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HP Made a Laptop Slightly Thicker To Add 3 Hours of Battery Life (theverge.com)
When a technology company like Apple releases a new product, chances are it's going to be thinner than its predecessor -- even if may be slightly worse off for it. HP is taking a different approach with its new 15.6-inch Spectre x360 laptop, which was recently announced at CES. The machine is slightly thicker than its predecessor, and HP claims it features three hours of additional battery life. The Verge reports: The difference between the new x360 and the old x360, in terms of thickness, is minimal, from 15.9mm to 17.8mm. (For reference, the 2015 MacBook Pro was 18mm thick.) It's an increase of 1.9mm for the Spectre, but HP says it's now including a battery that's 23 percent larger in exchange. At the same time, the laptop is also getting narrower, with its body shrinking from 14.8 inches wide to 14 inches wide. Unfortunately, the claimed three hours of additional battery life aren't meant to make this laptop into some long-lasting wonder -- they're really just meant to normalize its battery life. HP will only be selling the 15.6-inch x360 with a 4K display this year, and that requires a lot more power. By increasing the laptop's battery capacity, HP is able to push the machine's battery life from the 9.5 hours it estimated for the 4K version of its 2016 model to about 12 hours and 45 minutes for this model. So it is adding three hours of battery life, but in doing so, it's merely matching the battery life of last year's 1080p model. The x360 is also being updated to include Intel's Kaby Lake processors. It includes options that max out at an i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and Nvidia GeForce 940MX graphics. It's supposed to be released February 26th, with pricing starting at $1,278 for an entry-level model.
At least they are giving people what they actually want, which is function.
Personally I think that these manufacturers like the make things thinner and lighter and to put rounded edges and smooth surfaces all over them because it creates more devices that need replacement because they are frail and squirt out of your hand like a wet bar of soap.
Back in the days of the Motorola Razer (ultra-thin/light phone, cutting edge....), they made another phone called the 810-something, we had two of them in the family. Basically, it was the Razer with a real battery - lasted over a week on a charge. I would so-love to carry a Nexus 5x that's 3mm thicker with the extra volume filled with high efficiency LiPo.
Apple's marketing and fanbois paint it as "would you like a brick or this elegant and smooth, ultra light beautiful product?" Phrased like that, sure who wouldn't?
Ask the same typical consumer or business buyer: "would you like a device that, in order to be insignificantly thinner, requires open heart surgery to replace the battery and if your RAM or hard drive go bad, you're SOL?"
Then suddenly, the average person says not just no, but "oh hell, no" because this isn't a $700 PC laptop, but a ~$2000 Apple laptop.
Put a designer and a MBA together and you get a team that does not understand that while the MacBook Air is perfectly acceptable as a throw away appliance, that is because it can be had for less than $1k. A normal person who spends $2500 to $3000 for a seriously performant machine in order to be the backbone of their work doesn't want an appliance. They want a machine that can be quickly and cost effectively repaired.
2017 is looking good.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
My thought too.
Finally a company that listen to what the people have been saying. It's been a long time since anyone said "this phone is too thick" or "this laptop is too thick".
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Multiples of 3 are just so much more useful in everyday life than multiples of 10. I used the base 12 pica/point system in printing for many years, and always admired how trivially easy it was to calculate layout proportions. The human attention is drawn strongly to things in threes: three panels, three points in an argument, three parts to a story, and many others.
More than just the magic of 3. Since 12 has the three smallest (non-trivial) integer divisors, and four of the five smallest, it is simple to do many proportional (ratio) calculations and measurements. 10 only has two (non-trivial) integer divisors.
This extended to adding 5 and 6 as divisors gives the 360 degree division of the circle, invented by the Sumerians and adopted universally around the Old World (along with their division of the day into 12, then 24 hours, for similar reasons). Utility is proven by use.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Don't know about anyone else, but, for my usage, I don't care how thick something is. I don't want to be a "wallwart" always plugged into an outlet, just to use something. My smartphone has a 4,000mAH battery, my laptop has an "ugly" bulge on the bottom to support the larger battery. It's a tool, not a fashion accessory for me. My phone & laptop are my life, during the workday. It's a free country, you want a stylish fashionable phone/laptop, fine, get one, but I'll stick with the thicker ones that have a larger battery. (and most times are more dependable/rugged than their thinner counterparts).
