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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?

#271

Post by smoyer »

yodelshady wrote: post #36

XPS 13 currently, and probably next as well. I look for: - track record of linux compatibility. If it's Windows or out, I'm out. - good keyboard. - good screen, > 1920x1080 although 4K is overkill, preferably 16:10. Macbooks look tempting, but I just don't trust Apple to not break any workflow that isn't editing videos about how great Apple products are. The current keys are good but - sorry, the (pre-butterfly!) key…

I went from one XPS15 (2017) version to the next (2020) and found that in the interrim the S3 sleep has disappeared.

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

#272

Post by cehrlich »

siva7 wrote: post #226

That it doesn't get in the way of my work and life. Let me phrase it this way: A laptop is good when i don't have to think about it. Super quiet, exceptional battery performance, lightweight, sturdy, excellent design, super fast, doesn't crash, doesn't reboot when it wants, does what it should do when i close the lid and never lets me down. Basically the M1, the first laptop that does fit my requirements. I like Linu…

Same, my ideal laptop is an M1 MacBook Air but with a bigger screen and more user serviceability. The M1 Air I have now is the first laptop since probably the 2012 15” Pro that truly feels like a generational upgrade instead of just an increment. For several months now I have not once had to think about performance, heat, volume, or battery life. And even though multi core performance benchmarks slower than some high end x86 devices, the M1 _feels_ faster. It’s a game changer.

I hope everyone else catches up soon, I’d love to buy the Lenovo (or whatever) equivalent of this and run Linux on it.

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

#273

Post by Smithalicious »

tentacleuno wrote: post #254
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 could possibly be convinced otherwise if the trackpad is particularly good. Genuine question: what about Macbook trackpads? We have a MBP 2013, and it runs leaps and bounds over my Windows laptop which came out in the same year. I'm not sure if other laptops have caught up with Apple yet, but Macbook trackpads are commonly referred to as the best in the business.

I've heard they're good, but Macbooks tick almost none of the boxes in the list, so I am not very interested in them.

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

#274

Post by DiabloD3 »

lostlogin wrote: post #181
DiabloD3 wrote: post #167

Look for non-Intel solutions. There is absolutely zero reason to adopt Intel CPUs until Intel has proven that they can ship CPUs that do not contain expensive-to-fix security bugs year after year after year (you're on a laptop, every CPU cycle counts to keep heat down and battery life longer). Several companies make Zen 3 APU (Ryzen 5000 series models)-based laptops that have good keyboards, good screens, and the usu…

> There is absolutely zero reason to adopt Intel CPUs I’d live to ditch Intel, but quicksync is just so good for video transcoding. 10 or 20 high bitrate video streams can be attacked without any noticeable load on the system. Its excessive from what I need, but it’s just so good. Maybe I’m too easily impressed.

AMD and Nvidia's encoding engines can handle more load, do it in lower latency, and also be higher quality in less bits. The last time Intel impressed me with Quicksync was in the Haswell days.

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

#275

Post by fsflover »

emptysongglass wrote: post #208
fsflover wrote: post #180

1. Upgradable and repairable. 2. Linux and Qubes OS support. 3. 64+ GB RAM. 4. Coreboot and focused on verifiable security, neutralized Intel ME. 5. Hardware kill switch for camera, microphone. Actually, there is only one such laptop: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 .

I tried for years to get along with Purism but I've had three laptops with poor QC come from them. Broken hinges, unreliable touchpads, bad chargers. Never again.

I'm quite happy with my Librem 15, no problems. AFAIK they fixed their hinge in the latest model.

Which problems did you have with the chargers? Never heard about that on their forums.

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

#276

Post by t_von_doom »

grandpoobah wrote: post #46
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…

Was going to post the same thing (albeit far more poorly explained). Isn't Microsoft embarrassed about this? This has been an issue for my last two laptops over the last 5 years. How is it acceptable for this problem to still exist? My Lenovo supports S3 sleep, but I didn't discover it until probably a year into having bought it, so at that point my battery's ability to hold charge had already been sufficiently degra…

As a Mac user with the same gripe of the ctrl key placement: Remapping it to the caps lock works wonders :)

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

#277

Post by throw63738 »

Leherenn wrote: post #148
foobarbaz33 wrote: post #119

> if I'm missing on any new developments since 2015 Yes, you missed something huge. Apple Silicon M1 or nothing. It's just too good. Low power consumption allows the laptop to actually be used as a laptop. The power use-to-performance ratio is unmatched by anything on the market. Apple is breaking us free from decades of stagnation on the hardware front. Nothing else on the market comes close. I expect this to change…

Is ARM really the reason the M1 is so much better than the current x86 CPUs? If you have a look at the competition (Qualcomm), it sounds to me that it's Apple expertise at designing a SoC and using a more advanced node that makes it such a good CPU, not really the architecture. Said another way, I highly doubt we will see a non-Apple ARM CPU outclass the x86 competition in such a way anytime soon, so saying "never x8…

M1 has very fast memory and BUS access. It takes money and is not so sexy for marketing, but it works.

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

#278

Post by christophilus »

mindvirus wrote: post #225

Always fun threads, thanks for posting! I've learned a bunch. Truth be had, I'm still loving my 2013 MacBook pro. It's bulky and the battery's not what it used to be, but it's fast and the keyboard is great but after 8 years of hard use, a couple keys are wonky. I'll probably pick up whatever Apple announces on Monday. I've really want to like the XPS series, but I've bought and returned 3 of them in the past several…

It’s really frustrating that the only quality build is incompatible with Linux. The XPS is flimsy compared to the MacBook it replaced. That said, I’m never going back to Apple’s ecosystem, if I can help it. My next laptop will be the 15” Framework when it’s out.

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

#280

Post by mwint »

godDLL wrote: post #113
randomopining wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay $800 and you get your value. The market obviously decided that the value provided is good enough, since their sales are good. Just because you value certain things doesn't mean the collective does.

Just because some sliver (OK, large sliver) of their consumer base is satisfied with this shit doesn't mean that they didn't live a sizeable amount of people stranded for both hardware and software options. Because they did. I used to be able to slam an MBP down on the woodworking table, open it up and start typing. Now there is no slamming, because they flimsy. No typing near dust, because they get stuck in the keyb…

Flimsy? MacBooks? Are we in different universes?

Keyboard is/was a valid concern. But flimsy, I’m not seeing.

Pretty sure I could murder someone with my M1 MacBook Air, clean it, and then write code.

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