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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

What a nice collection of features ignored by other OEMs: wide range of screen choices (13.3, 14, 15.6, 17), USB C/A ports, headphone jack, 16:10 ratio, 72Wh battery, micro-SD, ethernet port.

Whiskey Lake is supposed to have hardware fixes for Meltdown and L1TF, which should boost performance and battery life.

(Edit: CPU for the 17" is Whiskey Lake, the others appear to be Kaby Lake Refresh, e.g. LG Gram 13.3: https://www.lg.com/us/support/products/documents/13Z980-A.AA...

No info on key travel)

Might there be a vPro configuration with a TPM, for running QubesOS?

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I wasn’t aware that headphone jacks on laptops were a cause for celebration now. A sad state of affairs...

Perhaps not for celebration, but for giving attention so that they are not removed by someone thinking "No-one asks for headphone jacks today". It's easy to come to the conclusion that this is the direction we're moving towards, now that more and more phones come without it.

Phones and laptops are quite different in terms of form factor, use case case and therefore demand and limitation. I think the headphone jack is safe for now.

Headphones have been removed from iPad Pro, even though there is ample room in the case and an entire ecosystem of accessories which rely on the headphone jack.

So you believe that a reviewer or perhaps a random internet commenter making a statement for or against a feature such as a headphone socket "gives attention" which is picked up by a company as it works on the spec for subsequent models? How would that work? How would you know whether the person was going to buy one anyway, or wasn't an idiot - what if you get some people who like it and some who don't? Wouldn't you just stick with the status quo, or talk to people who know what they're talking about?

What major laptops actually sell without a headphone jack? Apple, killer of the 3.5mm jack, still ships with a 3.5mm jack on all MacBook models.

I have a current-gen macbook pro and a Google Pixel 1. I feel like I'm living in a great, but precarious period when I can charge my phone and my laptop with the same cable, and plug my headphones into either my laptop or my phone (while charging!). The phone is getting old though, and I'm hoping that when it dies, the replacement will have both USB-C charging and a headphone jack too. Is that too much to ask?

I have a Huawei phone and a ThinkPad, both of which can use USB-C charging. In fact, the Huawei charger does charge the ThinkPad albeit slowly. I love it!

I own a macbook pro 15 , which is a work laptop and it's horrendous. The keyboard has so less travel that it feels like the keys were pasted on top of the keyboard, the touchbar is annoying when you want to use the function keys while programming, it has 'zero' usb ports so when you need to plug in a HDD you need to hunt for an adapter. Same with you are in a meeting and want to connect hdmi/displayport off you go adapter hunting again.

I've got a 2018 13" Macbook Pro, and I also hate the keyboard and find it horrible to use - I have a $100 Asus netbook that has a better keyboard!

It's also the only Macbook I've ever owned, so with people always raving about how great Mackook keyboards are, I'm especially annoyed about it having such a terrible keyboard.

Why can't high end luxery items have adapter slots like the think pads of old..

What I'm really looking for is a H Series processor with a 14" screen. I want to replace my desktop with a laptop, hooked on to dual monitors. So I don't even need a Ultra HD screen. A laptop helps on the rare occasions I want to travel. But all the manufacturers seem to brand laptops with H Series processors as gaming machines and have a 15.6 inch screen minimum.

> on the rare occasions I want to travel

Then why not get the 15"?! I honestly don't understand why the 13-14" screen size exists. If you want something really portable it's got to be 12" or less. If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more...

(The only thing more nonsensical than this is the wide screen AR when we know a 4:3 ratio would always be superior. Yeah, power users will customize their UI to get rid of the crap wasting vertical screen space... but those very same power users will also want to see long batches of code or spreadsheet cells, or text, so they'd still crave for more vertical space.)

13-14" is perfect size for fitting into a normal backpack or satchel, whereas 15" is starting to get to the point where you need a specialist laptop bag.

I find this to be true as well. A ~13.5" machine packs easily and, is noticeably more useful to me than a 12".

And 12" is just a little too small for my preference, though not wholly unbearable.

My 15" and larger machines have been much harder to travel with easily. For productivity, I have usually preferred the 15"+ machines. If that were the only consideration, then I wouldn't think twice. But they have been a pain to haul.

> If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more...

I have a 14" T470P (2560x1440) and I do 'serious' work on it all the time, its more than adequate for when I want to work away from a desktop.

I went from 15 to 13 due to getting an amazing deal on mbp. Won't go back. Never thought I would like the 13 but its actually way better than a 15 for taking with. Plugged into monitor at home anyways.

put me in as another 15->13 (well 13.3") convert. the weight reduction is also a nice benefit.

