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Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

I have the reverse problem. I want a laptop with a 1TB SSD, but those seem to appear only in configurations with other premium options, such as 4K displays. My 55 year old eyes can't see 4K resolution, so I'd prefer to save the money, power, and time not painting them. 1920x1080 works for me.

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There are a couple of options:

1. Buy a cheap laptop with a replaceable memory and nvme slots and upgrade them for cheaper than you could buy them for. Dells typically have replaceable memory and nvme drives.

2. Buy a cheap laptop and put a 1TB NVME drive in a Thunderbolt 3 / superspeed 10 enclosure. This would be the way to go for a Macbook Pro.

If you're going to do superspeed 10 (~ 1 Gigabyte/sec)

NVME disk: https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-1TB-NAND-NVMe-PCIe/dp/B07J2Q4...

SuperSpeed 10 enclosure: https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Tool-free-Enclosure-Thunderb...

If you want to do something faster (3 to 4 Gigabytes/s) than you should look at the Samsung Evo/Evo Plus/Pro nvme sticks and a proper Thunderbolt 3 enclosure for NVME like this one:

https://www.amazon.com/WAVLINK-Certified-Thunderbolt-Enclosu...

FWIW, I have that pluggable superspeed enclosure above and a Samsung Evo NVME stick, and the superspeed 10 enclosure is the bottleneck. I get 1 Gigabyte/sec in read and writes.

Most laptops can have their components swapped out. I've upgraded my ram [4->16gb], swapped out the slow non-nvme 128gb m.2 boot ssd for a 2tb nvme ssd.

I used a cheap m.2->sata tray in my laptops second slot with the 128gb ssd and macrium reflect* to mirror the old boot disk to the new ssd.

Next up I'm going to get a 4tb data ssd to replace the 128, and swap out the laptops 60hz display for a 144hz display.

Unless the laptops your considering have soldered data drives, are under unusually stringent after care plans (enterprise), or you don't want to mess with hardware these are pretty straightforward tasks. You can probably Google (laptop model) ssd swap site:YouTube.com and watch some one go through the steps. If YouTube doesn't have anything replace YouTube with reddit.

* https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

> My 55 year old eyes can't see 4K resolution

My old eyes really appreciate the significantly sharper text. If you can't see things, well increase the font size!!

I'm with the parent. Driving a 4K display is really power hungry and the advantages are basically zero if you are using a 16 point font anyway. I'm 1980x1080 on a 13" laptop display. If I've got my math right, that's 169 dpi. A point is 1/72", which gives me 2.35 dots per point, or about 37 pixels of height for a 16 point font. With anti-aliasing, that's absolutely fine for readability.

If I had a monitor that was twice the size (reasonable on a desktop), I'd be looking for 4K. Or potentially if I wanted 8 pt fonts to be shaped nicely... But of course, I couldn't read them anyway on my display... Anyway, on a mobile platform (what the original article is talking about), 4K is a bit of a loser unless you have super eyes, IMHO.

13" is tiny for getting work done, I suppose it hd makes sense there. I have a 15 and 20", and 4k makes it tolerable.

13" laptop fits in a handbag (it's A4 sized) and mine weighs 800 grams. I get 8-10 hours of real web development (with Docker, emacs, Firefox) on a single charge (I'm often without power for the entire day). Again... mobile :-) If you just want a luggable, then 4K can be a reasonable option -- especially if work is paying for it. However, for the extremely nomadic work style that I have 1080p, big battery is way better.

may I ask which model laptop you use? 8-10hrs at 1080p is very good. I get 6-8hrs on an Intel N3060 at 720p, but that's not great for development.

I posted this in the sibling post, but I'll copy it here: It's a GZ73/NL-NRA https://dynabook.com/direct/onyx-blue-pgz73nl-nra.html Actually, I was mistaken. It's 859 grams :-) That includes the battery. This particular model has only a 256 gig drive on it, though. I should also point out that it's an Intel box. I'm impatiently waiting for an AMD box with similar battery performance.

