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Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

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Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#141

Post by astrodust »

Steko wrote: post #61
bikitan wrote: post #5

I think Japan is going to be one of the first markets to see laptop sales dry up almost completely. Most people are fine with their iPhones. Where I work, all developers use macbooks and everyone else uses a thinkpad. A lot of other laptop models, like a lot of tech in Japan, is targeted at the Japanese market only. Dynabooks are the budget windows machine of choice at the moment, it seems. Although most young people…

What % of laptops in Japan do you think developers buy?

Japan has, by G8 standards, always been very PC wary. Where American kids would have a computer, Japanese kids would have a console. Where American kids finally got a laptop, Japanese kids had moved on to smart-phones.

I'm not sure if Japan is ahead of the curve or on a whole different curve altogether. If there's any modern country more full of contradictions, I don't know of one.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#143

Post by dom0 »

themodelplumber wrote: post #51
chemmail wrote: post #34

Japan is really behind in PC/Laptop. I was just there last week and the big PC and electronic stores only stock up to Geforce. Asus also has a big presence there now, but the prices are a lot more than US pricing for the same stuff. Not much innovation in the computer space. Home eletronics and appliances are amazing though. Their high end electrolux style vacuum stick cleaners easily clear $800 USD and are really aw…

> The mcirowaves have built in toast oven in one unit, and it works amazingly well I had one in my apartment outside Nagoya in 1996. Still can't believe I have never seen one in the states. I wonder if they just can't justify the potential marketing friction.

We've got a Samsung with that, it's pretty old (90s-ish). (Germany... maybe we have a thing with the Japanese... but then again Samsung "is" Korean?!)

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#144

Post by oblio »

astrodust wrote: post #140
oblio wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed a meltdown, I guess.

Degrees are expensive, and if you don't get to bludgeon people with them, what's the point?

This is the bad place to try to bludgeon people with your degrees. It kind of reminds me of two funny moments:

1. A group of British construction workers in a Discovery Channel documentary loved to start fights in random bars until one day they accidentally started a fight in a bar frequented by members of a local boxing club.

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#145

Post by ghaff »

Spooky23 wrote: post #16

The japanese companies were pretty amazing in the commercial space. My employer had a few Fujitsu ultra portables in the circa 2007 timeframe. One of our internal customers mentioned to a salesguy that they needed a particular port in a particular location on the laptop, not expecting anything. Two weeks later, they Fedexed a loaner/prototype with the port. Really an amazing experience. We were buying 5-6 figure quan…

For whatever reason, a number of Japanese companies were really driving the state-of-the-art for small laptops at on point. I also had one of the small Fujitsus and it was really nice for traveling at a time when even the more portable Thinkpads were fairly heavy and bulky in comparison.

In a way, they were pre-Netbook Netbooks--although their processors and memory configurations were often closer to "regular" laptops than netbooks were.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#146

Post by drabiega »

mikekchar wrote: post #46
Ezhik wrote: post #2

What's the laptop market like in Japan anyway? I don't really know a lot about it, but it's always interesting to see these random Panasonic or Fujitsu laptops not sold here, or those rare Japan-exclusive experimental ThinkPads.

As others have said, Apple has a very strong presence in Japan. If I go to an electronics store, usually half the models on display are Apple. Panasonic and Fujitsu pretty much rule the desktop with bizarre television/computer fusions. Imagine a TV about the thickness of one of the old plasma TVs. It usually has a stand, but I think you can also wall mount it. You can watch and record TV on them, so they are basicall…

> One thing that most people don't realise is that Japanese electronics are expensive compared to the rest of the world. If you have high end purchases (like a computer), you can fly to Korea and the money you save will pay for the flight, easily. Especially with the insanely high yen, American machines are also a pretty good deal.

This is pretty interesting because my experience has been that electronics were pretty expensive in Korea, as well. When my wife's laptop died while she was working in Korea, I ended up bringing her a new Samsung laptop from the US on my next visit because it was considerably cheaper here than buying it there.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#147

Post by fiatpandas »

nsomaru wrote: post #135
fiatpandas wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a 13" 2013 Vaio Z right now. It's a really great machine: 2x SSDs in RAID0, HDMI + VGA, 2x USB 3, SD reader, ethernet port with an interesting hatch mechanism to support its very thin form factor, 1080p, good thermal design. The product design is quite nice as well, which was an important factor for me. When researching the model before purchasing, I found a YT video with one of Sony's industrial designers disa…

I have the same model (SVZ13), I'm sure. Is yours carbon fibre? It's super fast and hasn't slowed down with a little maintenance. I'm sure it will go for a few more years with care. The docking station external graphics are useless though (only marginally better than the onboard intel HD) That said... Limitations I'm coming up against right now: 1) Cannot upgrade from 8GB RAM which is soldered to the board. I want to…

No, I didn't get the carbon fiber version (nor the dock, which I'm glad I didn't based on peoples negative reviews of the video card).

I've been surprised at how much it has held up its speed, even with upgrading to Windows 10. I can see myself using it for at least 1.5–2 more years.

The on-board RAM and SSDs are unfortunate. I experience memory limit issues occasionally, especially with heavy Adobe usage.

I believe linux will support the RAID configuration (seeing it as one drive). Good way of checking is to boot Ubuntu on a thumb drive.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#148

Post by spqr0a1 »

Zarel wrote: post #71
EdSharkey wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My drinking buddy in the early 2000's carried his libretto around in big baggy jeans pockets so he could pull it out and code on his game any time he was out and about and had a free moment. I always thought that was so 1337.

I used to code on the Voyage 200, which also fit in my coat pockets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-92_series#Voyage_200 My fingers were small enough to touch type on those keys. After I grew out of TI-BASIC, I always wanted something like that for computer programming, too, but I never managed to find one. A laptop in regular-laptop shape that was 6" or so would be ideal for me. I've also been considering a phone/…

How about the Pyra? Seems to be close to your ideal. https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#149

Post by gcb0 »

walterbell wrote: post #17
gcb0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably USA centric company that forces macbooks on all employees for IT policies. But then the devs need to work on compilers/debuggers for hardware that only runs on windows.

How do IT departments manage policy for a lot of Macs? MacOS server MDM is for small biz. Are there good OSS tools? I've seen a paper on cfengine, https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa10/tech/full_papers/...

ironically my 20k employee corp uses Microsoft Active Directory.

Re: Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

#150

Post by beachstartup »

bpicolo wrote: post #128

I had a Vaio Z once (This was ~2010, probably the first Vaio Z series). Performance was good in the 11" package. But... the hinge was terrible, and I snapped it with a light drop. Agonizing 1.5 month repair sendout. $300 bill. Same day it came back, broke the hinge in the same place. Never bought another Vaio. And this is why I just buy Macs now. Repair is easy - a couple hours at the Apple store. And the things are…

solid block of cnc machined aluminum vs. flimsy plastic. not a real hard choice.
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