Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days? • Hacker News Board

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

#581

Post by klelatti » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #564

NobodyNada wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rou…

Where to start?

> ARM is really old now.

Well aarch64 was announced in 2011 so not really that old.

> Apple’s implementation of ARM is decidedly CISC.

CISC is a description of the instruction set not the implementation.

> ARM doesn’t scale.

No idea what this means but you can get 128 core Arm CPUs and address huge amounts of memory but perhaps you have another definition of scaling.

And so on.

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

#582

Post by johnwalkr » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

manmal wrote: post #562

cehrlich wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It probably wouldn’t, at least not in every situation. It would probably be low power until more is needed.

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

#583

Post by Godel_unicode » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

spicybright wrote: post #506

jabroni_salad wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My 2019 Razer Blade does the same.

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

#584

Post by throwawayboise » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

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…

> why then is a top of the line brand in the PC world writing shit like this

"It's OK when we do it"

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

#585

Post by brendoelfrendo » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

Smithalicious wrote: post #273

tentacleuno wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could possibly be convinced otherwise if the trackpad is particularly good. Genuine question: what about Macbook trackpads? We have a MBP 2013, and it runs leaps and bounds over my Windows laptop which came out in the same year. I'm not sure if other laptops have caught up with Apple yet, but Macbook trackpads are commonly referred to as the best in the business.

I've heard they're good, but Macbooks tick almost none of the boxes in the list, so I am not very interested in them.

I will say that Macbooks are more rugged than they appear, and the battery life on the M1 models is best-in-class. That said, they're not very open or Linux-compatible (yet, at least). I bought an M1 Air and love it, but it's very use-case dependent, I think.

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

#586

Post by arendtio » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

As long as it is a normal laptop and does not support some kind of special tablet mode, I would skip the touchscreen part. My last laptop had a touchscreen (because I thought I would use it), but I never used it in a meaningful way. Instead, it created problems because at some point KDE detected it as a mouse and disabled the touchpad during boot until I took the time to solve the problem...

Price doesn't say much about build quality and I would search for a high quality laptop.

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

#587

Post by harshitaneja » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

motoboi wrote: post #545

harshitaneja wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the important ones like package managers, containers, not calling home etc are mentioned by the others. So I will mention things I don't think are discussed enough by linux switchers. The one I didn't think I would yearn for but am really reminded of everyday are- desktop environments and window managers. My friends couldn't stop praising the UX but even after a long time trying to get used to it I still am a…

Command+space t for terminal (at first you’ll have to type “terminal”, but after 10 or so it becomes the first result for “t”). The same for other aplications. You can also, from terminal, do a open -a application_name if you want.

This is what I use and it is part of muscle memory now. But this is a part of thousand cuts that make the experience less than amazing.

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

#588

Post by harshitaneja » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

Oddskar wrote: post #558

harshitaneja wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the important ones like package managers, containers, not calling home etc are mentioned by the others. So I will mention things I don't think are discussed enough by linux switchers. The one I didn't think I would yearn for but am really reminded of everyday are- desktop environments and window managers. My friends couldn't stop praising the UX but even after a long time trying to get used to it I still am a…

My friends couldn't stop praising the UX but even after a long time trying to get used to it I still am annoyed by the application switching keyboard shortcuts, lack of ability to set system wide shortcuts for launching basic things like terminal. Hammerspoon is the answer to all of these. The common solution is to rebind caps lock (using Karabiner Elements) to be “hyper” (cmd + alt + shift + ctrl) and then bind glob…

I vaguely remember having tried hammerspoon but can't remember why I didn't continue using it. Will give it a proper shot. Thanks!

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

#589

Post by zuhsetaqi » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

fjjhn33n3h wrote: post #567

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.

TDP != actual power usage especially when they're pushed to the limit

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

#590

Post by jonwinstanley » Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

tom_ wrote: post #363

jonwinstanley wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows wasn't good at this in the past either. Didn't they used to have sleep, hibernate and a load of other options too?

Just sleep/hibernate/restart/shut down, as far as I can remember? - sleep vs hibernate being a distinction you want, in my view, as the battery drain/restart time behaviours are different. I'm sure I don't need to explain why separate restart and shut down options are a good idea. (Never liked not having the sleep/hibernate choice on macOS. I know better than the computer what my upcoming plans are!)

I’ve been on Mac so long that all 5 options feel erroneous. I just close my laptop lid when I’m done.