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As Computer Vendors Focus On Making Their Laptops Thinner and Lighter, They Are Increasingly Neglecting Performance Needs of Their Customers (vice.com)
Owen Williams, writing for Motherboard: The pursuit of thinner, lighter laptops, a trend driven by Apple, coinciding with laptops replacing desktops as our primary devices means we have screwed ourselves out of performance -- and it's not going to get better anytime soon. Thermal throttling is not something that Apple alone suffers from: every laptop out there will face thermal constraints at some point, but whether or not that's perceivable depends on a number of different variables including form factor and cooling capacity. When you're shopping for a laptop, you'll notice that manufacturers like Apple use phrases like "Turbo Boost" and "Up to 4.8 GHz" without really explaining what that means. The 4.8 GHz processor clock speed, which Apple quotes for the 15-inch MacBook Pro, is a 'best case' processor speed that's only achieved in short bursts when your computer requests it, subject to a number of conditions.
If you're playing a game like Fortnite, for example, the game will request your processor provide faster performance, and the processor will attempt to increase its operating frequency gradually to deliver the maximum available performance within the thermal envelope of your machine. That maximum is restricted by both power and thermal limits, which is where we run into issues: laptops tend to get hot because they're thinner, with limited space to dissipate that heat through the use of fans and heatsinks.
If you're playing a game like Fortnite, for example, the game will request your processor provide faster performance, and the processor will attempt to increase its operating frequency gradually to deliver the maximum available performance within the thermal envelope of your machine. That maximum is restricted by both power and thermal limits, which is where we run into issues: laptops tend to get hot because they're thinner, with limited space to dissipate that heat through the use of fans and heatsinks.
What "power users" want is a portable desktop, not a sexy, sleek status machine.
Worth noting this guy doesn't compare the performance of the different generations of laptops. He's just assuming any form of throttling must be a step backwards. You couldn't possibly have a company like Intel trying to over-spec the parts they sell.
Also missing, a discussion of how large a battery you need in your laptop to run at 60 Watts for however long the guy wants his battery to last for. Not to mention, compensating for heat dissipation and the size of the heat sinks you need.
If you need performance, you need a desktop. It's simple physics.
Can you think of a better performance metric at this point?
The entire industry has been suffering form this for several years. For most applications, the current computers are fast enough and have been so for several years.
Yes, there are enthusiasts and there are a few high power commercial applications; however, most users are running an office suite and a browser. For those uses, the computers got fast enough several years ago.
I really don't care about how thin or small laptop is, I don't work in sales or marketing and don't have to look hip above any other consideration. I don't have a medical condition that would prevent me from carrying it unless it is ultra-light. However, I do care about screen size, battery life, ports, and performance.
"coinciding with laptops replacing desktops as our primary devices"
Here let me fix that for you... coinciding with smartphones and tablets replacing laptops and desktops as our primary devices
I hate Trump but reading your whining in every post makes me want to vote for him just to spite you.
I mean, ever Steve jobs is gone, they are getting dumber and dumber. The cheapest 15â Pro is so fucking expensive. Itâ(TM)s outrageous. Wtf is up with hat touch bar. I hate it with a passion, and thier funcking keyboard SUCKS. Apple is playing thier fans big time. I used to be a fan of their products, and adopted their ecosystem. Iâ(TM)m trying to get out. I just wish we had another competitor out there that builds descent real computer OS. I want to get windows, but it just sucks, thought the hardware options are awesom, and the value is infinitely better. OS X has intentional hardware dependencies for good performance so hackingtosh sucks. To be honest, I wish I can just get a late 2015 MacBook Pro with the latest chipset. Is that too much to ask fucking Apple idiots?
...details knew what they were talking about half the time.
The application (in this case, the game Fortnite) doesn't "request your processor provide faster performance."
The operating system, noticing an application is making certain API calls consistent with a program that needs high performance, will ramp up the clock rate of the processor.
How about we stop this bloating of software?
And I see this across everything - updates that just add more and more to the size of the applications and slow the machine down. Why does a performance enhancement increase the size of the application and use up more storage and RAM?
I find it asinine that today's OSes need 16 gigabytes just to function reasonably.
My 8GB phone can't update because Google's shit needs 32GB now in order to work properly.
Ok? 8GBs is NOT enough?!? For a goddamn phone OS?!? I have NO pcitures, videos, music or any other of that horseshit. I reset the phone and deleted EVERYTHING and it's still not good enough.
Seriously, the only problem is today's developers. It's not the hardware.
Most people do not care about performance. They want Twitter and Facebook. The OEM are just following the money.
They can care less about the people who want or need it. Not as much money in it.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Hey, I'm really interested in new laptops, especially powerful, light ones with great battery duration. But I don't really fit in this crowd. I won't ever run "Fortnite" or indeed any video game on it. I will develop software for space satellites, I will write and deliver speeches, maybe I'll produce some videos.
Right now I own a whole fleet of Panasonic Toughbooks of different vintages, up to the Core i7 tablet with removable keyboard, because I can drop them and have them keep working, and it is actually specified to stand being hosed off from any angle. All were purchased used.
