The Perfect Laptop • Hacker News Board

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#11

Post by TehShrike » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:20 PM UTC

How could anyone afford the engineering and manufacturing to build such a perfect laptop and sell it for <2000$?

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#12

Post by WesolyKubeczek » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:20 PM UTC

Two aspects in which Apple's newest Macbook Airs fit at least my own "peak laptop" definition are:

1) no fans whatsoever

2) no coil whine when I plug my headphones in and stress the CPU

The keyboard is exactly the right size and the right font for me, but I'll concede that muscle memory is an individual thing. I've owned Apple's laptops and keyboards made in 2005, 2007, 2010, 2015, 2019, and 2022, and they are very hell-bent on being consistent about key size and placement, I should give it to them.

I'd like a Linux laptop that would beat this.

XPS13 is a close contender because that 3840x2400 screen is the right kind of ratio and super crisp, but man, that fan noise and the coil whine are just killing the mood. Maybe Thinkpad X13s, but Linux support and its screen are both very meh at this point.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#13

Post by Yhippa » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:20 PM UTC

If the Pixelbook has the right aspect ratio, it would be my definition of the "perfect laptop".

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#14

Post by lylejantzi3rd » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

Am I the only one who likes 17" laptops? I miss my old lunch tray.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#15

Post by LaurensBER » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

For those who are budget or environmental conscious a second-hand Huawei Matebook can be a great choice. The older premium models have great battery life (think 13+ hours when undervolted), are passive cooled, have great 3:2 high resolution screens (with very thin bezels) and very good build quality. You can charge them with USB-C so if you have an Android phone you don't need an extra charger. SSD is upgradeable, sadly memory is not.

It's not an alternative for a M2 MacBook, nor is it going to run your 200+ microservices but for 200-300 bucks they tick a lot of the boxes and work great as ultra-portable productivity machines.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#16

Post by huangc10 » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

Recently got a 14" mbp m2 Pro for work. So far 3 months in, I "think" it is the perfect work/personal laptop (excluding gaming).

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#17

Post by kwanbix » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #14

Am I the only one who likes 17" laptops? I miss my old lunch tray.

Love my ThinkPad P51 with 15.6". Which laptops have 17"?

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#18

Post by qwytw » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

TheRealPomax wrote: post #2

I'd add "expandable storage" (and "can be fixed") because even if it's an Apple-esque SoC (which we're clearly going to be seeing more of in the future by other brands), there is no reason to not offer one or ideally two m.2 slots that you can just stick more, "slower", storage in.

> there is no reason

There is a very good reason called "profit margin"...

Good luck charging $500 for an extra 768 GB of storage if there is an m2 slot.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#19

Post by darthrupert » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

jbverschoor wrote: post #8

So basically a MacBook with a folding or rollable screen

And without being (practically) forced to use MacOS.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#20

Post by alexgaribay » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #9

Anyone put Linux on a Lenovo Slim Pro 7 and have any opinions? https://www.pcworld.com/article/1797659/lenovo-slim-pro-7-re...

I have the older version with the 6900HS but it’s more or less the same. I’ve run pop_os as well as fedora on it. Everything works great but you’ll have to compile the wifi driver https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89.