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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?

#81

Post by gnabgib »

teleforce wrote: post #75

For me the laptop must have at least these minimum features if money is no objection: 1) Weight about 1 kg. I do carry another e-ink reader in my bag thus a lighter laptop is a big plus. 2) Minimum 2K resolution. Once you have used 2K screen the Full HD just don't cut it anymore. 3) Military grade certification for drop. I once dropped my laptop bag from shoulder height containing less than a month laptop but because…

"2K resolution is a generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels." (...) 1920 × 1080 is the most common 2K resolution"[0]. How are you distinguishing between 2K and 1080p?.. are you thinking of 1440p (2.5k wide), or of a non 16:9 aspect ratio?

Have you ever found a laptop like this? 1kg is sacrifice a lot of corners in the name of weight (battery, screen, glass, ram, cooling, drives, processing and GPU), while workstations are are the likely place to find 128GB ECC.. they focus on performance over weight (they're getting better at style). Sounds like you want a workstation laptop in a ultrabook's body (and who doesn't.. I think there's a guy at NASA that would like you to bring it in for study)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_resolution

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

#83

Post by markus_zhang »

1. Good and replaceable battery;

2. Multiple USB on BOTH sides plus headset jack;

3. 16GB+ RAM plus 512GB+ SSD;

4. Solid frame for frequent travelling;

5. No touchscreen;

6. Keyboard that feels like one;

7. 15'+ screen;

8. Touchpad that can be disabled easily

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

#85

Post by teleforce »

gnabgib wrote: post #81
teleforce wrote: post #75

For me the laptop must have at least these minimum features if money is no objection: 1) Weight about 1 kg. I do carry another e-ink reader in my bag thus a lighter laptop is a big plus. 2) Minimum 2K resolution. Once you have used 2K screen the Full HD just don't cut it anymore. 3) Military grade certification for drop. I once dropped my laptop bag from shoulder height containing less than a month laptop but because…

"2K resolution is a generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels." (...) 1920 × 1080 is the most common 2K resolution"[0]. How are you distinguishing between 2K and 1080p?.. are you thinking of 1440p (2.5k wide), or of a non 16:9 aspect ratio? Have you ever found a laptop like this? 1kg is sacrifice a lot of corners in the name of weight (battery, screen, glas…

Yes for me 2K is QHD or 1440p. It just easy for me to compare display resolutions for example 0.5K for 720p, 1K for 1080p, 2K 1440p, then 4K, 6K, 8K, 16K, etc [1]. Buying laptop with less than 1440p display today is just beyond me.

They are many 1 kg laptops around at the moment by most of laptop manufacturers. For GPU personally I have an external GPU or eGPU via Thunderbolt interface.

Currently they are many laptops 128 GB RAM around, they just need to put it in a lighter laptop based on i7 or i9 [2]. Heck even the cheaper Intel's 10th Gen Celeron CPU can support up to 128 GB RAM [3]. It is not a rocket science to put 128 GB RAM inside a lightweight laptop today.

[1] 720p vs 1080p vs 1440p vs 4K vs 8K – Which Should I Choose?

https://www.displayninja.com/720p-vs-1080p-vs-1440p-vs-4k-vs...

[2] Top 10 Laptops with 128GB RAM:

https://www.reinisfischer.com/top-10-laptops-128gb-ram-mobil...

[3] Intel® Celeron® Processor G5900:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199268/...

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

#86

Post by a-dub »

kbob wrote: post #61
a-dub wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've seen all the hype but i have to ask: what is replaceable on these that you can't replace on a thinkpad t/pxx? (or p1)

Here are the parts they're selling. (A lot of them are "coming soon", though.) https://frame.work/marketplace I'm not familiar with current ThinkPads.

i dunno. honestly it looks like a regular intel laptop made to look like an old macbook with bays for inverted usb-c dongles.

the whole "it's modular! here's your screwdriver! you can service your laptop by yourself and replace the ram! don't forget your coveralls, you're a hardware technician now!" thing seems a bit.. theatrical? but who knows, i've never owned a laptop with fixed storage and ram so maybe i'm not in the target demographic. also, who knows, maybe their inverted dongle thing will become a standard?

i've always just used thinkpads. they do a pretty good job of picking the right ports in the right quantities and have almost (excluding the ultra-ultralights) always allowed for replacement of ram, disk and sometimes have had a modular bay for cd-rom/dvd/additional disk/etc. quality seems to have dropped a little recently, but overall, still decent.

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

#87

Post by sircastor »

michalf6 wrote: post #76
michalf6 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-consumer behaviour. Multiple hardware design faults in macbooks. Actively working against repair, against software freedom, against the user (see recent CSAM fiasco). Non-removable storage. Preference of thin&light vs upgradeability/cooling. I wouldn't mind that as I'm not their customer, but all the crap they introduce gets mindlessly copied by all their competition.

Adding to that, I'm afraid of the world moving away from the PC as a standard. Through a lucky set of circumstances, we were able to enjoy a relatively open and universal compatibility standard of computers for the last several decades. I'm afraid of the computing world fragmenting again into several walled gardens in the likes of Amiga/Atari of old, nothing being compatible with each other, unable to run code not si…

Seeing that, it seems like this is likely cyclical.

We’ll have 20 years of siloed hardware, and then some competitors figure out a way to get a foot in the door, or signed-only systems will become distasteful to consumers and Companies will revert, interoperability will become the norm again.

There are always barriers in computing and society will respond to it.

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

#88

Post by gadiyar »

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…

So which laptops do a good job of reliably supporting S3 standby/suspend? Any idea if the Framework laptop does?

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

#90

Post by mstaoru »

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
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