Poll: What is the size of your laptop/netbook? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: What is the size of your laptop/netbook?

#31

Post by shade » Mon, May 09, 2011, 3:47 AM UTC

Currently I have a 14" Sony and a 13" unibody MacBook. Both are approaching 3 years old, so I've been trying to decide what to do about replacing them.

At this point, it's looking like the answer is going to be selling off the MacBook and (eventually) the Sony and consolidating into a single PC laptop. I have a reasonably powerful desktop for my needs (home-built Core i5 running Win7) and a nice Dell i7 laptop for work stuff, courtesy of work, so I'm mostly looking for a small and light enough personal laptop. I'm thinking I may just go small and cheap and leave the heavy lifting to my desktop PC, so I'm looking at some of the new AMD 'Zacate' E-350 systems that Engadget likes to refer to as "notbooks" -- probably the HP DM1, since it has one of the new clickpads on it.

I considered getting a MacBook Air, but decided not to. Even though they're very nice machines I'd really rather not pay the price premium, and I'm honestly not very enthusiastic about some of the things Apple is apparently doing with Lion. For the OS X-specific stuff I do -- mostly Ruby and Python in MacVim -- I can do it just as well in Linux and on the same platform I'd be deploying it on -- plus I can set it up to dual boot Windows and drop back into that if I want or need to.

Re: Poll: What is the size of your laptop/netbook?

#32

Post by genbattle » Mon, May 09, 2011, 4:48 AM UTC

My last laptop was a 15.6" beast (Core2 T7200 I think with a GeForce 8400M G), but it was just underpowered enough to not do everything I wanted when I wanted, and was too bulky and power hungry to be considered portable.

Last year I switched to an i5 desktop with more than enough CPU and GPU grunt to push through the most demanding tasks (such as video encoding). However, if i wanted to slowly hack away at some code while watching TV in the lounge with my partner or do some coding while at my parents place, I was out of luck.

To solve this problem I bought a AMD C-50 equipped Acer Aspire 522 the day they were available here. Despite having only a 10.2" screen and a "netbook" processor, I find it does everything I want to do with a portable computer. The battery life, size and weight give me great portability (+1 for couch-hacking). The dual-core APU never locks up or stutters, even when playing 1080p video via the HDMI port. The DX11 capable graphics even play WoW and Minecraft great at native resolution (1280x720), and allows me to hack around with OpenCL GPGPU programming from my couch. NOTE: I upgraded the memory to 4GB, i would recommend an upgrade to at least 2GB for anyone who has/is getting this laptop.

I definitely think switching to a lighter form factor with more portability has allowed me to get more done because I can literally have this machine with me at all times. That said, I waited for this laptop specifically because it was portable, cheap, and had a decent screen resolution. If i were recommending a laptop for someone, I would probably reccomend something in the 12-14" range, unless they're going to have a desktop to do the grunt work, as I do.

Re: Poll: What is the size of your laptop/netbook?

#33

Post by ordinary » Mon, May 09, 2011, 12:55 PM UTC

I have a 10" netbook for personal use, which I take with me everywhere I go. I also have a 17" monster of a thing, which never leaves my desk because it's too big and too heavy to carry around with me. Going off the keywords "comfortable" and "portable", I'm going to have to pick the former.

Re: Poll: What is the size of your laptop/netbook?

#34

Post by pasbesoin » Mon, May 09, 2011, 6:16 PM UTC

My complaint/concern has to do with deeply recessed keyboards. Whenever I'm not in an "optimal" location, e.g. a conference room, café, etc. where work surface heights tend to be higher, the front edge ends up pressing into my wrists.

I've found it frustrating that so many laptop designs have incorporated this aspect. Smaller body sizes tend to help, although the 13' Mac and Mac Pro nonetheless still seem to have it in spades. Also, widescreen formats have made the overall "depth" that they have to work with, when shoving that keyboard to the back, less -- although I'd prefer more vertical in the screen dimensions, and designers nonetheless get the keyboard too far back for my comfort.

(I strongly dislike actually having the thing on my lap.)