This is a compelling laptop I wonder if the build quality will compare with Lenovo.
15.6 inch screen at 1920×1080? That’s barely OK but not great for a laptop in 2021.
Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
361–370 of 468 posts
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#362I'd love to replace my thinkpad. But I need/want things that seem unavailable. * trackpoint + buttons (can be without touchpad, disabled anyway) * full keyboard * strong durable * removable battery * 4k screen * ecc 64-128gb * rj45 * lots of ports * hardware switches to disable: networking, camera, mic,.. Thinkpad's are move farther away each year. I hope some company will fill the gap.
I would cry tears of joy to get a laptop with mouse buttons. Trackpad gestures are a gimmick and so much harder to user than buttons. Apple did it to be "bold" and everyone copied them.
This is one of the reasons I still enjoy using my old XPS. The buttons are great: nice deep solid clicks. Even doing stuff like dragging windows around is so much better than on a touchpad-only design. (I've used Macbooks with the old "hinge" style touchpad, and they're even worse than using a double-tap-and-drag gesture, just because of the force needed to keep the button pressed.)
Given the number of people these days who don't even own a desktop, I don't understand why mouse buttons aren't the standard. With the XPS I can even play casual games while sitting on the couch. No need to move to a desk and dig a corded mouse of the drawer!
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m talking about computers here though, not parts. Spec for spec, is an Apple computer really 2x more expensive?
Certainly. Computers are made of parts. Apple charges egregious prices for upgrades, some companies don’t. System76 is the focus of this whole discussion, and they charge extremely reasonable prices for SSD upgrades... not hundreds of percent markups. Since we’re on the topic of System76, a fully upgraded Oryx Pro (except leaving the GPU at the base option) costs about half of what a fully upgraded 16” MBP costs (als…
>Since we’re on the topic of System76, a fully upgraded Oryx Pro (except leaving the GPU at the base option) costs about half of what a fully upgraded 16” MBP costs (also leaving the GPU at the base option), while offering similar specs — $3158 vs $6000.
Not sure where you're getting these numbers. Comparing like for like and maxing out the Oryx, and the Mac's processor, they both have 64GB RAM and a 4TB SSD. The price I'm getting for that Mac config is $4800 vs the $3168 that you mention. $6000 doubles the Mac's storage to an 8TB SSD, which the Oryx does not offer. 6K is indeed a lot, but how many PC laptops even offer an 8TB SSD at any price? I haven't seen many.
But I digress. That's roughly a 50% markup, which is indeed a lot. For the extra $1500 you get a much higher resolution display (2880 x 1800) with good color reproduction, much better build quality, macOS and the Mac software ecosystem, Thunderbolt ports, Mac trackpad and keyboard, etc. Maybe these things are not valuable to you! But it's not like you're not getting anything for that money. The products are not equivalent, even if their specs were the same on paper.
I own System76 products and Apple products, and have owned countless PC laptops in the past. I do the math regularly and know what I'm paying for with Apple stuff, and it's almost never a 70% markup. And Apple stuff has specs you just can't find in other products, like the high-res displays and high number of Thunderbolt ports. Which isn't to say it's perfect! I don't like the Touch Bar and would like an SD card reader and HDMI out. But in general, statements about the price inflation are overblown. It exists but it's not as bad as many people think.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would cry tears of joy to get a laptop with mouse buttons. Trackpad gestures are a gimmick and so much harder to user than buttons. Apple did it to be "bold" and everyone copied them.
I moved from Macbook to a ThinkPad (trackpoint+trackpad+mouse buttons+trackpad buttons). I never used gestures. But I seriously miss inertia scrolling. You never realize how much a pain in the ass it is scrolling web pages until you don't have it. Firefox has it, but you have to turn on an environment variable to get it and it feels a bit weird to me. Chrome does not have it all on Linux. And the way they are impleme…
> But I seriously miss inertia scrolling.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but this is just when you scroll, release your fingers, and it slows to a stop instead of stopping instantly, right? I have that out of the box here on Linux. Firefox + X + touchpad with the synaptics driver.
I had thought this was what "Use smooth scrolling" did it in the Firefox preferences.
Edit: I also just checked and I have this in my terminal (Konsole), text editor (KWrite), and PDF viewer (Okular) so this is at the very least not a Firefox only thing. It feels exactly the same in each application. I bet it's a feature of the touchpad driver.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#365I 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…
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.
It depends on your age. At 50, even 768x1366 would be good enough if it had fractional scaling. ;-)
Now, seriously, I find it hard to see the difference between 1080 and 4K. What would be nice is a good HDR display panel.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
This debate makes me wonder what it'd be like to have a keyboard layout in which the num pad is in the middle of the keyboard, such that on a qwerty keyboard Q-T, A-G, Z-V are on one side and Y-P, H-L, B-M on another, with the numbers in the middle (separated by a buffer space). I know this sounds crazy, but IME the worst part of keyboard ergonomics on mac laptops is that my hands are much closer together than my sho…
I agree you probably won't find this in a laptop ever, thanks to the standard keyboard design still being stuck with strange quirks, some of which were already outdated in the era of actual typewriters. That said if you're a numpad user a keyboard with centered numpad is pretty much the best concept other than the rabbit hole of custom ergonomic keyboard layouts. Either way you can only get into that realm with a lot…
Go down the rabbit hole! :) You’re one text file away from plopping a numpad anywhere you want on the laptop’s keyboard. Right Alt + K is the center of a numpad on my XPS 13.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This debate makes me wonder what it'd be like to have a keyboard layout in which the num pad is in the middle of the keyboard, such that on a qwerty keyboard Q-T, A-G, Z-V are on one side and Y-P, H-L, B-M on another, with the numbers in the middle (separated by a buffer space). I know this sounds crazy, but IME the worst part of keyboard ergonomics on mac laptops is that my hands are much closer together than my sho…
As someone with a disability who types with one hand, please for the love of God don't make this the standard
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the crazy thing about that is that Windows handles fractional scaling perfectly, and I hear that Linux environments mostly do (but I have no experience), while macOS uses an absolutely stupidly bad technique that literally makes the higher resolution worse than having a lower resolution screen in most cases: rendering at the next integer, and scaling down. That way, it’s impossible to draw pixel-perfectly, and fi…
I've had better luck with fractional scaling on Windows over Linux. Can be hit or miss if any given Linux application will handle fractional scaling well, but the desktop environment (KDE Plasma on Ubuntu) does fine with it.
My experience with it and multiple screens is not great.
Not sure why it is that way - it's just a matter finding a global pixel size, rendering all screens to these bitmaps and then 2D scaling them down to panel resolution.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#369I 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.
> It is so annoying to have to type long sequences of digits without one.
I can't remember when was the last time I had to type more than 8 at any time.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps because you can buy a separate numpad if you want one, and then have the best of both worlds: both a numpad and a centered keyboard?
I don't want to have to assemble my laptop in parts. Why not the webcam and the mouse and the speakers while we're at it.
Great. I need 4 speakers for my quadrophonic music files! ;-)