[HN Gopher] Pangolin - Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Rade...
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Pangolin - Mobile AMD laptop with Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics
Author : bananicorn
Score : 365 points
Date : 2021-03-16 15:15 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (system76.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (system76.com)
| lupire wrote:
| What's the price difference to comparable hardware from other
| vendors (and other OSes)?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Someone on here yesterday suggested a Lenovo Slim 7, which
| seems broadly comparable, this review covers a few other
| similar models https://www.theverge.com/21423498/lenovo-
| ideapad-slim-7-2020....
|
| Note, I'm in UK "slim 7" here is used by Lenovo for a "Yoga"
| model whilst the poster mentioned an "IdeaPad". I assumed that
| as I searched for the latter and got the former that they must
| be different regional names. But, no. They're very different
| with very similar model names. Lenovo seem to do this a lot and
| it's very annoying.
| ptcampbell wrote:
| I like System 76 and I use Pop OS on a desktop PC. I don't know
| how else to say this but crikey, these machines are ugly.
|
| Edit: I expect to be downvoted, and this is just my unhelpful,
| subjective opinion. But the font on those keys looks like one
| you'd get from a 90s shareware kit of 100 free fonts.
| stakkur wrote:
| I really like System76, and what they're trying to do. But their
| mediocre laptop keyboards are always the deal breaker for me--
| it's the chief human interface, and the one component I don't
| want to compromise on.
| bogwog wrote:
| > and what they're trying to do
|
| What is it that they're trying to do? Sell re-branded Sager
| laptops?
| bbpp wrote:
| I have a Darter Pro 2019 and I also have two ThinkPads (T490
| and W510) and I can say the Darter Pro is not half bad. The
| layout is "different" but not bad once you get used to it. The
| feel is pretty good. Not as good as the W510 but comparable to
| the T490. Even the trackpad on the Darter Pro is smooth.
|
| I agree with the overall sentiment though that it's time for a
| premium-designer-made-for-linux-laptop!
| Sosh101 wrote:
| Yeah it's telling that on the specs page, the keyboard doesn't
| even get a mention.
| paulcarroty wrote:
| Is this laptop designed by System76 or yet another Clevo re-
| brand?
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Honestly why do I need to spend so much money on a Linux laptop?
| I have my inspiron with 11th generation i3 and an 8gb of RAM,
| rocking both Linux Mint and Zorin with 0 problems.
|
| Oh, and Pop OS runs great too!
| GNU_James wrote:
| How is this ad not banned on the spot?
| glsdfgkjsklfj wrote:
| Supporting system76, librem, etc was once about investing in
| support for linux....
|
| Yet those companies provide zero contributions, rebadge open
| source projects, and just re-sell taiwanese white-label computers
| while going great lengths to hide that and fake innovation.
|
| if pcpartpicker.com adds a single checkbox to their searchs: "[ ]
| support in mainline linux kernel", it would make more good to
| linux support than all those companies combined.
|
| Also, barrel charger plugs? ugh.
| mattl wrote:
| I like my System76 desktop but I've had plenty of issues with
| their laptops, and I really dislike a numpad on a laptop.
| sgc wrote:
| I love my numpad.
| aendruk wrote:
| Try putting it under the home row with a modifier key. I
| won't go back.
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NBBq9vHufU9a6d59irhR.
| ..
| loop0 wrote:
| Yes! If someone from system76 is listening to this thread,
| please, make a version without the numpad! That would be the
| case for me to buy one of these, but with a numpad it is a no.
| opan wrote:
| Seconding the numpad thing. I wish laptops would come with
| something like a 50% ortholinear mechanical keyboard in them.
| dkersten wrote:
| > I really dislike a numpad on a laptop.
|
| Was going to say the same.
|
| Also, I will not buy a 1080p laptop. We're in 2021, give me 4K
| or at least 1440p or I'm not interested.
|
| I also personally prefer 13" laptops for travel convenience.
| (Not that its a concern _right now_ , but I assume one day it
| will be again!)
| Karunamon wrote:
| I question whether 4K on the average laptop screen size is
| worth the added load on the GPU (and so, lowered everyday
| performance and battery longevity). On big screens, sure, but
| at 13 inches? At that point you're stretching the limits of
| perceptibility, and given the other compromises you're
| already making to have a laptop instead of a desktop, it
| seems like a doubly silly one to add.
| dkersten wrote:
| Well, my current laptop, a Dell XPS 13 has a resolution of
| 3840x2400 and its great! Yes, my normal use, I have things
| scaled/zoomed but for watching videos, its fantastic.
|
| For normal use, 1440p is fine, but 1080p is too low for me.
| 4K is probably not necessary if its only used to watch
| videos. I probably should have flipped it and said: _" give
| me 1440p, or even 4K"_
|
| Although one area where I find higher resolution is
| beneficial code editors, if I have enough pixels that I can
| have 3 vertical splits and have the text still look crisp,
| that really helps my development workflow.
|
| On a 15" and above though, I wouldn't go lower than 4K
| personally.
| simias wrote:
| given the size of the unit it makes sense to have a numpad, no?
| What would you put instead?
| bdefore wrote:
| i'd prefer wider more forgiving typing targets of the keys i
| use
| loop0 wrote:
| You put nothing, why do you assume if there is space it needs
| to be more keys in there? I bet they can even improve the
| structural rigidity by not having the numpad.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Most offices don't allow people to put pictures or personal
| effects on their hotel desks anymore so perhaps one could
| have a little LCD panel there displaying pictures of one's
| loved ones, or the cat not eating salad.
| Sosh101 wrote:
| Just put the keyboard in the centre, there's no rule that you
| need to make use of the whole surface.
| wheels wrote:
| I don't like having my hands off-center. I assume I'm not
| alone there. Among other things, it causes amplified wrist
| pain.
| mrweasel wrote:
| You're not alone. Why anyone would prefer an off center
| keyboard only to gain a numpad I'll never know.
|
| Being left handed makes the numpad even dumber. It's placed
| on the wrong side of the keyboard.
| yellowapple wrote:
| I'm left-handed and I'll take a built-in numpad any day.
| I punch in enough long numbers day-to-day to really enjoy
| having it, even if it's on the "wrong" side of the
| keyboard (and so it is with virtually every other
| keyboard out there with a built-in numpad).
|
| I also already normally type with my keyboard slightly
| off-center on my desktop, so an asymmetrical laptop
| keyboard ain't really all that big of a deal. Even if I
| didn't, and insisted on a perfectly-centered typing
| experience, having an off-center screen is something that
| I've yet to actually really notice.
| geophile wrote:
| I have a 2-yeard old Darter Pro, which has an Intel CPU. Love it,
| great laptop.
|
| Can someone comment on the pros and cons of the Ryzen CPU?
| Wondering how to compare the new machine to the Intel-based
| System76 laptops.
| wffurr wrote:
| Yikes that keyboard. Small right-shift key, weird narrow numpad,
| off-center trackpad.
|
| Do people actually like that kind of layout? It seems pretty
| awful to me. I'd prefer no numpad at all and a full size shift
| key with half-height arrow keys.
|
| If I want a numpad, that's what desktop keyboards are for, or a
| USB numpad.
| marshray wrote:
| I have a laptop with that basically that exact same keyboard.
| It's not too bad. In practice, I find the flush surface hidden
| mouse buttons to be more problematic. I would never want a
| numeric keypad on a laptop, but apparently it's a selling
| feature and it's near impossible to find a larger-screen laptop
| without one.
|
| I find whether minor things like the off-center trackpad bug me
| tends to reflect more about my current state of mind than
| anything else.
| bityard wrote:
| For the last 20 years, "has a numpad" has been one my
| qualifying criteria for buying a laptop. I need a numpad,
| because I type long-ish numbers into my computer all the time.
| IP addresses, phone numbers, and simple arithmetic problems are
| probably my top three uses. If I had to suffer with only a
| number row on a day-to-day basis, I'm sure I'd have some kind
| of RSI by now. The number row is too far away from the home
| keys to be of more than occasional use.
| mdoliwa wrote:
| How does it compare to Lenovo Thinkpad L15? As I understand there
| is no problem with running latest Linux on it, and currently I'm
| thinking about buying it (mostly Rails development + docker). Do
| you recommend any other machine?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I don't understand the appeal for System76. It seems grossly
| overpriced. Is it simply because they install Linux for you? You
| can find the same processor with much better specs for cheaper on
| Amazon or Costco.
| pnathan wrote:
| It is all set up and chosen to work out of the box. I have a
| limited number of hours in my life, and figuring out the right
| combination of hardware to run a Linux box correctly is not
| something I'm going to bother spending them on.
| danbolt wrote:
| I certainly paid a bit extra for my Thelio, but it's incredibly
| cute on my desk (in a NeXTcube kind of way) and I didn't have
| to worry about finding the right permutation of parts to get
| everything up and running.
|
| I'm sure I likely could have purchased and assembled the
| components myself and found a more spartan case and all that,
| but it felt a bit like Christmas using it for the first while.
| bluGill wrote:
| With system 76 you get not just the processor, but also the
| other parts. You know System 76 didn't change network
| interfaces to something new with no linux drivers mid stream.
| Or Wifi, USB chipset, some BIOS, or one of the many other non-
| processor parts that manufacture change all the time. If there
| are drivers the substitution doesn't matter to anyone, but
| often there are no linux drivers for 3-6 months (best case -
| meaning that it isn't hard to write the driver, in the worst
| case linux will never get a driver).
|
| Note that for the above substitutions there often is no part
| number change so you have no way of knowing if the
| amazon/costco model will work even if it works for someone
| else.
| mcguire wrote:
| Pro-tip from an ex-university sysadmin: beware getting
| consumer-grade machines, and never, ever, get them if you are
| buying in bulk. The specs will probably all be similar, but
| the individual parts will be whatever was in the bin when the
| chassis came down the line, which means whatever was cheapest
| that day. Even if you get lucky and have drivers for
| everything, supporting 10 machines with 10 different
| configurations is 10 times harder than supporting hundreds of
| machines with one configuration.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Costco list the model and the manufacturer provides all the
| information about the chips on their website. If you're
| running a distro with a 2 year old kernel then you may have
| issues, but I run Arch so it works flawless. I just got a
| Ryzen 4600 on Costco for $429 and everything works great.
| officeplant wrote:
| Not everyone runs Arch or a distro with anywhere near the
| newest kernel. Not everyone feels like digging for posts
| online that show what wifi/ethernet/etc chipset a laptop is
| using so they know beforehand whether or not its going to
| be a pain in a more LTS minded distro.
|
| System76 is there for those people.
| shmerl wrote:
| _> Video Ports HDMI(w /HDCP)_
|
| Would be really nice to use a proper modern DP instead of
| antiquated HDMI for this.
|
| Is it using Coreboot by the way?
| jandrese wrote:
| HDMI is less hassle. Everything comes with a HDMI port these
| days, but a DP port is still more of a proper full Computer
| Monitor(tm) feature. My work just installed a whole bunch of
| projectors that have HDMI and VGA as input options. I have no
| idea where they found them.
|
| Of course sometimes the HDMI fails due to DRM nonsense, so
| that's also an issue.
| baybal2 wrote:
| A lot of hardware these days just convert DP to HDMI
| internally for ease of engineering.
| shmerl wrote:
| I think HDMI only exists because HDMI cartel keeps pushing it
| for patents profits. There is no real need for it because DP
| is much better. But since they make HDMI only equipment, we
| are still stuck with it.
|
| And personally, I had a lot of problems with HDMI in the
| past. Unlike with DP.
| jandrese wrote:
| Theoretically some DRM content should refuse to play at
| full resolution on DP connected displays due to the lack of
| DRM on the cable. I've never tested this myself, but you
| often see requirements for things like Blu-Ray players that
| you have to be running a late model Intel chip, on a
| supported motherboard, on Windows 10, over HDMI to a
| supported monitor. Get anything wrong and you've got a 720p
| picture or a black box.
|
| Edit: Behold this list of requirements. https://www.reddit.
| com/r/htpc/wiki/faq#wiki_what_do_i_need_f...
| shmerl wrote:
| I'm quite averse to DRM in general. For blurays there
| should be libaacs with keydb.
|
| DP should support HDCP as far as I know, if you need it.
|
| Seriously, HDMI should just disappear already but that
| corrupt cartel will keep it around for years.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I feel like battery life could be a challenge too, at 49 Wh. The
| M1 Macbooks have a 58 Wh battery, but they also benefit from
| being not-x86 and having better power management at the OS level.
| Dell XPS laptops with discrete graphics ship 97 Wh.
| tlhunter wrote:
| I love non-4k displays, but 1080p on a 15" is too harsh. 1440p
| would probably be the cutoff for that size.
|
| It seems that most developers (their target audience?) love hidpi
| which may be one of the biggest adoption issues for System 76.
