency cores.

Depends on what they do with GPU. If they put in desktop-class(-ish) graphics, then that would impact battery life heavily (and make me super happy OTOH).

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

#563

Post by ratherbefuddled »

inetknght wrote: post #498

1. Full size keyboard with a numpad. If I can't type on it then I won't buy it. 2. 1080p internal display. I won't buy it if the internal screen resolution isn't at least 1080p. 3. Works with Linux. That's a dealbreaker if I can't put Linux on it. 4. Discrete GPU that can be enabled/disabled without rebooting. Not for games, though that's a bonus. I write software that uses GPU acceleration and I need to test it in t…

Very similar list to me, the only ones I've found that meet this, can be relatively powerful (H CPUs and 64GB ram) and don't force you to buy a Windows license are TongFangs. Any others?

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

#564

Post by smoldesu »

NobodyNada wrote: post #490
deadmutex wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. A lot of people asking for ARM based machines do not really realize that the reason is not because of ARM, but they just want faster/more efficient machines. I think to make a analogy for HN frontend sw devs, imagine a non-technical marketing person going to a developer and saying "I want this website in AMP, because AMP is fast.". And sure, a lot of sites with AMP framework are fast... but that doesn't m…

It’s true that ARM alone isn’t the reason for the M1’s performance, but it’s definitely a significant factor. x86 is old — modern x86 chips are still backwards-compatible with the original 8086 from 1978 — and it’s stuck with plenty of design decisions that might have been the correct choice sometime within the past 45 years but no longer today. Whereas the M1 only implements AArch64, a complete redesign of the ARM a…

The issue for me is that ARM is also really old now. I mean, just look at the ISA Apple has to use to run their MacOS on it: it's littered with NEON extensions and more cruft than you can shake a stick at. Simply put, Apple's implementation of ARM is decidedly CISC. On top of this, I'm still dumbfounded by the fact that they didn't go for a chiplet design where ARM could truly shine: if Apple had went the chiplet route, the M1 could have had a much higher IO ceiling and might have a shot at addressing more than 16 gigs of RAM.

Apple has a much bigger issue, though. ARM doesn't scale: it's a fundamental conceit of the architecture, one that a lot of people are probably willing to take on a laptop that will mostly be used for Twitter and YouTube. This presents issues for the rest of the market though, and it will be fascinating to see how Apple retains their pro userbase while missing out on the high-performance hardware sector entirely.

I think x86 is pretty terrible too, if it's any consolation, but really it's the only option you've got as a programmer in the 21st century. I hopped on the Raspberry Pi bandwagon when I was still in middle school, I grew up rooting for the little guy here. Looking out on the future landscape of computer hardware though, I really only see RISC-V. ARM is an improvement on x86, but I don't think it's profound enough to make people care. RISC-V, on the other hand, blows both of them out of the water. On consumer hardware, it's able to accelerate pretty much any workload while sipping a few mW. On professional hardware, you can strap a few hundred of those cores together and they'll work together to create highly complex pipelines for data processing. On server hardware, it will probably move like gangbusters. Even assuming that cloud providers pocket half the improvements, a 5x price/performance increase will have the business sector racing to support it.

So yeah, it is a pretty complex situation. Apple did a cool thing with the M1, but they have a long ways to go if they want to dethrone x86 in it's entirety.

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

#565

Post by GordonS »

mstaoru wrote: post #90
michalf6 wrote: post #71

1) Maxed-out battery (90-100WH) 2) Low-TDP modern CPU, ideally Ryzen 3) Bright, hi-res screen There is nothing on the market that offers this. M1 mac is the closest option, but Apple shouldn't be given money. I'm currently on a Thinkpad T480.

Asus Vivobook 16X OLED? 1) 94 Wh battery 2) R7 5800h / R9 5800hx 3) 4K OLED screen that goes to 550

I hadn't come across this laptop before - looks pretty good!

Do you own one? Keen to know what real world battery life is like, and if there are any tradeoffs/annoyances?

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

#566

Post by mwint »

godDLL wrote: post #412
mwint wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flimsy? MacBooks? Are we in different universes? Keyboard is/was a valid concern. But flimsy, I’m not seeing. Pretty sure I could murder someone with my M1 MacBook Air, clean it, and then write code.

Or poke a hole in the screen by leaving a single speck of sand on the keyboard before closing the lid. There used to be a thick glass panel in front of it, but no more.

Again, don’t know where you’re getting this. 2020 MacBook Air has a glass panel. Ctrl-F “glass” on https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/.

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

#567

Post by fjjhn33n3h »

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…

AMD 5850U is almost as good as M1 and it beats it in power performance benchmarks as well in multicore performance:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-7-PRO-5850U-v...

Both have TDP of 15 WATT.

I have Thinkpad P14S Gen 2 (AMD) and can work on the machine the whole day without charger and it never ever get hot.

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

#568

Post by Oddskar »

chias wrote: post #487

My process is I have a list of things I hate, and if you fail to do any of them, then I love you. But yeah, my preferences are: -- * Don't make the keyboard key placement stupid. Make the arrow-keys and pgup / pgdn a six-key rectangle that all feel the same and you're dead to me. * Backlit keyboard is a significant plus - yeah yeah you touch type but uncommonly-used shortcut keys in the dark sucks. * NVMe storage is…

My reaction to some of the posts in this thread just make me feel old.

Backlit keyboard is a significant plus - yeah yeah you touch type but uncommonly-used shortcut keys in the dark sucks.

Can’t you just .. turn on a lamp? Why would you do this to your eyes?

Please put the webcam at the top (lookin at you, Dell XPS...) so people don't have to look at my dirty fingernails and up my nose.

Having used this myself for a number of years; I honestly in hindsight cannot comprehend how Dell could let their flagship laptop launch with this. How on earth did they try this and go “this is acceptable”? Boggles my mind.

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

#569

Post by jrm4 »

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…

Bahahaha.

Sorry, long time Linux user here. I just presumed the sucky state of this sort of thing was SOLELY due to my insistence on using Linux.

Relatedly; seriously - besides the obvious "mindshare" and so on, and I suppose "mostly for the people here;" Macs I get, but why do people still use Windows?

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

#570

Post by Oddskar »

_mitch wrote: post #397
tomrod wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I have the same problem. I build different modes into my keyboard via QMK that I can switch via special key combos. It works okish, with the exception being that modifiers just work differently on Mac with Cmd not really cleanly mapping to Ctrl — don’t you find this annoying?
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