New Leaks of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano | Hacker News Reader

New Leaks of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano

notebookcheck.net

117 pointsarketyp143 comments

> 13.0 | 16:10 | 2K | 450nits | 100% sRGB | Optional Touch

> Ultra-narrow bezel | 85% STB

It is very nice move from the Dell [0], and also now Lenovo to bring 16:10 display in laptops. It was always for me strange decision, when laptop manufactures decided to use 16:9 displays for all, even for pricey, high-end models. I am highly enthusiastic to see 16:10 displays back after ten years, when numerous notebooks had 15.4" display.

[0]: For example Dell Precision 5550 - https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebo...

The old Dell Latitude D models had 16:10 displays (albeit at 1280x800 pixels) so for Dell they are bringing it back.

16:9 is just too shallow to do any meaningful work on.

It was never meant for work..

Yeah... exactly. If I remember there were two drivers. One was entertainment (movies look good on 16:9 although I prefer to have the black bar for subtitles) and another was keyboard. Wider screen meant more space for keyboard with full sized keys which meant smaller laptops possible at the same diagonal.

Also worth mentioning that shallower screen at the same diagonal has less area.

Oh c'mon, many laptops in last decade had 1366x768 display and many people still downscale theirs 1920x1080 into 1600x900 or 1440x810, because they have problems to comfortable see and read text from screen :)

Dell D-series are at least twelve years old [0] (example model with 16:10 display [1]).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Latitude#Latitude_D8x0_se...

[1]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-D830-Note...

Edit: I would love to have same resolution (1680x 1050) available from linked D830 (2007) in mine HP Probook 4340s (2012), which I used at university and Unity3D course. It had scrumpy 1366x768.

It kills me when I see people downscale their displays to be able to read their text. But I blame the OS developers for this: the display settings should allow you to scale the graphical elements according to your preference.

Windows 10 is good at this, you can set 125% or 150% UI scale no problem.

The 16:9 is for videos

I was doing some work on an old 4:3 IBM X41 last weekend. Reminded me what we've lost.

iPad Pro 12.9" provides 4:3 in HiDPI with good battery life, which challenges the claim that laptops couldn't source 4:3 screens.

Also, I would venture a guess - a lot of us are not laptop-gamers and as such, do not look forward to those '>=120Hz' display-panel technologies companies are dedicating so much resources into. A significant part of the reason I'm about to buy an external monitor is the 16:9 ratio vertically challenged little screen on my laptop. This new trend ought to catch on.

>= 120Hz is great for everything, not just games. Moving your mouse (or scrolling) on a 60Hz monitor after you've used something higher is like looking at a slide show.

For example, on a 60Hz monitoring, try panning around a Google Map and reading the labels. They just become a mushy blur. On a higher refresh-rate display, you can read the labels as they move. (I always found this to be an interesting demo: https://testufo.com/persistence)

> >= 120Hz is great for everything

It's not great for battery life.

iPad Pro adjusts dynamically.

In the same way, Flagship SoC is great perf but not great for battery so we can choose to buy middle spec SoC.

Nice website, thanks for linking it. But, it looks like I'm in the minority here - having always worked on 60Hz screen computers and never finding myself wishing for higher refresh rate than a better screen ratio. Perhaps, personally speaking, my priorities are different.

What have we lost?

I have _always_ preferred a wider screen to a taller one because it means I can fit more xterms side-by-side.

Yea, seriously. When did the whole taller windows are for productivity vs wider for media folks, decide this as obvious and undeniable?

It's just a preference!

The most workflow obessesed tiling window manager people tend to expect a two column, (one with a tall window, with a 2 or 3 rows in the other) approach by default. Often 3 columns.

I can see where taller might be better for documents- so maybe better for LaTex, Word, etc. productivity. But not for programming IMHO.

ThinkPad T61 models changed from 1400x1050 (SXGA+) to 1440x900 (WXGA+) when they went widescreen.

They literally just lopped off 150 vertical pixels. There wasn’t some corresponding gain in horizontal space. You could fit the same number of xterms side-by-side on either laptop.

I had one of the lovely T61s models that did 1600x1200. That machine had a long, long lifespan for a 3+g memory it could support. Miss the 4:3

Probably still worth something to the right person!

But it's not one or the other. The screen is just as wide, but taller. So your xterms can be just as wide but you can fit more rows into them.

