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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.
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.
I hate Trump but reading your whining in every post makes me want to vote for him just to spite you.
Smartphones and pills (I mean tablets) are nice toys, but suck for even basic web surfing and emailing. Writing an email on a touch screen vs a real keyboard makes me want to toss the device out of a window.
Tablet + keyboard? Sure. But at that point it's a laptop by another name.
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.
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
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.
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.
The average user does NOT play games. The average user surfs the Net and does a little word processing and that's about it. This quest for "more power" is irrelevant to most users. The user who actually plays games pays attention to the specs and doesn't try to run them on a wimpy thin laptop.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
The thing is, 99% of the CPU is idling even when running an IDE or Excel. So much so even a complex worksheet may take longer to open on a thin and light laptop, but in general, Excel or the IDE can crunch while I'm thinking about my next move.
It's important for the app to open fast and display what it knows. Recalculate in the background because by the time I navigate around to find what I want, the CPU is probably done with the calculating and macros and all that.
I love myself a beefy laptop, but while it's nice and powerful and runs everything I threw at it, it wasn't the best. Carrying it around was such a pain it was easier to just leave it at my desk. Traveling with it mean having to plan beforehand how I was going to carry it - its heft and weight made for real issues. And forget about using it enroute.
Today's modern processors mean it's Good Enough. It may not crank out the FPS as much, but eGPUs help, and it means when move about, I can carry my thin and light laptop with me - it slips in my bag and it's not that much heavier with the heft of other stuff. I can take it out and use it when I need to - granted, it's not got the graphical power so I can't play heavy games, but I can do plenty of other stuff with it. I can even code using an IDE with it. Getting decent battery life (something my laptop battlestation never had - the battery was more of a UPS than anything) is a bonus.
Granted, it's not for everybody - there are people who need to run 3D applications, Photoshop and other things that need raw power on the go and would need a huge heavy laptop. I just found while it was great, it was also more limiting. Turned out for me, I needed less a luggable, and more a portable.
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.
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Sport and racing games in particularly are ridiculously popular. Normal people play plenty of games - it's just that the typical platform of choice is their smart phone.
Gaming isn't the only reason you'd want a 'beefier' laptop though. I ended up needing to buy a laptop to get some 3d work/editing done on the go - it came down to an expensive under-spec'd ultra thin, a chunkier gaming laptop with 'passable' specs, or an insanely expensive "workstation" with a mobile quadro in it.
I ended up getting a gaming laptop - I was surprised to find opening the thing was as simple as undoing a single scew and using a shim to pop some plastic latches and I was in. 32 GB of ram and a 500GB M2 SSD later I had a laptop that hit most of my needs - still need to tinker with bios settings to get it to recognize the original HDD.
The laptop out of the box ran like garbage - between the slow 2.5" HDD, the small memory (how is 4GB still typical today?) and the crapware every Laptop vendor shoves on their machines the thing was barely functional unless I let it sit for an hour or two after booting. The upgrades and a fresh install of windows fixed these things - but I can't imagine how I'd ever be able to do these fixes on a 'super thin' laptop, by design they're so densely packed and everything is so custom fit that more often than not there are NO sockets for you to upgrade things, everything is soldered or glued in place! You'd be lucky if you could even swap the hard drive out. Not that a bit of solder would deter anyone with the mind to do it - but your average Joe or Jane doesn't stand a chance.
The main draw I see to these thin laptops for manufacturers, is that being so hard if not impossible to upgrade you're forced to upgrade sooner rather than later.