| tristor wrote:
| I want to love this, but the keyboard seems horrible. I know I'm
| exceptionally picky when it comes to keyboards, I usually just
| take a 60% mechanical keyboard with me, but I've been able to
| adjust to using the (non-crappy years) Macbook Pro keyboard and
| the Thinkpad keyboards while traveling, and generally find them
| acceptable. This keyboard though has really bad legends, an
| inexplicable numpad, and it takes up too much real estate when
| I'd rather have a trackpoint and a larger touchpad.
|
| Also, the screen resolution and size seems odd. I'm okay with a
| 1080P screen... but not at nearly 16". This should be offered
| with a 3K or 4K screen only.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > 60% mechanical keyboard
|
| What's that?
| tristor wrote:
| The article on the Deskthority wiki probably explains it
| best: https://deskthority.net/wiki/60%25
|
| It's essentially a keyboard lacking function keys, a
| numerical pad, and a navigation cluster. Usually has between
| 61 and 68 keys, and contains an extra "function" key that
| acts beyond the typical Fn key to help you control layers.
| Every 60% doesn't have layers, but most do, and those layers
| are generally programmable. These days pretty much all of
| them use QMK or VIA firmware.
|
| The Deskthority article for some reason mentions the Minila
| which is actually a 65% keyboard (which is a 60% + arrow
| keys).
| ur-whale wrote:
| I've never bought a laptop without a numpad and would never
| even consider a laptop that doesn't have one.
|
| There are tons of apps, specifically in the video editing / 3D
| modeling space that are basically unusable without one.
|
| When I code, I have macros tied to numpad keys. Couldn't work
| without them.
|
| If all you do is browse the web and answer email on your
| laptop, then yeah, makes sense.
|
| For any serious work, no numpad = no buy.
| mvanaltvorst wrote:
| Do you really feel like you would be constrained by the
| amount of shortcuts on a keyboard without a numpad? There are
| so many different combinations you can make once you include
| control/alt/fn etc. Sure, if you're used to shortcuts on a
| numpad I can see how it might hinder your productivity for a
| few weeks. However, working on a smaller keyboard will
| definitely not constrain the amount of flexibility you have
| in the long term once you get used to other shortcuts. You
| might even become more productive on a smaller keyboard,
| because it takes less effort to stay on the home row and find
| keys.
| tristor wrote:
| I probably feel differently, because I'm used to using
| shortcuts and macros on a TKL (or smaller) keyboard. There
| are many different ways to achieve that, but for instance on
| my 60% mechanical keyboards I have between 3 and 14 layers
| (depending on keyboard firmware) which can be accessed with
| modifiers and trigger macros. There are significantly more
| combinations available to me on a 60% keyboard or on a laptop
| keyboard, with appropriate tooling, than is available on a
| numpad.
|
| I've been doing "serious work" for my entire career, thanks,
| although these days I do spend more time in Zoom meetings and
| writing emails/documents.
| [deleted]
| vngzs wrote:
| I'd buy one if they had high DPI panels. Even 16:10 would be a
| significant improvement; 1080 vertical pixels feels awfully
| cramped these days.
| rychco wrote:
| I previously bought a Thelio desktop from System76 and it was
| great. I ended up upgrading and basically took all the parts from
| it except motherboard and cpu. I still use PopOS as my daily
| driver and have no reason to ever switch to anything else.
| Drivers always work and updates are painless. Major version
| upgrades are always smooth. I haven't had any external hardware
| compatibility issues (though to be fair this isn't just PopOS,
| but Linux in general improving). I'm a huge fan of PopOS.
| okennedy wrote:
| +1 It might be a bit pricy, but the tech support is amazing.
|
| I just spent a few weeks working with them to debug a transient
| kernel panic with my new Thelio. Throughout the entire process,
| I talked to support techs with actual agency, and not just
| automata reading a script. Serious kudos to System76.
|
| (The problem ultimately turned out to be a clearly labeled
| experimental feature I'd turned on a few months earlier and
| forgotten about. Ooops...)
|
| The Thelio is my daily driver, and PopOS just fades into the
| background.
| mbackson wrote:
| You're welcome guys. I'd been considering whether to wait for one
| of these or buy something else.
|
| After just putting in an order for a Darter Pro, of course this
| immediately becomes available!
| kevinherron wrote:
| Too bad it has that numpad instead of a centered keyboard.
|
| Also I don't understand why a laptop of that size doesn't have a
| 99Wh battery.
|
| The 1080p resolution is understandable... high DPI support suck-
| fest can be avoided.
| albertTJames wrote:
| This name triggers some deep and still ongoing trauma
| nisa wrote:
| looks like the aura 15 from tuxedo computers / schenker but a
| little bit more expensive?
| https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note...
| azangru wrote:
| Also, with a smaller battery.
| danielyaa5 wrote:
| Just don't let randy near it
| rplnt wrote:
| 10MB of unnecessary large (2560x3842) PNGs on a product page.
| It's not a gallery, it just makes it slow to load.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| Just picked up a Thinkpad P14s with the 4750u (8 core 16 threads)
| for about $600 using corporateperks.com discount. Spent another
| $250 for 1tb m.2 and 32gb ram upgrade. The value is tremendous.
| sinistersnare wrote:
| Why aren't there any bold laptop manufacturers? This is a 2021
| laptop that uses USB-A primarily, a meh panel, and no particular
| standout design features. Why do I have to get a mac if I want
| actually good design?
|
| System76 should take a risk and truly make an interesting laptop.
| leaving the standard, boring design to the big name companies.
| cashewchoo wrote:
| I think it's a combination of:
|
| * extremely, extremely thin margins
|
| * in general, users are pretty low-discretion, which makes it
| hard to meaningfully differentiate your product
|
| * deeply entrenched competition (what % of laptops are sold at
| best buy/etc?)
|
| * the users who are high-discretion are going to be extremely
| demanding users. They're going to nitpick over small details in
| both hardware and software. And they're probably going to be
| installing their own OS (or at least reinstalling the existing
| one) and will generally be more demanding of both product
| design and support. Also, they probably have the tech skills to
| correctly point the finger at you when it's your fault. Whereas
| less discerning users might just go "Ugh bill gates!"
|
| Doesn't help that the "linux laptop" niche was probably a big
| part of this "niche laptop" market segment and Dell and Lenovo
| are both kinda warming back up to that niche. e.g. the newest
| XPS's all work great on (latest kernel) linux.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Thinkpad X and T series laptops are excellent machines. They're
| all in the process of getting at least a 2k display, 11th gen
| intel chips (or amd in the case of T and X13), etc etc
| s_dev wrote:
| I would imagine part of the explanation is that Apple is a
| trillion dollar company and System76 is a million dollar
| company.
| screye wrote:
| I don't know what laptops you are looking at ?
|
| The XPS 13 competes directly with the mac in terms of (familiar
| but) industrial design, standout display and inner design (with
| the white carbon fiber) and USB-C ports for a lifetime. Stating
| it first, because its the most obvious competitor.
|
| The Razer, Asus, HP and Surface flagships have clear standout
| designs and similar features.
|
| The only 2 laptops that are purposely boring are the Thinkpad
| and System76, because they seem to cater to people who need
| them as work machines, first and foremost. (LG Gram is not a
| flagship)
| [deleted]
| Wohlf wrote:
| If you want something like a Mac there are plenty of options.
| Off the top of my head there's Lenovo Yoga, Dell XPS, and
| Microsoft Surface.
| nobleach wrote:
| I've grown to love my Dell XPS (with Linux). It definitely
| has some rough edges. Dell shipped what I consider a faulty
| machine. The trackpad is wobbly/bouncy. I had a tech come out
| to replace it, but he ended up having to send it to "the
| depot" due to a screw being sheared. I hadn't touched the
| screw. The depot returned it to me with a missing/broken case
| LED, unplugged speakers and one WiFi antenna that won't seat.
| Even still, the machine is beautiful. Even the fingerprint
| reader works in Linux. I use the heck out of it and battery
| life is quite good. Also, I upgraded my RAM to 32G and my SSD
| to 512G. This thing also has another M.2 slot just in case I
| want to put another SSD into it.
| zucker42 wrote:
| System76 doesn't design their own laptop hardware, as far as I
| know.
| modernerd wrote:
| They plan to one day: https://www.linux-
| magazine.com/Online/News/System76-To-Desig...
| baybal2 wrote:
| And that's the reason.
|
| OEM are very risk averse. They only produce cookie cutter
| designs because most of their buyers themselves look for most
| casual buyers.
| monocasa wrote:
| My Huawei Matebook Pro is most of what I wanted in that space.
| 3000x2000 screen, USB-A on one side and C on the other, all day
| battery, nvme instead of soldered in SSD.
|
| Still has soldered in RAM, unfortunately.
| birktj wrote:
| My xiaomi notebook looks a bit like a mac clone and as 2x USB-C
| ports and 2x USB-A ports. It is not without its problems, but
| if you want a reasonably priced laptop that looks like a mac I
| would say it is a pretty good choice.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| I'd have to disagree. I bought the Mibook Pro a few years ago
| after it seemed to get quite good reviews, but it is an
| absolutely miserable machine to use
|
| The iGPU has a hard-locked 64MB of RAM allocated to it, which
| means the Nvidia graphics chip is ALWAYS on, causing it to
| get maybe 2~ hours of battery life at best
|
| The build quality is miserable, I ended up replacing all of
| the screws in the machine to make it more properly sturdy
| (which also fixed the case flex causing the fans to grind to
| a halt if you nudged the machine too harshly)
|
| Linux support still isn't 100%. The Nvidia blob doesn't
| support GPU switching for what ever reason and Nouveau just
| causes kernel oopses
|
| After suffering with it for so many years I finally bought an
| "MSI Modern 14" Ryzen laptop, which I'm moderately content
| with. I'll probably send the Mibook off to some people I know
| that work at Red Hat so they can at least improve its Linux
| support for those who still have it though
| llampx wrote:
| What is so bold about the MacBook design in 2021?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Not a "fan" of Macs but a fanless laptop without having to
| get 5 year old performance in return and the touch bar is
| still very rare outside Apple devices.
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| Aren't the current rumors/expectations that they are
| dropping the touch bar?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Hopefully. The fact it's never migrated to any other
| project outside the 'Pro' laptops seems to point to an
| obvious conclusion.
| Closi wrote:
| That it's exclusively a Pro feature?
| lupire wrote:
| Fanless performance is a microchip innovation not a bold
| laptop design.
| nrp wrote:
| It's fairly expensive to develop and pay for tooling on an
| entirely new notebook. It's relatively inexpensive to start
| with a whitelabel design from Clevo or Tongfang instead and
| leverage the existing tooling and validation work.
| simias wrote:
| Apple can design custom everything and has the economy of scale
| to justify it. The PC space is also more competitive, Apple
| managed to associate their brand with luxury and charge a huge
| premium for their hardware, a laptop with equivalent specs
| would struggle massively to sell at the same price when you
| could purchase similarly powerful laptops for half the cost
| that would run the same software.
|
| At this point Apple can design any gimmicky piece of hardware,
| stick their logo on it, sell it for three times the price of
| equivalent third party products and still run out of stock on
| launch. You can't beat that.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It wasn't always the case. Also, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. have
| more than enough economy of scale.
|
| $1000 for the M1 air is not a huge premium. It's actually
| very cheap.
| fwip wrote:
| I don't think $1000 can be called "very cheap" when the
| median laptop price is around $650, and you can get basic
| Windows laptops for under $300.
| taneliv wrote:
| Yet $1000 is cheaper than some phones from the same
| manufacturer. Which is, of course, an apples and oranges
| (pardon the pun) comparison. But boggles my mind,
| nevertheless.
| simias wrote:
| It's been the case for a while though, and I know for a
| fact that Dell offers form factors very similar to
| MacBooks. But even then, the market is a lot more
| fragmented when Apple offers a full ecosystem of devices.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > It's actually very cheap.
|
| Which is a huge problem for the competition. I know that I
| can get just get a cheap Mac and it will still be fast, it
| will still have a great screen and the build quality will
| be higher than the majority of PC laptops.
|
| I happen to like macOS, so it's not a huge issue, but if I
| want to get a laptop for Linux, then I need to go to a
| store to see the models. Otherwise I can't be sure if I'll
| like the screen, keyboard or overall look an feel. The
| minor price difference for an Apple product is acceptable,
| given that I know what I'll getting a usable laptop
| regardless of which model I pick.
| jolux wrote:
| The Mac markup is not 100%.
| simias wrote:
| It depends on the products, for some of them I'm fairly
| sure it's well beyond that (their new headphones come to
| mind). For their macbooks you're almost certainly right
| though.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Yeah. I've said it before, if you do a like-for-like
| comparison (of notebooks, I've found this to be less true
| on their desktops) then their prices are often in line with
| other manufacturers. Every time I've bought a MBP (2007,
| 2009, 2012, 2017) I've done a comparison with non-Apple
| laptops and found that a spec-for-spec equivalent from most
| manufacturers is going to be roughly equivalent in price to
| Apple's (usually a range of about $300-400 on the prices,
| Apple being near the top but not always the top).
|
| Now, if you spec out their Mac Pro, especially as it gets
| updated so infrequently, those get very out of line with
| competitor hardware quickly.