Stop romanticising the past. :) You are certainly having more characters vertically on screen on current environments plus having more horizontally.

Stop romanticising the present.

Wider (and, crucially: shorter) displays were foisted on us by the majority of computer users being heavy media consumers the desire to consolidate supply chains.

The efficacy of a 16:10 (or 5:2) screen is undeniable.

I’ve been looking for a good 16:10 screen to replace my aging Dell U2412M’s for over 5 years at this point.

The 3840x2400 16:10 on the new XPS 17" is very nice. It was a substantial increase from the older 15" i9 mac I use for work. Well worth the extra $400 for it over the 1900x1200 version for me.

My lamentation at the end was about dedicated displays (off topic in a thread about laptops I know...)

I have a new MacBook coming soon, so 16:10 dreams come true there.

IMO avoiding 16:9 aspect ratio is no longer important on dedicated monitors but still important on laptop monitors.

I just updated my personal laptop with the dell xps 17 largely because it has a glorious 16:10 screen. My only complaints with the machine is the tiny torx screws on back are very fragile - got an M.2 drive waiting to go in it so I can do my linux install. Lovely screen, decent keyboard and trackpad. All in all, pretty happy with it.

I stripped a couple of screws on my XPS 13 and was about to break the bottom panel out of anger & frustration. Instead I bought a new, quality set of screwdrivers and managed to open it, then replaced torx screws with phillips head M2x3 screws. Highly recommend.

Torx is much more stable than philips head.

To add to this, Phillips screws are designed to cause the screwdriver to cam out. This is done so you can’t over torque the screw hole. This also makes them really annoying sometimes.

No, it was found that they have a tendency to cam out and it was later claimed that cam-out was a feature not a bug.

Regardless, using Pozidrive, JIS, Torx or similar is better for your soul.

Torx, Philips, whatever, we can all agree that they're both 10x better than Allen-head screws.

Weird. I bought a torx screwdriver to open my new XPS 13, and the screwdriver stripped. I bought a better screwdriver, and didn't have any problems with the screws or screwdriver after that.

(Stripped screwdriver was Husky brand from Home Depot, better screwdriver was a less-expensive, higher-quality one from Harbor Freight.)

Can confirm Home Depot/Husky did not have a happy ending on one screw. Which Harbor Freight set you pick up?

(was getting ready to mix the epoxy for the one screw/bit)

Pittsburgh Pro, 34 pc. precision screwdriver

The label is on the back. The front is a clear lid which shows the flexible extension, a straight extension, the screwdriver (black and green), then four rows of bits.

It's a pretty decent set. It's kind of funny though, the warning label on the back says to wear "heavy duty work gloves during use."

Working on most laptops is relatively easy but you still need couple relatively inexpensive tools.

If you ever venture into disassembling a laptop I would highly suggest some protection against static electricity. Most damage from static discharge on induced current is not immediately apparent but may manifest itself in crashes, slowdowns and other ways.

(A bit off topic) Two months ago, on reddit there was interesting finding and discussion about low quality screws in Dell laptops [0]. Also, if you look for "screw" phrase in r/Dell you will might find that problem is more common than occasional and touches many models, especially noticeable in XPSes.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/gf520r/xps_9570_aliex...

16:9 is popular because its cheaper for the same amount of inches (which people put in ads), because the area is smaller. Also, production numbers are higher because TV screens are also 16:9.

I've just bought a Lenovo laptop on a rush because my XPS 13 died (as usual, it works fine again now that I have a new laptop to replace it :)

It's nice and all, but it has a 3cm wide useless black bezel below the screen that screams "I should have a 16:10 display!!!". At least this one has 3 USB ports, a full size HDMI port and a camera cover...

Meta but why is it called 16:10 instead of 8:5? Ratios should be brought down to the lowest common denominator, just like every other standard aspect ratio, no?

Probably for an easier direct comparison with 16:9, which has been the de-facto standard for years. Without having to do any math, you immediately know that the screen is proportionally taller than a 16:9 screen would be, which makes for easier marketing.

16:9

16:10

16:10.66 (almost 3:2)

16:12 (4:3)

3:2 is the best. The Microsoft Surface line used 3:2 a lot (always?), and the Google Pixelbook. 16:10 is still better than 16:9, but I want more things to be 3:2.