This is what courage looks like.
Umm, did you actually read the summary?
"So it is adding three hours of battery life, but in doing so, it's merely matching the battery life of last year's 1080p model."
If you were truly brave you'd use it with the screen turned off to get that extra 3 hours battery life.
This. To parent post and to HP.
I've yet to meet a single person that needs, or even wants, a laptop/tablet/phone that is 0.5mm thinner. But everybody needs longer battery life and more durable devices. And many of us need features (looking at you, headphone jack) that are sacrificed in the dubious pursuit of thinness above all else.
Nothing posted to
I wish there was a better way to quantify the durability of phones. Something akin to crash test ratings. You can get water resistance and dust resistance for phones... add scientifically measured standardized scratch, bend and shatter resistance tests.
And yes, while I think that it's unfortunate that they're doing this just to feed a hungry 4k screen (I'd much rather just not have the 4k screen), and also that they're shrinking the width ("Meh"), kudos to them for bucking the "must get thinner every time!" trend.
Your headphone example is not only a great example of sacrifice in the pursuit of useless thinness, but it's a great example of the sacrifice of durability, too. I've had many USB ports and USB plugs break over the years, but never in my life had headphone jacks or plugs break. I've had the headphones and their cords break, but never the plug or jack. Because it's a thick solid piece of metal plugging into another thick solid piece of metal. That sort of thing is what I want in my ports, I don't give a rat's arse that it adds half a dozen grams to the device's weight.
And likewise, for that incentive of ditching it - pushing people towards going wireless with their earbuds - for Thor's sake, the last thing I want to have to deal with is another piece of household electronics to charge. You've got my support when you have an long-range wireless charging standard in place that everyone has agreed that they're going to move to. Not a second before then.
And so long as you're wired, it should be kept analog, because that gives you the cheapest earbuds and removes any DRM/lockout/incompatibility/etc fears from users.
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
From the article:
Unfortunately, the claimed three hours of additional battery life aren’t meant to make this laptop into some long-lasting wonder — they’re really just meant to normalize its battery life. [...] It is adding three hours of battery life, but in doing so, it’s merely matching the battery life of last year’s 1080p model.
This isn't courage, this is just a good PR spin on them having to increase the size of their laptop to accommodate a 4k resolution. I'm glad they chose this route instead of cutting battery life but this isn't some kind of grand gesture.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
First off, any opportunity to chip at the Apple PR machine should not be wasted. And second, I think it is fair to say Apple started or at least mainstreamed the "thinner instead of more functionality" trend so mentioning them here seem appropriate.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I dunno. I live in Iceland and we're a very aggressively metric country, to the point that windspeeds aren't even measured in km/h, but meters per second. In fact, off the top of my head I can only think of one thing at all where imperial measurements are used.
And that thing is screen sizes, in inches. And I understand it's that way in other countries too - for example, I've been told that in Japan, the only two things they use inches for are pizza and screen sizes.
Hmm, now that I think about it, we use inches for pizza also. Hmm, let me do a search to see if I can came up with some others. Let's see... I guess tires too, yeah... Oh, and Subway sells their sandwiches in inches, but they're a US company and all of that stuff is standardized the world over... And I guess if you want to go that far, when working on cars that were made in the US, you have to use imperial-measure tools...
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
Let's see if it sells well. Unfortunately I have a feeling it won't, because even though if you ask people "would you prefer it to be to 0.5mm thinner or have more battery life?" they will tell you that they want the battery life, in practice when they are in the shop with an array of laptops in front of them they will pick the thin and shiny one.
The other thing that makes a bigger battery is hard sell is that all manufacturers lie about battery life. It's become post-truth, everyone knows that battery life claims are all lies so there isn't any point being truthful any more. Thus if you just stick a "16 hours battery life" sticker on the box, even if it is true people will just assume it is a lie.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I would say that there should be some sort of standard for measuring it like there is for vehicle fuel consumption, but they'd game it anyway.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
OK more battery life is good. Now, if we are using a 15" screen, what benefit is there to using 4K resolution and use up more of that battery capacity? Can't we find a middle ground between 1368x768 and some overkill and expensive screen resolution?
