Comment by dmayle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmayle | Hacker News Reader

I've been doing very similar research, but with slightly different constraints, so for those who might be looking for a more powerful laptop:

* 15 inch screen, preferably hidpi

* ability to power two external 4k@60 displays

* 64GB of RAM

* M.2 NVMe SSD (preferably Samsung SM961 / 960 Pro)

* quad core (this trumps kaby lake vs skylake)

* touch screen

Other than that, I tend to agree with the opinions expressed in the article.

I have found four possibilities:

* Dell Precision 7510 paired with TB15 thunderbolt dock (no touch screen)

* Lenovo Thinkpad P50 (People seem to have troubles getting 2 external screens at 4k@60, no touch)

* Falcon Northwest TLX / System76 Oryx Pro / Clevo (1080p no touch, bad battery, but has GTX 1070, more USB-C ports)

There is one more possible contender, which is the as yet unreleased kaby lake XPS 15. Given the XPS 13 refresh, I suspect we'll see the new XPS 15 in the December / January time frame. If I knew for certain that it would support 64GB of RAM, I would wait and get that machine, but at this point I'm leaning towards buying the Precision 7510 in the next week or two.

Software support for hidpi outside of OS X/macOS isn't great. If you can test it out on an existing computer before buying a new one I'd recommend doing that just to be sure that's what you want. Otherwise 1080p would probably be bearable on a 15" screen I would imagine.

I've got a colleague who had the P50 4k display, who said the only annoying part at the time was that moving Chrome or IntelliJ from a lowdpi to highdpi display meant you had to relaunch those processes (and this was some time ago). While I agree this is annoying, Fedora 25 launches this month with Wayland, which is supposed to fix these issues.

The Dell Precision looks like a good option if you don't need a better GPU (Quadro M2000M ~= GTX960m). I've been doing VR dev so I went w/ an Aorus (the smaller X3v6 on preorder), but you may want to look at something like the X5v6 which should tick all your checkboxes save touch and might be more appealing than the Aorus: http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X5%20v6

One bummer about this new gen of Aorus' is the mystifying lack of TB3 (despite USB-C 3.1 on an otherwise top-of-the-line-specced system).

Too bad about the P50 having external display issues. A built-in 100% NTSC / 100% AdobeRGB 4K panel sounds great. (same crap Quadro card though)

The MSI GT62VR looks like what you want. It meets all of my needs plus GTX 1070, plus Thunderbolt 3

Personally, I took a leap of faith and I ordered the new Alienware 15, because 50 % of my time I do Film editing with color grading and graphics heavy things (so the nvidia 10 70 should be useful) and 50% of my time I do development (Kubernetes,...) so the 32gb of RAM come in handy. Plus it has NVMe, 4k screen,HDMI 2 + DP, TB3,... it check a lot of your boxes. I considered the Thinkpad P50 and the HP Zbook 15 but I found the GPU to be a bit weak. Plus I heard many issues with the HDMI 1.4 on these machines.

According to Intel, Kaby Lake mobile processors support a max of 32gb of ram.

http://ark.intel.com/products/95451/Intel-Core-i7-7500U-Proc...

The high end XPS 15 currently uses the Skylake-H, and will probably also use the Kaby Lake-H (quad core) as opposed to the U dual core, and we don't know if that will have higher RAM support

If I configure the 7510 with the 3840x2160 LCD, it doesn't let me select Ubuntu as the OS instead of Windows. Do you have any info on whether it works, but just isn't supported?

Ubuntu 14.04 is very likely not going to be a good experience on a 4k display. A newer release, however, should be significantly better. I'm not sure if it's possible to work around Dell's configuration constraint system.

I'm doing same analysis. Am leaning towards P50 since it supports multiple PCIe x4 whereas Dell only supports one.

Could you link to references about external screen troubles?

> I have found four possibilities:

Such heavy laptops can not be considered as an alternative for Macbooks.

That assumes everyone cares about weight / thinness over of system performance. Apple no longer gives users an option to choice their preference.

It's very easy to find a decently made heavy laptop (jut get any Dell/HP workstation, or gaming Alienware/etc), much harder to find a portable decent laptop. The main laptop's feature is its portability, else is secondary.

So a half inch thinner and a pound or two in weight is the main consideration? I have yet to find any laptop that isn't portable by definition. I have an old ThinkPad that I use sometimes for OpenBSD, and I find it to be very portable.

Why this fetish over saving a little weight? I don't understand it, but it's common among the MBP crowd.

Not a fetish, but practical thing, unless you keep your laptop constantly on the table or drive it only in the car.

The difference between carrying 2lbs or carrying 6lbs is negligible to me. Unless I'm going hiking with 80lbs of gear, I won't appreciate a loss of a few pounds. Any scenario I can imagine where I'm already carrying 80lbs in gear involves scenarios that I wouldn't be bringing my laptop regardless of the weight.

Especially if you get a proper bag or backpack to carry the laptop with. The laptop would need to weigh over 12lbs before I even noticed I was carrying it with a shoulder-strap.

This message makes me think you are not used to carry your laptop on the daily basis. Try to carry you laptop at least a one day having for example a big walk (get new area/city to explore on the foot, for example).

I agree with the OP, it's not a big deal. I used to cycle 20km with the laptop bag on my back, a little more or less is like adding a book to the bag, I don't even notice it

I lug around my laptop every single day. I bought a cheap bag off Amazon [0] because I also lug around the charger and an external mouse. I also carry a gallon of water with me everywhere I go.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DUGZFWY/ref=oh_aui_deta...

I'm glad you're tough enough to carry heavy laptops, most of the people are not so tough.

I could understand that answer if laptops weighed 45lbs....but honestly if carrying around a few pounds is too heavy, I'm curious how they have the energy to even walk anywhere? =\

The Precision 7510 weights 6 pounds, which is about a half pound lighter than what the 17 inch macbook pro used to weigh. (750 grams heavier than the current 15 inch macbook pro). So... it falls squarely into Macbook Pro range. Now.. if you're looking for a Macbook Air, of course, this won't come anywhere close to to that.

This is not to say that you'd accept this as a Macbook Pro, but your statement about it not being an alternative to the Macbook Pro is clearly not true.

Personally, I often carry around a 40 pound weight (4-year-old daughter), so for me the difference is negligible.

What about Precision 5510?

maxes out at 32GB of memory on Dell's web site.

The 5510 gives you 4k touch, but is limited to 32GB of RAM (and has a slightly weaker processor) This is the business version of the skylake XPS 15.

Fits perfectly for my needs :) I've got 6820HQ and FHD. Not sure if anyone would notice any difference from 6920HQ.

Also "limited to 32GB" sounds a bit funny. Would you mind sharing why would you need more? (I am developer btw)

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