I don't want an ultra light thin phone. I just put them in a Unicorn Beetle case as soon as I get them, and they aren't thin after that. I want one with a battery door. This is difficult to get in a good phone these days. Similarly, I want to be able to replace the laptop battery and disk.
Bruce Perens.
Suits don't actually work for a living.
I've often called out for decent laptops, but nooo. Glossy screens! Video format screens when I need more vertical pixels. Ever bigger tapdancing pads that interfere with my typing when I need a trackpoint. Decent quality keyboards instead of keys that fall off at the tiniest dust particle. Decent-sized keys instead of ever more useless keys crammed in far less space than available. And so forth, and so on. The people that make the decisions apparently never actually need to use their laptop in anger.
Seriously, it seems as if we are in an age of excess hardware capabilities.
Your "power user" isn't playing crazy hardware killing games on the laptop.
It's like when you demand high and higher horse power cars and eventually end up with a 750 HP Shelby GT 500 or an 800 HP Demon. So you can get from 0 to 45 MPH or even 65 really fast.
Sure, Win 10 will suck up CPUs for eye candy, but all that power has provided very little visible benefit to your average user.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Even the thinnest and lightest high quality laptops are amazingly fast. Modern chips are crazy efficient.
While I agree they have a lighter thermal budget and that it impacts their ability to run flat-out for extended periods of time.. That's a use case that really should not come up outside of true workstation or gaming workloads. (In which case you should get a gaming or workstation laptop, dummy) With a crazy fast processor ideally they spin up the cores, complete a task, and then clock down again when idle. The short thermal "peak" is absorbed by the cooling system.
I think most thermal issues are actually just wasted cpu cycles. I can't even count the number of times I've encountered a laptop with it's fans blaring and the fault has been a runaway frozen process or misbehaving application sucking up a full core for no reason at all.
The real fault isn't even the bad programs. Its the OS's power management and scheduler. They really should be more aware of how runaway threads cause problems on modern laptops. Windows, linux, macos, whatever should be able to tackle situations like: High cpu process running for a long time -> High power and thermal overhead -> Kill/suspend process
We've got that on phones. iOS and android can watchdog misbehaving apps and stop them from killing the battery. Why not on PCs?
If laptop makers were making things people didn't want, no-one would buy them.
Laptop makers going thinner and lighter didn't come out of the blue. It came about in large part because of hugs sales successes from things like the original MacBook Air. Common sense will tell you that 99% of laptop buyers by laptops because they carry them around, and why would those people not prioritize light and thin above performance?
It's not like there are no high-performance laptops, take Alienware. But who do you think sells more laptops, Alienware's relative huge bulky gaming laptops with power to spare, or Dell/Apple...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And thanks to CPU throttling it's slower than my old one despite being 3 years newer. No docking Port either.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Modern CPUs are incredibly fast, and the constraint is often memory IO, not CPU speed. In other words, for many, many tasks your CPU is sitting around waiting for the memory. Boosting the MHZ even more is just going to make it wait the same amount of time, just more clock ticks.
That's highly task dependent of course. For some very specific tasks the CPU can fit everything in the high-speed cache of the CPU. But the article makes it sound like the CPU boosting to 4.8 ghz is "insanely fast", while in reality it's a much more complicated story. Also, that huge "turbo boost" is normally reserved to just one core. So if you're using all 4 cores on multiple CPU intensive tasks, you're not going to get that big turbo-boost on a single task.
These fine details are completely lost on journalists and the general public, but they're vitally important to understand what's actually going on inside your PC. Everyone is so quick to try to point out how you're "getting screwed". The reality is a lot more complicated.
It's definitely true you're sacrificing performance for battery life and other conveniences. Nothing new there of course. If you want performance, buy a desktop!
Docking stations need to come with a water loop coupling.
Plug in the laptop and cold water is fed through pipes in laptop's body.
There is plenty of space for the coupling points now that all the useful interfaces have been removed from laptops.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Indeed, this is quite accurate. For use cases that only peg the CPU for a minute at a time (for instance, incremental compilation of a large software project), this is great -- in fact the turbo is significantly higher than the nominal clock speed of the CPU, essentially allowing it to 'save/borrow' TDP from the past and future in order to deliver snappier instantaneous performance.
On the other hand, for use cases that peg the CPU for minutes at a time (for instance, encoding a long video, clean build of a huge project), turbo gets you no benefit and you are limited by the steady-state TDP.
So which is more important? Honestly, I think everyone will have to look at their own use-case and decide. For a lot of folks, they don't often exercise the latter use case and might be fine with lower steady-state performance. Others might not.
Something I've been puzzled by is why people often use laptops even when a desktop would be a better choice. If you really are moving around a lot and need a portable device then I get it. Laptops are super useful for people on the go. But a lot of people work at a desk all day long on a laptop which makes very little sense in a lot of cases. I use a desktop PC with some fast hardware and 3 large 28" 4K monitors. FAR more productive than any laptop. When I need a laptop I have one of those too but its often frustrating to use unless I'm single tasking or doing something simple. I'm usually juggling multiple applications and documents and doing that on a single small screen is annoying to put it mildly. Even a "big" laptop doesn't hold a candle to a well configured desktop for performance and desktop real estate.