It would be very difficult to control... Build a Faraday cage so that only your wifi network is available with consistent power and interference. For browsing use a local server with consistent response times, fixed suite of test pages. Temperature controlled room. Even then you couldn't stop the manufacturer just turning down the wifi power level on the review unit, or adding a defeat device that underclocks the CPU when it notices it is running the test suite.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
How do you break a headphone jack or plug? I doubt they'd break if you hit them with a hammer. Okay, if you put the jack side in a vise, then hit the other with a heavy hammer blow, you'd probably bend the pin. But it'd probably still fit in and out bent and still work.
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
I guess I'd put it this way: I like my internal hardware Japanese but my connectors and casing Soviet. ;) Low tech and heavy, but able to survive 30 years bouncing around in the bed of a pickup truck in Kazakhstan.
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
Every country has 11 inches in their feet. They also have a 12th inch.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I purchased a Surface 4 a couple months ago with the fastest processor available. I get maybe 1-1/2 hours of use off the battery. Crappy battery life if my only complaint. Other than that, it's fantastic... I would gladly sacrifice some thickness for additional battery life. $2200 for a mobile device that’s not mobile 2 hours is just pointless.
If the tests included "process X amount of data" and "download X amount of data" and were evaluating not only battery life, but also performance, they'd have to choose which one to cheat. Since (judging by 2016 MacBook Pro sales) many people don't give much if a shit about battery life, there would be incentive to sacrifice battery life to improve performance in that test; until you realize that some people do care about battery life, which removes any incentive to cheat at all.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I've done it (although I still prefer the old, simple tech). A 3.5 mm plug is roughly 20 mm long (not counting the wire, of course). You can get a nice bit of torque by pulling on the end of the plug. Enough to trash an iPhone plug. Been there, done that.
No tech is perfect. I'd rather have the plug than fiddle with Bluetooth vagaries. "Connected". Yeah, sure, to the wrong device you whacky gizmo. Annoying dropouts. Batteries. Batteries. Batteries.
I finally found a decent Bluetooth headphone - Sennheiser Momentum M2. About $300 worth. But I'm not cashing in all of my wired devices. I'm looking at YOU Apple. And I friggen hate dongles.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Name them.
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Happy now?
The Amsterdam foot (voet) consisted of 11 Amsterdam inches (duim). It was more complex than just 11 inches to the foot, though: Dutch feet varied from 10 to 13 inches depending on local laws. The variability in units of measure varied this way throughout Europe.
Unfortunately, your fantasy iPhone would look something like this. Hard to pocket. Even with cargo pants.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I can tell you from experience, switching between a 15" PC laptop with a 4k screen and a 15" MacBook Pro with at 2880x1800 screen, the difference is quite noticeable. 1080p to 4k would be even more so. Of course, not everyone has 20/5 vision, so that could be your problem.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
How do you break a headphone jack or plug?
Plugs, not so easy, (see below though) but the jacks? Not so hard. They are weakend a little bit every time they get plugged in. Typical is that the springiness slowly goes away, or the contact eventually breaks at the base. Mostly just losing contact on the plug, though. Then the users jiggle it a bit, maybe get it to work, often making the problm worse. The mini 1/8" plug and jack are a scaling down of the old 1/4" plug and jack, which was a little meh as well. The smaller you make them, the weaker they get. The micro ones are almost useless.
I doubt they'd break if you hit them with a hammer. Okay, if you put the jack side in a vise, then hit the other with a heavy hammer blow, you'd probably bend the pin. But it'd probably still fit in and out bent and still work.
To test your conjecture, I took a good grade 1/8th inch plug, placed it on my workbench, and gave it a whack with an 8 oz claw hammer. After a bit of time removing the metal outer case due to it's no longer having a circular shape, the results were internal connections were bent and weakend but not broken, Flange at top of the pin was crushed, and the pin itself ws compressed, which turned it roughly ovoid, and made it impossible to fit into a jack.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.