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Comment by Hasz | Hacker News Reader

I recently purchased a new laptop, after looking through a bunch of options -- Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, etc. Ultimately, I settled on one from Xiaomi. For $720, I get an i5-6200U, 8gb of DDR4 RAM, 256gb SSD, 1gb dedicated graphics card, a 13.3" panel, aluminum body, backlit keyboard, USB C + HMDI + 2 USB 3.0 ports etc.

Build quality is similar to Surfacebook, but I would have to spend another ~600 to match the stats. Is the whole touchscreen tablet combo worth that premium?

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> Is the whole touchscreen tablet combo worth that premium?

I would say it depends. I love the touch screen (I've disabled my touchpad) - and I love the real pen/digitizer.

The sp4 is basically the dynabook: high dpi screen, a pen that works.

Still some annoyances with scaling in legacy apps - and I've yet to find a great "smart" drawing/cad program that really takes advantage of the pen - I'm thinking something like Ivan Sutherland's "Sketchpad".

I haven't quite gotten around to it, but I believe it would make a great Smalltalk companion (although it's a "button" short). It does work quite well with MIT's "scratch" system.

Regarding drawing and CAD programs, have you heard of Moment of Inspiration (MoI)? The interface is designed to be suitable for stylus input with fewer and fatter buttons, scrubbing, etc. More importantly, the workflows also seem to be designed around this so repeating or chaining actions is easy and you never feel like stylus input is cramped or lacking precise control.

Other pros:

  -fully customizable HTML UI
  -fast, lightweight but powerful
  -advanced actions (cloning along a path) aren't archaic hidden abilities for advanced users, they're discoverable and usable by new uers
  -reasonable price

Cons:

  -not as serious/enterprise as some people might need
  -due to semi-indie status it probably won't serve as your ONLY 3d modeling tool with only a handful of file format option

All said, it makes for a fantastic addition to existing toolbelts but could also be a complete game changer for a certain class of users.

No, I had not. I'll certainly take look.

http://moi3d.com/

The issue is, specs often don't tell the whole story. Look at phones for example. The Pixel is still according to a lot of reviewers the best every day phone. You can find other phones with similar specs for half the price, but the hardware/software integration is what really makes a big difference.

I'm not saying the extra 600$ is worth it in this case, we'll have to wait for reviews to know that, but generally you're paying for better build quality, integration, support and form factor.

I only use specs because it's sometimes tricky to describe qualitative things in a way that's easy to compare quickly.

I was wondering if the pen/stylus input method really was worth the money over a traditional touchpad+keyboard.

Which model exactly and where did you buy your Xiaomi? Sounds interesting

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