I could see a laptop with an external GPU being a useful thing if you need occasional portability but mostly work at a desk. But if you work at a desk then it's kind of silly to use a laptop. Use the right tool for the job. We mostly use desktops and have a few laptops in the company for people to share when they need something portable.
As Customers Continue to Buy Computers Whose Vendors Focus On Making Their Laptops Thinner and Lighter, They Are Increasingly Neglecting Their Own Performance Needs
Get a real laptop to run Windows, Linux on. With all that extra RAM and an extra big new GPU.
Find a real laptop thats not a fashion accessory that has thermal limits.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
When you cater to the group of people who view devices more as a fashion statement than portable functionality, you can obtain a much higher mark-up in the pricing. Fashion rarely comes inexpensively. As a result, the manufactures are moving toward the higher margin markets, the fashionable device market, while all but ignoring the part of the market that needs additional capability and function.
Why do you bother carrying computer horsepower around with you? This is why we have wireless networking. Get something small and light to carry. You can get a brand-spanking new Dell laptop for less than $200, who cares if you drop or break it.
You, sir, are an arrogant prick. Just because someone plays computer games doesn't mean they don't have a life.
No, we have not. Electronics in general — and laptops in particular — is a very competitive field. That "invisible hand of the markets", which Illiberals love to mock so much, is at work. The mainstream laptop offerings are exactly, what most of us want. And there also remain offerings for the various minorities — because there is money to be made from satisfying demands of the niches too.
Why are we Ok with lower-powered machines? I guess, that's because improvements in connectivity make it possible to use remote servers for the real heavy-lifting. Personally, I'm happy with an ssh-client on my iPhone — my bluetooth keyboard, which I only need to make typing easier (rather than possible) is still smaller, than the smallest laptop...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If you need so much computing power that it's melting the laptop case, you probably need to get a desktop. If you're using a laptop there's always going to be an area of compromise: portability (weight, size), battery life, performance, cost, and upgradability. It's like complaining that the ROG or Predator laptops are heavy and gets less than 7 hour battery life. There's not going to be a laptop that's perfect in every way. Recently a friend asked for a recommendation of thin, powerful laptop with 10+ hour....for under $600. SMH.
Yeah, they are very involved in harassing women online, socializing with other incels, and failing to understand sarcasm on Slashdot.
Bruce Perens.
It doesn't matter that I can get a cheap chromebook for $200 if it happens to fail 5 minutes before a speech.
Bruce Perens.
Spare me your technical and business equivocations. Put the fucking GPU on the back of the screen so it doesn't burn my lap and so it can cool more effectively.
There are companies who make proper performance laptops. The customers either don't make the effort to find them or are too interested in getting something pretty.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If you've been paying attention to Apple's trend with the iMac, you can see where this article could be a warning of things to come: Apple has been trying to drive the iMac down to basically a great big tablet on a stand for the past two decades. It's predominantly that thermal envelope which has stopped them from getting there, without significant compromise -- but that hasn't stopped other vendors from likewise attempting to release "desktops" with the same objective in mind. (The Surface Studio springs to mind, as one example... but there are others as well.)
You can run Excel on a 286 laptop. It just holds numbers in a cell.
Your comparison posits that all BMWs would be cars like the 2 Series while all the Fords were Taurus.
You'd be surprised at how well RDP works over high latency connections.
I imagine RDP doesn't work so well under the constraint of a packet latency of days or weeks. Say you send the last packet of the month over a satellite or cellular link, which causes you to exhaust the monthly data transfer quota that your satellite or cellular ISP imposes on you. It can be days or weeks until your satellite or cellular ISP allows your hotspot to start receiving packets again at the start of the next billing cycle.
not all gamers are like that.
Sucks when you do not have reliable or fast Internet...
Sure, if you only buy Apple products, you're pretty much screwed if you want a performance laptop. However, thankfully, there is a thriving Windows market with many competitive laptop models including monstrous products like the Acer 21X.
Are you really that dumb? It's not a Chromebook, it's an actual windows/Linux laptop.
Are you really that dumb? Do you actually have failure rate data? Why do you need a fleet of laptops? Maybe they are too flakey? Maybe try something modern?
Why does the internet slow down your internal Network?
...with a windows phone. I know because my boss just bought one, and I got to set it up. Actually works pretty well, but not the best use of my time.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Bring a USB drive? I teach part time which means lots of "speeches" and they're not something I need a portable computer for. Computers are ubiquitous at presentation venues including schools. Should those fail use notes and the whiteboard. I'm thinking of cutting way back on the computer next semester regardless.
I know. I am trying to clean up the issues in ham radio and the open source world. I do hope people are out there in the gaming world making it clear that the entire mysogynist and incel thing is an illness and that they are not victims of some women's conspiracy.
