Hacker News Reader

Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

I really want the G14 as a durable performant work machine but it has no webcam :(

I like the lack of webcam in my G14 - I see it as a safety feature. Also having a separate device for that, I can do upgrades.

What I don't like though is the lack of PageUp, PageDown, Insert, Home and End keys - this took some time getting used to.

Still, performance and battery life more than make up for all that. And the screen is also decent.

I wouldn't compromise my day-to-day work experience just because every other aspect of the G14 is perfect. It is an incredible machine (especially for the money), but if it doesn't get the job done it's ultimately worthless.

USB webcams or cellphones are a pain to deal with, especially if you just want to grab 1 device and run to a meeting room. "Oops i forgot my webcam brb". Cellphones are problematic because this means you now have to run some sort of hybrid of meeting software between PC and phone. This can increase cognitive load and distract from the actual purpose of the meeting.

IMO doesn't really matter anymore, considering most of us have a phone with a front facing camera with much better quality than most/all laptop cameras, it can easily substitute a laptops camera.

Is there some easy to use software to use your phone as a webcam for your laptop (android -> linux/windows/mac) ? And do you use a stand for the smartphone for that?

Otherwise you need to connect to each conference with multiple devices, choose which microphone to use, share a presentation on one device, but the camera on the phone, ... . Doable, but annoying.

Theres this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dev47apps....

Its a little tempermental but works without to many issues.

Almost any smartphone is a better webcam than almost every webcam money can buy.

why do you need a webcam? i wfh and all my meetings are audio only and optionaly someone shares the screen to show a demo or a presentation. we don't show our faces. the majority of colleagues have duct tape on the laptop's webcam. so for me, the missing cam from g14, is a feature

Get an external webcam?

Yeah, you can tell they designed that machine way before the pandemic and WFH was the norm and they switched to a no-webcam-on-gaming-laptops mantra.

ASUS engineer: "laptop webcams have shitty quality and gamers don't use them anyway, let's just not include one and save ourselves the BOM cost; applause from bean-counters"

Covid-19 WFH: "I'm gonna end this man's whole career"

I'm sure their hindsight is now 20/20 though.

MacBook Pros got the right balance between usability, features and power a long time ago, other companies should just copy & modernize it. Not having webcam on a laptop is unacceptable (though having a physical switch on it is a great feature for privacy).

I disagree, other companies should definitely stay away from copying the modern Macs.

I like having choices regarding OS, hardware configuration, ports, keyboards, displays, upgradeability, reaprability etc..

If you want a Mac copy then the Mac will be the best anyway.

I don't like the post Steve Jobs direction that the Macbook Pro took, so it's a no-go for me. I had a company macbook pro in 2008 and I loved it (except the OS and the keyboard layout). It had great sound (I had more expensive laptops with worse speakers since then). Also the display was perfect for me (especially outside in sunshine...). Maybe it's just my memory, but I don't feel that the current laptop offerings are that much better.

Hard pass. People who do not buy Macbook pro do it because they don't like what's on offer. No point copying it. For example, latest laptops from Dell/ASUS/etc have 120Hz screens, sometimes even touch screens. If they were to just copy mac, we would never get these amazing features.

It was a shitty deal to not have a camera even before the pandemic. It seems they thought only gamers would want to buy it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com