I should also say that I use Arch Linux with i3, powertop settings and set my backlight down to about 7% to get the longest battery settings. This is fine indoors, but if I'm working outdoors or in a sunny place, I'll have to up the backlight which will cut a couple of hours off the peak performance.

many thanks, impressive stuff

Is that 800g with a battery in it?! What laptop is this?

It's a GZ73/NL-NRA https://dynabook.com/direct/onyx-blue-pgz73nl-nra.html Actually, I was mistaken. It's 859 grams :-) That includes the battery. This particular model has only a 256 gig drive on it, though. I should also point out that it's an Intel box. I'm impatiently waiting for an AMD box with similar battery performance.

thanks, very impressive. if only it were available to buy ><

ditto! I'm off to Japan in a couple of months, I'll try and come back ~859g heavier!

I don't understand why they don't sell it elsewhere. It was the same with the previous model I bought. You've got a full power, A4 sized, < 1kg laptop that gives you a full day's work on a charge. How can they not sell that? And eventually Toshiba decided they had to exit the laptop market because they couldn't make any money at it... It's baffling.

it's rare enough to find an i7-8th gen in anything without a >=15" screen and keyboard with numpad. Dell Ultrabooks perhaps but they start at 1.2kg AFAICS

The do sell it here, it's just under a different brand name and model number:

https://us.dynabook.com/computers/laptops/portege/X30/X30-F1...

It's ~1kg, but that's mostly due to additional RAM and the like.

That's not actually the same machine. There is a similar model on the Japanese side. It's missing some extra USB-A connectors and an actual network connector. I think the extra weight is actually because battery technology is different. It is possible that they can't sell the lighter / longer life battery in the US. But, you are right anyway. It's close enough :-) I'm glad they are finally realising that this is a useful configuration for some people.

Hot off the press there's this[0] guy weighing in at 870g.

[0] http://uk.dynabook.com/press/releases/dynabook-europe-porteg...

I've been using Dynabooks (no longer made by Toshiba) for precisely this reason. They have a variety of strange models that can give you low resolution displays with very long battery life. The only problem is that I'm not sure you can find those weird configurations outside of Japan. Now that they are a Taiwan company, I'm hoping so (especially because I'd love it if the concept would catch on). Anyway, troll their truly horrible website, using the search function. That's how I tend to find the model I need. Also, note that in Japan the price on the website is inflated. I found that if I "became a member" (give them my email address), the price was 30% off. No idea why they have such a bizarre (and seemingly counter-productive) pricing system. No affiliation with Dynabook or Toshiba -- just been my goto laptop for 10-15 years.

What do you mean they're no longer made by them? They still have them for sale here:

https://us.dynabook.com/computers/laptops/portege/X30/

Yes, but Dynabook is now a Taiwanese company. Toshiba still sell the computers that are made, though. There is a "design" element apparently, but the two companies are supposed to move farther apart over time... Or at least that's what I'm led to believe.

You can buy a 1TB SATA SSD for like $120 or a 1TB NVMe SSD for around twice that.

It really depends on the laptop how easy that replacement is, but yeah that can be a _great_ option. A friend got a great deal on a laptop that would have been perfect except it was spinning-rust-only. So we upgraded that to an SSD and saved probably $400 for an hours work.

There are plenty of under $500 laptops with 15.6" FHD IPS screens that you can upgrade the RAM, M2 and 2.5" storage slots. I just updated a $300 Acer with 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, cost me less than $200 extra.

MacOS has an option to change the size of text independently from the resolution. This is how i use it on 4K displays. Cant remember the exact setting name. Other operating systems might have similar features.

are nvme slots a thing yet?

i have a 1tb one. it's pretty tiny. it cost me $70. why is it so hard to put one of these inside a laptop?

Its really not that hard to find a laptop with upgradeable SSDs and even RAM. We just have to stop buying laptops with soldered, non-upgradeable everything.

I had the exact same thing, so I bought a Dell xps 15 then swapped out the ssd for a 1tb one that was faster, too.

My thinkpad x395 has 1TB storage. It's a 13" laptop with 1080p IPS screen, Ryzen 3700U and 16TB ram.

I was amazed with 16 TB RAM for a laptop, but obviously it was 16 GB instead

Oh, I'd love to have 16TB of RAM indeed.

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