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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?

#701

Post by manmal »

cma wrote: post #647
manmal wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Beefier graphics often improves battery life (more cores at lower clock, like nvidia mobile vs desktop for the same model number: lower TDP, same perf). They might move to more power hungry RAM as part of it though.

The on-chip GPU Apple ships in their MBPs draws way less power than the dedicated Nvidia chip. This is especially noticeable in the battery life drop that occurs when the dedicated chip is used exclusively.

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

#702

Post by mwint »

godDLL wrote: post #693
mwint wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy crap, now I have to sit on it? That’s a bit different than the original claim…

Only way to make sure. Alternatively, throw a pinch of sand on the keyboard, close the lid, bag the Mac. Now, with some vigor, take it out blindly by any corner and trow it down on the thick wooden table, slamming it with it's own weight. A few times. And tell me how that gentle test went for you. :)

Send my condolences to any laptops you use.

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

#703

Post by manmal »

cehrlich wrote: post #615
manmal wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

You're actually right. MacBook Air M1: 49.9Wh | MacBook Pro 16" 2019: 100Wh The 16" MacBook Pro is rumored to have double the performance CPU cores, and either double or 4x the GPU cores. So for tasks that are strictly GPU bound, battery life could be about half of the M1 Air. Considering that this is the absolute worst case scenario battery life (assuming of course that they don't make the battery smaller), the new…

And CPU/GPU core count is only one factor for battery life, so 4x the cores would not even result in 4x the power draw.

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

#704

Post by chias »

Oddskar wrote: post #568
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…

Can’t you just .. turn on a lamp?

Usually yes, but not when I'm in bed and my wife is trying to sleep next to me I can't.

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

#705

Post by manquer »

selfup wrote: post #496
browningstreet wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use so many keyboards, not all of which are under my control.. I wish I could, but it would bring chaos to my typing world.

You can set this in the OS itself.

Wouldn't you need root/admin access for that ?

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

#707

Post by mixmastamyk »

ayushnix wrote: post #300
Smithalicious wrote: post #166

0. 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 did look into the Framework laptop recently but while it's probably the closet things in a long time the keyboard doesn't look good and there's no trackpoint (nor even physical mouse buttons) It also has a screen that needs fractional scaling which makes Framework a deal breaker for me, no second thoughts about it. I'm not buying anything with a fractionally scaled display if I can help it.

200dpi according to calculator, which is about right for 2x. What would you prefer?

2256x1504, 13.5”

https://www.calculators.tech/dpi-calculator#dpi-viewing-dist...

Says it is good from about three feet away.

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

#708

Post by mixmastamyk »

harshitaneja wrote: post #529
mustache_kimono wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you feel like you're missing in userspace?

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…

Even on Linux I rarely bother hitting a hotkey to open a terminal. Why? Because I have it load on startup and almost never close it.

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

#709

Post by klelatti »

NobodyNada wrote: post #700
klelatti wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only advantage I’ve heard put forward for RISC-V on single threaded applications is the existence of compressed instructions - which could reduce cache misses albeit at the expense of a slightly more complex decoder. I’m a bit sceptical as to whether this is material though as cache sizes increase. Of course the flexibility of the RISC-V model allows approaches such as that being pursued by Esperanto [1] with lot…

ARM had THUMB, which definitely improved performance back in the GameBoy days — but they dropped that with AArch64, so presumably they decided it wasn’t beneficial anymore.

Indeed and IIRC the increased code density got them into Nokia phones too.

I find it hard to believe that they didn't drop Thumb from AArch64 without a lot of analysis of the impact on performance.

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

#710

Post by mixmastamyk »

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…

If you don't think arm can scale any further, why do you think x86 can? They could easily double all the specs in the "M2" and slap two+ of them into a mac pro.
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