I have a new Dell XPS15, and the "ultra narrow bezel" kind of drives me crazy. I tend to do a lot of terminal based work, in full screen mode, and my fingers block the lower several lines of the screen when I'm using the on-laptop keyboard. It's a great laptop otherwise, and most of the day I'm using it at a desk with external keyboard so it doesn't matter.

(full disclosure, It's my first non-thinkpad laptop in decades, and I didn't pay for it, my job did).

ThinkPad's announcement of 16:9 displays in 2009:

---

> I stated in my last post that the industry is going to go through yet another display ratio change over the next year or so.

> For years we've had 4:3 “square” displays. These have all but disappeared from the market as the current standard is 16:10 “wide.”

> The industry is about to move yet again to true 16:9 wide. This means that the ratio of your PC display will match that of your HDTV. This change won't happen overnight, but will phase in gradually. In fact, it's already started. Many of the newest consumer notebooks, especially in the 15″ class now sport the more rectangular 16:9 display.

> Again, we can thank the LCD manufacturers for this change. By cutting everything in the same aspect ratio, they have less waste per large sheet of glass. Since these manufacturers make more selling TV displays than laptop displays, the PC vendors have almost zero say in this change. We simply have to adapt. As much as I would like it to be so, 4:3 is not coming back.

> For readers of this blog, yes, I had our team run the math. In order to provide a high end IPS display option, we'd need well over 15,000 confirmed orders to make it even worth considering. This is due to minimum order quantities, creating models, stocking replacement parts for years to come, etc. If someone enterprising wants to create a database of (legitimate) credit card numbers of confirmed, non-cancellable orders, I'm sure that it would get some attention around here. (For you legal types, this does not constitute an offer to sell.)

> https://web.archive.org/web/20111030050311/http://www.lenovo...

Huh, LCD manufacturers (at least in 2009) made TV and laptop displays together? Interesting..

I'm glad to see a resurgence of 16:10 screens. I'm waiting to see bezels shrink to the point I'll have a nearly 15" 16:10 screen in a 14" laptop body, not to have a number pad.

I am so glad that there's been a 16:9 backlash. It makes no sense on smaller screens the you have to work from. It's ok for phones, since you need to hold them in your hand in portrait so some narrowness makes sense, and for smaller tablets that are designed just for watching video. But I love that iPads are still (mostly) 4:3, and 16:10 is an ok balance for laptops and desktop monitors (though I'd probably prefer 4:3 there as well).

As a programmer I would really like to have more choices of 3:2 or even 4:3 aspect ratio laptops (because of the added vertical space, which is really much more valuable when working mostly with text on fairly small displays). For 3:2 I'm only aware of the MS Surface and Huaewei MateBook laptops, and Thinkpads were probably the last 4:3 laptops(?).

The MateBook really is a nice looking laptop. The folks I've known that have purchased them have all run into reliability issues within a year (non-booting machines, spacebar stops working, other weird things) I looked into them before I bought my Thinkpad X1C. I still like that screen though.

The Google Pixelbook is 3:2 also, it's pretty great except for the big-ass bezels.

Isn't already a thing (or almost)? For example Dell Latitude E7470 14" (16:9) [0] and Dell Precision 5550 15.6" (16:10) [1]:

Dell Precision 5550:

> Front Height: 7.70 mm (0.30 in.)

> Rear Height: 11.65 mm (0.45 in.)

> Width: 344.40 mm (13.56 in.)

> Depth: 230.30 mm (9.07 in.)

Dell Latitude E7470:

> Front Height: 17.2 mm (0.68 inch)

> Back Height: 19.4 mm (0.76 inch)

> Width 334.00 mm (13.14 inches)

> Depth: 232.0 mm (9.13 inches)

Precision is bulkier (cooling and dedicated GPU) and by about 10mm is larger (in width) but it is close to mimic 14".

[0]: https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/latitude-e7470-ultrabook_own...

[1]: https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/precision-15-5550-laptop_own...

I have a Huawei matebook x pro, which is 3:2 and has a 91% STB ratio in a 14" form factor. Unless you want the bezels to disappear completely, I don't see things getting much better.

Sometimes I feel like the only one who likes bezels. They provide a nice, distraction-free buffer between the screen and the background. You can also pick up sturdier laptops by the bezel, without worrying about getting fingerprints on the screen.

Of course, I also like more screen space, so it's a wash in the end. And I prefer small bezels in multi-monitor setups. So I guess I understand why they're going out of style.