Bruce Perens.
The only awkward part is that it's easy to forget everything you're doing is in (essentially) a Chrome browser window, so pressing ctrl+w while in a remote session will close it out.
The other awkward part is what happens when you close your Chromebook, board the bus, and try to get back to what you were doing. Unless you're using Crostini (a GNU/X11 environment that is currently exclusive to more recent, high-end Chromebooks), you're relying on an Internet connection to get things done, and buses in many cities (such as my own) don't provide a hotspot even for fare-paying riders.
The "middle" is some George W. Bush/Obama/Clinton soup. Lol at stupid Americans voting for the "middle" and getting fucked over again and again. Your political middle stands for SJW, billionaires and wars. Your middle is the CIA and neocons and they created ISIS by pouring thousands tons of ammo and weapons into their general area.
Oh, but Americans don't have to give a shit, this happens oceans away so it's all good you can tune out and go back to your fake racial and gender issues and have no refugees or economic debacles to worry about.
Meanwhile do you know about the UN report on poverty in the US?, people living in sewage, mouthfuls of rotting teeth, that sort of thing. Things that right-wing democrats like Obama don't care about. But no a Hollywood exec touching a piece of ass in 1987, or made up pronouns are more important.
Oh asking for sources now. Well please show me a new laptop from a reputable seller for 200. You know something useable, none of those 13 inch mistakes.
I had no real issues doing my thesis with a word processor and spreadsheet on an early IBM PC clone. (AMD 8088)
Apple perfectly responds to the need of desktop users for slower PCs.
The few who need computers must wait for the exascale machines to arrive (and the manufuacturers getting their EUV processes up to speed).
Many users also want more ports. And not just power users.
Some want to plug in an ethernet cable, some want to plug in an hdmi device, some want to plug in USB 3 or C, and many
would like all of these.
But there has to be lower limits to both weight and especially thinness. When you need to design new keyboard keys that are worst than the previous generation to save half a millimetre on the thickness of the laptop, you're actually going backwards.
#DeleteFacebook
Get over yourself.
Mac pro 2019??? better be good or pros are done with apple.
Also don't lock storage to the T2 chip in a desktop workstation pro uses need storage choice and don't want to have lot's of EXT boxes.
Hackintosh is there but if apple had good system usage will go down.
Mini $549-$799
Like an desktop starting at $999-$1599
Pro workstation starting at $1999-$2599
Hell even an $250-$300 T2 card (no storage) that fit's in an HP-Z can work and may as well sell and then apple does not need to deal with looks or say that you need to loop back video card DP out to the TB bus.
I still dont understand who these people are who will break their backs if they carry an extra 1/2 pound. They should get off their laptop and seek medical attention immediately.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Please show me, where either side, has ever given a fuck about the poor man?
Hilarious trash coming from a social stunted cuck such as yourself. Pluck the j00ish mind virus from your brain, lest you end up in the pyramid of bodies when the time comes.
I, don't know, Mr Shatner, I, really, don't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Want performance you have to look beyond a thin ultra book model. They all are pathetically focused on battery life not performance. Want a really good desktop replacement notebook with some kick as they say. Look to a professional line with a thick chassis and more traditional designs. Or choose a gaming type notebook with dedicated graphics and not a "U" prefixed Intel CPU. The U stands for ultra low power and low power stands for lower performance. Moore's law still exists, put the power into a chip to get more performance out of it.
Your whole post sounds like you just wrote it to hear yourself talk. So you are a lame ass who spends all his time working. We get it. Sorry but some of us like to blow off steam. We do that by gaming. Maybe Beating your wife is your fav pastime, who knows, and honestly, who cares.
You've already figured out what works for you(the tough book), which is why you have several generations. Why are you even mentioning a new laptop. You know you will just buy a new toughbook anyway.
You listed what works for you, then
Went on a tangiwnt about other vendors. Who gives a shit. Use what works for you Bruce. They aren't catering to us nerds anymore.
Someone mod this crap down.
Jesus Christ. If anyone else wrote this it would be at -1 so fast.
Get off your fucking high horse Bruce. Keep that social justice shit out of here. We don't care about that fake ass made up problem. The leaders are frauds, proven liars.
Why don't you tell us some more about how christine single handedly created the word open source. Tell us more Bruce...
You are a prick.
An area on the bottom of a thin laptop thermally coupled to the processor might allow higher clock rates when resting on a cold surface. This would have to be a large enough area to avoid the heat concentrations that have caused reproductive issues in the past, or be exposed intentionally by opening a panel. Aftermarket products mating with this conduction surface might be based on the cold water bottle, ice pack, or cooling fan.
// DevsVult: The Machines Will It
Alright first things first I think it is wrong to point the finger at Apple here as the primary driver of the thinner trend. They have been attacked in ads in my recent memory for being thicker than Lenovo and HP models.