| coder543 wrote:
| For SSD upgrade prices, it is actually more than a 100%
| markup compared to _retail prices_ for the _most premium_
| Samsung PCIe SSDs on the market. Apple 's markup is
| multiple hundreds of percent compared to mid-range PCIe
| SSDs on the market.
|
| Retail prices already include higher profit margins than
| bulk order prices would include, which makes this markup
| even more egregious.
|
| I calculated it the other day, and Apple is charging
| $0.52/GB for SSDs on their M1 MacBook Air.
|
| Samsung's 980 Pro is under $0.20/GB for the 1TB model on
| Amazon right now. That is arguably one of the best SSDs on
| the market right now, and I'm fairly sure Samsung' 980 Pro
| is actually significantly better than the internal SSD that
| Apple is using on the M1 MacBook Air.
|
| That means Apple is charging a _160% markup_ above retail
| price, minimum.
|
| The Western Digital SN550 1TB PCIe SSD is priced at about
| $0.10/GB at retail on Amazon, which means Apple is charging
| _over a 400% markup_ relative to the retail prices of that
| perfectly good SSD. _Most_ users would not be able to tell
| the difference between the SN550 and the internal SSDs
| Apple is currently using.
|
| I recognize that other OEMs can sometimes charge steep
| upgrade markups too... but Apple's prices for storage are
| personally annoying to me because the M1 MacBook Air seems
| reasonably priced until you get into the upgrades. I wanted
| to get more storage, but I'm not going to pay $0.52/GB for
| additional storage these days... I just don't find it
| reasonable.
| jolux wrote:
| I'm talking about computers here though, not parts. Spec
| for spec, is an Apple computer really 2x more expensive?
| coder543 wrote:
| Certainly. Computers are made of parts. Apple charges
| egregious prices for upgrades, some companies don't.
| System76 is the focus of this whole discussion, and they
| charge extremely reasonable prices for SSD upgrades...
| not hundreds of percent markups.
|
| Since we're on the topic of System76, a fully upgraded
| Oryx Pro (except leaving the GPU at the base option)
| costs about half of what a fully upgraded 16" MBP costs
| (also leaving the GPU at the base option), while offering
| similar specs -- $3158 vs $6000. The System76 chooses to
| go for a 144Hz panel instead of a HiDPI panel, but
| different people value different things. The System76
| obviously has a better port selection (for most people),
| while obviously not being as sleek -- but it's not huge
| either, it's reasonably thin and light. It's more durable
| while not as shiny. It's easy for people to pull out the
| "no true Scotsman" defense at this point, but it all
| depends on what the customer is looking for. It's Apple's
| fault if they don't offer enough variety to meet the
| needs of their customers.
|
| I'm sure I could dig into comparative analysis of other
| OEMs vs Apple and come up with other examples, but this
| one is easy enough.
|
| Spec for spec, Apple charges much more than twice as much
| for many important upgrades... so a sufficiently upgraded
| Apple laptop can be more than twice as much, even if it's
| often "only" a 70% markup or something. That doesn't
| excuse charging egregious prices for storage. Customers
| want storage, and Apple withholds it unless customers
| want to pay a large ransom. They solder the SSDs so that
| customers cannot upgrade their own computers.
|
| I own an M1 MacBook Air. I'm not some "Apple hater", but
| their upgrade pricing is truly appalling, and for all
| their talk of environmental friendliness, their attempts
| to thwart aftermarket repair and upgrades significantly
| hinders the total potential lifetime of their products,
| which increases their environmental impact relative to
| what could be.
|
| I bought the 256GB/16GB model, and that 256GB SSD is
| borderline too small for me to deal with, and I'm not
| even like an average user that would be attempting to
| store music and pictures on it. I'm almost exclusively
| using it for software dev and web browsing. I would swap
| out the SSD, but... that's obviously not possible.
|
| If I can't make the 256GB of storage work long term, I
| think I would rather sell this thing and buy something
| else than give Apple $0.52/GB. The M1 is good... but it's
| not priceless. My opinions are subject to change, of
| course.
| goldcd wrote:
| Indeed. Just looking at the M1 Air (which I am quite
| tempted by).
|
| $999 Starting Price. _tempting_
|
| +$249 +265Gb SSD (and a 8th GPU core)
|
| +$200 +8Gb RAM (to a reasonable 16Gb)
|
| +$200 +512Gb (to a nice 1Tb)
|
| So that's $649 for a 768Gigs of SSD, 8 Gigs of RAM (and a
| GPU core). Cost of 1Tb gen-4 and a stick of RAM is about
| $200
| postalrat wrote:
| The fact that paying those inflated prices after the
| initial purchase isn't an option is already enough to
| turn me away from buying any of them (or even the laptop
| itself).
| dgellow wrote:
| Microsoft experimented with bold ideas with their surface
| series. They have fantastic displays (3:2, 4K, multi touch),
| keyboards, and touchpads. But they have the same issues as
| Apple's devices, you cannot open the machine and change
| components, and the I/O are a bit limited (USB 3, SD, USB-C,
| propriety port for charging).
| vinay427 wrote:
| System76 is probably one of the least bold laptop manufacturers
| because they can't afford to be. As other comments have noted,
| much of their hardware are largely rebadged devices from other
| manufacturers such as Clevo, because the main selling point of
| System76 appears to be the software experience and hardware
| integration.
|
| If you want great design that matches a Mac (overall, better in
| some areas, worse in others), look at the flagship ThinkPad
| models, Microsoft Surface devices, etc. There are many laptops
| that have "standout design features" such as convertible
| designs, novel display and input options including pen-and-
| touch, etc. If anything, I think Macs lag behind in these
| innovations, although they have other benefits.
| gnufied wrote:
| hmm - aren't there Eluktronics laptops
| (https://www.eluktronics.com/laptops/) which also uses some
| rebraded chasis for newest Ryzen laptops? Even if you are
| forced to use rebranded chasis - i think there are better
| options out there. The pangolin model looks pretty meh tbh.
| hojjat12000 wrote:
| I couldn't find any laptops with the new Ryzen mobile on
| this website.
| kube-system wrote:
| I bought an innovative new convertible tablet from HP in
| 2008. I now appreciate Apple's hesitancy to implement
| innovative designs before they're ready for prime-time.
| Sometimes, quality of execution is more innovative than the
| concept.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I still have a vintage 2010 HP TouchSmart tm2 sitting
| around. It was certainly an early execution of the
| convertible idea, and I appreciate it for that. Doesn't
| stop me from also appreciating my modern Surface Book 2 and
| Dell XPS 13, though.
|
| Anyway, that's basically the creation myth of the iPhone,
| no? That it supposedly was basically iterated on for quite
| a few years before the technology got to the point where a
| high-quality execution was allowed. I also had Windows
| Mobile smartphones and remember the iPhone releasing. I
| didn't recognize or appreciate that difference then.
| kube-system wrote:
| I also had WM phones at the time of the iPhone release.
| Most WM users at the time, myself included, were power-
| users who criticized the iPhone for a lack of features
| and never actually bought one. I couldn't install my
| network scanning app, connect to exchange, or even
| copy/paste with the iPhone, so what was the point?
|
| Turns out I was entirely wrong: Apple wasn't positioning
| this phone for IT/business professionals for corporate
| use. They were building a consumer product. The feature
| set they were prioritizing was entirely counter-intuitive
| from my perspective. The features that I thought were
| gimmicks at the time ended up being the features that
| made it successful: natural multi-touch input, a (then)
| gigantic screen, and a bare-bones UI/UX. It had nothing
| that I wanted or needed, but it had everything that they
| needed to open up the market to millions of people who
| weren't using HTC bricks on their Verizon corporate plan
| that their IT admin configured for them.
|
| Just search "windows mobile" on YouTube and look back at
| the awful (but feature filled!) experiences we used to
| think was awesome. For example:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXDgsZvSTP8
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > This is a 2021 laptop that uses USB-A primarily
|
| Seems like the reasonable choice, given that host-side USB-C is
| still dead in the water.
| minhazm wrote:
| Reminds me of this medium post [1]. Apple might make it look
| easy but all those little things they do are really difficult
| and require massive scale to get at a reasonable cost.
|
| [1] https://beneinstein.medium.com/no-you-cant-manufacture-
| that-...
| fnord77 wrote:
| I don't understand why many of these workstation-class laptops
| have num. pads.
|
| It is so annoying to type with your hands off-center from the
| screen.
| Taniwha wrote:
| To me a num pad is a waste of space, but my Dell M6800 with a
| 3rd mouse button on the trackpad - wonderful luxury!
| ur-whale wrote:
| If you were a blender user, you would understand.
| echelon wrote:
| They're optimizing for the professional accounting Olympics use
| case.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I don't understand why many workstation-class laptops DONT have
| a num pads.
|
| It is so annoying to have to type long sequences of digits
| without one.
| rattray wrote:
| This debate makes me wonder what it'd be like to have a
| keyboard layout in which the num pad is in the _middle_ of
| the keyboard, such that on a qwerty keyboard Q-T, A-G, Z-V
| are on one side and Y-P, H-L, B-M on another, with the
| numbers in the middle (separated by a buffer space).
|
| I know this sounds crazy, but IME the worst part of keyboard
| ergonomics on mac laptops is that my hands are much closer
| together than my shoulders are; widening to shoulder width
| makes for much more comfortable typing.
|
| I'm sure nobody will crazy enough to build a laptop like
| this, but it makes me wonder...
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I agree you probably won't find this in a laptop ever,
| thanks to the standard keyboard design still being stuck
| with strange quirks, some of which were already outdated in
| the era of actual typewriters.
|
| That said if you're a numpad user a keyboard with centered
| numpad is pretty much the best concept other than the
| rabbit hole of custom ergonomic keyboard layouts. Either
| way you can only get into that realm with a lot of money
| unfortunately.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Nice idea. Keyboard design is stuck in typewriter era and
| my shoulders and wrists could use an ergonomics upgrade.
| There's nice split keyboards, but the price is steep (~300
| euros vs my current sub 10 euro keyboard).
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I've been typing on a ~60eur let's split for the better
| part of a year now. Made myself some nice armrests out of
| scrps of locust. My more expensive keyboards don't hold a
| candle to it imo
| rattray wrote:
| By "scrps of locust" do you mean scraps of Robinia
| pseudoacacia (black locust) wood?
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Get an mnt reform and build your own :D Or just invest the
| few bucks to go for an mvp: split 60% keyboard and a
| separate numpad simply stuck between the two splits. If you
| like it, build it properly. :D
| rattray wrote:
| I already use a separate keyboard for each hand when I'm
| at my desk (external magic keyboard for left hand, right
| hand on laptop, with the unused half of the external
| keyboard underneath my propped-up laptop). Works great!
|
| I don't usually do a lot of numerical stuff so rarely
| need the number pad... it'd just be nice to have a wider
| laptop keyboard when I'm roaming about (though tbf I'm
| not sure I'd want a laptop that large...)
| gmac wrote:
| Perhaps because you can buy a separate numpad if you want
| one, and then have the best of both worlds: both a numpad and
| a centered keyboard?
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| I don't want to have to assemble my laptop in parts. Why
| not the webcam and the mouse and the speakers while we're
| at it.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Assembly shouldn't be required (could be pre-configured
| from factory) but I don't see any reason why the top deck
| of a laptop couldn't be modular so the same model could
| support a more MacBook-like config with a centered
| keyboard + trackpad with no numpad and larger speakers
| _OR_ an off-center keyboard and trackpad with numpad and
| smaller speakers.
|
| Actually, thinking about it, it strikes me as slightly
| absurd that this isn't an option on at least a few
| mainstream laptops.
| azangru wrote:
| > Why not the webcam and the mouse and the speakers while
| we're at it.
|
| Given the reportedly awful quality of webcams and
| especially speakers on those Clevo laptops, you might be
| on to something...