Definitely. Check out Bang & Olufsen TVs. You’ll like them.

"the new model is even smaller and lighter, with a weight of less than 1 kg. To achieve this, Lenovo uses a slightly smaller 48 Wh battery and also slashes most ports that are present on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon"

Sounds like the X1 Nano is marginally better than a Macbook (the super small one, not Air or Pro).

I'm on my second X1 Carbon gen-5 (third X1C overall), and it already has nearly the fewest ports I prefer in a laptop. While I could do without the headphone jack (controversial I know) and Ethernet port (proprietary? I lost the OEM adapter long ago), I think two each of USB-C and USB-A is minimal enough.

USB-C for power USB-A for yubikey nano One of each for expansion

It's too bad there aren't more high-res (2k+) laptops in the slim form factor that Intel used to call "ultrabooks". I was really hoping the Purism Librem 14 would have that as an option.

edit: ...and I'm unwilling to give up anymore battery life as long as it's used for video conferencing

battery life and weight >> Any other feature on a laptop.

I'm waiting for that ARM mac.

I disagree, many people use laptops as replacement desktop these days so having expansion ports is important. My new job gave me an X1 Carbon with only two USB type A ports and this is my workstation now. If I want to use any accessories like a mouse or external keyboard (set the laptop on a stand so it's level with an external monitor), I immediately run into an issue with having enough expansion room.

If you're doing nothing but sitting in meetings and taking notes, the battery life will follow due to the light use. But for many people, a laptop is as much of a computer as they'll ever use, so having the ability to expand is crucial.

USB-C hubs nicely solve the problem of plugging USB devices, a monitor and a charger into a laptop. Like the docking stations in old laptops, but far cheaper. If you have multiple 4K screens or very high speed I/O devices you may need Thunderbolt, but for most people USB-C is fine.

If a challenger doesn't appear soon, I may have to look into stitching together my Chromebook Plus display (12.3" 2400x1600, 3:2, with Touch Screen) to some new AMD laptop body.

Thunderbolt 3 or 4 ?

"The ThinkPad X1 Nano just has two Thunderbolt 3 ports, "

vs.

"2 brand new Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports."

https://www.slashgear.com/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-nano-leaked-to-...

I guess it's USB-4 ports, which are Thunderbolt 3.

That seems like an error on the part of the author there, since the image they used specifies Thunderbolt 4 as well.

Tiger Lake has Thunderbolt 4. It's the same speed as Thunderbolt 3 so most people won't notice the difference anyway.

When can we get 3:2 aspect ratio laptops with zero (>95% screen to body ratio) bezels? So far the Surfaces have one part of this, and the XPSes have the second part.

My daily driver is a Huawei Matebook Pro, with exactly those specs... But a horribly placed camera and I think nowadays you can't even buy them in the US anymore.

Yes the Matebook does have 3:2 and no bezels, but it's Huawei, it's only 13 inches, and the processors are the 15 watt versions rather than the 45 watt ones. I'm thinking more of an LG Gram 17 inch or at least 15 inch with these specs.

I agree about the screen size. I'm really looking forward to next year's XPS 15, once they deal with the usual 'first model' issues.

That said, I haven't found a situation where the processor has been a problem, but that's probably a matter of workload. For software development, it has never been an issue. If you are re-encoding video for a living or doing CAD, maybe it could be an issue.

Hopefully by 2K they mean 2.5K (2560x1600) and not actual 2K with a 1920x1200 screen.

Yes, they seem to have 2560x1600, probably the same display as Yoga [0].

[0]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Leak-confirms-Lenovo-Yoga-Carb...

2K usually means 1440p

Apparently some manufacturers have adopted that confusing naming. 2K is 1080p though in any reasonable naming scheme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K_resolution

>Apparently some manufacturers have adopted that confusing naming.

Gamers decided to call 1920 x 1080 as 1080P and 1440 as 2K.

It makes absolutely no sense. But this mis-information got so widespread it sort of became a norm.

3K would make more sense even...

Clarity on resolution/DPI is important for me as I continue to use bitmap fonts in Linux which don't scale well with HiDPI. I think the resolution+DPI on the Microsoft Surface Laptop is perfect but I would prefer to go with Lenovo.

Calling 2560px as 2K is absolutely wrong and really confusing. I hope they think what is half of 4K.

