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Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

system76.com

221–230 of 468 posts

Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

#221
post #175
post #83

It doesn't look like there is a Thunderbolt port ( a 40 GBPS port ). I recall reading that it has something to do with it working on Intel only hardware. But whatever the case is, lack of Thunderbolt is unfortunately a deal breaker. I've moved on to unifying all my docks and power chords to only be Thunderbolt. It's unfortunate because the Ryzen chipsets are clearly getting to be superior from a price/performance poi…

Thunderbold is generally not available on AMD systems. Several reasons. a) Intel wants licensing cash for allowing you to use it b) It does not actually add that much to USB. You want to attach monitors? Non-Thunderbolt USB can do that. You want to attach storage? Non-Thunderbolt USB can do that. Networking? Charge your device? USB can do all that. The remaining selling point of Thunderbolt is that you can attach an…

Thunderbolt may not matter so much for desktop, but it definitely does for laptops.

Like the other comment mentioned, docks.

Yes you can theoretically accomplish everything with other ports, but I don't want to feel like I'm disconnecting my laptop from life support every time I move around. 1 Wire for Power + 10+ peripherals is awesome, and I can't go back.

Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

#224
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would buy in a heartbeat if it had a 4k display. Hard to go back to 1080p after six years of Retina and 4K displays.

Honestly find it hard to notice much difference in the display quality between my 1080p 2018 XPS laptop and my 1800p 2019 Mac laptop. Actually the XPS is slightly preferable to me because the matte vs glossy finish outweighs the extra resolution at that size for me. I guess that could just be my sight, but the reviews for the XPS laptop vs the 4k model of the same were pretty much unanimous on the 4k variant being a…

> could just be my sight

It is

1080p to 4k is such a large difference

Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

#225
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you want something along the line of what Purism is offering. Not sure about ECC ram on a laptop. Haven't seen that one yet. https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/

The one thing that stops me from getting a Librem 14 is the utterly hateful decision to have a tiny right-shift key to the right of the up arrow. Like seriously wtf Purism?

Oddly enough, I almost never hit the right shift key. I touch type pretty fast, but the left pinky does a lot of work. I suppose it comes from CAD stuff and (let's be honest) WASD gaming where my left hand is on the keyboard and right hand is on the mouse.

But I totally agree: Input and output to the user (keyboard, trackpoint/mouse buttons/touchpad/screen) are of critical importance. I can be really effective on a decade-old Thinkpad (with the IPS display mod!) and woefully out-of-date processor, but if it takes too long to adjust to the keyboard I'll be frustrated every time I have to use it.

Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

#226
post #143

I can't speak to the 4700u or the pangolin specifically, but I can offer this perspective on PopOS/AMD: I've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus G14 (4800hs) as a daily driver and I really like it. (freelance/web) The battery life is comparable to Windows (on integrated graphics mode, it has graphics switching available)at 7-10 hours with 70% brightness and balanced power settings using VScode and firef…

I was considering to buy a G14, but got distracted with other stuff. Can you please share a few details on how you use it? - What kind of external webcam do you use? Does it have any problem with any video-conferencing software? - Do you access any streaming service (with DRM)? Any issues? - Any issues with drivers, returning from sleep/hybernation? Thanks!

I've have a G14 with RTX2060 and I'm very happy. Battery life is good (4-6h work with IDE etc) and webcams work as intended. DRM is mostly a non-issue, at least not more than on any other Linux install.

The nvidia driver is a bit of a pain to set up, especially if you're on wayland or if you want to use displays via USB C (reverse prime does not work yet due to an nvidia driver bug, so you need to use the nvidia gpu as primary when docked). Other than that, everything works and the community (arch wiki and rog-core) provide good support for getting everything up and running. A bit of configuration and a somewhat recent kernel will be needed (it's pretty new hardware after all), but it's not that hard if you either know Linux or are willing to spend some time. I'm running this config for 8 months now, so the situation from a fresh install might be even better.

Similar to the sister comment, I came from an XPS 13, but I'm happy. The laptop is a bit heavier, but in exchange you get a lot more power, far more RAM (up to 48GB), more ports and, subjectively, a dar better keyboard. Initially I wanted to stay with an XPS, but now I'm happy I made the jump.

EDIT: One unbelievably good point I initially forgot: You can run a VM with GPU passthrough on the laptop. If you need Windows with graphics performance, especially on the go, this is an incredible advantage.

Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

#227
post #131
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac markup is not 100%.

Indeed. Just looking at the M1 Air (which I am quite tempted by). $999 Starting Price. tempting +$249 +265Gb SSD (and a 8th GPU core) +$200 +8Gb RAM (to a reasonable 16Gb) +$200 +512Gb (to a nice 1Tb) So that's $649 for a 768Gigs of SSD, 8 Gigs of RAM (and a GPU core). Cost of 1Tb gen-4 and a stick of RAM is about $200

The fact that paying those inflated prices after the initial purchase isn't an option is already enough to turn me away from buying any of them (or even the laptop itself).

Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

#228

I don't understand why many of these workstation-class laptops have num. pads. It is so annoying to type with your hands off-center from the screen.

I don't understand why many workstation-class laptops DONT have a num pads.

It is so annoying to have to type long sequences of digits without one.

Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would buy in a heartbeat if it had a 4k display. Hard to go back to 1080p after six years of Retina and 4K displays.

I find it weird that non-Mac laptops either come with 1080 or 4k display options. Mac displays look incredible, and the 16" MBP resolution is 3072 × 1920 - basically 70% of the pixels on a 4k monitor.

I think it's to avoid fractional scaling.
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