511–520 of 693 posts
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Purism physically destroys components that won't run libre firmware.
They physically destroy the laptop's CPU? I doubt that.
What's crazy to me is how insanely overspec'd mobile devices are for what they deliver. If you went back in time and told 1999 me the following: I'll give you a computer with the following: * 256GB of solid-state storage * 6 CPUs @ 3+GHz * 8GB of RAM * Weighs only 200 grams * Battery-powered, lasts 5+ hours * 1440 x 3168 resolution display I would have been absolutely gobsmacked. Such a machine absolutely outclasses…
A desktop would definitely be faster. My wife has a low-end desktop that blows my top-end laptop out of the water.
But I don’t play games, and need to take my system on the road, occasionally, so I need the laptop.
I do have a couple of screamingly fast external USC-C SSD drives. They work nicely, and are teeny.
I prefer a desktop because: 1. I like big, big monitors. 2. I prefer a full size keyboard. 3. I prefer a separate mouse. 4. I prefer big freaking disk drives installed. 5. I put the desktop under my desk, and with a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse, there is much less of a snarl on my desk. 6. The desktop has an optical drive I still use. 7. The desktop has lots of USB ports and they're all in use. 8. I can repla…
Advantages of using a laptop :
- portability - I work as a consultant and I need to work on premises occasionally - if I had to switch between desktop/laptop it would be too cumbersome
- standalone when you need it - when I travel or am on vacation I usually need to do a few hours of work - I won't lug my full setup but I'm 100% ready on the go
- can develop for OSX/iOS with MBP
Disadvantages :
- thermals - I use a fully loaded 2018 i9 MBP and I have to undrvolt/disable turbo boost in office because the laptop hits full fan speed with a VM + IDE running and people start turning heads
- lower performance compared to desktop equivalent and especially compared to best available workstation
I'm hoping VS code and remote development setups (either running VSCode in the browser hosted on my desktop or remote tools) get sufficiently good that I can get a lightweight ARM Mac and then I SSH to my home workstation - feels like the ideal solution if the tooling gets there
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What? There’s a lot of laptops that hit their top clocks with no issues. The main problem is that doing so seriously reduces your battery duration and emits significant noise. Pick anything over the 800$ range that isn’t a macbook and you’re way more likely to hit clocks than not.
Can you keep them in prime 95?
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It's hard to find a full size bluetooth keyboard. I think I went through every keyboard on Amazon and found only one. If you use a USB wireless keyboard, well, there goes one of the two USB slots on the laptop. It's not just the monitor being big, I want lots and lots of pixels. I'm currently running 3840*2160, and have a second monitor attached set up in portrait mode (so I can display a manual page while I work on…
I plug my full sized USB keyboard into my monitor, along with my yubikey and wireless mouse dongle -- one USB C cord connects it all to my laptop. edit: two monitors is still a pain, though.
> I know that new "open" laptops are still available, but most of them--the System76's, the Purisms, etc.--are overpriced in my opinion This quote suggest to me the author is an integral part of the problem. Companies are ALWAYS trying to increase their profitability. If they can lock down the computer, they can drop the price while _increasing_ CLTV. That’s why System76 is more expensive. They’re NOT overpriced. The…
Mainstream manufacturers have to deal with consumers who know nothing about computers. They expect full support. They will also follow directions on any website without knowing what they're doing, and mess things up. The move to lock down computers isn't really a Big Brother conspiracy to prevent us from doing things on our computers that The Man doesn't want us to. It's a safety measure to stop inexperienced users bricking their machines and demanding support fix it.
Purism (and others) sell "overpriced" computers to people who know what we're doing. When I had a problem on my Purism laptop, they told me to unscrew the back and check the connections. That's not something that Dell can do with their customers.
I think they'll always stay "overpriced", partly because we're happy paying for the extra freedom. And partly so that they don't become mainstream and end up with a huge support overhead.
Given that the author's demands are being met, exactly, by Purism (etc), then I don't think he gets to complain that it's "too expensive" - that's not how markets work. You have a niche need, you pay a niche price. Stop with the Big Brother conspiracy theories and pay the extra cash to get the specific thing you want.
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There are obviously many ways to do this comparison, but going off Wikipedia's pricing for most recent Intel processors. Their highest end mobile processor is currently the i7-1185G7 which apparently retails for $426. Let's compare it with the closest desktop processor to that price, the i9-10900 ($438). Cores (Threads): 4(8) vs. 10(20). Base Freq: 3.0ghz (At 28w TDP) vs. 2.8ghz. Max All Core Turbo: 4.3ghz vs. 4.8ghz…
Passmark and Geekbench are decent CPU benchmarks for general performance and indeed both show about a 2X multi-threaded difference: * https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-1185G7-vs-Inte... * https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4354735?baselin... These are short tests too, so would be a best case. In real life, laptop performance is probably significantly worse due to thermal throttling.
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Well... tbh I'm still working on the build. But I don't do windows and I don't play FPS or anything where latency would be super important. I use VNC across town to my office and that's generally good enough... but we'll see. I had small hopes that "laptop as linux thin client" would have an easy PNP solution by now, but my research indicates that this still isn't the case. Definitely open to suggestions.
It's been a bit since I had a second device to try it with, but my experienced with Windows Remote Desktop have been less of a "this would be hard to game with" lag and more a "the delay in my mouse movement is making my head hurt" lag.
Sure if I'm on a high latency link I might have to adjust to clicking taking a wee bit to register, but normally I don't have to adjust my usage.
Windows to Windows.
I prefer a desktop because: 1. I like big, big monitors. 2. I prefer a full size keyboard. 3. I prefer a separate mouse. 4. I prefer big freaking disk drives installed. 5. I put the desktop under my desk, and with a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse, there is much less of a snarl on my desk. 6. The desktop has an optical drive I still use. 7. The desktop has lots of USB ports and they're all in use. 8. I can repla…
>I prefer a full size keyboard. Also every laptop has a different - stupid - keyboard layout.
Also when pressing Ctrl+F4 I use the outside of my hand to press Ctrl, then my index finger for F4. That means that the F4 key needs to be over or to the left of the #5 key, or else I can't reach.