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| Perhaps, one can just buy a mouse and have the best of both
| worlds?
| echelon wrote:
| Do numbers constitute even 5% of your keyboard usage time?
| detritus wrote:
| Outside of typing out emails or schpiels, yes. If I
| discount Ctrl, Alt & Shift - probably significantly more
| than 5%.
| i80and wrote:
| Depends on what you're doing: any kind of 3D work requires
| a numpad to be effective, since that's typically where
| camera controls are bound in every workflow I've seen.
| spijdar wrote:
| I'll say I personally can't use numpads, and they're
| total wasted space for me, so I try to avoid them on my
| keyboards and laptops, especially because they put the
| keyboard off-center on said laptops.
|
| However, I think there are use cases and people who
| prefer using them. Some software is really geared around
| the full cluster being there. I've got a full size,
| numpad-ed keyboard (some old stock DEC thing that went to
| a mid 90s alphastation I believe, I got it for dirt
| cheap) attached to my "windows gaming machine", and I use
| the numpad on a few shortcut-heavy games.
|
| Otherwise, though, I just don't have any muscle memory
| for it. I have to look and hunt/peck for keys on a
| numpad. I'm mostly using bash and vim for work, though...
| detritus wrote:
| I did work experience for a week for my IT course when I
| was about 15 in the offices of a petroleum-selling
| company. I spent a day or two in the accounts department
| absolutely amazed by the ~50 year old lady who was
| showing me how she input numeral data into the old green-
| screen workstation, fingers flying over the numpad
| inputting quantities and prices. As someone who even then
| felt I was 'good' with computers, I was stunned and
| thought I'd never get to that level.
|
| Now I feel crippled whenever I'm on my laptop, which
| doesn't have a numpad, my own fingers flailing uselessly
| over numbers that whilst in mind are not available to my
| right hand.
|
| I should probably get one of those external numpad USB
| things, but I much prefer a whinge.
| lumenwrites wrote:
| This only applies to Blender. No other 3D software that I
| know of requires numpad hotkeys. I've been using
| Maya/Houdini/zBrush for years, never touched the numpad,
| that feels too awkward. If numpad keybindings in these
| apps do exist - I never knew about them, never needed to,
| never will.
|
| (because left hand is on the keyboard, and right hand is
| on the mouse or stylus, and putting down the mouse to
| reach for a numpad is just weird.)
|
| Doing it with the laptop would be even worse, I imagine.
| krsdcbl wrote:
| Same goes for Cinema4D, wouldn't know of any numpad
| shortcuts
| coldtea wrote:
| To some professions, they do.
|
| This includes a surprising variety, from accountants and
| POS, to 3D modelling artists...
| JediPig wrote:
| go split / layer keyboard, and you will change your mind. I
| will never go back to a num pad, cause it would mean the loss
| of layers and a 60% TKL.
|
| Until you experience it, you will not have the experience.
|
| Either UHK v2 or Dygma Raise. Both are great.
| scns wrote:
| The NEO2 layout has the numpad on another layer under the
| right hand, no numpad needed.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I don't understand why most developers that work in a
| stationary location use underpowered/thermally-constrained
| laptops rather than a desktop machine.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Because I work in multiple stationary locations. Even during
| pandemic.
|
| If I really wanted to work on desktop I'd need to buy a car
| and bother with transporting it few times a week, or I'd need
| to buy multiple desktops and move only external SSD.
|
| And in that case it would be a luxury, but I'd still want a
| laptop for occasional work and entertainment from couch.
| dmos62 wrote:
| I was wondering that about myself for a while. Upgraded from
| a laptop to a desktop and it's awesome. The ease of
| maintainability (and upgradability) and ergonomics of not
| having a laptop on the table are awesome. Plus it's much
| cheaper.
| ansible wrote:
| Six years ago, I searched long and hard for a 15.6in screen
| laptop with a SSD and _no_ numeric keypad. HP had just come out
| with the first of their Omen series of gaming laptops.
|
| I've sort of regretted the decision. Not the keypad part, I
| still hate those, but there are other little aspects to the
| laptop I still don't like, or didn't work quite right.
|
| I don't know, I guess I shouldn't really complain. For all the
| expense, the 16G of RAM and SSD are holding up well after this
| time. The programmable gaming keys didn't work quite right for
| my purposes (I just wanted dedicated PgUp / PgDown, Home and
| End, with the shift and Ctrl variants), and the battery life is
| crap these days (glued in). It still mostly works though.
| joshuaengler wrote:
| Ever try using Blender without one? You absolutely need the
| numpad for 3D programs and game engines, otherwise it's
| outright painful.
| loop0 wrote:
| You can always add a usb numpad, but you can never remove one
| that is already there.
| willis936 wrote:
| True. Why do they sell laptops with screen built in?
| aquadrop wrote:
| They do sell them without built in screens too - Mac Mini
| for example.
| azangru wrote:
| They don't call them laptops though.
| echelon wrote:
| Because all laptop users make use of the screen.
| coldtea wrote:
| A large number of laptop users just use them on the
| desktop, tethered to a big screen, in clamshell mode.
| This includes almost every vlogger setup one can find...
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Except the primary design goal of a laptop remains
| portability to some extent. And not having a screen would
| make it an incomplete device.
| p1necone wrote:
| Surely this is just due to a lack of knowledge? If you're
| never going to use the portability, then you can get a
| much more powerful desktop than a laptop given the same
| amount of money.
|
| Having a built in UPS is pretty sweet for some use cases
| though.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Surely this is just due to a lack of knowledge? If you
| 're never going to use the portability, then you can get
| a much more powerful desktop than a laptop given the same
| amount of money._
|
| They can also just like having the option of portability,
| and appreciate the less bulk. Plus, they do use it once
| in a blue moon outside (at a conference, traveling, etc).
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I use it like that 80-90% of the time, but the on the
| rest I just use it purely as laptop on the couch. I like
| to have both options.
| elihu wrote:
| A long time ago I used to own a laptop that I bought from
| a friend after someone stepped on it and broke the
| screen. I removed the screen and installed some version
| of Linux on it.
|
| It turned out to be quite fun and useful. Not a very good
| laptop if you want to use it where you don't have a
| screen, but it was kind of like a modern TRS-80. You
| could treat it like a keyboard and not have the laptop
| screen get in the way of the larger desktop monitor (back
| then it probably would have been a CRT) I actually wanted
| to use. In a sense it was actually less awkward than a
| normal laptop for the way I usually wanted to use it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Lots of people don't care.
|
| It can be important to keep the trackpad close to centered on
| the keyboard for easily use of both, but the screen not
| aligning by a couple inches is purely aesthetic.
| brianolson wrote:
| I have their 13-ish/14-ish laptop from 2017, 3200x1600 display.
| It's great. Damn shame they don't have anything high-dpi now. 15"
| 1920x1080 is unacceptable. 1920x1080 is the new 1366x768.
| thefz wrote:
| I am avid for System76 direct user experience. How's the
| machine-OS integration going on so far?
|
| An I agree that 1080 now is a 13-14'' display resolution only
| nowadays.
| piokoch wrote:
| Is this system better than, say, Lenovo Legion 5 or HP Envy, they
| have similar price, are those System76 laptop offer better build
| quality, etc?
| samstave wrote:
| I have owned multiple S76 machines - the machine was built by
| Clio? The guts were good, but the case was chintsy.
|
| I had four of these laptops - and on ALL 4 they would have
| screws come loose and fall out inside the case. You could hear
| it rattling around when you turned the machine. Two of them had
| one type of connector for the screen and the other two had a
| different connector - One got fried and on the other I broke
| the screen on - so I couldn't harvest parts from one to the
| other.
|
| S76 wanted $90 for a new charger after one of mine failed.
|
| I have an HP Omen laptop as my primary machine now - here is
| what is cool:
|
| I had an HP Omen and it failed to power on one day - so I
| contacted support and they had me send them the machine -
| instead of fixing it, they sent me a brand new Omen which was
| way better than the failed unit. The design is super elegant,
| and it has dual NVME slots, so I have dual drives in it.
|
| The screen is matte so no glossy reflections like my macbooks
| have...
|
| Yeah - I think I'll stick with Omens for the foreseeable
| future. HP's support was FANTASTIC.
|
| When my macbook pro caught fire in my sleep and nearly killed
| me (it was laying on my bed and I fell asleep watching a movie
| and the machine caught fire - something that that model was
| recalled for) I took it to Apple's main store in San Francisco
| - and they kept it for two months "analyzing it" then came back
| and told me that even though it was a safety issue and the
| machine was under recall for CATCHING FIRE, they found that one
| of my moisture sensors had been triggered and therefore, they
| were not going to replace, fix or help me.
|
| (I had spilled a small bit of water on the keyboard many month
| prior to the machine catching fire)
|
| Then they tried to sell me a new machine, or have them "replace
| the machine for $1,500"
|
| A total joke. Ill never buy another apple machine nor a s76
| machine again.
|
| HP support is AMAZING.
|
| Also - When HP bought Compaq - we had a bunch of Compaq/HP
| servers back in 1998 - and the support back then on those
| servers was top notch - and the HW design was as well. I used
| to rebuild those servers in minutes in the literal dark.
|
| All the Sun servers we had, like the 650s would bitch if their
| case was even slightly off center and would refuse to boot.
| easton wrote:
| > HP support is AMAZING.
|
| Can anyone else back this up? Has HP changed? I've sworn off
| HP products (both enterprise and consumer) because of their
| terrible customer service and documentation. Dell/Lenovo
| always offer something very similar in price and performance,
| and their enterprise support is fine to great.
| glsdfgkjsklfj wrote:
| Yes it is amazing, EVEN for the lower end E series.
|
| I bought one, and didn't like the keyboard. Send to a
| relative overseas. Months later the Mobo died a few weeks
| under warranty. Called HP and told i was overseas. They
| provided a local support number. ship by local post.
| upgraded new mobo. no charge.
|
| This was a non-business $300ish laptop.
|
| sadly, their shopping experience is abysmal like every
| other PC manufacturer :(
| samstave wrote:
| I might have just hit the HP Support Jackpot. But it was
| hands down the best experience I have had between machine
| manufacturers - HP/Sun/S76/Dell/Apple etc...
|
| I was completely dumbfounded when HP just said "we are
| going to send you a new machine, at no cost, please pick
| from this list...
|
| And I picked this dope Omen machine and when I opened it up
| to look at the guts and put in a second SSD, I was taken
| aback by the elegant symmetry of the design. The only
| downside is that even though the sound is "bang & olufsen"
| - its a bit too quiet.
|
| However, the support guy on my case was dope, and I love
| this machine
| mcguire wrote:
| As a counter-anecdote:
|
| I'm typing this on a 7 or 8 year old s76 Gazelle. It was my
| primary work and personal machine for 3 or 4 years and has
| been my primary personal machine since. I did replace the
| original drive with an SSD, and I think I may need to replace
| the fans---they're getting loud. Hardware- and build-quality-
| wise, I've never had any problems. (Well, ok, I killed one of
| the USB ports. Probably broke some of the connections.)
|
| The one problem I have had is with the NVidia graphics, which
| have never worked properly. (I've got graphics acceleration
| disabled now.) Either it wouldn't go to sleep, or the
| graphics wouldn't wake up. The last straw was when I got
| those problems beaten into a standstill, and Chrome started
| somehow overriding my window manager and keeping the
| (accelerated) Chrome window front and center, minus WM
| decorations.
|
| Sure, it's a generic Clio or something, but I've been very
| impressed. Never had much love for HP, though.
| robotbikes wrote:
| I had good experiences with System76 support. I've bought 2
| laptops off of eBay and had no problem getting support even
| though I wasn't the original owner since the original owner
| bought the 2 year support package. If I had a loose screw I
| would have removed the case and found it. They're reasonably
| able to diy and your warrant isn't voided just because you
| replaced the RAM. Apple support has gotten horrible based
| upon anecdotal experiences friends and family have had. The
| build quality isn't the greatest but having everything work
| well under Linux and be supported is a good thing. I gifted
| my Oryx Pro to my step-kid who uses it to play games etc.
| Linux battery/power management has never been great as this
| isn't the focus of most kernel developers and there is a lot
| of microcode optimizations that might be possible.
| samstave wrote:
| I opened them up. I spoke to S76 support and they charged
| me $9 for a new screw kit...
|
| I am quite familiar with breaking down/working on all types
| of machines...
|
| they had lock-tight paint on the screws, which didnt work.
|
| and the sad thing was that the connector type between the
| two broken machines had changed, even though they were the
| same model "Gazelle" - they are also a super pain in the
| ass to work on. The screen connector requires you to
| basically dismantle the entire machine...
|
| Obviously this machine was a white-label Clio machine, and
| S76 has more recently started designing their own machines
| (supposedly - so I dont know how much of that design is in-
| house vs them spec'ing things out to other design
| services...
| glglwty wrote:
| I get system76's coreboot offering looks interesting because
| there aren't many vendors shipping that feature. What's the
| appeal of their other products though?
| diragon wrote:
| How are they keyboards in System76 laptops? By the pictures it
| does not look very good.
| jarcane wrote:
| Would like to see more specifics than just "AMD Radeon Graphics".
|
| That could mean literally anything from Intel integrated level
| performance, to a proper dedicated GPU, though for the price here
| I'm guessing on the former ...