That said, Apple's Pro models are not Pro. Sure I could plug an external video card into one but... I'm not a gamer, a video card won't solve my problems. I am IT/lead developer/dev ops/infrastructure planning. I need a laptop that has an ethernet port whether, I am fixing the network or breaking it by pulling down data faster than the wireless can handle. I need a laptop that runs cool enough that it doesn't burn me while perched precariously in those niches above closets where previous persons did dumb things with cables. I need said laptop to not be a monster 17" that won't fit in those spaces an yeah isn't so thin that it slips my grip. I need a laptop with enough battery to last the day. I need a laptop with more memory so I can run all the web browsers to test the website and run a selection of VMs so I can run all the web browsers in all the OS's. And you know what I really need? Is for Visual Studio and Chrome to not grind a brand new laptop to a halt on their own... Memory and processor hogs that they are.
I've been fairly happy with my 2012 13" MacBook Pro running OS X 10.11, Ubuntu 18.04 and Windows 10. And I will keep putting money in it because there is nothing on the market worth buying until that day when Visual Studio overheats it one last time.
Is logic, the customers that are more likely to spend more money in a device are the ones that do not require too much performance but lust the style and fancyness.
Most phones only advertise the storage number.
You've told us your phone has 8GB, but you haven't told us how much RAM it has.
You probably got tricked by marketing and bought an under-spec'd phone with 512 or 1 GB of RAM, but that's really not enough for a modern version of Android.
If your phone doesn't have at least 2GB of RAM, then that's the problem. Go buy a new phone today. I suggest getting one with 4GB of RAM.
I still dont understand who these people are who will break their backs if they carry an extra 1/2 pound.
That's an extra lens (well, maybe part of a lens) or camera battery to me. My under-seat bag that holds my laptop regularly weighs more than my carry or on real luggage... and it's not 1/2 a punt you are saving, often a pound or two for a really thinner laptop.
That may not seem like much but it adds up with combined with other things.
Hikers know that over long distances even an ounce can matter, never mind half a pound! Every ounce more something weighs means something else potentially important will be left behind.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But there has to be lower limits to both weight and especially thinness.
Why? The only real concern is reliability and resistance to damage. iPads already show weight and size can still head smaller for laptops while still meeting all factors that people care about (on a recent three week trip I took an iPad Pro instead of a laptop because it was the cheapest thinnest option and could still do what I needed).
Can you truly not envision a future with a bendable "laptop" nearly paper thin? Why not?
When you need to design new keyboard keys that are worst than the previous generation
No longer true.
The very most recent keyboards are nicer than previous models now, including reliability.
In terms of performance, battery life, ease of carrying, and reliability Apple is not moving backwards, nor is any other laptop maker that is pursuing goals that actually matter to people.
I used to love the large full travel clicks keyboards myself but in recent years more and more like the short travel keys Apple has been offering on a variety of devices. I still have my older keyboards but do not use them. I just bought a $200 keyboard in fact, but ended up returning it once I came to this realization that I really didn't want that anymore...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As Phone Vendors Focus On Making Their Phablets Thinner and Larger, They Are Increasingly Neglecting Needs of Their Customers who want small, thick, rugged phones.
If you want performance, plug the damn thing into a wall socket, it ain't gonna happen on battery power!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
if talking performance , something in a server room with a heavy load, you're going to be using a real database, not MS SQL server running on windows.
Stack Overflow is written in C# and runs on IIS and MS SQL Server. Or would you characterize Stack Overflow as not being built for performance?
I just joined a small company as their first/only IT guy, and was tasked to do a survey which computers were needed, Only 3 out of the 45 employees that responded wanted a desktop, everybody else (even de CAD developers) wanted a laptop. So to save on support cost and simplify maintenance, it was decided by the boss that the 3 desktop lovers would get a laptop too.
At my previous job I had a Intel NUC with core i3 and 16 GB memory which was fast enough for me and never ran hot. The laptop I will get will be 2x as powerful so I will give it a chance, but I will be watching it for any reason to replace it with a good desktop...
You go long distance hiking with your laptop? You have other problems.
If you go through a few airports on a trip you can easily end up walking a few miles as part of traveling. Some airports have carts but not all.
Of if I'm working in a city I may be walking several blocks going to and from a client site depending on where my hotel is.
I'd say the problem here seems to be your inexperience traveling.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thermal throttling has been around for years and so has software patches to fix configuration bugs.
If Trump does nothing but piss of Washington elitists- no other thing- he will still be a massive boon for humanity. Any wrench thrown at these cogs of suffering is meritorious.
The delta betwixt peak and sustained grows. That is all this is- it is now feasible to have a machine that can really blaze for a few milliseconds.
There isn't even a good bemchmark to suss it out, because he benchmarks- most notoriously geek bench- gove the processor some cooling down time, to make it looks like some dumb apple chip that can fit in your foreskin is somehow comparable to a fucking Xeon.
Basically, given that everyone has a profit motive to decieve you, just buy stuff based on the assumption that a laptop is about half as powerful as advertised, and a phone is about a tenth. These are good benchmarks for now: you may have to adjust them as they get better at lying.