When Apple first eliminated all but two (or four) USB-C ports, there was a ton of vitriol towards Apple on HN. In the years since Apple’s move, both Dell and IBM have adopted Apple’s playbook and are in the process of eliminating ports, and there are no comments on how everyone will need dongles to connect peripherals or get their work done.

- What has changed in our use of laptops over the last 12-months that dongles are no longer a pain point?

- Did Apple make the right and, dare I say it, bold call by removing a whole host of ports in lieu of standardizing on USB-C?

They offer machines with more ports, making it the buyer's choice.

Dongles are still hell, I regularly still use USB-A and HDMI on my notebook.

My Toshiba Portegé X-30-D is coveted in our company as it has:

1x Full-Size USB3

1x Full-Size HDMI

2x Thunderbolt USB-C (Displayport Support on both)

Micro-SD Slot

Headphone Jack

32GB of Socketed DDR4 Ram

1TB NVMe SSD

Matté Full-HD Touchscreen

Windows Hello Face&Fingerprint Recognition

and weighs only 1,05 kg

The only bottleneck is the i7-7500U Dual-Core CPU that I got because I couldn't wait another generation and now I just don't know what to upgrade to. I hope once USB4 becomes available there will be a Ryzen 4800U successor powered notebook available that just MATCHES the rest of the specs of my current one.

It's still a pain-point, it's just that everyone's moved on. It's the new normal.

As one of those people who loves all the ports, I'll admit that the adapter situation has gotten a bit better. People/offices have adapted to the situation, where it has become standard to have a set of adapters attached to any display cable. And if not, usually someone has an adapter somewhere. I still find it frustrating that the costs of Apple's decision (followed by others) has effectively been subsidized by everyone else though.

Then in the lockdown, it has been months since I've found myself in that frustrating situation where I travel to someone else's office or a conference, they only have an HDMI input, I forgot my adapter, and nobody can seem to find someone who has the right adapter. I'm likely in the market for a laptop over the next 6-12 months, and 6 months ago I would have said for sure that my next laptop would have to have HDMI or bust, but now those pain points are definitely not top of mind.

What's nice about the way Lenovo is doing it is that they give a ton of different options for what you want and need. My X1 Extreme, for example, has a ton of different ports, 64GB of RAM, it's bigger, HDMI port, etc. The X1 Nano focuses on being lightweight and portable. If that's what I prefer and I don't mind it only having two USB-C ports, that's what I would go for. And I might! I'd be curious to see how much battery life it actually gets, and it has 5G.

What's dumb is that my "Pro" MacBook only has 4 Thunderbolt ports.

For one thing, USB itself is moving entirely to Type-C as of v4.

Why not use AMD CPUs?

I'm guessing not enough time to stuff an amd rig into ultra portable form factor.

Their previous lineup did also include ultraportable AMD devices like the X390 though. Or is there something inherently harder about AMD designs?

I doubt it, but the nano is over 20% lighter, it's in a different class, a class that amd hasn't competed in until now.

I'm guessing amd will be in these kinds of ultra portables soon. Their cpus are flying off shelves, they're probably focused on the more lucrative server market for now.

I read that the X1 was developed with Intel, and thus they can't use AMD CPUs in that lineup. I don't know if it's true or not. It was a random reddit comment.

Time. I saw the HP Envy on Linus' Tech-tips review and the battery life on AMD CPUs is ridiculous. 14 hours on battery. For most people, you might be able to bring your laptop to work WITHOUT a power brick.

I'm personally not a fan of HP laptops, but i'm looking forward to AMD CPUs on thinkpad and Dell XPS laptops. There is no way there isn't going to be a X1 type laptop with an AMD CPU. Lenovo can't leave that kind of battery performance on the table without losing market share to Dell and HP.

14 hours compared to 13h for a similar intel based laptop. Not really that impressive. Correct me if I’m wrong, but most of the power consumption comes from the screen anyways.

It's impressive for AMD - they have had a not so stellar history with overheating, battery killing laptop CPUs. Also that's with 8C/16T as opposed to 4C/8T on Intel.

Yup, only 7% better battery.

But... 20% cheaper. 50% faster in multi-threaded tests, 20% faster in single-threaded tests.

Almost seems strange they've kept that 522g battery in there, when they could have had ~10h battery life and a machine approaching a kilo.