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| See benchmarks here:
| https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Ryzen+7+4700U...
| legohead wrote:
| basically: not great
|
| I don't want to advertise, so I'll just say - you can go to a
| big computer/hardware seller website and search for laptops
| with nvidia graphics cards. You can get a laptop with a GTX
| 1650 for $700, which has 3x the performance.
| officeplant wrote:
| And then we have to deal with nvidia's proprietary drivers,
| HDMI being electrically connected to the gpu, graphics
| switching, etc.
|
| AMD's APU graphics offer a good enough solution while
| removing the headaches many of us are trying to avoid.
| jarcane wrote:
| Not if you want 3d graphics it's not.
| tyingq wrote:
| The graphics appear to come from the processor, either a Ryzen
| 4500u (6 gpu cores @1500Mhz) or Ryzen 4700u (7 gpu cores
| @1600Mhz).
| neogodless wrote:
| https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-7-4700u
|
| Vega 7 @1600Mhz
|
| You are unlikely to see dedicated graphics paired with a
| U-series processor in most cases. (There are exceptions, but
| you'll see the dedicated graphics card specified in those
| cases.)
| snicker7 wrote:
| Is there a way to get an accidental protection plan on these
| machines? I would love to support Linux HW vendors, but I am very
| clumsy.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Add it to your home insurance? Buy a separate policy?
| mturilin wrote:
| I just can understand people creating non HiDPI displays in 2021.
| It's just beyond me that someone is making laptops with display
| much worse than my 2012 MBP Retina.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I just can understand people creating non HiDPI displays in
| 2021.
|
| Because they still sell.
|
| Back around 2 decades ago, we had a funny thing in Russia where
| people demanded 640x480 monitors back, and even bought, and
| sold them on premium because new 1024x768 monitors "make
| everything so tiny!"
| av8avenger wrote:
| Totally agree with you. I use my MBP mostly on native
| resolution if my screen gets really crowded and on the other
| hand it's nice when you're doing creative work and can switch
| to a downscaled image with so much more "smoothness" and
| details. I like the specs of this Pangolin notebook, but as
| soon as i saw 1080p i was gone.
| dmos62 wrote:
| I've no use for a hidpi display. I've a use for lower power
| usage though. If I don't care about power usage, I'll be using
| a desktop anyway. Plus the price is probably pretty different.
| I know decent external budget 4k monitors are non existant.
| Naac wrote:
| It doesn't look like there is a Thunderbolt port ( a 40 GBPS port
| ). I recall reading that it has something to do with it working
| on Intel only hardware.
|
| But whatever the case is, lack of Thunderbolt is unfortunately a
| deal breaker. I've moved on to unifying all my docks and power
| chords to only be Thunderbolt. It's unfortunate because the Ryzen
| chipsets are clearly getting to be superior from a
| price/performance point of view.
|
| EDIT: I am writing this as someone who supports System76, and has
| only ran Linux professionally and at home for the last 10 years.
| neogodless wrote:
| Thunderbolt aka USB 4 (I think?) can be added to AMD systems
| but so far I've only seen one AMD desktop motherboard introduce
| this option. So far it doesn't look good for 2021... maybe next
| year?!
| andoriyu wrote:
| It's complicated. Thunderbolt 1/2/3 were all open-ish, but
| required intel's chip. Which was alright at the time - AMD
| didn't have anything competitive in mid to high-end market
| anyway. Thunderbolt 3 later became royalty-free, but with
| mandatory certification by intel.
|
| Around January 2020 vendors are able to make their own
| controllers and submit them for certification. AMD doesn't have
| any. Intel's controllers don't have an embedded version for
| sale.
| fefe23 wrote:
| Thunderbold is generally not available on AMD systems.
|
| Several reasons.
|
| a) Intel wants licensing cash for allowing you to use it
|
| b) It does not actually add that much to USB. You want to
| attach monitors? Non-Thunderbolt USB can do that. You want to
| attach storage? Non-Thunderbolt USB can do that. Networking?
| Charge your device? USB can do all that.
|
| The remaining selling point of Thunderbolt is that you can
| attach an external graphics card over it. There are external
| USB graphics solutions, too, but they can't really compete if
| you plan to do high perf 3d graphics over it.
|
| However this selling point is also the Achilles heel of
| Thunderbold. It exposes PCIe to devices outside the device,
| allowing direct memory access over it. This can be partially
| mitigated if the OS and all drivers cooperate and are really
| well written (for example not expose a memory page that
| contains other stuff as well).
|
| But bottom line? I actually view this as an AMD advantage. It's
| a bit like Firewire was. a) it cost licensing money and b) it
| introduced a similar security issue while c) not actually
| delivering that much of an advantage over USB unless you are
| part of a certain niche.
| Naac wrote:
| Thunderbolt may not matter so much for desktop, but it
| definitely does for laptops.
|
| Like the other comment mentioned, _docks_.
|
| Yes you can theoretically accomplish everything with other
| ports, but I don't want to feel like I'm disconnecting my
| laptop from life support every time I move around. 1 Wire for
| Power + 10+ peripherals is awesome, and I can't go back.
| techrat wrote:
| >1 Wire for Power + 10+ peripherals is awesome, and I can't
| go back.
|
| This can still be done with non-TB USB-C. Including power
| and video.
| domano wrote:
| Not if you use 4k or even more.. DisplayLink compression
| sometimes gets so bad that you can measure it in seconds
| per frame.
| techrat wrote:
| USB C alt mode over DP isn't DisplayLink, does 4k and is
| published by VESA.
|
| https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-
| us/000141328/displaypo...
| dijit wrote:
| I believe, based on my own experiences, that you're
| mistaken here.
|
| MacOS has a nice feature that shows you in the device
| tree what the thunderbolt connection speed is, for my
| eGPU it shows as '2x' which is 20GBps, and that's running
| an eGPU with 2x 4k displays.
|
| For work, I run a 4k panel from Lenovo[0] that has a
| USB-C in and while that's a 60Hz screen, it does not show
| any signs of input lag or artifacting.
|
| [0]: https://www.lenovo.com/il/en/monitors/p27u
| neogodless wrote:
| In my opinion, though I don't actually have this option, the
| killer use case for Thunderbolt (or USB 4) is sufficient
| bandwidth and a large aftermarket for...
|
| Docks.
|
| Now, I had a thin 'n' light with just 2 USB-C ports, and I
| could get a dock/adapter that had power delivery, HDMI,
| Ethernet and a couple USB-A/USB-C ports. But for high-refresh
| rate monitors, a proper dock will want a _lot_ of bandwidth.
| Without that bandwidth, you 'll have to pick your compromise
| on the dock.
| tjoff wrote:
| Seems more sensible to me to base everything off of usb-c
| instead.
| aendruk wrote:
| Thunderbolt uses USB-C since ~2015.
| tjoff wrote:
| Point still stands.
| SpaceNugget wrote:
| No it doesn't.
|
| USB Type-C is a connector shape, used by both USB and
| Thunderbolt. So people saying they want thunderbolt and
| you saying they should want USB Type-C doesn't make much
| sense.
|
| Imagine someone in 2001 saying they are disappointed with
| new computers being released without USB 2.0 (i.e. still
| using USB 1.1), and you replying that things should be
| based on Type-A. Both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 used Type-A
| connectors. The shape is unrelated to the
| protocol/speed/etc.
| tjoff wrote:
| I think it was obvious beyond any reasonable doubt that I
| meant USB over USB-C.
| Grazester wrote:
| The lack of Thunderbold has nothing to do with Intel.
| Apparently AMD has not supplied hardware partners with any
| reference designs implementing it. If you do it then it would
| be up to you to come up with your own design implementation.
| There is one desktop Ryzen board that supports Thunderbolt
| p1mrx wrote:
| I don't think I'd buy a laptop in 2021 without USB-C PD charging.
| Happpy wrote:
| I'd love to replace my thinkpad. But I need/want things that seem
| unavailable.
|
| * trackpoint + buttons (can be without touchpad, disabled anyway)
| * full keyboard * strong durable * removable battery * 4k screen
| * ecc 64-128gb * rj45 * lots of ports * hardware switches to
| disable: networking, camera, mic,..
|
| Thinkpad's are move farther away each year. I hope some company
| will fill the gap.
| astorgard wrote:
| I'm on the same boat as you: my ideal laptop would be an
| x220/x230 on the outside with a 1440p display and a modern CPU
| on the inside.
|
| I can't understand why Thinkpads are moving away from this
| _absolutely perfect_ design in the name of... slickness?
|
| Why are laptops with a minimal (or non-existing) touchpad so
| difficult to find? Once you start using the trackpoint your
| wrists feel incredibly relaxed at all times.
|
| Why do so few vendors offer RJ45 ports? When in the lab, I find
| my self needing one almost daily.
|
| Why this trend of including keyboards with shorter and shorter
| travel distance?
|
| There was a campaign to bring attention to all these details a
| few years ago which (surprisingly!) resulted in Lenovo
| releasing the "Thinkpad 25 anniversary edition" [1] which
| ticked most (but not all) of my boxes and which is
| unfortunately no longer available.
|
| Do people really prefer the new design trends? Am I out of
| touch with reality?
|
| [1]
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus/laptops/thinkpad/think...
| numpad0 wrote:
| Likelihood of people actually using products they buy is
| overestimated, I think.
|
| Lots of games on Steam has achievements for extremely simple
| tasks, such as _launching the game for the first time_ or
| _playing it for five minutes_ , and popularity of those is
| typically around 82.5% and 75% respectively among audiences
| for most popular titles.
|
| IOW, 17.5% of PC game enthusiasts pay for a game and
| immediately put it on a shelf and don't even double click on
| the icon. 25% reaches past the loading screen. Of all
| purchasers, maybe 10% reaches the final boss or end of the
| storyline. Potentially less.
|
| A person who has issues with a mainstream laptop for its lack
| of an Ethernet port few years into ownership, who knows how
| many of those exist in the whole world?
| astorgard wrote:
| I would like to think that there are *dozens* of us!
|
| At least, many people in HN and most people in /r/thinkpad
| seem to agree! :)
| criddell wrote:
| Have you looked at the P series laptops?
|
| > Why do so few vendors offer RJ45 ports?
|
| I'm guessing that because laptops are portable machines,
| almost nobody ever uses the network port and if you need one,
| you can use an adapter with the USB port.
| astorgard wrote:
| > Have you looked at the P series laptops?
|
| They come close in number of ports and battery life *but*
| they still have an excessively big touchpad, don't have a
| 13 inch version and start at 1.7 kilos (which makes them
| less than ideal for carrying around).
|
| But I agree they are the very nice machines and we keep a
| bunch of them in the lab.
| yoz-y wrote:
| I think there is definitely space to at least offer some SKUs
| with all that, albeit at a high markup (kinda like the Mac
| Pro).
|
| However I think that yes, most people (including me) prefer
| the new to the old. Eg.: I dislike full keyboards because it
| shifts my hands to a side and moves the mouse further away. I
| tried track points but I find touchpads superior. I don't
| need an RJ45 because even if I wanted to use it, I'd much
| rather have it on a USB-C dongle with pass through power, so
| I only have one cable to disconnect when moving around. And
| call me crazy, even though I use a mechanical external
| keyboard most of the time, I actually like typing on the
| butterfly keyboard more than on other laptop keyboards I have
| and had.
| pedrocr wrote:
| The X1 nano is the same width and height as a X220 but half
| the thickness and significantly lighter. The X13 is very
| close to that too on the lower end. What would you change in
| those?
|
| Having been a user of the old X lines throughout the years
| the current X/T and X1 lines seem like a definite improvement
| to me. And I also use the trackpoint exclusively.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Have been using an X1 Nano for a few weeks now and so far
| it's been quite nice. Light as a feather, decent
| keyboard/trackpoint/trackpad, reasonably battery life, and
| the 16:10 screen ratio works so much better on this size
| than 16:9.
|
| Feels quite well built despite the low weight, too. It
| doesn't sacrifice on solidness to achieve its weight.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| The X1 Nano seems like a great buy. I think I will hold
| out for 9th gen X1 Carbons to drop in price, however,
| because I want to bump up the RAM to 32gb and keep the
| laptop for a long time, lessen the chance of my workloads
| outgrowing the machine. Or I will wait for the T series
| to get the 11th gen Intel chips and 16:10 screen
|
| Plus the extra battery life in the Carbon. But the X1
| Nano beats my 2020 intel macbook air in battery life from
| the benchmarks I've seen, which could be longer I have
| not found lacking
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Yeah I made the same consideration. Carbon G9 has some
| distinct advantages but I needed the laptop sooner than
| later (who knows how long it'll take the G9 to come down
| to reasonable prices in the current environment) so I
| went ahead and bought the Nano.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Yeah given a time constraint I would make the same
| decision easily.
| astorgard wrote:
| I own both the x230 and the x395 (which is, externally,
| almost the same as the x13) and I can definitely feel a
| difference when typing on the much more comfortable x230.
|
| It's mainly due to two factors: 1) thanks to having a very
| small touchpad, the keyboard is closer to the edge and I
| feel much less strain on the lower part of the arm, near my
| wrists, which becomes more apparent after long coding
| sessions; and 2) the key travel is much longer and typing
| feels "better" (I make far less mistakes).
|
| Also, because the x395 is almost half the thickness, they
| could not fit a bigger battery (which is definitely my main
| complaint on these newer machines).
|
| Don't get me wrong, the "X" series is great and I will
| probably get the latest version when I need a replacement
| *but* I'm sad they make these sacrifices in the name of
| "design".
| pengaru wrote:
| The X220 is nowhere near an "absolutely perfect" design, it's
| way too wide. I still use one as my daily driver, but come
| on. The screen bezels are huge, the keyboard stretched to
| fill its wide footprint, and the power plug juts out the back
| where it gets stressed against the floor in any cross-legged,
| or other tilted back usage setting.
