Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Perfect Laptop

blog.brossia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 354 posts

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#321

Post by pmontra »

silon42 wrote: post #315
pmontra wrote: post #114

Starting with my ZBook 15 from 2014: 1. Make it 16:10. There is plenty of bezel for that. 1900x1200 or something like that. 1200p was pretty common on good CRT monitors in the 90s. 2. Make the number pad optional. Framework is doing that with their 16" model. I'll bury my number pad and give a party. 3. Keep the three physical buttons on the touchpad. By the way, it can probably do gestures and it definitely register…

11. Thick enough for an standard ethernet port.

Sure, that was so obvious to me that I forgot to add it to the list. I'm using that laptop now with an Ethernet cable. Why should I want a laptop with a dongle connected to it all the time? Also internal WiFi and Bluetooth, no dongles for that please.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#322

Post by amne »

the Lenovo Yoga 7 proX something something fits my perfect laptop criteria:

- well built small form factor, metal, premium feeling

- hi-dpi and bright 90hz screen (I think recently they upped to 120hz. very smooth)

- affordable 32gb ram variant

- powerful and efficient CPU for daily tasks + some dev here and there

- amazing keyboard. I still think Lenovo laptop keyboards have the best feel.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#323

Post by whatch »

dhruvmittal wrote: post #113
pico303 wrote: post #84

> another Apple can’t put my finger on why this is so much better than everyone else things Once you’ve used a Mac touchpad, it’s impossible to go back to a Windows/Linux laptop. I’ve tried…

I've very happily left a Mac touchpad. Not once but twice. While the gesture support in the OS is nice, I don't like how big the touchpads are. I feel like it regularly gets in the way of typing. I'm okay with the size of the trackpad on the Framework laptop, but it could have been smaller. I really miss my old Thinkpad trackpad with the physical buttons between the trackpad and spacebar, which I felt was really usab…

> I feel like it regularly gets in the way of typing

I understand that everyone's experience can be different. But wow I just noticed that my palms are so often on the touchpad while I'm typing and I have never ever had any problem with that.

Also I usually use my thumb to move cursor and click while other fingers stay on the keys and I cannot remember when it didn't behave according to my intentions. Especially considering the bigger contact area between a thumb and touchpad compared to other fingers.

I just checked edge cases and it works very reliably. Cursor doesn't move if I use my palm. It does move if palm is on the touchpad and I use my thumb. It does move as expected if I move both thumb and palm over touchpad synchronously. It follows the thumb as expected if I move both my thumb and palm in different directions.

I remember my first touchpad on macbook air 13 from 2011. It felt so much better than anything I tried before. But at that time it was physical and it had dead zone at the top of the touchpad. And it was smaller. Today's touchpad macbook pro touchpad is an engineering marvel.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#324

Post by atoav »

maximamas wrote: post #46

I'm no die hard apple fan, but you would think I was if you heard me talking about my 16" m1 pro. It's an absolute beast, battery for days, and I've never heard the fan spin up once. It would take a lot for me to even give another machine a chance.

Yet my 4 year gaming laptop that back then costed half of a m1 macbook pro when it was new renders any typical Blender scene 4 times faster than it (using the newest Blender version with Metal support).

I suspect the fan doesn't turn on because it is heavily throttled.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#325

Post by jna_sh »

trashcanman wrote: post #246
jna_sh wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Being one item, and not even the first, in a bullet-pointed list at the bottom of the article is hardly “shilling”. Outside of that, Framework aren’t mentioned.

Yes but it’s the only item on the list with a link and really shouldn’t be on the list at all. A laptop with a two hour battery is a long way from perfect. I’ve seen too many of these articles for this to be a coincidence. Pretty sure it’s a PR campaign or paid influencers.

It probably just has a link because it’s a relatively unknown brand, the author doesn’t need to link to Apple for people to know what a MacBook is. This level of paranoia about a niche laptop company is fascinating.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#326

Post by brailsafe »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #307
pwpw wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's a 16". I spent two weeks vacationing in Europe and then a 3rd week working at night, and it was a pain to carry that MacBook around! It forced me to bring an entire backpack to carry it. Not fun to add all of that weight when I was also hauling a camera around. That's where the Nano thrives. Even the 14" is considerably heavier than Nano as you've pointed out.

Isn’t the more obvious comparable to the 2.1 pound X1 Nano a 2.8 pound MacBook Air, not a 3.5 pound MacBook Pro?

I'd agree with that

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#327

Post by brailsafe »

pwpw wrote: post #306
brailsafe wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 14" MBP is about 3.5lbs compared to just under 2 for the X1 Nano, is your work computer a 16"? I had a 16" for work, but wouldn't get one personally, it's a bit bulky.

Yeah it's a 16". I spent two weeks vacationing in Europe and then a 3rd week working at night, and it was a pain to carry that MacBook around! It forced me to bring an entire backpack to carry it. Not fun to add all of that weight when I was also hauling a camera around. That's where the Nano thrives. Even the 14" is considerably heavier than Nano as you've pointed out.

As seanmcdirmid pointed out below, I'd agree that the Macbook Air would probably be the closest approximation in the mac lineup in terms of weight, but intended to compare the weight between the 14" MBP and the Nano favourably. To me, yes the weight and size of the 16" would be a bit of a pain to carry around for any substantial amount of time, but the added 1.5lbs of the MBP 14" or the 0.8lb difference of the Air doesn't seem too significant to me, perhaps even less so when compared with the camera gear you might be hauling.

I used to see a fair number of 11" MBP Airs at conferences when they were a thing; relatively low burden mac-based computing device. I'm sure if there was an M series version it would acquire a following among those who are more likely traveling than in a position to require the largest thermal envelope.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#328

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

ramesh31 wrote: post #24
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #12

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 h…

>I'd like a Linux laptop that would beat this. Por que no los dos? Asahi is running on M2 now: https://asahilinux.org/2022/07/july-2022-release/

There is a difference between “it runs somehow” and “it uses the potential of my hardware to 100%”.

Sorry, I’m not paying mad bucks for something that’s “yes, but”.

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#329

Post by vxNsr »

scrlk wrote: post #6

Unconventional choice: Panasonic Let's Note. Sadly JDM exclusive and has soldered RAM, but the latest models come with a 3:2 display, decent I/O (e.g. RJ45, full sized SD card reader, even VGA (!)), magnesium alloy chassis and a removable battery in a sub 1.1 kg package. Can't speak for the quality of the trackpad or keyboard though. https://panasonic.jp/cns/pc/

This is amazing, it looks like the laptop an engineer would make if he was told don’t worry about aesthetics, just make the thing exactly as you’d like.

The circular trackpad is an acknowledgement that most engineers hate using trackpads, generally only will use a laptop docked, and would rather have a better typing experience than a giant trackpad that will only get in the way the few times they do use the laptop on the go.

“If you can’t do it in the keyboard it’s not worth doing”

Re: The Perfect Laptop

#330

Post by vxNsr »

rcmjr wrote: post #5

If framework made a surface style device, that would be the perfect laptop for me.

I have a surface book (the original) that I inherited from pilot program at work. I love the idea of it, but practically, it just doesn’t work, I rarely if ever used it as a tablet, and when I did it wasn’t a very good tablet because the OS still doesn’t support that input method very well. As a laptop a lot of compromises were made to support that form factor and if just wasn’t worth it.
Post reply on HN