I love the thought experiment however putting all those connectors in there + a decent battery is not going to be simple (if even possible at all).
A small notebook for a system administrator
81–90 of 274 posts
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#82This feels like it's an unrealistic Christmas present list. By that I mean having a laptop with everything in this article would be absolutely amazing, but is it even possible to mass produce something like that, let alone even build the thing as a one-off? What would a more realistic sysadmin notebook look like?
I'd vote for getting a disposable laptop with good enough hardware to do most sysadmin things. A 2006/7/8 macbook isn't a bad choice IMO since it has all the standard ports. It supports two disk drives and the keyboard works OK.
If you poke around you can usually get one in the $20-40 range. No USB-C or large processing power, but if you're mostly networking into other computers it shouldn't really be a bottleneck, right?
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's specific (US Letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_(paper_size) ) - half of which is reasonaby close to A5, but I'm not sure why the "odd" qualifier.
I guess odd because it’s really only used in North America. I’ve never seen a piece of letter sized paper although I’ve heard of it (first after deciphering the weird PC LOAD LETTER error on HP laser printers which is extra confusing if you don’t realise that letter is a paper size).
Suddenly, after 25 years, that message makes sense! Thank you!
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#84I just want a company to keep making the previous generation MacBook Air. Keep the ports. Keep the MagSafe. Don’t screw with the keyboard. More memory and disk space would be nice, but it’s not a deal-breaker. I don’t mind going for a walk or enjoying a cup of coffee while I wait for GHC to compile. It’s a good machine. Now leave it alone.
Preferably the 11" Macbook Air.
I'm on one right now, it has magsafe (good), 3.5mm (good), 2 usb and a thunderbolt
I'd rather it was a little thicker and had two ethernets and a second thunderbolt, but aside from that it's a great alternative to a chromebook. I wouldn't do real work on it though
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#85HP x360, Intel i3, 6GB ram.
Affordable, durable, works well with multiple flavors of Linux and dual boots just fine.
Been administrating systems for years with this baby.
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#86I love it (though it's like Homer's car).
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#87What about a touchscreen? Are matte touchscreens a thing? I didn't think I'd ever use the touchscreen on my laptop but I have found myself finding it convenient for quick actions when I'm not seated in front of it. I can imagine only having the TrackPoint to navigate menus to be annoying when you're standing.
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#88I went with a Dell Latitude 3180, which is basically a Chromebook that comes with Windows instead. I wanted something 10+ hours battery life, small (11-13" screen), fanless so that it'd be quiet.
--Linux works 100%
--11 hour in-use battery life so it doesn't live plugged in
--Dead quiet (no fan)
--Has good enough specs to get by (N4000 cpu, 4gb ram, edit: also a ssd rather than flash storage, which makes a big difference, and I have a 256gb microsd for extra storage)
--Not a convertible and has a real keyboard
I paid about $200 for it. It gets used more than my $1k laptop.
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#89Lots of good ideas. I have on more than one occasion wished for the laptop's monitor, keyboard and mouse to double up as peripherals for another computer. Another niche thing I've wished for is this: An input selector on the laptop's monitor to select b/w igpu and dgpu. The use case if for gpu passthrough to vms so that you switch between host and guest and still get good gpu performance in the guest. Current optimus setups on laptops are all over the place in their implementation, although some of them do allow passthrough of the dgpu. The main blocker though is that dgpu is only connected to external ports. So if you mux it to the internal panel, you can achieve this without complicated software hacks or copying of framebuffer from one gpu to another. The only additional software support you'd need is to capture the keyboard and mouse for the host or guest based on the context.
Re: A small notebook for a system administrator
#90Using the laptop monitor as a display for external sources (and the video input port) is a good idea, I'm not sure why nobody is implementing it these days. Are there any technical challenges to this, or is it a feature considered useless by all of the laptop producers?