What's all the fuss about glass vs plastic touchpad in the article? I never had a glass touchpad on my laptops but I had glass touchpads on all my smartphones (the screen.) I see why the screen of the phone can't be plastic (colors, scratches, more?) but I never felt that the plastic touchpads of my laptops did not do their job as nicely as the screens of my phones.
The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
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Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#42The 14-inch MacBook Pro pricing quoted in the article seems wrong. Looking at the US Apple Store right now, it has the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Pro (10-core) cpu + 32GB ram and 1TB storage as US$2599, rather an US$3099. Seems outright cheaper than the Thinkpad x13s.
Interesting, when I wrote the article the prices were what I could generate on the Apple website, but you are correct that they are not the same now. I should have taken screenshots! Thanks for the heads up, I'll update the article to reflect that :)
Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#43Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#44Like the author, I also do a lot of Kotlin development and use intellij and pycharm a lot. This sounds like an awful laptop to do that on. Kotlin is great but it's compiler is rather slow and you end up waiting for that a lot. So, faster is better. I noticed about a 2.5x build speed improvements when I upgraded my cheap Samsung i5 laptop (a temporary thing I used for a while) to the M1 14" Mac Book Pro. On a typical…
Silly question ; am I the only person who still uses a desktop / tower machine? Feels like I'm a huge minority these days, but when it comes to needing processing power and juice it still feels it provides budget and upgrade flexibility no laptop can match.
I use an massively overbuilt i9-13900K tower everyday and a laptop on the go. I remote into the pc when I need major grunt.
I do know a ton of people who live out of a laptop tho. I can sorta see the appeal depending but the lack of display real estate and how low the screen is and all is just a nonstarter for me for any long duration work.
And plugging up to a dock or what passes for a dock these days and external monitors and keyboards etc is a flaky annoying PITA.
Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#45I'd be much more interested in the Linux situation on this laptop. Most of the UI applications I use casually or CLI apps are available on ARM (I have them running fine on a Pinephone, so the experience on a laptop will only be better). But not sure how the dev workflow would be: Podman, IntelliJ, Sublime Text, etc.. And some casual stuff like Calibre, Thunderbird, Joplin. Oh and how much would the battery life impro…
Same where wondering if it performs the same/better under Linux. I imagine the battery life could be better under Linux based on my experience with Windows 11 on my own laptop, I mean, the fans don't even spin up that often under Linux unlike the near constant fan chorus Windows gives me. Also, a computer without a single fan so I can comfortably use it on my bed? With possibility to replace it's SSD? It sounded a lo…
> performs the same/better under Linux
...yeah, I was wondering that too. This seems like a job for a Gentoo system, compiled from the ground up with "-march=native". Would love to know how that would turn out performance-wise, in comparison to Windows.
Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#46What's all the fuss about glass vs plastic touchpad in the article? I never had a glass touchpad on my laptops but I had glass touchpads on all my smartphones (the screen.) I see why the screen of the phone can't be plastic (colors, scratches, more?) but I never felt that the plastic touchpads of my laptops did not do their job as nicely as the screens of my phones.
It reminds me of the glass vs plastic phone backside arguments. Glass is more fragile than plastic and will not absorb shocks. It is also heavier and harder to replace (most plastic backsides can be removed with a guitar pick).
But glass is considered premium.
Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#47I'm going to assume that, not being an Intel processor, it won't have Intel Management Engine. So where does this device land privacy-wise? Can this device safely be recommended for highly privacy-focused people who might otherwise choose "respects your freedom certified" [1] legacy hardware? Or does it have something similar to IME with similarly negative privacy implications?
Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#48I'd be much more interested in the Linux situation on this laptop. Most of the UI applications I use casually or CLI apps are available on ARM (I have them running fine on a Pinephone, so the experience on a laptop will only be better). But not sure how the dev workflow would be: Podman, IntelliJ, Sublime Text, etc.. And some casual stuff like Calibre, Thunderbird, Joplin. Oh and how much would the battery life impro…
Same where wondering if it performs the same/better under Linux. I imagine the battery life could be better under Linux based on my experience with Windows 11 on my own laptop, I mean, the fans don't even spin up that often under Linux unlike the near constant fan chorus Windows gives me. Also, a computer without a single fan so I can comfortably use it on my bed? With possibility to replace it's SSD? It sounded a lo…
> imagine the battery life could be better under Linux based on my experience with Windows 11 on my own laptop
God, I have experienced the exact opposite with Linux on laptops. Battery management is so bad I am considering moving to a Macbook.
Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#49I find that battery life extremely uninspiring. I wonder if that's because of Windows, JetBrains or a combination of both.
I run a x86-64 laptop with Linux AND decicated graphics (Ryzen 6850u and Radeon 6800S) and get 6-10 hours of battery life while developing.
Granted, that's after quite a bit of tweaking - I've configured my monitor to go to 60hz, limit the CPU to only 4 cores/8 threads and 2200MHz while on battery. I write Rust with rust-analyzer so the CPU is constantly in use, and my browser of choice (Firefox) is far less optimized for battery life than any chrome-based browser is on Windows.
This gives me a laptop with no concessions with regards to compatibility and it's probably running loops around this ARM based chip, even when running at my tuned-down power settings.
I'd love to have a Linux compatible ARM laptop, but if they don't give you real world double digit battery life, why bother?
Re: The ARM powered ThinkPad x13s, as a developer
#50If the author works with Kotlin, and for that price tag…. Get a mac!
Some of us (me included) just refuse to use a Mac. If I couldn't find a good Thinkpad, I would get a Surface.
May i ask why ? I don't use Macs because my day to day requires X86 and linux. But pounds for pounds if someone doesn't mind MacOs. The new Mx series of macs is just a better value than most high-end laptop theses days