Thin laptops are a nightmare. They're really hard to service. They are generally designed to never be serviced. This sort of disposable equipment is exactly the sort of thing we need to get away from. Run away from these devices. They are the manufacturers answer to slumping sales: Make something that can never be repaired so people will buy another one every so often.
Just stop. This is not good for anyone. As a middle finger to the manufacturer, we whom are in the repair field should outright refuse to service these machines and ward customers away from buying them. "We can't fix it cuz it's designed to not be fixed. Buy one designed to be serviceable and we can help you any time any day." Consumers don't like to be told no. And do this enough, they'll learn to stop buying them.
They fucking LOVE trump. McConnel nearly creamed himself with the Supreme Court picks and the passage of the tax plan.
To be able to change the battery or hard drive if it goes bad. Decent airflow and a good keyboard.
Hi,
One suggestion is to look for a laptop powered from USB-C (for now it might be only very high end or very low end ones?)
You'll be fucked regarding removable batteries on laptop at least. I'm sure mine is perfectly removable but I've counted the 12 screws on the bottom of the laptop and I expect to remove these to even look at the hardware. If being removable after removing the screws qualifies as a removable battery to you, good.
So, USB-C power would allow you a USB-C battery - make the battery external. I don't think USB-C power supplies and batteries with no brand name are to be longed for though. So beside the PSU that came with the laptop perhaps reputable brands of PSU (or batteries) will have products.
i.e., I wouldn't buy a 45W USB power supply from Ching Chong. Just because historical reasons and principles. But maybe trickle charging your laptop from a 9W or 15W Ching Chong battery/cable/power supply would be somewhat safe.
If you want powerful and low power, maybe "it's the silicon, stupid!". That means don't bother with the current wares and wait for 2019, Intel 10nm and AMD 7nm CPUs.
ARM laptop hardware might be actually useful but might be crippled with 8GB max soldered RAM and other issues.
Get some Asus shit and install Linux Mint with Mate (sadly, 32bit version would be better for RAM use but doesn't support UEFI, so it'll have to be 64bit)
Get sure that the piece of shit has 1366x768 that way it doesn't need GUI scaling and is crisp.
Already proven to work. And your dock cables can just pass out via the crack in the fridge door.
If imbecile nuts with nostalgia of the 30s and 40s like yourself ever stir shit up to that point you'll be run over by the Russian army again, like your jihadi Sunni butt buddies. By the way, all the wannabee joo killers do is help the cause of Israel. This only help those nazi jews as their sole way of existing and killing their sandnjggers is to find fake enemies like your basement-dwelling sweaty butt and then cry wolf.
I work in a dell shop, it is decent except the higher rate of DOA on hardware over the last 2 years. The E7480 laptops are nice enough, but to get this generation ever so slightly thinner than the last the ethernet port has a very delicate flap that expands down under it to accommodate the RJ45. I run all over town and do testing and spend about half my time trying to get the cable disconnected without ripping the port apart. I'll tell you who did their job; the guys who were told to make a thinner port but not "cheap so the cable will fall out."
As a gamer, performance is top priority. Unfortunately, moving around, a desktop computer is not an option.
Have a 17" unit. Laptop bag (laptop, mouse, power supply, external drives, etc) weighs about 19 pounds.
I took one laptop back for a refund when I realized that I couldn't take the battery out (a requirement at the time for the helicopters I flew on).
My previous (XPS) laptop had six USB ports, two on the side, four on the back. Most connections were on the back.
Hard to find more than four now, and they tend to be all on the side with nothing on the back. F-ing stupid design. Cables and plugs all around the side, taking up space where I should be free to use my mouse.
It might be in a few years - effectively as an eGPU, to deal with being detached from system memory.
Software is not optimized for the latency and DMA cost of eGPUs yet enough to make this a viable default. I'd also worry about the heat affecting the screen.
It's not about "not wanting", it's about "wanting more".
I do want a thin and light laptop, but I want a laptop with better screen and more battery life MORE.
If my choice is a thin and light laptop, or a crappy budget laptop (or even worse no laptop at all), I'll take the thin and light "business" laptop.
Am I the only one who'd love to buy a BIG, THIN and SLOW laptop?
I'm a developer. What I need from a laptop is to be ergonomic, not powerful:
- good keyboard with dedicated Ins, Del, Home, End, PgUp and PgDn keys, and preferably a numeric block
- big matte screen. No point in having 4K resolution if the screen is 13 inches and all I can see is my reflection and fingerprints. I want at least 15 inches.
- good enough CPU. I don't need to run VMs on my laptop, I can RDP to work from anywhere and have all the power i need
- a lot of ports, both old and new. USB, USB-C, HDMI and RJ45 is a must, COM would be nice
My ideal laptop would be 15"-17" and passively cooled. At that size
- it would probably be capable of passively cooling even a U-series Intel CPU, but I have a Y-series now and it's sufficient
- it could have great battery life thanks to the combination of big size battery and low performance
- it could fit a great keyboard and all the ports
- it could still be thin just enough to fit a RJ45 port
- FullHD would be comfortable to work with at 100% zoom thanks to the screen size
- it would be absolutely silent and dust resistant - no need to take it apart and clean the ever-louder fans after two years
But it seems that I'm the only one who wants this. There are virtually no passively cooled laptops larger than 13.3" and certainly not with good keyboards and a good selection of ports.
