1. MacOS
2. No touchbar
3. HDMI ports
4. 32GB ram, 512GB SSD
Hopefully we'll get one of these in a few days.
Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
591–600 of 731 posts
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#592For me, No. 1 with a bullet is a mechanical keyboard.
I type endlessly and I type fast -- without mechanical keys, I'm replacing the keyboard (or even the whole laptop) every 18 months.
This irritatingly leaves me stuck with gigantic gaming rigs; the first company to build a relatively lightweight laptop with mechanical keys has my business for life.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#593A 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…
All Macs have fractional scaling and AFAICT most people seem to have it on. For example my Macbook Pro has a native resolution of 2880x1800. The default OS resolution is 1440x900 (so 2x) but I have it set to 1680x1050 or 1.714 It looks fine and I see none of the issues you mention. A big difference with Window though is that this scaling happens at a very low-level. The OS tells apps they are on a 2x display at 1680x…
This doesn’t really make sense. Your computer is still using all of the pixels on the screen (unless there is a GPU problem), it’s rendering everything bigger so that 2X pixels are used on a 2X screen. The OS isn’t scaling 1680x1050 bitmaps to 2880x1400, unless the apps are somehow producing bitmaps directly.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#594Earlier 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.
The people writing the software have a vested interest in your battery wearing out so you have to buy a new laptop
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#595Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your battery is likely worn from keeping it charged at 100% constantly, lenovo have an option to limit max charge to something like 80% which will greatly reduce battery wear, you just have to turn it off if you are actually planning to run it without AC for as long as possible.
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.
My laptop only heats up in sleep mode, unfortunately.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#596Earlier 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…
JetBrains Rider. If you care about quality, don't bother with Visual Studio at all.
Or CLion, if you’re doing C++ or Rust development
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
Okay. Just tried hammerspoon and I love it. Love the documentation as well. Thanks.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#598That it doesn't get in the way of my work and life. Let me phrase it this way: A laptop is good when i don't have to think about it. Super quiet, exceptional battery performance, lightweight, sturdy, excellent design, super fast, doesn't crash, doesn't reboot when it wants, does what it should do when i close the lid and never lets me down. Basically the M1, the first laptop that does fit my requirements. I like Linu…
I like Linux, but i have to be honest: Windows/Linux laptops can't compete in 2021 with the Apple M1. Maybe some day they will catch up. Mostly because all the flagship laptops are stubbornly (or rather being strong-armed into) sticking with Intel.
> Mostly because all the flagship laptops are stubbornly (or rather being strong-armed into) sticking with Intel.
Intel sold StongARM (and XScale) along time ago. They might be in a much different place now if they didn’t.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#5990. Linux compatibility, I am not super picky about getting everything to work perfectly but I should be able to trust that the software I prefer to use will run and my laptop will connect to wifi and play audio properly and so on. 1. IPS screen (mostly a given nowadays, but this wasn't always so) 2. Trackpoint, I hate trackpads. Pretty rare option so I could possibly be convinced otherwise if the trackpad is particul…
> 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 tried a lot of Windows laptops, and there’s still nothing on the Win/Linux side, even in Dell and MS laptops, that compares with the precision and natural feeling of a Mac trackpad.
Re: Ask HN: What does one look for in a laptop these days?
#600Full Linux support. Battery, SSD, RAM swappable with no glue involved.
Good cooling. I don't want to use 60% of a throttling CPU when I paid 100% of the price.
Ethernet, HDMI or Displayport, and a headphone jack without dongles. Also USB-C charging just in case the manufacturer decides to use the flimsiest cable for the proprietary charger and stops selling it after a few years (hi, Microsoft).
Would be cool to have hardware switches for camera and microphone.
So in short, I hope the Framework laptop makes it to the european market at some point. I don't really need a new laptop, but this would be a reason for one.