> If you want something really portable it's got to be 12" or less. If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more

What about something semi-serious... like Photoshop or Illustrator which can take reasonable amount of resources, but far fewer than a video editor or an IDE. A 13" with a really good screen can handle this task well and doesn't need the added heft of a 15".

If it doesn't have to be portable why spend that much on a laptop at all? Why not get a desktop you can at least sensibly upgrade/fix etc?

There's no reason a 12" (and 13.3/14) laptop should be less powerful than a 15" or 17", though.

I'd buy that even if it adds one centimeter to the height (gasp ! Now I can have an RJ-45 port and more than one USB port ?!).

> There's no reason a 12" (and 13.3/14) laptop should be less powerful than a 15" or 17", though.

yes there is. area and volume inside the chassis increase a lot faster than the length of the diagonal. the limiting factors for performance are heat dissipation and power. a bigger chassis can evacuate heat faster and house a larger battery that can sustain high power use for longer.

But we'd get a larger chassis just by doubling the height, right ?

Gigabyte Aero 14

Too bad about the keyboard. That is the weakest part of the system. With that footprint I wish they'd have used a typical tenkeyless desktop layout, instead of the cramped and crippled numpad layout.

Not only are the arrow keys halved but no dedicated hone, end, page up/down keys.

I love the 16:10 dearly, but that keyboard is going to be maddening to anyone but the most casual media consumer. That is true of almost every laptop though, keyboards are typically afterthoughts.

Where do you see the ethernet port?

My 14" LG came with a Ethernet dongle to connect to the USB-C port. No ethernet port.

Nice pics, but the side view is telling: not nearly as thin as it appeared. One almost wonders if the designers designed it around the marketing pictures. Which in and of itself is a huge red flag. Maybe competitive with a 2012 MacBook Pro, maybe? But injection molded plastic and Windows. No thanks.

Calling Nano Carbon with Magnesium "injection molded plastic" is incredibly dishonest.

HN: The MacBook keyboards are terrible! Why doesn't Apple go back to the slightly-thicker 2015 design and keep the ports and keyboards the way they were?

Also HN: Any keyboard thicker than a MacBook air is pure crap.

Umm, what? I think the laptop is thin enough and the trackpad is large enough. They have managed to get a 17" laptop to the same weight as a 13" MacBook Pro, which is a huge achievement.

I know it might sound like a wild concept, but let's consider. Is it possible that there are multiple people, who have different opinions, even though they are expressing them on the same forum?

This laptop is 0.7 inches thick, while the latest Macbook air is 0.61 inches thick.

It's just 13% thicker. It's also 6% heavier, and has a much larger screen.

But the keyboard does not look good. And the effect of weight is not linear

I am much more interested in the Microsoft Go.

The Surface Go is 10" and this is 17". They are completely different markets, and one costs $1700 vs $400. I doubt that many people are considering both at the same time.

Surface go is okay, don’t expect to really do much and you’ll need to buy an upgrade key to pro if you want to even attempt to run docker and such. But it’s great for travel.

What are your requirements, that you're considering either this or a Go?

Very light, good keyboard, to be used daily for SSH.

The size is not really a factor, even if larger keyboard are usually more comfortable.

The best keyboard I ever found was on a small Thinkpad many years ago.

Since it appears that cost is not a concern, I'd recommend a ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Yeah, looked great until I saw the side [0]. Would be great if it had a larger trackpad, too. If it's actually plastic, that's a complete deal-breaker.

[0] https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13681/lg-gram-17-io.jpg

The article states it comes in a dark silver Carbon Magnesium alloy chassis.

It's thin enough

How much thinner could you make it without sacrificing the ports?

Perhaps GP refers to the looks rather than thinness.

Yep, the aesthetics appear a bit dated and it looks like there are plenty of gaps for dust, dirt, etc to collect. For the price tag, the specs are fine, but the chassis is terrible. I'd much rather buy something like a Razer Blade 17" if I required something that packed a punch and looked great.

Looking at the Macbook in front of me & back to this laptop on my screen & the trackpad looks absolutely tiny. Large trackpads are good! Seems odd that it's so small.

I've used good and bad trackpads/keyboards/etc. over they years. No matter how good or bad they are, you always find a way to get used to them.

I wonder if its not the relative size that's throwing you off. Bigger keyboard = smaller-looking trackpad.

The MacBook Pro 2016+ shows that bigger isn't necessarily better when it comes to input devices.

Yeah, it's probably a function of it being a larger laptop. & it's, of course, subjective. I saw this typing on my 2016 MacBook Pro, & I personally love the giant trackpad.

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