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Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

system76.com

241–250 of 468 posts

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really dislike a numpad on a laptop. Was going to say the same. Also, I will not buy a 1080p laptop. We're in 2021, give me 4K or at least 1440p or I'm not interested. I also personally prefer 13" laptops for travel convenience. (Not that its a concern right now , but I assume one day it will be again!)

I question whether 4K on the average laptop screen size is worth the added load on the GPU (and so, lowered everyday performance and battery longevity). On big screens, sure, but at 13 inches? At that point you're stretching the limits of perceptibility, and given the other compromises you're already making to have a laptop instead of a desktop, it seems like a doubly silly one to add.

Well, my current laptop, a Dell XPS 13 has a resolution of 3840x2400 and its great! Yes, my normal use, I have things scaled/zoomed but for watching videos, its fantastic.

For normal use, 1440p is fine, but 1080p is too low for me. 4K is probably not necessary if its only used to watch videos. I probably should have flipped it and said: "give me 1440p, or even 4K"

Although one area where I find higher resolution is beneficial code editors, if I have enough pixels that I can have 3 vertical splits and have the text still look crisp, that really helps my development workflow.

On a 15" and above though, I wouldn't go lower than 4K personally.

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

#242
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It could be your sight, or the size of your display. You never mentioned how big it was. If it's a monster 18" laptop then the difference between 1080 and 4k is a lot more significant than if it's a 14" display where you almost can't even tell the difference. It's all about pixels per inch. I always prefer higher quality pixels as opposed to more of them, I don't mind 1080p if it's extremely accurate colour and amazi…

That's fair. I can notice the difference between 1080p and 1440p on my desktop monitors which are 27" (or between the 1080p monitor and the 1080p laptop).

Both laptops are 15".

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

#243
post #204

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've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus G14 (4800hs) as a daily driver and I really like it. (freelance/web) Thank you for the pointer. I have the exact same laptop and tried Ubuntu on it - couldn't even change the screen brightness.

Ubuntu 20.04 lts?

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

#244

I just can understand people creating non HiDPI displays in 2021. It’s just beyond me that someone is making laptops with display much worse than my 2012 MBP Retina.

Totally agree with you. I use my MBP mostly on native resolution if my screen gets really crowded and on the other hand it's nice when you're doing creative work and can switch to a downscaled image with so much more "smoothness" and details. I like the specs of this Pangolin notebook, but as soon as i saw 1080p i was gone.

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

#245
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do numbers constitute even 5% of your keyboard usage time?

Depends on what you're doing: any kind of 3D work requires a numpad to be effective, since that's typically where camera controls are bound in every workflow I've seen.

I'll say I personally can't use numpads, and they're total wasted space for me, so I try to avoid them on my keyboards and laptops, especially because they put the keyboard off-center on said laptops.

However, I think there are use cases and people who prefer using them. Some software is really geared around the full cluster being there. I've got a full size, numpad-ed keyboard (some old stock DEC thing that went to a mid 90s alphastation I believe, I got it for dirt cheap) attached to my "windows gaming machine", and I use the numpad on a few shortcut-heavy games.

Otherwise, though, I just don't have any muscle memory for it. I have to look and hunt/peck for keys on a numpad. I'm mostly using bash and vim for work, though...

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was/am thinkpad user also. I have migrated to desktops. They are cheap enough to have one at the office and one at home. Sure the above wont work for everybody, but if you are like me, you unpacked the laptop at home and at work each day at exactly the same space, where all the cables and extra monitors were. I used to use laptop in coffee shops and outdoors, but nowadays between phone, and tablets (wel phone and k…

The downside with this is extra effort to keep them in sync. Depending on what you do, syncing can be easy (or even trivial if you do everything remote anyway) or more annoying.

Just install Syncthing. And if you have an Android, you can even sync photos/notes to and from the device to your computers.

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

#247
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever try using Blender without one? You absolutely need the numpad for 3D programs and game engines, otherwise it's outright painful.

You can always add a usb numpad, but you can never remove one that is already there.

True. Why do they sell laptops with screen built in?

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was/am thinkpad user also. I have migrated to desktops. They are cheap enough to have one at the office and one at home. Sure the above wont work for everybody, but if you are like me, you unpacked the laptop at home and at work each day at exactly the same space, where all the cables and extra monitors were. I used to use laptop in coffee shops and outdoors, but nowadays between phone, and tablets (wel phone and k…

Exactly what I did. 2 desktops at home and office, sync via dotfiles for OS config, documents via Nextcloud and src via git. A laptop (xps 13 9360) for traveling or working in remote places. Even have a yubikey on each desktop and one for travel. All storing the ssh keys. I don't use the laptop for months, open it and update the packages and dotfiles before going for a travel and that's it. Ready to go.

> sync via dotfiles for OS config, (...) src via git.

This is something other than just having your dot files in git, and system config in git via etc keeper?

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed as backend developer screen real estate is much more important than super accurate colour or viewing angles.

I'm a backend developer as well (or maybe full-stack, hard to say) and I switched my 4k to 1080p long time ago, because it wasn't worth it. On the other hand I like good viewing angles and nice colors. Unfortunately the latter isn't too good in basically every laptop I tried and... my current monitor (eh).

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

#250

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 most developers that work in a stationary location use underpowered/thermally-constrained laptops rather than a desktop machine.
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