Pangolin 15 looks interesting.
Compared to the latest Thinkpad X1 Carbon, I wonder how bulky the thing is. Sure display wise, it's bigger.
Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
391–400 of 468 posts
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
The closest I came was my XPS 15 9560. The build quality and hardware was excellent. i5 + GTX 1050 + 8GB RAM + 256 GB NVME + Thunderbolt. Linux support was phenomenal, especially on a rolling release. After about 18 months of owning it, I upgraded the memory to 16GB and storage to 1 TB without any problems. Unfortunately, I ran into a few issues trying to use it as a work and home machine. 1) Mixed DPI is insanely ba…
> I put a 1050 Ti in it without any problems. Possibly a stupid question, but isn't a "1050 Ti" an Nvidia chip? How did this help you with the driver issues?
Unfortunately, I need CUDA for work. However, with a desktop and static resolution (not changing from laptop 4k to dock 1080p all the time) I can comfortably use X11, and without power management issues (no battery on desktop) I don't have to switch between Nvidia and integrated graphics.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#393Earlier 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…
There's a big difference when it comes to trying to read complex characters 贅沢な醬油の会社の面接体験を受けようとしています。 I absolutely hate viewing text on my LO-DPI PC vs my 6 year old HD-DPI Macbook Pro or either my 4 year old android smartphone or my 1 year old iPhone or my 7 year old iPad. It's like playing a NES game vs a PS4 Game. Sure some are fun and it's nostalgic but the world as moved on and lo-res is old.
"lo-res is old"
This is exactly what the product people who are building blazing fast, high spec laptops with top-of-the-line circa 2006 displays need to hear.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 pri…
I agree that I made a mistake on the storage capacity comparison, I was walking and looking things up on my phone and got briefly confused. The rest of your points I’ve already addressed. More thunderbolt ports is actually bad for most users if it comes at the expense of ports they can actually use without a dongle. The build quality is not really any better... I’ve owned both as well, and I’ve also had a work MacBoo…
>If Apple would be environmentally friendly and allow people to repair and upgrade their computers, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, because I’d have a 1TB SSD in my MacBook Air, and it would have cost me $100.
I mean, yeah. This is the one thing that's basically inarguable. Their computers increasingly do not contain serviceable parts, except for the Mac Pro, which is absurdly expensive. I suspect they just prefer compactness and longer battery life to repairable devices. I have to admit this isn't something I care about very much because I don't upgrade my machines and I use them until they break, which is often around a decade with Macs. Because you have different preferences I can see how you'd find these changes upsetting.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worse than you think: They are somewhat hamstrung in their hardware decisions by the current offerings from those Apple/Ultrabook chasing OEMs, but in this case they jumped the shark entirely and removed the 2.5" drive caddy . The nearly identical Clevo NL51RU/NL50RU [1] has a 2.5" drive caddy but a 36 Wh battery. Take a look at the internal photo of the System76 unit at [2]. It's the same laptop. Heck, they did…
> 1" thick or more is not too much. I think it depends a lot on an individual's needs. Like in my case, a recent laptop purchasing decision revolved around qualities that make a laptop particularly good at being a laptop — that is, high portability, low/no noise, little/no heat. Power and ports were a cherry on top because I already have another machine that fills those needs. In that situation, 1" isn't necessarily…
IMO thickness isn't a much problem but weight and footprint is.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's to avoid fractional scaling.
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 think you misunderstand what's happening with macOS resolution scaling. What you're describing is assets being rendered down and getting blurry; but this doesn't happen to text because text is vectorized. You're right that some assets like icons and such will be less sharp at 1.5x than 2x, because 2x will have an actual asset and 1.5x will have to be scaled down.
How does Windows fix this? I have used so many Win32 apps that are jus broken in one way or another on HiDPI displays, most shockingly Visual Studio, my experience of HiDPI on Windows is always worse.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the quality of networks these days it may pay off to just have a single beefy desktop at work or home and a very simple desktop in the other location that you just use to remote in to the first. Keeps the environment consistent over time and even allows leaving long running computations running and picking them up later. Two remote stations and a headless server in a rack somewhere may even be better. No worries…
What remoting software do you recommend
Mosh and tmux is classic setup. If you need x11, I have recently found x2go to have the best performance.
I use wireguard to access my home network when I'm visiting my parents.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#398Why 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.
I don't know what laptops you are looking at ? The XPS 13 competes directly with the mac in terms of (familiar but) industrial design, standout display and inner design (with the white carbon fiber) and USB-C ports for a lifetime. Stating it first, because its the most obvious competitor. The Razer, Asus, HP and Surface flagships have clear standout designs and similar features. The only 2 laptops that are purposely…
I'm on my 2nd XPS 13. I switched to it and linux after being severely impacted by the butterfly keyboard (i.e. having to fly to a different country to get it repaired, only to have it break again a few months later).
I don't _hate_ the XPS 13, but I wouldn't recommend it and I probably won't be getting a 3rd one (unless they change).
The build quality just isn't there. First of all, the flexible chassis is annoying. If I pick it up on the side with one hand, it's likely to flex enough to trigger a trackpad click. Secondly, while it's pretty quiet, it does get rather hot. Third, the trackpad and mouse aren't Macbook-quality (butterfly keyboard aside). In my first one, the trackpad and battery had to be replaced. The keyboard on my current one (9300) has very mild issues (I think they reduced the travel distance and it, like butterfly, is somewhat susceptible to dust/dirt)
Not sure what I'll replace it with. Will see how the reviews for the Framework laptop are.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This isn't a complete analysis.
High DPI screens are able to render text without aliasing, and that makes a significant difference, especially with less-than-perfect eyesight.
What you're saying is true insofar as I had to squint up to a 1080p screen at 13" to actually see the pixels. But everything was slightly blurry, and switching to a "Retina" (1600p iirc) screen fixed that.
Which was the lack of subpixel aliasing: you can make those screens look blurry as well, by turning it back on. But a 1080 without it just looks like it has janky text rendering.
An actual 4K screen is unnecessary at 13", imho, but the extra pixels are harmless except in battery life. I do detect a real difference in textual rendering between 170ppi and 227, because it's the difference between leaning on subpixel aliasing and turning it off while still getting good results.
Re: Pangolin – Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially in a post-COVID world where home offices are more common and possibly with even less travel, I think battery life is quite overrated for many people. I have a Serval Workstation (i.e. high-power laptop) from System76 and absolutely love it. The battery doesn't last very long especially if I'm doing heavy-lifting on the GPU, but I very rarely go somewhere I can't plug in. I need to be able to fold up my "wo…
Battery life is a proxy for somethings you do care about: how often does the fan come on and when does thermal throttling impact performance notably? If you don't travel, a desktop will cost less, last longer, and do more than a laptop — in part because the system won't be throttling. I spent about 20 years being laptop-only and went back to a desktop recently after realizing that it'd literally been years since I'd…
I routinely travel!
From my desk, to my easy chair, to my bed, and back again.
Not hard on my battery (two of those have charge cables handy) but difficult to pull off with a desktop.
Now that you mention it, it's been more than a year since my laptop has left my home. Ouch.