This is likely a product of Project Athena. Intel is spending a lot of money codeveloping flagship laptops with OEMs. That, of course, comes with CPU exclusivity.

I can't even imagine what a laptop lighter than my X1 carbon would feel like. Thats so light.

Remember the 11" Macbook Air? It's pretty light, and it'd be lighter without the aluminum.

> <999kg

Yeah I hope so.

Are the USB ports on both sides? One of the nice things about the 15" MBP is being able to charge it from either side. Also, having >= 3 ports allows me to keep a yubikey installed semi-permanently and still charge from either side. Nice to see more laptop manufacturers adopting less wide screens.

Woohoo! Praise for non-16:9 laptops.

Bring back 4:3!

I would much rather someone made a laptop with a keyboard with sculptured keys and reasonably full key travel. I would be glad to lose a pound of lightness for that.

no 32GB option? pass.

Sure, but think about it: This means other systems will get 16:10 !! (I cannot type fast enough to sooth my enthousiasm for this!)

Some T series, 15 inch, with 16:10 #swoon

> This means other systems will get 16:10

I hope so. And I sure hope Lenovo will not put some crappy TN screen in them, as it is known to do. Or make you chose between quality and resolution.

I'd be enthusiastic if they released a laptop with a proper 4:3 screen.

two thoughts

a) where does it say this? it says the machine will have 16 GB of ram, nothing about possible bonus upgrades one might be able to get (though maybe you followed some links in the article)

b) even if 16 GB is max: whoever it is that "needs" more than 16 GB probably won't go for an ultra light weight (< 1 kg = < 2.2 pounds) 13 inch machine for their use case. Seems like "mobility" is priority number one, not having some multi-tasking maverick

It's not my use case but I know developers commuting with 13" laptops (weight and size) and connecting them to a large monitor in their office and working with VMs and containers. 16 GB is the minimum, 32 GB is the best option.

I just got an xps 13 and decided to go to with 32 gb

I may not desperately need it now but figured to future proof it for the nominal upgrade price. this laptop is going to last quite a while for me so might as well make it worth it.

I got an XPS13 a month ago. Love it...

Nearly ordered the 32GB RAM model with 1TB SSD and the 4k touch screen. Here in the UK that meant a special order and a three week lead time.

Then Dell had a flash sale on the non-touch 16GB model, with 14% off, an extra 5% via a cashback site's affiliate link, and next day delivery.

So all in all, I got a machine that is nearly as good nearly all the time, for 60% of the top spec price.

I figured by the time I really do need 32GB, I can sell it and buy a top of the range AMD-based Dell or Lenovo.

Wouldn't you want something more powerful for that? Combining 15W cpu, ultralight, small form factor (constrained thermals) with 32GB for VMs and containers seems like a bad fit.

It's fine for running Kubernetes locally and IntelliJ. Chrome tends to be the HUGE offender in my setup. It can chew through so many Gigs just due to open tabs. The processor rarely is my roadblock. It's always memory.

You don't need a strong processor for VMs, just a lot of cores. And AMDs U processors can have upto 8 cores and upto 16 threads on their 15W ULV parts.

I don't know, I find it a bit upsetting that the X1 I bought 8 years ago had already 8G.

Doubling every 8 years seems a bit slow. I would like a bit more headroom to future proof it.

what are you doing with an ultra book that would make it need 32gb of ram?

Running Slack.

Or chrome. Need 64gb option to run both.

Or Firefox. (writing this from Firefox on Thinkpad with 16GB of RAM)

funny thing: firefox is using ~433mb of ram with ~15 tabs (including gmail, graphql playground, youtube).

slack alone is using 300mb. discord is using another 300mb.

I just checked mine my slack because I thought 300mb was too low for slack, mine is using 68mb, it used to chew like 1gb... Did they optimize it or something.

No optimisations here: Slack is using VIRT: 24.868g, RSS: 1.919g, SHR: 526924

Next highest single process is Firefox with 1G RSS and 5G Virt. I have 113 tabs open at the moment, although there's about 4G of RSS in "Web Content" processes which are firefox related.

Just curious, how many extensions do you have? I'm trying not to bloat my browser too much with them, but have 3-4 privacy related extensions and a couple of utility ones. Right now I have 22 tabs and Firefox uses 5-6 GB of RAM. Restart decreases RAM usage, but Firefox slowly eats RAM again.