|
| The X61s was far closer to an absolutely perfect design, it
| just needed less plastic in the chassis. Things started going
| downhill with the X201s in the transition to wide aspect
| ratio displays, and X220/X230 arrived at full retard on that
| trajectory.
| astorgard wrote:
| You are completely right. The X61s is a better design (I
| happen to own one too!), I completely forgot about it as,
| due to its much slower CPU, I must have put it away
| somewhere in the attic many years ago :)
| sorokod wrote:
| ...slow and 32 bit. Got one too.
| pengaru wrote:
| > ...slow and 32 bit. Got one too.
|
| Slow by modern standards, being pre-Nehalem, yes. But not
| 32-bit, the X61s tops out at a 1.8Ghz c2d L7700, which
| _is_ 64-bit:
|
| https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/3224
| 3/i... Intel(r) Turbo Boost Technology:
| No Intel(r) Hyper-Threading Technology: No
| Intel(r) Virtualization Technology (VT-x): Yes
| Intel(r) 64: Yes Instruction Set: 64-bit
| Enhanced Intel SpeedStep(r) Technology: Yes
| Intel(r) Demand Based Switching: No
| javajosh wrote:
| I honestly love overhearing you discuss your perfect
| computers, because it doesn't seem impossible that you
| might get your wish! One really interesting possibility is
| to recycle the X61s chassis and use modern PCBs, chips, and
| peripherals to get you what you want. Another possibility
| is the creation of a PC ecosystem similar to the "Red
| Camera System" where yes, your m2 module costs $5k instead
| of $500, but it it comes in a machined aluminum module that
| fits perfectly with the rest of your tricked out customized
| laptop.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It's worse than you think: They are somewhat hamstrung in their
| hardware decisions by the current offerings from those
| Apple/Ultrabook chasing OEMs, but in this case they jumped the
| shark entirely and _removed the 2.5 " drive caddy_.
|
| The nearly identical Clevo NL51RU/NL50RU [1] has a 2.5" drive
| caddy but a 36 Wh battery. Take a look at the internal photo of
| the System76 unit at [2]. It's the same laptop. Heck, they
| didn't even bother removing the boss and brass insert for the
| 2.5" drive retaining screw by the left speaker.
|
| System76 is not an OEM, they whitelabel and have tweaks made to
| Clevo/Sager laptops. I think they do a great service to the
| Linux community with PopOS and driver development/compatibility
| to make those into machines where Linux "just works" out of the
| box, don't get me wrong.
|
| This obsession with thin-and-light goes completely counter to
| the whole point of "Our laptops' guts are fully accessible!".
| They say they've got a tactile keyboard, to fit in 20mm thin
| right on top of the heat sink for the high-power Ryzen
| processor and discrete graphics I think I'm pretty safe in
| assuming it's a pathetic <1mm key-travel scissor unit.
|
| 1" thick or more is not too much. You could fit in all the
| ports, as well as an 80 Wh battery, and cooling to run at boost
| frequencies for more than 20ms. You don't have to match the
| dimensions of a Macbook Air and be able to slice tomatoes with
| the wrist rest.
|
| [1]: https://laptopwithlinux.com/wp-content/uploads/Clevo-
| NL51RU-... from https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-
| nl51ru/ [2]:
| https://assets.system76.com/products/pang10/internal.png
| jdmichal wrote:
| I agree with your general sentiment. (He says typing on his
| Dell XPS 13...) But it also seems to me that ditching a drive
| bay to get a bigger battery is the definition of a _design
| decision_ and not in any way jumping the shark.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > 1" thick or more is not too much.
|
| I think it depends a lot on an individual's needs. Like in my
| case, a recent laptop purchasing decision revolved around
| qualities that make a laptop particularly good at being a
| laptop -- that is, high portability, low/no noise, little/no
| heat. Power and ports were a cherry on top because I already
| have another machine that fills those needs.
|
| In that situation, 1" isn't necessarily too thick, but it
| _is_ negatively impacting its functionality as a laptop, if
| only because added thickness implies added weight (especially
| for sizes larger than 13 ").
|
| With that said, ultraportables shouldn't exist at the cost of
| models more oriented toward power and flexibility... they
| should be an option alongside more traditional laptops.
| qudat wrote:
| I've been looking around for a good linux laptop dev machine
| and am starting to resolve around the idea of having multiple
| desktops. It's cheaper with better support for replacing parts
| as well as linux.
|
| The laptop market churns way too much for my liking and I feel
| like the second I move away from my macbook pro (work) I'm
| going to be disappointed with the quality.
|
| When it comes to development, my goal is to be able to ssh into
| my linux box and use that for most development (tmux + vim).
| That plus ZeroTier and I now have access to my dev machine from
| wherever.
|
| Even on large codebases written in Typescript, vim + plugins
| are "good enough."
|
| macbook pro + live inside an ssh terminal seems to be working
| well enough for me.
| COGlory wrote:
| The closest I came was my XPS 15 9560. The build quality and
| hardware was excellent. i5 + GTX 1050 + 8GB RAM + 256 GB NVME
| + Thunderbolt. Linux support was phenomenal, especially on a
| rolling release. After about 18 months of owning it, I
| upgraded the memory to 16GB and storage to 1 TB without any
| problems. Unfortunately, I ran into a few issues trying to
| use it as a work and home machine.
|
| 1) Mixed DPI is insanely bad on Linux, and that issue is
| amplified if you have Nvidia hardware. At least as of last
| month, Wayland and XWayland are basically unusable with
| Nvidia. Since the laptop screen is 4k, but I was using a
| Thunderbolt dock plugged into 2x1080p monitors, I'd have to
| turn off display scaling on the laptop, and, because I was
| stuck on X11 because Nvidia, I'd have to restart the laptop
| for the scaling change to take effect.
|
| 2) There was no Thunderbolt dock support for unlocking full
| disk encryption, so if you wanted FDE, you either had to
| unplug the laptop from the dock, open it, type the password
| and plug it back in every time you turn the laptop on, or
| just not used a Thunderbolt dock. This wouldn't be a big deal
| except I was restarting the laptop frequently when changing
| pretty much any display parameter.
|
| 3) There was no clear best practice for managing switchable
| graphics. There are options like Bumblebee that I never
| really figured out if they were working properly - especially
| for games. Then, Nvidia supposedly added a "primus-run"
| feature to the driver, but again, it seemed to just not work.
| Eventually I settled on "prime-select" but that involves
| rebooting every time you switch.
|
| 4) Selecting the Nvidia graphics disabled on-board audio. I
| had to either use USB or Bluetooth. I never figured this out
| despite countless hours of messing around with alsamixer. My
| best guess is that it was trying to direct everything over
| the HDMI out even though that wasn't plugged in. The Intel
| drivers were loaded, just every time I selected the Nvidia
| chip, the audio devices would disappear.
|
| In the end, I settled on picking up an Acer Aspire
| refurbished from eBay. It has an i5 10400, 12GB RAM, and a
| 512GB SSD. I put a 1050 Ti in it without any problems. The
| total system ran me $500. It's much nicer. So the moral of
| the story is for me, if you do go Linux laptop, avoid Nvidia
| like the plague.
| unionpivo wrote:
| I was/am thinkpad user also. I have migrated to desktops. They
| are cheap enough to have one at the office and one at home.
|
| Sure the above wont work for everybody, but if you are like me,
| you unpacked the laptop at home and at work each day at exactly
| the same space, where all the cables and extra monitors were.
|
| I used to use laptop in coffee shops and outdoors, but nowadays
| between phone, and tablets (wel phone and kindle in my case) I
| almost never feel the need.
|
| Buy silent box, mobo for overclocking and underclock it for
| extra silence, and throw the box under the table.
|
| Still have my laptop, but its mostly just "backup" and in case
| I travel somewhere, but honestly I don't care about it as much
| albertzeyer wrote:
| The downside with this is extra effort to keep them in sync.
| Depending on what you do, syncing can be easy (or even
| trivial if you do everything remote anyway) or more annoying.
| lupire wrote:
| Carrying a disk on your commute is easier than carrying a
| laptop.
| deckard1 wrote:
| Just install Syncthing. And if you have an Android, you can
| even sync photos/notes to and from the device to your
| computers.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Syncthing has been life changing. Very much "set it and
| forget it".
| baybal2 wrote:
| Rsyncing home directory worked for me for 15 years.
| jdhawk wrote:
| cannot say enough good things about unison
|
| https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
| pedrocr wrote:
| With the quality of networks these days it may pay off to
| just have a single beefy desktop at work or home and a very
| simple desktop in the other location that you just use to
| remote in to the first. Keeps the environment consistent over
| time and even allows leaving long running computations
| running and picking them up later. Two remote stations and a
| headless server in a rack somewhere may even be better. No
| worries about noise and cooling.
| belinder wrote:
| What remoting software do you recommend
| kettro wrote:
| Honestly, it depends on what you need, and what your
| platform is. Windows has its Remote Desktop, which works
| fine.
|
| I'm on Linux, and use mosh as a more reliable ssh client.
| d21d3q wrote:
| mosh + tmux
| samstave wrote:
| >>>*laptop at home and at work each day at exactly __the same
| space__, where all the cables and extra monitors were.*
|
| Nope. Actually, just like with my phone chargers, I like to
| have a laptop charger in all the spaces I like to compute.. I
| like to have a charger in my bedroom, my living room and in
| the garage.
|
| I used to have this for all my machines - though I now have a
| new HP Omen (bad ass machine) - but I only have one charger
| for it currently.
|
| I havent touched my ipad in a really long time.
|
| But here is a tip - this super light and super cheep USB
| screen is AMAZING to have with a laptop:
|
| (This thing was $69 when I bought it - but its now $99 but
| still - a USB only monitor is fantastic.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/AOC-e1659Fwu-1366x768-Brightness-3-0-.
| ..
|
| What I do, is I make it the top monitor - and I have this TV
| Tray stand that is at the perfect level for me to have my
| laptop on my lap, a tray or a TV tray, and then I have the
| AOC monitor on this stand and I just move up to click on that
| mon...
|
| And this is dope because during this pandemic, I am trying to
| take every free training I can get my digital hands around.
|
| https://digitaldefynd.com/free-udemy-courses/
|
| So I have the training vid on the top screen and then I can
| use whatever program(s) I need on the laptop...
|
| Blender courses are a good example of how this works great.
| The point is to have the two screens stacked vertically so
| that you only move your eyes up and down and dont have to
| turn your neck...
| trepatudo wrote:
| Exactly what I did. 2 desktops at home and office, sync via
| dotfiles for OS config, documents via Nextcloud and src via
| git.
|
| A laptop (xps 13 9360) for traveling or working in remote
| places.
|
| Even have a yubikey on each desktop and one for travel. All
| storing the ssh keys.
|
| I don't use the laptop for months, open it and update the
| packages and dotfiles before going for a travel and that's
| it. Ready to go.
| e12e wrote:
| > sync via dotfiles for OS config, (...) src via git.
|
| This is something other than just having your dot files in
| git, and system config in git via etc keeper?
| rvanlaar wrote:
| My main reason to go for a laptop was that I wanted to
| continue coding where I left off and not have to worry about
| differing settings and system configuration.
|
| Did you solve those problems? and if so how?
| criddell wrote:
| I do it with Windows by using remote desktop.
|
| If you don't want to do something like that, with a
| Microsoft account a lot of settings can be applied to
| multiple machines.
| rvanlaar wrote:
| I use Linux for application development. Python, C++,
| occasional R and use linux containers as well.
| Ignacy-s wrote:
| 3 machines Syncthing setup between desktop, laptop and a
| cloud instance in case laptop wasn't on to sync and the
| desktop is off for some reason. It takes about 15s from
| connecting the laptop to the internet to having the files
| synced to it. Just need to remember to save files in emacs.
|
| Setting up Syncthing in the cloud was a challenge, had to
| tunnel the web-ui with ssh port forwarding.
| intrasight wrote:
| I too went desktop route. Built what I want - including lots
| of ECC memory. I too have a laptop for backup and travel (and
| a Chromebook used as RDP client).
|
| Sync isn't an issue. All work is on VMs, and they get backed
| up every day to my Synology.
|
| My backup laptop is a 6 year old Thinkpad, which hasn't been
| out of it's bag in over a year.
| kop316 wrote:
| This may interest you:
|
| https://www.xyte.ch/
|
| I have a thinkpad x2100 and it is a great laptop.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this, it looks outright incredible. I love
| my x201, but it's starting to feel a little long in the tooth
| these days... I may end up getting one of these. What's the
| battery life like?
| kop316 wrote:
| I can typically get 4-6 hours with an OEM x201 battery? I
| really don't try to max out the battery though. It really
| depends on your usecase as well, as I don't do anything too
| harsh with it.
|
| I have an x200 as well, so if I was really worried I could
| just carry a spare battery.
| xbar wrote:
| Thank you for this. I look at every System76 announcement
| dreaming of this screen size, this keyboard, this trackpad.
|
| I am glad I am not the only one.
| tootie wrote:
| I would cry tears of joy to get a laptop with mouse buttons.
