Comment by Smithalicious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Smithalicious | Hacker News Reader

0. Linux compatibility, I am not super picky about getting everything to work perfectly but I should be able to trust that the software I prefer to use will run and my laptop will connect to wifi and play audio properly and so on.

1. IPS screen (mostly a given nowadays, but this wasn't always so)

2. Trackpoint, I hate trackpads. Pretty rare option so I could possibly be convinced otherwise if the trackpad is particularly good.

3. Decent keyboard, any laptop will always be primarily a text processing machine for me. (tablet version) 4. User serviceability, with battery and RAM being highest priority but expandable storage is nice too, and all other replaceable parts are a nice bonus.

5. General ruggedness, the whole point of a laptop is being able to travel with it and it's the kind of tech I expect to last me for years.

6. Battery life, though I am not super picky about this.

7. Everything else including performance, higher resolutions than 768p, thinness, appearance, touchscreen (roughly listed in order of preference).

Posted from my trusty Thinkpad X230t which is the only laptop I'm aware of that ticks nearly all my boxes. It's bulky and makes a vacuum cleaner noise when compiling and the battery only lasts 4-5 hours of normal use, though. Still, good enough for web browsing, various forms of text processing, watching videos, listening to music and the vast majority of what you might use a computer for.

I did look into the Framework laptop recently but while it's probably the closet things in a long time the keyboard doesn't look good and there's no trackpoint (nor even physical mouse buttons)

Similar here. I've been spoiled by Lenovo, although it's not perfect. It's mostly a coding machine for me too.

0. Linux compatibility: minimal driver problems, hibernation can fail less than 1% of the time. 1. Touchpad with mouse buttons (ideally 3) is not negotiable. 2. A decent keyboard with all keys from the home/end/... block. Full sized arrows would be nice, half-sized are a no. 3. Not bigger than a sheet of A4 paper. 4. A non-glare, wide angle display. 5. Good WiFi sensitivity and performance. 6. A hard drive activity light is quite useful. 7. When it inevitable gets thermally throttled, it should still be useful for web browsing. 8. Mute/mic mute buttons are nice. So are volume buttons. 9. Open firmware: WiFi, coreboot, libreboot. I'm a hacker, and don't like fences.

Same thoughts about the Framework laptop. I hope it becomes an option in the future.

> I could possibly be convinced otherwise if the trackpad is particularly good.

Genuine question: what about Macbook trackpads? We have a MBP 2013, and it runs leaps and bounds over my Windows laptop which came out in the same year. I'm not sure if other laptops have caught up with Apple yet, but Macbook trackpads are commonly referred to as the best in the business.

I've heard they're good, but Macbooks tick almost none of the boxes in the list, so I am not very interested in them.

I will say that Macbooks are more rugged than they appear, and the battery life on the M1 models is best-in-class. That said, they're not very open or Linux-compatible (yet, at least). I bought an M1 Air and love it, but it's very use-case dependent, I think.

They are basically an iPhone digitizer in landscape mode, so yeah, they are very much OK. Trackpoint is still preferable for when editing text.

I’ve tried a lot of Windows laptops, and there’s still nothing on the Win/Linux side, even in Dell and MS laptops, that compares with the precision and natural feeling of a Mac trackpad.

Apple leapt ahead of other laptops again with their trackpad that uses haptics instead of an actually button. It takes consistent pressure across the whole trackpad instead of being more difficult to press as you get closer to the hinge. It feels ridiculously convincing that you're actually pushing a button and even has a cool feature where you have a second action by pushing harder. And it really does feel like you've pushed a button deeper.

Yeah, the haptic stuff is mad! I was amazed when I learned about it, I thought it was a real button with some sort of touch sensor.

You can literally change the feedback from the "click" (and the push-down strength) in Settings. Even in 2015 that felt decades ahead of its time.

If anything I still prefer that trackpad over a real button.

> I did look into the Framework laptop recently but while it's probably the closet things in a long time the keyboard doesn't look good and there's no trackpoint (nor even physical mouse buttons)

It also has a screen that needs fractional scaling which makes Framework a deal breaker for me, no second thoughts about it. I'm not buying anything with a fractionally scaled display if I can help it.

Why not? Waylanyd has gotten to a stage where I can use it as a daily driver and have a better experience than with X.

Is it X support or something else?

200dpi according to calculator, which is about right for 2x. What would you prefer?

2256x1504, 13.5”

https://www.calculators.tech/dpi-calculator#dpi-viewing-dist...

Says it is good from about three feet away.

200dpi on a laptop screen would ideally need 1.6x scaling, not 2x. It could vary between 1.4x to 1.8x but definitely not 2x. Not sure what's wrong with that website.

