Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

HP Says It Made the World's Thinnest Laptop (time.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the as-thin-as-a-AAA-battery dept.

An anonymous reader writes: HP claims that its Spectre laptop, unveiled April 5, is the world's thinnest laptop. It measures 10.4mm thick or 0.41 inches. That would mean that it's slimmer than the 12-inch MacBook (0.52), MacBook Air (0.68 inches) and Dell XPS 13 (0.59 inches) at their thickest points. It's also thinner than the 0.52-inch Razer Blade Stealth. The new notebook is equipped with an advertised nine-hour battery life, 13-inch HD 1920 x 1080 resolution display, and sixth generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processor. The Spectre will be available for pre-order on April 25 for $1,169.99 before it hits Best Buy stores on May 22 for $1,249.99.

14 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. not a good idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thin laptops are vulnerable to being bent and cracked in half. They're not very durable. They also tend to have shorter lifespans because there's little room for adequate air circulation and the overheating shortens the life of the components. This probably isn't a good way to spend your money.

    1. Re:not a good idea by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Laptops have already reached the 'thin enough for me' plateau. Weight reduction is still a good thing though.

    2. Re:not a good idea by vux984 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They've reached thin enough i think. They could still lose some weight. They could definitely stand to gain some battery life still, especially for more perforamnce oriented units.

      And they could still stand to shed a lot of heat. My macbook pro runs pretty cool most of the time web/email/excel/etc, but some crappy web-sites/web-apps manage to be written poorly enough to burn enough cpu cycles to start warming it up if I leave it on the page; and if i launch a game or even stream one a desktop via steam play it heats up fast... even something pretty nomimal for performance like simple sprite turn based games like ToME, or SotS:The Pit, or the graphical version of "DoomRL" get it too hot to have on my lap... I don't expect to a new tripleA game with the latest shiny 3D graphics and have it run cool... but its pretty irritating that DoomRL heats it up.

  2. and woe betide you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...if you sit on it. Or drop it. Or sneeze on it. Or look at it the wrong way.

    This anorexic idiocy has got to stop. 0.75-1" is fine, especially if built properly, and allows for maintenance hatches and cooling systems that can handle 35-45W TDP processors. These things are idiot status symbols.

  3. RAM by darkain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The thing still tops out at 8GiB RAM? I still don't understand why mobile devices have such low amounts of maximum RAM. I purchased a cheap ass 10" netbook some 3-4 years ago for only $300 and was able to effortlessly upgrade it to 8GiB of RAM. Surely a 13" system with more horizontal space could pack more RAM, especially with the increase in memory density?

  4. Shaving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I won't be happy until I can shave with mine. And we're talking ZZTop here, not Justin Bieber.

    1. Re:Shaving by LordHighExecutioner · · Score: 5, Funny

      you can shave with a pc just now. Just use a blade server.

    2. Re:Shaving by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Funny

      you can shave with a pc just now. Just use a blade server.

      F*ck everything, we're doing five blades!

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  5. HP is Garbage by CrashNBrn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    HP locks down a large number of their "laptops" with a custom shit-bios. I believe most of their laptops have 2 ram slots. And when you put 2x8GB slots in there - the Bios says 16GB, and when your system finally boots, your OS is allowed to see and use 8GB.

    1. Re:HP is Garbage by Anonymous+Psychopath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ultraportables generally don't have RAM slots at all. The memory is soldered onto the motherboard, as is the SSD. Sacrificing the ability to upgrade in favor of portability is par for course with this type of system, and the target user usually has a 3-year or less refresh cycle so they don't care.

      --

      Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

  6. I beg to differ: by Hartree · · Score: 4, Funny

    "HP Says It Made the World's Thinnest Laptop"

    A construction company I know has a Cat CS44 vibratory soil compactor that says otherwise.

    Oh. You mean a useful laptop. :)

  7. Spectre? by colinrichardday · · Score: 3, Funny

    This thing had better work, 'cause Spectre doesn't tolerate failure. If a screen breaks, who gets thrown to the sharks?

  8. If it runs Windows 10, I don't want it... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It doesn't matter how thin it is, if the HP laptop runs Windows 10 I don't want it.

    .
    At this point I am more concerned about the amount of data harvesting being done by Windows 10 than I am about the thinness of a laptop.

  9. Re:8GB RAM max? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's almost like different people have different requirements for laptops...