I bought a top spec 13.3" passively cooled Asus https://www.ultrabookreview.com/11961-asus-zenbook-ux360ca-review/ and it's OK. I want the same, but bigger with an old ThinkPad keyboard and matte screen.
This is how he got elected. People voted for whoever was breaking the conventions and rules that the voters blamed for their shitty life. They were not capable of understanding that their shitty life may get even worse and that international politics may impact them too. Perhaps they will grok it after Trump's (for a lack of better word) "politics" hits them where it hurts.
no, many of them are just enabling and defending the real scum
It doesn't really matter what type of fucking laptop you have if it's going to fail 5 minutes before a speech. My understanding is that Dells, Lenovos and even Apples are all of equal usefulness once they've failed.
Bruce, your posting here on /. is almost entirely insightful and well-reasoned. When you respond to a single person's ludicrously childish trolling by smearing an extraordinarily diverse group of people you do yourself a disservice.
... but macbooks since they became mainly closed and thin was the primary goal always thermally throttle when asked to do more than basic email and web.
Personally I'd rather have a chunky notebook with useful active cooling and a dgpu capable of getting out of it's own way.
...And return to the great form factors between 2010-2015. They were already a great all-around weight and size, and were thick enough to accommodate a comfortable keyboard (NO MORE BUTTERFLIES!), a worthwhile GPU, and battery packs that could run the thing long enough.
These new "thin" Macs are totally useless! If you really can't deal with the weight, start hitting the gym and get in shape. Or get an iPad!
It's a pain and expensive to maintain two computers.
No it isn't either difficult or expensive. I've been doing it for years. Heck I have a desktop in my home office, a near identical one in my work office, and a laptop for the occasional bit of portability. Online storage makes keeping documents synced between them trivial and having the same applications on each is not a challenge. I have VPN software if I need something on one that isn't on the others. Maintaining them is a good approximation of trivial.
You can get a VERY serviceable desktop PC with two 1080p monitors for well under $1000. You can get an extremely nice desktop with a huge amount of RAM and a nice GPU with three 4K monitors for under $2500. Probably under $1700 if you do a little bargain hunting.
I do most of my development on a virtual machine so I am glad it's a laptop.
Those statements have nothing to do with each other. The laptop provides no benefit over a desktop to developing on a virtual machine.
Which pretty much is the exception that proves the rule. Sure, some people need actual portability but why do you undock it? Have you really thought about it and whether that is the ideal work flow for you? Maybe it is but maybe not. Sounds like you use your laptop as a desktop much of the time so what are you giving up to gain portability?
I just don't want to deal with all the cables, and the bulkiness and immobility, plus laptops have batteries so they don't mind that much if power goes out.
You just got done saying that you have a docking station with multiple monitors, etc and thos all have cables so your argument makes zero sense. And on a desk who cares about the cables? They aren't going to be in your way and you'll never move them. You effectively use a desktop most of the time. As for batteries, you can put a VERY large battery that will run any desktop PC (plus other equipment) for hours for less than $200. Far larger than the battery on any laptop.
I feel like it's not as much that someone doesn't need a laptop because they use the computer at their desk, and moreso that they always use the computer at their desk because they don't have a laptop.
Look around you. Most people in most companies work in a defined space - usually at their desk and they rarely need a computer elsewhere. There are exceptions of course but there are a LOT of people using a laptop which they essentially never use anywhere except their office. I see it all the time. Heck I used to do it. Then I realized I was using a slower weaker computer with a ton of compromises for portability that I almost never used. You might be someone who really does need the portability (though given your other comments I doubt it) but an awful lot of people use laptops for their job when a desktop with a lot more screen real estate would serve them better.
a desktop definitely locks you to your desk. If you dont need one why would you get one?
Most people work at the same desk anyway so why should it matter? And think for half a moment about what you give up to gain portability. Speed, screen real estate, GPU power, a decent keyboard+mouse, etc. If you really do move around then by all means get a laptop. They exist for good reason. But my point is that you should actually think about how you use the machine rather than how you imagine you use it. There are a LOT of people that would be better served with a desktop PC but have companies that reflexively give them laptops despite the productivity hit that entails. Plus laptops cost more for the same computing capability in virtually all cases.
Basically my point is if you don't actually need portability, why would you get a laptop?
Most laptops don't leave the house, so weight isn't really a massive issue. Given the choice though, most would go for a small and sexy form factor, since there isn't really a portable games machine at the price most consumers are paying.
I'm looking for a ~15" laptop. The P51 seems to be a really good laptop comparable with the Apple Mac Pro 15" -- priced with comparable features. The big drawback is that it's a M$ Windows laptop and I don't do M$. Does the P51 do Linux? If not, it's not applicable for me. When I left my previous job 5.5 years ago, I stopped using M$. System76 sells comparable Linux laptops in the same price range. I would probably choose a System76 laptop since they already come with supported versions of Linux. (Does anyone worry about Chinese back doors these days?)