I remember recently I freed 10GB of RAM just by restarting Firefox. I literally looked at Ubuntu's System Monitor. And I keep everything updated.

Tried to play with settings in about:config, made even worse and reset.

i'm using firefox nightly, with just a handful of extensions. vim vixen, lastpass, ublock origin and simple tab groups.

that's on linux, latest nightly.

I honestly can't tell if you're being serious.

I'm using a 6/7 year old ASUS with 8gb of RAM. It has no problems running 20 Chrome tabs, Slack, Spotify, VSCode all at once. Are these programs really pushing people's laptops that hard, or is my laptop some kind of weird mega-performer?

While they do chew any ram available. It is an over exaggeration.

I'm always confused why my experience never matches that of others in this arena. I run bare i3 and NeoVim. When I add Slack, Chrome and Spotify, I often see 12 Gigs of usage after a couple of days. Most of the time it comes down to Chrome's tabs... and Slack appearing to be leaky. I've recently started using an extension for Chrome which puts my tabs to sleep and frees the memory they were using. But still, I'm sitting at 8.33 Gigs of RAM used.

Chrome is bad with memory if you’re a tab hoarder, and some extensions can also be problematic. They have an update in the pipeline which will dramatically decrease memory use for background tabs.

I haven’t really seen the memory problems with slack, but we use the free slack without extensions. Maybe it has a similar problem with extensions?

Haha it's insane why it would need so much RAM for chat. It's truly insane.

Not really. It's a matter of which variable do you optimize for? There was a lot of Hackernews moaning on the thread for the blog post where the guy laments Kubernetes and its effect on etcd -- about how modern software is too complex and this and that.

But simplicity is not what they're optimizing for. They're optimizing for productivity -- specifically, how fast a typical corporate webdev shop can go from zero to working app. That's really the only thing that matters, because there's no room for something like Qt in today's move-fast-break-things environment. Qt means developing, compiling, testing, and supporting across multiple platforms which a modern webdev shop may not even be able to do if they had the budget for it (which they don't). Hell, there's barely room for any language besides JavaScript.

So hence, we get Electron and we get memory bloat. And it's perfectly reasonable, given the right perspective.

> But simplicity is not what they're optimizing for. They're optimizing for productivity

it's not only simplicity we're leaving on the table but efficiancy (resource usage) as well. this is not sustainable industry practice (see climate crisis, rare earth depletion). the need for ever more hastly crafted apps is compareable to the need for cheap plastic toys from the 1-dollar store i.e highly questionable.

There are FPGA synthesis tools that recommend 32GB (Depending on the chip you are targeting). If you have to keep jumping between an office desk and an R&D lab then an ultrabook is convenient.

Arguably you can schedule an FPGA synthesis or bitstream generation job on a build server rather than locally but I am just saying this an example of a use-case.

Lots of VMs. VMs don't need much CPU time but oh boy do they need the RAM.

This is one place containers do genuinely have the edge (if you can stomach running them outside a VM, of course...)

I don't feel right to ask this question using "Ask HN" - how many VMs you usually run?

What sort of a use case requires you to run "lots of VMs"? What nature of development do you do?

Some of the software I write must work on various different Linux releases (with different kernels), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Haiku and Windows. This is realistically only possible because I have all these running in different VMs.

I'd like to add macOS to the mix but it's something of a pain to virtualize. I'm aware of hackintoshes but there seem to be a bunch of gotchas and it seems you can never upgrade them.

I also have some VMs where I need decent security guarantees and confinement, such as running different web services.

Makes sense, thank you!

Even 32 is starting to feel cramped nowadays, especially with all those Electron apps, VMs, containers and Intelij incarnations. My next laptop will have 64!

Surely when you get to that size you get a normal-sized laptop, or an internet connection and an ec2 server.

i think 1366x768 resolution on 15.6 inch screen is perfect in terms of UI elements size. like its a sweet spot between to small and too large with enought horizontal area.

physical width of such 15.6 inch screen is 34.53 cm so it gives you 0,025285037 cm per pixel.

so my "perfect" laptop would have 15.6 inch screen and 16:10 aspect ratio. i would double the resolution in order to avoid fractional scaling and use 200% scaling so final resolution would be 2732x1708 - anyone can recommend something close to that on the market?

Just get 4K with 300% scaling. 3840/3 = 1280, it's about the same.

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