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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.
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.
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.
The performance would be EVEN better if you did a lot of things. Building a laptop is all about compromise. The author has no clue about what that takes and just assumes everything can always be "better".
Perhaps laptop vendors think it's a better idea to put in a throttled fast processor than a full-speed slower processor.
Throwing a hissy-fit over a single datapoint without any realistic discussion of what the options are is, as I said, drivel.
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.
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.
Power users utilize all sorts of applications that are extremely CPU / GPU intensive that aren't necessarily games.
The list of applications that I use daily where horsepower is vastly preferable over slim & sexy:
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Lightroom
Blender
Capture One Pro
Rhino
Zbrush
Keyshot
I'm typically using a desktop to run the aforementioned applications when I'm at home. When on the road, however, I carry a beefy laptop that is neither thin nor light. It weighs in at nearly thirteen pounds and has dimensions of 17"w x 12.7"d x 2"h. Most current configurations of the laptop fits an Intel i9-8950HK, 32GB Ram and an Nvidia 1080 GPU.
Not light, not thin, not even quiet. Definitely not cheap.
( as a bonus, if you wish it to, it will run the hell out of just about any game you throw at it )
But horsepower it has, which is what I want, so I'm willing to sacrifice light and thin to get it.
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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