1) Maxed-out battery (90-100WH)
2) Low-TDP modern CPU, ideally Ryzen
3) Bright, hi-res screen
There is nothing on the market that offers this. M1 mac is the closest option, but Apple shouldn't be given money.
I'm currently on a Thinkpad T480.
2) Low-TDP modern CPU, ideally Ryzen
3) Bright, hi-res screen
There is nothing on the market that offers this. M1 mac is the closest option, but Apple shouldn't be given money.
I'm currently on a Thinkpad T480.
1. Get a T480 with the i7-8650
2. Get the 95Wh battery option (24Wh internal + 72Wh external)
3. Upgrade RAM to 32GB DDR4-2400
4. Upgrade SSD to 2TB NVMe
5. Upgrade display to the T14 Gen2’s 1080p 100% sRGB 400nits display (available with custom brackets for T470/T480 e.g. here: https://www.xelent-store.de/Innolux-N140HCG-GQ2-400cd-Low-Po...)
Result: A laptop with awesome specs in all regards except CPU, and even the CPU is still respectable, replaceable everything, and a great display. For overall somewhere around 500-700€.
There’s nothing better on the market right now, especially as this gives you powerbridge, so you can keep two external batteries and just replace them when they drop to 0% instead of having to wait for it to charge.
And as the T470/T480 is easy to open up, you just need a small iFixit kit and 30 minutes to do all these replacements.
After seeing how crisp and clear the text is on my main screen, I was really annoyed with myself for not getting a 3K screen for my secondary monitor too :(
That 16″ 3840×2400 display means 283ppi; 1920×1200 would be only 142ppi. (Even a 13.3″ 1920×1080 is still only 166ppi.)
I went down from a Surface Book’s 13.5″ 3000×2000 (267ppi) to a Zephyrus G15’s 15.6″ 2560×1440 (188ppi) and although it’s definitely better than 1920×1080 it’s still definitely not as good as the Surface Book for crispness. (Most people probably wouldn’t worry about the difference, but they’d certainly notice it if going down to the 141ppi that 1920×1080 would represent.) That Vivobook looks magnificent: if I hadn’t just recently obtained my G15 and could actually get that Vivobook, I’d do so like a shot.
It also depends on the screen size. Such super-widescreenness is probably only found in fairly large monitors, and at that size I’d say that doubling the resolution (5760×2160) will have a massive effect on perceived text quality. At that size, and depending on how far away from the screen you use it, you could possibly even double it again and still tell and appreciate the difference.
Do you own one? Keen to know what real world battery life is like, and if there are any tradeoffs/annoyances?
And you are right that Intel U chips are rarely are shipping with 90Wh+ . But https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Home/Zenbook/Zenbook-Flip-1... does. The Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 (Yoga Slim 7) has a 71 Wh, the Schenker Via 14 has a 73 Wh, the HP Spectre x360 15 72.9 Wh, the MSI Summit E15 has a 82 Wh.
And yes, likely next year, AMD will have USB 4 but -- not right now.
And the problem is not exactly the bus speed -- although 10Gpbs is not that much -- but the lack of external PCI Express (or any other DMA capable protocol but the last non-PCIe tech doing that was Firewire and that's gone).
see my reply below -- it already is. sorta.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/10/22428899/apple-suppliers-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/29/lens-te...
I wouldn't mind that as I'm not their customer, but all the crap they introduce gets mindlessly copied by all their competition.
I'm afraid of the computing world fragmenting again into several walled gardens in the likes of Amiga/Atari of old, nothing being compatible with each other, unable to run code not signed by the manufacturer.
The danger should IMO be obvious, but I watch in terror as my friends happily buy into the M1.
We’ll have 20 years of siloed hardware, and then some competitors figure out a way to get a foot in the door, or signed-only systems will become distasteful to consumers and Companies will revert, interoperability will become the norm again.
There are always barriers in computing and society will respond to it.
Laptops maybe, but the framework laptop is exactly what you want, seems pretty decent, and has a decent chance of taking off.
Not a fan of Apple here but I use (and admittedly like) their products: I develop apps and iOS is solid on the app landscape, currently we don't even care about Android versions of our apps in almost any project that we use because most people who are "serious" about their apps are on iPhones and iPads. In addition, even though I have the hacker mindset of many out here, at the end of the day I need something reliable and good-looking, and well supported, which Apple has and others don't.
I don't like Apple's user-hostile behavior and would happily love to see some competition. For me:
Apple is bad, Microsoft/Google is worse. So Apple is relatively good.
You can sell good products while still embracing open technologies.
I used to be able to slam an MBP down on the woodworking table, open it up and start typing. Now there is no slamming, because they flimsy. No typing near dust, because they get stuck in the keyboard. Every app is a single window, so you can't chat with two people at once. Everything is in the cloud, so you wait on your very fast computer to do networking all the f.in time (even opening Finder). The UI has lost so much of it's legibility that I don't know what I'm looking at half the time anymore. Active window? Maybe not? What does that label say? Why is this a modal? Where is the "don't ask again items" preference pane?
We have parted ways, I think. I'm not riding with them anymore.
Keyboard is/was a valid concern. But flimsy, I’m not seeing.
Pretty sure I could murder someone with my M1 MacBook Air, clean it, and then write code.
There used to be a thick glass panel in front of it, but no more.
Open your new MacBook Air, place a single grain of sand smack in the middle of the keyboard between the G and the H. Close the lid.
Turn around and sit on it.
Tell me all about glass then. If you record it I'll have a listen.
Alternatively, throw a pinch of sand on the keyboard, close the lid, bag the Mac. Now, with some vigor, take it out blindly by any corner and trow it down on the thick wooden table, slamming it with it's own weight.
A few times.
And tell me how that gentle test went for you. :)
This isn't a rare occurrence, I'd say ⅓ of my acquaintances do this. The power of marketing at its finest.
This extends to many brands of course for example AWS or anything where time or the person is invested but it's most easily noticeable with Apple on HN.
But not so anymore. Yes you pay. Yes the price is fair for what's on offer. No, it's not quality, and not the general direction I'm interested in, at all. Not in hardware, not in software.
I recently watched something[0] about the Macbook cooling (Intel, at least) and you seem to be right.