| Trackpad gestures are a gimmick and so much harder to user than
| buttons. Apple did it to be "bold" and everyone copied them.
| bydo wrote:
| Apple has only ever shipped single-button mice with their
| computers, so turning the whole trackpad into that button on
| their laptops was a pretty simple evolution. Gestures came
| much later.
| spideymans wrote:
| >Trackpad gestures are a gimmick and so much harder to user
| than buttons.
|
| They're not a gimmick if well implemented. Useful gestures
| are very dependant on deep software integration, however.
| deckard1 wrote:
| I moved from Macbook to a ThinkPad (trackpoint+trackpad+mouse
| buttons+trackpad buttons).
|
| I never used gestures. But I _seriously_ miss inertia
| scrolling. You never realize how much a pain in the ass it is
| scrolling web pages until you don 't have it. Firefox has it,
| but you have to turn on an environment variable to get it and
| it feels a bit weird to me. Chrome does not have it all on
| Linux. And the way they are implementing it means that _every
| app_ has to reimplement inertia scrolling on its own. Sigh.
| At least you can hold down the middle mouse and use the
| trackpoint to swiftly scroll.
| Joeri wrote:
| I had the same problem. As lenovo seems set on making thinkpads
| more like macbooks I just embraced it and got the m1 macbook
| air instead of another thinkpad. It's amazing, as long as I
| don't need to repair it.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| Sounds like you want something along the line of what Purism is
| offering. Not sure about ECC ram on a laptop. Haven't seen that
| one yet.
|
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/
| jude- wrote:
| The one thing that stops me from getting a Librem 14 is the
| utterly hateful decision to have a tiny right-shift key _to
| the right of_ the up arrow. Like seriously wtf Purism?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Oddly enough, I almost never hit the right shift key. I
| touch type pretty fast, but the left pinky does a lot of
| work. I suppose it comes from CAD stuff and (let's be
| honest) WASD gaming where my left hand is on the keyboard
| and right hand is on the mouse.
|
| But I totally agree: Input and output to the user
| (keyboard, trackpoint/mouse buttons/touchpad/screen) are of
| critical importance. I can be really effective on a decade-
| old Thinkpad (with the IPS display mod!) and woefully out-
| of-date processor, but if it takes too long to adjust to
| the keyboard I'll be frustrated every time I have to use
| it.
| driverdan wrote:
| Screen is only 1080p
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| For sure, this doesn't meet all of the wishlist specs.
| bondant wrote:
| And is there anything as enduring and resistant as the
| thinkpads?
|
| I accidentally spilled a glass of water on my old thinkpad w,
| and all I had to do was to replace the keyboard (happened
| twice). It also helped that I could find spare part easily
| online. Would it be possible with lesser-know brands? It also
| fell several time on the ground but never broke anything. I'm
| honestly very interested to know if there are laptops as
| durable as thinkpads.
| rurban wrote:
| I've got the Thinkpad E495 with AMD Ryzen 3, Vega and 1TB HD,
| Fedora 32 for under 500EUR.
|
| Excellent machine, faster than anything else I got. But it was
| only a short time test balloon, I fear. Not available anymore.
| merb wrote:
| I still miss thunderbold on the ryzen mobile laptops. I still
| hope that tb4 changes things.
| eingaeKaiy8ujie wrote:
| Do they do anything to neutralize/disable the "AMD Secure
| Technology" thing (if that's even possible)?
| cassepipe wrote:
| Has it an aluminum chassis? The plastic always breaks with time
| Fergusonb wrote:
| I can't speak to the 4700u or the pangolin specifically, but I
| can offer this perspective on PopOS/AMD:
|
| I've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus G14
| (4800hs) as a daily driver and I really like it. (freelance/web)
|
| The battery life is comparable to Windows (on integrated graphics
| mode, it has graphics switching available)at 7-10 hours with 70%
| brightness and balanced power settings using VScode and firefox.
|
| The g14 has a 75wh battery vs the pangolin's 49wh, so I would
| expect less battery life from the pangolin despite the 4700u
| having a lower default tdp, since the 4800hs likes to sit at
| around 6-10 watts when doing non-intensive tasks anyway.
|
| In 2021 I'm not missing any major programs. It's pretty
| incredible how much is cross-platform now.
| indymike wrote:
| Would buy in a heartbeat if it had a 4k display. Hard to go
| back to 1080p after six years of Retina and 4K displays.
| hertzrat wrote:
| I have a 4K display that I run at 1080p because at 4K there
| is lag (dell xps). I suspect the battery life is longer too
| but haven't tested that in years. At 4K you have to scale the
| sizes of things anyway to be able to read them. 1080 seems
| decent to me. 1440p with hardware to back it would be great
| elchief wrote:
| you don't need 4k for retina at that size. 2880x1600 (3k?)
| will do 221 ppi
| the-nozzle wrote:
| I know, eh ? Why is every linux laptop manufacturer insistent
| on using panels that they fished out of a dumpster behind a
| 7-11 ?
| Macha wrote:
| Honestly find it hard to notice much difference in the
| display quality between my 1080p 2018 XPS laptop and my 1800p
| 2019 Mac laptop. Actually the XPS is slightly preferable to
| me because the matte vs glossy finish outweighs the extra
| resolution at that size for me.
|
| I guess that could just be my sight, but the reviews for the
| XPS laptop vs the 4k model of the same were pretty much
| unanimous on the 4k variant being a waste of battery for a
| neglible return on image quality, so it's at least not a
| fringe view
| joshuaengler wrote:
| It could be your sight, or the size of your display. You
| never mentioned how big it was. If it's a monster 18"
| laptop then the difference between 1080 and 4k is a lot
| more significant than if it's a 14" display where you
| almost can't even tell the difference. It's all about
| pixels per inch. I always prefer higher quality pixels as
| opposed to more of them, I don't mind 1080p if it's
| extremely accurate colour and amazing viewing angles, but
| that's just me.
| Macha wrote:
| That's fair. I can notice the difference between 1080p
| and 1440p on my desktop monitors which are 27" (or
| between the 1080p monitor and the 1080p laptop).
|
| Both laptops are 15".
| willis936 wrote:
| I have an XPS 15 from around the same time and the 1080p
| display feels a little poor. What I notice most is the long
| pixel response time. I'd take a 1080p OLED over a 4K LCD
| anyday. I'd also take a 4K OLED over either any day as
| well. High refresh rate and/or backlight strobing would be
| nice to have as well. Battery life isn't as much of a
| concern to me. I know not all users have the same priority
| as me. It's nice that consumers have options.
| bscphil wrote:
| > 1080p OLED
|
| Yep. What's getting lost in this whole discussion over
| resolution and whether >1080p is necessary is the issue
| of panel quality. Most laptops have always had absolute
| shit that is useless for photo editing or color-accurate
| work. Even at the high end they rarely advertise things
| like gamut coverage.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| > could just be my sight
|
| It is
|
| 1080p to 4k is such a large difference
| eertami wrote:
| Really? On a 13" display? I bet in a blind AB test at a
| normal viewing distance you wouldn't even be able to
| accurately tell me which is which.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I would bet money on you being wrong at 2-3 feet away
| bscphil wrote:
| There's no need to bicker about this. A 13 inch display
| at 4K has about 340 pixels per inch along the diagonal.
| At 1080p it would have about 170 pixels per inch.
|
| Perfect vision is usually understood to be the ability to
| discern details of about 1/60 of a degree, or 0.29
| milliradians. By the arc length formula (s=rth), we find
| that the distance needed to precisely align this angle
| with the level of detail provided by a 1080p screen is
| about 20 inches.
|
| In other words, if you sit closer than 20 inches away
| from your screen (perhaps not _that_ unlikely for a
| laptop), you might be able to discern details beyond the
| 1080p level. This would only be possible for extremely
| contrast sensitive small details, like text in a small
| font size at 1:1 (no DPI scaling).
|
| So... it's a bit complicated, but I suspect 1080p would
| be good enough for nearly everyone at 13 inches, but move
| up to 15 inches and I could see many people preferring
| 1440p.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > the XPS is slightly preferable to me because the matte vs
| glossy finish outweighs the extra resolution at that size
| for me.
|
| I have a ThinkPad, and this has been my experience. Sitting
| next to my Macbook Pro 13" retina, there is not much
| difference. 14" 16:9 1080p vs. 13" 16:10 1600p. The matte
| finish + slight diagonal increase closes the gap between
| the two. Unless you're in your 20s with perfect vision, I
| doubt the average person could tell a visual difference
| between the two.
|
| I will also say that at 13", the difference between 16:9
| and 16:10 is practically nonexistent. Especially 14" vs
| 13". I thought this would be a major issue for me. But it's
| not. On a 27" desktop monitor? Sure, that can make a
| difference.
| dabernathy89 wrote:
| I find it weird that non-Mac laptops either come with 1080 or
| 4k display options. Mac displays look incredible, and the 16"
| MBP resolution is 3072 x 1920 - basically 70% of the pixels
| on a 4k monitor.
| dsego wrote:
| I think it's to avoid fractional scaling.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| And the crazy thing about that is that Windows handles
| fractional scaling perfectly, and I hear that Linux
| environments mostly do (but I have no experience), while
| macOS uses an absolutely stupidly bad technique that
| literally makes the higher resolution _worse than having
| a lower resolution screen_ in most cases: rendering at
| the next integer, and scaling down. That way, it's
| impossible to draw pixel-perfectly, and fine detail (like
| text) is _always_ blurry. The mind boggles and I still
| have trouble believing that they actually did this, when
| their grip of their ecosystem made them the OS in the
| best position to do it _right_.
| jmt_ wrote:
| I've had better luck with fractional scaling on Windows
| over Linux. Can be hit or miss if any given Linux
| application will handle fractional scaling well, but the
| desktop environment (KDE Plasma on Ubuntu) does fine with
| it.
| [deleted]
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Indeed as backend developer screen real estate is much more
| important than super accurate colour or viewing angles.
| szatkus wrote:
| I'm a backend developer as well (or maybe full-stack,
| hard to say) and I switched my 4k to 1080p long time ago,
| because it wasn't worth it. On the other hand I like good
| viewing angles and nice colors. Unfortunately the latter
| isn't too good in basically every laptop I tried and...
| my current monitor (eh).
| bavell wrote:
| Full-stack dev here, running 1x1080 23" (top) + 3x1440
| 27". No real interest in moving to 4k, 1440 is the sweet
| spot for my workstation. The only problem... need more
| monitors!!
| Macha wrote:
| Do you run your mac at native res? The default is 900p
| with pixel doubling (and some fonts at native res).
| Basically anything other than doubled or native has a
| performance and battery life penalty relative to those
| two modes.
|
| This has less space than 4k at 200% (normal for 15") or
| 1080p at 100%.
| isoos wrote:
| I was considering to buy a G14, but got distracted with other
| stuff. Can you please share a few details on how you use it?
|
| - What kind of external webcam do you use? Does it have any
| problem with any video-conferencing software?
|
| - Do you access any streaming service (with DRM)? Any issues?
|
| - Any issues with drivers, returning from sleep/hybernation?
|
| Thanks!
| unknown2374 wrote:
| I had a G14 that I ended up returning. for points 2 and 3, I
| had no issues at all in the few months I used it.
|
| A side note: the build quality was extremely disappointing,
| coming from an XPS 13.
| shaicoleman wrote:
| I have the Dell G5 4800H (AMD iGPU+AMD dGPU), there are a
| couple of graphic driver issues under Linux. I'm using the
| USB-C connection which is connected to the iGPU.
|
| * Locks up on suspend/resume
|
| * Locks up when inserting an external USB-C monitor
|
| * Requires a recent kernel to work properly (5.8 or later)
|
| * Locks up without amdgpu.runpm=0 kernel command line
|
| * dGPU can't be turned off, so increases power consumption
|
| * Locks up with vsync on with the dGPU
|
| * Kernel warning on startup, but doesn't affect stability
|
| Besides these issues (which can be worked around), it's very
| solid.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Wow. I've got a Dell Latitude 5505 with a 4700u.
|
| It's worked great so far except for plugging into Dell's
| USB-c dock in the morning. This is a guessing game of which
| (of 3) monitors are going to work, often requiring
| opening/closing the lid a time or two or turning on/off
| screens.
|
| Battery life is decent (VERY good if you turn down
| brightness and ssh to your work) and it's blazing fast. It
| does get egg cooking hot when unplugged and running the GPU
| (games).
|
| Running Win10 currently, but trying to figure out which
| Linux is going to run with 3 monitors without doing hours
| of research. Suggestions welcome. Guess I'll try PopOS
| next.
| Nagyman wrote:
| I have a Dell monitor which has a built-in USB-C hub. I
| experience similar issues when plugging in my MacBook Pro
| - the monitor part works fine, but the keyboard/mouse
| usually takes a few attempts at plugging in ("docking").
| Might not be your laptop so much as Dell's USB-C dock
| acting up.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I've have a G14 with RTX2060 and I'm very happy. Battery life
| is good (4-6h work with IDE etc) and webcams work as
| intended. DRM is mostly a non-issue, at least not more than
| on any other Linux install.
