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The Best Size of a Laptop

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Re: The Best Size of a Laptop

#22

Post by lylejantzi3rd »

Joeboy wrote: post #11

Tengentially: Since a lot of us are hybrid workers now, can't we have a better solution than having to constantly schlep our laptops to work and back? I want an easily pluggable SSD that doesn't dangle precariously out of the side of my laptop. Something like the old PCMCIA form factor. Then I could have a work laptop and a home laptop.

At that point, why not have a home desktop and a work desktop? You've been able to have external hot-swap SSDs in a relatively small form factor for years. They make m.2 hot swappable frames[0].

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/j4ilsa/m2_ssd_in_a...

Re: The Best Size of a Laptop

#24

Post by zabzonk »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #17
whalesalad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice any burn-in issues with the oled?

Based on reviews I’ve watched and read its display is also exceedingly glossy, to the point that it’s questionable if it has any antiglare coating at all, which has been a major factor keeping me away. Asus should really have an antiglare option of some kind.

It is very glossy (which makes the touchscreen nice to use), but also very bright and high-contrast - personally, I have had no problems at all with readability (rather the reverse) but I don't use mine outside. It's a great display.

Re: The Best Size of a Laptop

#25

Post by 3np »

Joeboy wrote: post #11

Tengentially: Since a lot of us are hybrid workers now, can't we have a better solution than having to constantly schlep our laptops to work and back? I want an easily pluggable SSD that doesn't dangle precariously out of the side of my laptop. Something like the old PCMCIA form factor. Then I could have a work laptop and a home laptop.

You mean like the Framework laptop modules?

Re: The Best Size of a Laptop

#27

Post by onli »

Regarding really tiny laptops - there actually are some on the market now. All chinese and based on the Pentium N100 or similar. There is the Chuwi Minibook X (10.51"), it gets quite good reviews, and two Topton devices (I think they are the original brand, of the Aliexpress models at least, but I might be wrong), a 7 inch device that looks a little bit like a miniature ThinkPad (model name might be L4) and a newer 8 inch laptop with a rotating screen (P8). If I got that right the Chuwi goes up to 12W, the others only to 6W, which should make a big difference for the processor. But it might be enough anyway for browsing, Youtube, some SSH when a server needs a restart and maybe even some very light coding?

Sadly all of them have spotty Linux support, and a Windows device is no use to me as a travel companion, for which they might be great solutions otherwise.

There is also the GPD Pocket 4 as a high class option, 8.8″, but that's too expensive for me for the few days a year the device might be in use. Similar for the One-Netbook 5, besides that being not in stock. Both of these look like the models the three above copy.

Old netbooks seem to be a no-go, they are all too chunky and weak and can't even play videos in proper resolutions (reviews of the time suggest that Intel managed to equip the later netbooks with a "better" processor that lacked hardware support for video decoding). MacBook Air 11" sounds like a good option at first, but with the huge bezels it's not actually that small, not smaller than a modern 13" Macbook Air, is it? And I'm unclear on how well the old Macbook would work with Linux now.

If I missed a great option, or one of the cheap ones is actually fine with Linux now - though the Chuwi gets new revisions regularly, so that's hard to guarantee - please let me know.

Re: The Best Size of a Laptop

#28

Post by kristianp »

"The Best Size of a Laptop"? Sounds like nerd-bait to me. Its exactly the thing that causes scads of comments about what people prefer. It's like whenever there's a comment about 4k monitors comes up, people have varied opinions.
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