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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?

#651

Post by dorfsmay »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #618
dorfsmay wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ApparentlyApparently 3rd party manufacturers are looking at building keyboards with trackpoint for the Framework laptops.

Have you ever used a trackpoint-style pointing device from anyone other than IBM or Lenovo and had it be any good? I think the current Lenovo trackpoints aren't as good as the IBM devices used to be in the late 1990s. I assume they were sacrificed on the same altar as the keyboards. But the ones I've used from Dell, Toshiba and HP were so aggressively terrible I'd rather just carry around an external mouse. So I like…

I have used some of them. Indeed not as good but useable.

Sadly Lenovo is taking alot of wrong directions imo, non-removeable battery, soldering memory now etc... I'd be happy to try something else and love the concepts behind the Framework.

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

#652

Post by SomeHacker44 »

For me:

1. Good keyboard with real F-keys and fn-arrows that do home/end/pgup/dn or real keys that do those near the arrows. No numpad so it is centered. (Never again for apple, been burned too much by their crappy keyboards.)

2. OLED screen

3. Thunderbolt or USB4

4. At least 3 or more USB/TB ports

5. 32G+ RAM

6. 2T SSD, preferably socketed, or two sockets

7. A disable-able discrete GPU is nice; but quiet in normal operation is good

8. Slim - do not care about battery, but my back is not what it used to be, including the power brick

9. Nice but secondary: HDMI/DP, Ethernet, SD, fingerprint or other biometric, good mic, good webcam, good speakers, WLAN, WiFi beyond ac

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

#653

Post by godDLL »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #652

For me: 1. Good keyboard with real F-keys and fn-arrows that do home/end/pgup/dn or real keys that do those near the arrows. No numpad so it is centered. (Never again for apple, been burned too much by their crappy keyboards.) 2. OLED screen 3. Thunderbolt or USB4 4. At least 3 or more USB/TB ports 5. 32G+ RAM 6. 2T SSD, preferably socketed, or two sockets 7. A disable-able discrete GPU is nice; but quiet in normal o…

On the one hand your list is not that bad. Could probably be satisfied.

On the other hand it's 9 items. So comparable to mine.

I don't think I'll be buying a laptop this year. Again.

Nothing satisfies.

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

#654

Post by godDLL »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #628
fragmede wrote: post #624

Fingerprint reader so I can log in frictionlessly. Laptop locks instantly, but I can swipe my finger to log back in, so the security requirement isn't onerous.

This saves so much time during my day, where I have to be called away regularly and my laptop auto-locks which I leave enabled for paranoia.

Are you under the impression you're worth spying on? Why don't you just Ctrl-Shift-F12 or something to lock it when you actually want that?

I had bad experience with fingers as ID. Any spill on the scanner surface will disable it for days. And sometimes my prints change enough by being callous, or not fat enough or whatever. Just change. And then – no dice.

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

#655

Post by ziml77 »

can16358p wrote: post #648
ziml77 wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more that Visual Studio is a massive project that was built around running on Windows. It would be a huge undertaking to bring it over to another OS and probably not add nearly enough value. The only reason macOS has "Visual Studio" at all is because Microsoft bought out Xamarin and rebranded their Xamarin Studio product.

Yup it would just not be worth it to bring real VS to macOS. Then why decrease its brand value by marketing a crappy product like Xamarin (which I think has always been bad, and I honestly don't know why MS bothered to buy it) as if it was VS? Just call it Xamarin, or VS "lite", or anything, but not VS as it is not VS.

Consistent branding. Visual Studio is the name they're using for all their code editing software. I don't think it's a good idea given the confusion it causes when people talk about the various programs, but they are distinctly named Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Visual Studio for Mac.

Microsoft has never been good at naming things. They made that mess of Windows naming at multiple points and they are still making a mess with the Xbox brand.

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

#656

Post by devwastaken »

grandpoobah wrote: post #46
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…

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…

Microsoft released windows 11, so, no, they have no shame. Microsoft is a company without leadership, without direction, and without a central vision. The only feature of windows that people like, is that it continues to run the software they need. Other than that the OS itself gets in the way, stops your workflow, and makes your life harder. And the only other commercial alternative is just as bad in other ways. The natural result of letting the computer marker be controlled by a few big players.

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

#659

Post by xdfgh1112 »

baybal2 wrote: post #232
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…

> 1. S3 Standby/suspend support. Intel diasabled S3 in Tiger Lake

Luckily there are AMD thinkpads and they are great.

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

#660

Post by microtonal »

deckard1 wrote: post #607
microtonal wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an AMD Ryzen ThinkPad. It has all the same issues with modern sleep. The solution is to enable S3 sleep in the firmware. Unfortunately, even in S3 sleep, the battery would drain in a day. I am now back to a MacBook Air (M1) and sleep works perfectly. Life is to short to deal with the terrible state of sleep on Windows/Linux laptops.

I'm fairly certain that your Macbook is actually hibernating, and not merely suspending. This seems to be the case with my 2015 Macbook. Suspend alone will drain your battery. I have a Ryzen ThinkPad p14s with Linux. What you do is turn on S3 mode (they call it "Linux") in BIOS as you did. Then in /etc/systemd/sleep.conf you enable AllowSuspendThenHibernate. You can adjust the time. I have mine set to 30 minutes. I a…

I'm fairly certain that your Macbook is actually hibernating, and not merely suspending. This seems to be the case with my 2015 Macbook.

Actually, as far as I understand it's a mixture like modern sleep in Windows. Like modern sleep, the system also wakes up to fetch e-mail, calendar events, etc. But in contrast to Windows, it actually works well and is very restrictive (only certain whitelisted apps can update). Apple calls it Power Nap:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-power-nap-m...

Which means when I close the laptop, it suspends for 30 minutes. If I open before 30 minutes, it resumes right away. If not, it hibernates. The battery will last for practically days if you configure it this way

I know, but hibernate on Linux has many issues. First of all, properly restoring hardware state is even more of a hit and miss than S3 sleep (where e.g. the trackpad would often not come up correctly).

Hibernate on Linux also has all kinds of security issues. Hibernate currently does not work with Secure Boot + kernel_lockdown [1]. Hibernate with randomly-keyed encrypted swap requires all kinds of workarounds.

I am not willing to forgo security mechanisms that have been supported for some time on other systems.

[1] https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/55845.html

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