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Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics

system76.com

341–350 of 468 posts

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

#341
post #221
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>1 Wire for Power + 10+ peripherals is awesome, and I can't go back.

This can still be done with non-TB USB-C. Including power and video.

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

#342

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.

To me a num pad is a waste of space, but my Dell M6800 with a 3rd mouse button on the trackpad - wonderful luxury!

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

#343
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>1 Wire for Power + 10+ peripherals is awesome, and I can't go back. This can still be done with non-TB USB-C. Including power and video.

Not if you use 4k or even more.. DisplayLink compression sometimes gets so bad that you can measure it in seconds per frame.

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

#344
post #315

I want to love this, but the keyboard seems horrible. I know I'm exceptionally picky when it comes to keyboards, I usually just take a 60% mechanical keyboard with me, but I've been able to adjust to using the (non-crappy years) Macbook Pro keyboard and the Thinkpad keyboards while traveling, and generally find them acceptable. This keyboard though has really bad legends, an inexplicable numpad, and it takes up too m…

> 60% mechanical keyboard What's that?

The article on the Deskthority wiki probably explains it best: https://deskthority.net/wiki/60%25

It's essentially a keyboard lacking function keys, a numerical pad, and a navigation cluster. Usually has between 61 and 68 keys, and contains an extra "function" key that acts beyond the typical Fn key to help you control layers. Every 60% doesn't have layers, but most do, and those layers are generally programmable. These days pretty much all of them use QMK or VIA firmware.

The Deskthority article for some reason mentions the Minila which is actually a 65% keyboard (which is a 60% + arrow keys).

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could just be my sight It is 1080p to 4k is such a large difference

Really? On a 13" display? I bet in a blind AB test at a normal viewing distance you wouldn't even be able to accurately tell me which is which.

There's no need to bicker about this. A 13 inch display at 4K has about 340 pixels per inch along the diagonal. At 1080p it would have about 170 pixels per inch.

Perfect vision is usually understood to be the ability to discern details of about 1/60 of a degree, or 0.29 milliradians. By the arc length formula (s=rθ), we find that the distance needed to precisely align this angle with the level of detail provided by a 1080p screen is about 20 inches.

In other words, if you sit closer than 20 inches away from your screen (perhaps not that unlikely for a laptop), you might be able to discern details beyond the 1080p level. This would only be possible for extremely contrast sensitive small details, like text in a small font size at 1:1 (no DPI scaling).

So... it's a bit complicated, but I suspect 1080p would be good enough for nearly everyone at 13 inches, but move up to 15 inches and I could see many people preferring 1440p.

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

#346
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1 Wire for Power + 10+ peripherals is awesome, and I can't go back. This can still be done with non-TB USB-C. Including power and video.

Not if you use 4k or even more.. DisplayLink compression sometimes gets so bad that you can measure it in seconds per frame.

USB C alt mode over DP isn't DisplayLink, does 4k and is published by VESA.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000141328/displaypo...

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

#347
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1 Wire for Power + 10+ peripherals is awesome, and I can't go back. This can still be done with non-TB USB-C. Including power and video.

Not if you use 4k or even more.. DisplayLink compression sometimes gets so bad that you can measure it in seconds per frame.

I believe, based on my own experiences, that you're mistaken here.

MacOS has a nice feature that shows you in the device tree what the thunderbolt connection speed is, for my eGPU it shows as '2x' which is 20GBps, and that's running an eGPU with 2x 4k displays.

For work, I run a 4k panel from Lenovo[0] that has a USB-C in and while that's a 60Hz screen, it does not show any signs of input lag or artifacting.

[0]: https://www.lenovo.com/il/en/monitors/p27u

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Full-stack dev here, running 1x1080 23" (top) + 3x1440 27". No real interest in moving to 4k, 1440 is the sweet spot for my workstation. The only problem... need more monitors!!

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

#350

Why aren't there any bold laptop manufacturers? This is a 2021 laptop that uses USB-A primarily, a meh panel, and no particular standout design features. Why do I have to get a mac if I want actually good design? System76 should take a risk and truly make an interesting laptop. leaving the standard, boring design to the big name companies.

They have to take whatever designs are coming out of China and can only make minor adjustments to the specs.

Apple has huge volume, big margins a very tight supply chain and a mountain of cash in tax havens. They have a lot more options.

If a seller like System 76 adds too much margin on their models people will buy a Clevo rebadged by some other seller which is a shame because System76 are adding value with their firmware and OS tweaks.

I am looking forward to the day when a company like System76 can release their own designs but without being in Apples position of fleecing customers for music, video, apps, cloud, mobile, tablets etc in a closed ecosystem it might be a long time coming.

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