The base has to be heavy such that the laptop does not fall over. Tablets that have the GPU and the battery behind the screen do use stands to avoid that. Try tablets like Surface to check whether you like this solution. They are nice on tables but awkward on your tights.
I regularly have to use Macbooks for work and it's stupid that I need a bunch of dongles to make the thing at all useful. Useful is sexy. Built-in is sexy. Broken and missing adapters is not sexy.
Yeah, I don't know anyone who uses a laptop solely at a desk.
I know an alarming number of people who do. Particularly in big companies. The former president of my company used to do that. Had a laptop but it basically never left his desk. I see it happen a lot. I also see a lot of people who use laptops in places where they really aren't geared to be especially productive. They work in a conference room when they would gain more efficiency by having a multiple screen system at a desk.
Please understand I'm not arguing against laptops. I'm just saying use the tool that actually fits how you work, what is most efficient, and be honest with yourself about what that is. Laptops have trade offs to gain portability particularly in speed and screen real estate as well as some other areas. For someone like me who does engineering work and typically has multiple documents open at once, a laptop is really limiting. I typically have our tooling database, MRP system, a web browser, some work instructions, a quote or two, our accounting software and several PDFs open at any given moment - and often more than that and I'm switching rapidly between them. To facilitate this I have three 4K 28" monitors and a fast graphics card. It would be really awkward to do what I do on a single 15" laptop screen and I'm not particularly unusual. Literally every office worker in my company has at least a dual monitor setup with a desktop because that maximizes productivity. I see a lot of companies and individuals reflexively going to laptops when they actually are giving up significant workflow efficiency for portability they only occasionally or never really need.
I believe you can get Lenovo laptops pre-installed with Linux: https://support.lenovo.com/us/...
I've had very good luck with running Ubuntu on my Lenovo laptops in the past. Had a bit of issue with a wifi driver I got past and a few years back the Nvidia drivers weren't great for Ubuntu but that seems better. Lately though I've been running Ubuntu in a virtual machine as I have too many programs I need Windows for (ex my college uses google drive, which can work in Ubuntu but I only got it to work extremely poorly).
Lenovo's history with spyware and back doors is a concern, but I suspect people are watching Lenovo and similar companies a lot closer than they are watching for simple internet downloaded spyware these days (http://www.itpro.co.uk/desktop-hardware/29396/lenovo-settles-superfish-spyware-lawsuit-for-35m). And other companies like HP and Sony have been found to install Spyware too, so I think Lenovo is just the one being talked about, possibly not even the worst.
My primary reason for Lenovo has been the physical layout of the laptops. I have been able to easily take apart most any Thinkpad and upgrade the hardware. Tore apart my Lenovo the first day as I couldn't find the second hard drive it was supposed to come with... it was there, I just didn't notice it wasn't enabled in drive management. I even swapped out the HD for an SSD in my Thinkpad flex which is less easy to tear apart being a convertible laptop but still better than most manufacturers.
If it's your case that a rental car costs less than depreciation and wear and tear on an owned vehicle then there must be a lot of bankrupt car rental agencies out there.
For occasional use a rental car does cost less to YOU than a vehicle you own because you don't have to amortize the entire purchase price (and insurance and maintenance) of the car over those miles. It's a step function and you share the costs. If you own a car for 200,000km then owning the car is clearly cheaper on a per mile basis. If I drive for 200 miles renting the car is clearly cheaper on a per mile basis. If you rent a car a few times per year then it is cheaper to not own it because you are sharing the capital and maintenance costs with other people. Nobody is making the claim that rental car companies aren't recouping the cost of the car.
Meh, using multiple applications with a single screen is largely a matter of preference.
Not really. I've equipped my staff with multiple monitors and it really does make a substantial performance boost in most cases unless you have a fairly linear workflow that doesn't involve a lot of need to look at more than one thing at a time. It's been my experience that most office workers strongly benefit from having multiple screens.
I don't just work with multiple applications, I work in multiple virtual machine desktops.
That might be appropriate for your work flow but you cannot generalize that to everyone else's work flow. My day job is actually studying this sort of stuff (I'm an industrial engineer) including ergonomics and work flow and virtual desktops are a good thing but generally speaking multiple monitors (space permitting) is better for more people. That's not to say there aren't cases where a virtual desktop is a great choice - just that such use cases are less common in circumstances where multiple monitors are a realistic option. And you can use virtual desktops with multiple monitors as well - they aren't incompatible options even though doing so is uncommon.
There is a thing called 'virtual desktops' that mostly makes up for being on a single screen.
I've used them more than a little and in general having a larger or multiple screens is almost always preferable when it's a viable option. Virtual desktops is a workaround to capture some/much of the value of having multiple monitors on a single screen but in general it is clearly less efficient except in cases where you are restricted by other constraints to a single screen.