At 13.5 inches, it would've been better to take a page from some Surface laptops and go for 3000x2000 or 3200x1800, depending on the preference for aspect ratio. At ~260 PPI, 2x scaling works fine.

My tastes are fairly similar to yours. I'm curious which boxes aren't ticked by the more recent X200 series Thinkpads since the X230 in your view?

I recently purchased one, and I did a bunch of research before deciding which to get. I settled on an X270 because it's user upgradeable, supports two SSDs, has two batteries, has hardware VP9 encoding/decoding, includes a USB C port, and is hopefully much closer to the ruggedness of the impeccable X200-X230 range than the newer models. The only thing thing I felt like I compromised on was the lack of support for 32 GB of memory. I was able to purchase an i7 X270, 4TB SSD, 16GB RAM, and replacement batteries all for under $1k, and it blows any new laptop that costs twice as much out of the water for my needs.

The X270 has a 6th or 7th gen dual core CPU. If you get an 11th gen i5 like you'll find in the sub-$1000 laptop range you'll get something that is literally twice as fast as even the highest end 7th gen i7. That is a lot of performance to leave on the table.

you'll find in the sub-$1000 laptop range you'll get something that is literally twice as fast

That's true, but it would require some combination of major compromises on the SSD, RAM, hot swappable battery, build quality, form factor, and keyboard/trackpoint. I'm almost never CPU limited in my day to day workflows, even on a 2nd gen i5, and I have cloud resources available when I need to do something CPU intensive like model training for work. It's a tradeoff that isn't right for everyone, but those other factors are far more important to me than the CPU.

X220 is my primary computer. It never uses more than 4 of the 16GB RAM. I ran the fan almost all the time at full speed tough. The killer app (in a bad sense) is Zoom. It kills the CPU and can't handle virtual backgrounds.

How much RAM is used is determined by you pattern of application usage (and OS), not by your choice of computer.

I know. I just wanted to emphasize on Zoom being the only thing that makes an otherwise perfect computer not powerful enough (for me of course).

I feel like the X-series Thinkpads after the X230 are an unhappy compromise, somewhat better in some ways and worse in others. The further away in time you get from the X230 the more they sacrifice things I care about.

The X270 feels more like a side-grade, trading in a certain amount of ruggedness and maintainability for a better screen and better battery life, but a pretty minor performance improvement.

ApparentlyApparently 3rd party manufacturers are looking at building keyboards with trackpoint for the Framework laptops.

That would definitely incline me towards it a lot more, but I'd have to see it first.

Have you ever used a trackpoint-style pointing device from anyone other than IBM or Lenovo and had it be any good?

I think the current Lenovo trackpoints aren't as good as the IBM devices used to be in the late 1990s. I assume they were sacrificed on the same altar as the keyboards.

But the ones I've used from Dell, Toshiba and HP were so aggressively terrible I'd rather just carry around an external mouse.

So I like the idea of a framework with a trackpoint-style pointer, but I am afraid it's likely to be awful.

I have used some of them. Indeed not as good but useable.

Sadly Lenovo is taking alot of wrong directions imo, non-removeable battery, soldering memory now etc... I'd be happy to try something else and love the concepts behind the Framework.

Lenovo's descent into soldered RAM and the elimination of external batteries has me rooting for Framework too.

My daily driver is currently a T-480 that's about 3.5 years old. The relative stagnation of CPU and even IO in laptops has it still feeling reasonable to use. I'm hoping that by the time I want to replace it, Framework will really have found their stride and my decision will be obvious.

And I'd rather be stuck with a touchpad than a soldered SSD, which feels like Lenovo's next logical move.

I see a lot of mentions of mainstream brands in this thread. If Linux compatibility is a criterion, why not a laptop built with that in mind?

Just a reminder that now exist, in no particular order: - Juno Computers - Tuxedo Computers - System76 - Slimbook - Starlabs - Pine - Framework - Manjaro Computers

Admittedly, the same chassis are reused across a couple of these examples, but there's choice

How smooth is video playback of newer codecs or even higher resolution of any codecs at 4k? I thought about bringing back my w520 from the dead but the cost didn't seem worth it.

Coding videos below 1080p are harder to read and unless it's a school lecture, 720p is a minimum.

And is it you main, do you have a separate system for media consumption?

Yes you did describe explicitly a thinkpad. Why is trackpoint a preference?

Because it's just much more pleasant to use. Plus, being able to manipulate the mouse without taking my hands off the keyboard is also a big advantage.

I've never used a trackpad that did not have at least one of: bad palm rejection, inaccuracy around the edges, clicking that feels bad and/or makes the mouse cursor drift while trying to click.

Granted I have not used an expensive, modern laptop in a while and it could be much better now, but even then I just think the trackpoint is better UX and better posture, there's something uncomfortable about having to awkwardly squish your arm between you and the laptop to manipulate the cursor.

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