|
| The nvidia driver is a bit of a pain to set up, especially if
| you're on wayland or if you want to use displays via USB C
| (reverse prime does not work yet due to an nvidia driver bug,
| so you need to use the nvidia gpu as primary when docked).
| Other than that, everything works and the community (arch
| wiki and rog-core) provide good support for getting
| everything up and running. A bit of configuration and a
| somewhat recent kernel will be needed (it's pretty new
| hardware after all), but it's not that hard if you either
| know Linux or are willing to spend some time. I'm running
| this config for 8 months now, so the situation from a fresh
| install might be even better.
|
| Similar to the sister comment, I came from an XPS 13, but I'm
| happy. The laptop is a bit heavier, but in exchange you get a
| lot more power, far more RAM (up to 48GB), more ports and,
| subjectively, a dar better keyboard. Initially I wanted to
| stay with an XPS, but now I'm happy I made the jump.
|
| EDIT: One unbelievably good point I initially forgot: You can
| run a VM with GPU passthrough on the laptop. If you need
| Windows with graphics performance, especially on the go, this
| is an incredible advantage.
| gbrown wrote:
| I use it with Fedora happily, and for work I have to use Zoom
| daily. I did have to replace a fan with one from Aliexpress
| due to rattle, but haven't had issues since.
| api wrote:
| It's so unfortunate that it's called Pop! OS. That name is
| unspeakably awful. It screams "toy not suitable for anything
| serious."
|
| It wouldn't turn me off from System76 if the hardware were
| good, but it's just... bad... real bad.
| ansible wrote:
| Any more, all I care about is how searchable the name is.
| That's something to like with Debian and Ubuntu.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > I've been using System76's PopOS with my Asus Zephyrus G14
| (4800hs) as a daily driver and I really like it.
| (freelance/web)
|
| Thank you for the pointer. I have the exact same laptop and
| tried Ubuntu on it - couldn't even change the screen
| brightness.
| e12e wrote:
| Ubuntu 20.04 lts?
| Fergusonb wrote:
| You won't be able to change the brightness or use the
| keyboard shortcuts by default, but it's pretty easy to use
| mainline to get the latest kernel which will support those
| features.
|
| This would also work for Ubuntu.
|
| https://github.com/bkw777/mainline
| macksd wrote:
| Especially in a post-COVID world where home offices are more
| common and possibly with even less travel, I think battery life
| is quite overrated for many people. I have a Serval Workstation
| (i.e. high-power laptop) from System76 and absolutely love it.
| The battery doesn't last very long especially if I'm doing
| heavy-lifting on the GPU, but I very rarely go somewhere I
| can't plug in. I need to be able to fold up my "workstation"
| and take it with me, sure. But I can work from the airport,
| many planes, from my couch, from most coffee shops, etc. I just
| have to plug in when I get there. I would rather plug in when I
| get somewhere and have a much more powerful machine at my desk.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Indeed, LG's 32wh battery laptop rated at 23 hours instantly
| comes to mind.
|
| For Intel based laptops built in the last 10 years basically
| the only thing making a difference in battery life for
| laptops with same CPU is screen, and battery.
|
| Everything else is almost the same everywhere. NVME SSD +
| WiFi will uniformly eat 2W. Power conversion will also eat at
| to 500-800mW. All other peripherals combined will unlikely to
| eat more than 1 watt, with exception of 1GB ethernet if
| working full speed.
| acdha wrote:
| Battery life is a proxy for somethings you do care about: how
| often does the fan come on and when does thermal throttling
| impact performance notably? If you don't travel, a desktop
| will cost less, last longer, and do more than a laptop -- in
| part because the system won't be throttling. I spent about 20
| years being laptop-only and went back to a desktop recently
| after realizing that it'd literally been years since I'd had
| any significant amount of on-the-go work which I couldn't do
| on my phone.
| officeplant wrote:
| For me battery life means I can go outside somewhere to get
| some fresh air/inspiration (hobby computer music production).
| It doesn't frustrate me to have to take the power brick
| along, but it is nice when I can replace that weight in my
| bag with a small midi controller.
| amanzi wrote:
| I run Pop!_OS on my T480 and it's amazing - really stable with
| great battery life. They've struck a nice balance between the
| stability of Debian and the modern-nature of Ubuntu. The only
| apps I miss from Windows are Office (mostly Excel) and
| OneDrive.
| gnufied wrote:
| Does graphics switching in popos works without full system
| restart or at least without restarting X11? I didn't think
| there was a way to make switching graphics work in linux
| without either restarting X11 session or restarting the machine
| completely.
|
| On related note - does external display works without nvidia
| GPU? A lot of manufactures have lately decided to hardwire
| external HDMI connection to descrete GPU and hence it has been
| pretty painful to use NVIDIA powered Laptops on Linux. :(
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| I have an older system76/galago laptop(Intel graphics). I use
| it with 2 external 4k(HP/Z27) monitors with no issues.
| Previously used with 1 4k, 1 1920xSomething/Portrait.
| Resolution switching works fine. Also, PopOS gnome UI comes
| with build-in tiling, feels like slightly nerfed i3. It also
| works fine across monitors/virtual desktops and so on. PopOS
| desktop is X11 based and I havent played with Wayland on that
| laptop
| wazoox wrote:
| I have a Lenovo IdeaPad 520 with a Ryzen 5 3500 running Pop_OS.
| It works great, but battery life hovers around 4 hours (I have
| no idea how long it is supposed to last under Windows, though).
| lumost wrote:
| I'm really unclear on the motivation for sticking a 50wh
| battery in a machine which can easily burn 25+wh in normal
| operation.
|
| If the computer can only hold up a 1.5 hour battery it really
| doesn't satisfy the use case of a laptop, doubling the battery
| up to 99 wh really allows for a 3-4 hour minimum battery life
| and a longer battery life for non-GPU work.
| f6v wrote:
| You can still carry it in your bag and plug it in at
| home/work.
| xvilka wrote:
| Does it use coreboot?
| antattack wrote:
| Given that Display specs are not front-and-center, my guess it's
| a TFT panel. Combine that with 1080p resolution and this laptop
| is might (no GtG or refresh specs) be good for gaming but not any
| serious typing or designing.
| al_chemist wrote:
| How serious is your typing?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Sure it's not DSTN?
| acd wrote:
| Nice price on the extras, fairly cheap upgrade parts such as cpu
| and memory.
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Pricing doesn't seem that bad. I wish they'd elaborate on what
| "AND Radeon Graphics" means specifically
| JediPig wrote:
| asus zephryus is a better buy, as much I would love to purchase
| the system76. Core of it, is it at least 20% higher margins.
|
| The Ryzen 5000 is out, I highly recommend either going for Asus
| Zephryus or wait for lenovo's mobile 5000 AMD lands.
| Redoubts wrote:
| > 1920x1080
|
| Come on.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Still no 4k equivalent resolution. _yawn_.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Interesting choice of animal, given that Pangolins are suspected
| of being the source of the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic.
| https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210210/did-the-new-coronav...
|
| All publicity is good publicity, I guess...
| jacurtis wrote:
| This was my immediate thought upon reading this. It is a very
| bizarre name choice given its potential connection to COVID-19
| and that it was released during the ongoing global pandemic.
| Regardless of whether Pangolins are the true source of the
| pandemic (it is looking like that is becoming much less likely
| as time has gone on), the connection is still there in many
| people's mind and not what I would be naming my product after
| in 2021. Maybe in 2030 it would be safe, but this might just be
| a bit too soon.
|
| Surely someone at System76 has to be aware of this, which begs
| the question, was this naming intentional? It would have to be
| I imagine. It seems a bit crass to go this route in the current
| climate.
| officeplant wrote:
| Given the Pangolin was used for Ubuntu 12.04 and System 76
| has used previously referenced animals from Ubuntu's naming
| scheme before, I'd suspect that's why.
| msikora wrote:
| Ha, came here to say just this.
| Antoninus wrote:
| This but thinkpad keyboard.
| bgorman wrote:
| Shipping 1080p panels in a high end laptop was a non-starter in
| 2016.
| bluedino wrote:
| Not such a big deal because highdpi is finnicky in Linux in
| 2021 (as long as it is a high-quality panel). Lenovo has
| shipped some atrocious 1080 panels in the past.
| opan wrote:
| Works well on Wayland from what I've heard.
| vetinari wrote:
| Works great, if you happen to have resolution that is
| usable with integer scaling.
|
| If you need fractional scaling, only native Wayland
| applications work well. X11 applications are going to be
| upscaled and look blurry. Today, Chrome, all Electron apps,
| Jetbrains tools still do not support Wayland, though at
| least for Chrome/Electron the support is on the way.
| sagolikasoppor wrote:
| Totally disagree, you won't see much of a difference in such a
| small screen anyway and the battery life is way better.
|
| I have a 4k monitor on my laptop but I regret that choice.
| ObscureScience wrote:
| I would have love something like 2160 x 1440 (3:2 aspect
| ratio), but then they'd likely not have included a numpad.
| dgellow wrote:
| I completely agree. I will never go back to 1080p and a 16/9
| ratio.
|
| 3/2 is the best ratio ever when writing code (after 4/3, but
| that's definitely dead).
| hu3 wrote:
| For me and my tired eyes, no laptop screen comes close to the
| real deal which is a large ultrawide monitor. So it might as
| well come with 1080p which has better battery life and no
| application scaling issues on Linux.
| jerf wrote:
| I don't mind the resolution per se but am a bit concerned about
| what _sort_ of panel it is. There are some _bad_ cheap panels
| out there.
| neogodless wrote:
| I prefer them. Either my opinion is wrong, or your blanket
| statement is wrong.
| apahwa wrote:
| why do you prefer 1080?
| stagger87 wrote:
| Longer battery life and no app scaling issues (on the apps
| I use)
| precurse wrote:
| I prefer it since 1080p takes less resources to drive,
| therefore gets better battery life. On a 14" display, I
| think 1080p looks more than fine. If I want a hidpi
| display, I'll just dock to an external display.
| neogodless wrote:
| My eyesight is not great. The higher resolution screen is
| wasted on me, and wastes computing / energy resources to
| drive it.
|
| I enjoy gaming on my laptop, and prefer native resolution
| gaming.
|
| I require a high refresh rate due to post-concussion
| syndrome. So sure, if that can be the case with a higher
| resolution that's fine, but that isn't the norm yet. (2021
| seems to be the year for QHD 165Hz though!)
|
| I'm in no way saying QHD or 4K isn't ideal for _anyone_. It
| 's just silly to say that "this option I don't want is a
| non-starter" as if it applies to everyone.
| mrec wrote:
| Same here. I (old fogey) use a 1080p 24" monitor with my
| desktop, and don't feel any particular need for more.
| kensai wrote:
| Sometimes I wish there was the possibility to see the exact
| number of upvotes or downvotes a response got here in HN in
| order to settle the numbers of such opinions (pro and
| contra).
| gostsamo wrote:
| There are hn polls.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'll play this game. Reasons to like lower resolution
| screens: * Concerns about power *
| Concerns about HiDPI issues / fractional scaling, esp. with
| Linux * Likes seeing pixels * Price
| blahyawnblah wrote:
| Why still only 1080p in the year 2021?
| glsdfgkjsklfj wrote:
| battery and overall compatibility.
|
| and for under 15" it is just a waste for 90% of people.
| gbolcer wrote:
| System 76 is well known for the linux laptops, aka mobile
| workstations. I've owned a few over the years.
| pier25 wrote:
| Why do they use such ugly fonts for the keyboard? It's an
| immediate turn off.
| spijdar wrote:
| Probably because it's (likely) a Clevo NL51RU or something
| similar and they use these gamer-y legends. [0]
|
| [0] https://clevo-computer.com/media/image/15/da/88/CLEVO-
| NL51RU...
| pier25 wrote:
| My question was rather "why would anyone use such an ugly
| font on a keyboard?" :)
| siraben wrote:
| Laptops that are designed with Linux first-class support are
| interesting, and I've been considering to get one once I'm
| through with my late 2014 MBP.
|
| How do System76 and Purism compare in terms of daily drivers?
| Anyone tried both and could provide a comparison?
| frederir wrote:
| I stopped at FHD display. WTF can we have at least a QHD
| resolution on a 15.6" ?
| jonplackett wrote:
| Anyone know the battery life? Interested to see Ryzen 4000 VS M1.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Laptops with offset keyboards are difficult for me to deal with.
| The keyboards qwerty (or whatever layout) section should really
| be centered under the screen
| timwaagh wrote:
| plot twist: you get corona if you touch it.
| jackcviers3 wrote:
| Just switched to a Gazelle from an old IdeaPad p400 touch. Full
| keyboard, beautiful screen, removable battery, extensive power
| management options, large trackpad, multiple color adjustable
| brightness back-lit keyboard so I can change it to red to avoid
| hurting my eyes, a real gpu, and powerful as all heck. I love it.
| f430 wrote:
| how loud is it? should've bought this....
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