I would throw decent money to anyone not subscribing to the current form over function trend. I want thick, sturdy, long battery live, proper palm rest, good old LAN port. Is that too much to ask for a modern laptop?
Another option is to upgrade the motherboard and/or LCD in an older Thinkpad chassis.
Right-to-repair legislation is slowly progressing in the US.
Glossy screens literally give me headaches, they only work in pitch dark ambient light.
Primarily, graphics acceleration doesn't work. Since Apple has never made a computer that uses Intel 11th Gen CPUs, the integrated graphics are borked. I suppose a tremendous effort to reverse engineer and inject a working driver /could/ work, it's probably not feasible.
[0]: https://community.frame.work/t/macos-on-framework-laptop/295...
[1]: https://community.frame.work/t/macos-on-framework-laptop/295...
But they don't want to do that, because leaving hardware at the office translates to much higher insurance costs and makes them a bigger target for theft.
But like, 32 core, 64-128GB workstation with all the ports and storage you'll ever need is very possible and attainable on a fixed workspace, along with 4K 120Hz matte color-calibrated displays and the best keyboards money can buy.
Laptops are an unfortunate compromise. I get it, and I can work with it, but I'd rather have a desktop.
> because leaving hardware at the office translates to much higher insurance costs and makes them a bigger target for theft.
Not sure I buy that. Laptop loss and thefts resulting from being out in public must be way higher than the incidence of thieves breaking into locked and alarmed commercial office buildings just to steal computers.
Most gaming laptops nowadays also, sport a sober look (full black gaming laptops ala Thinkpad are usual), not the previously common "RGB-everywhere".
The lost upgradability in Thinkpads is even fully available in many gaming laptops, even some 14' ones have one-two RAM slots available.
The performance required for a professional laptop is fully there too, fast processors, lots of ram, several internal storage devices (in 15' gaming laptop is quite common one -upgradable - SSD plus a 2.5 bay sporting a much bigger HDD, accouting for several TBs in internal storage, almost unthinkable in most current "professional" laptops, specially if you want NOT to pay U$S 2000+).
And the guarantees usually span 2 years.
I think my future work laptop will be one of those amazing machines.
My X1 Nano and M1 Pro MBP are vastly better in those departments, hitting 450 and 500 nits brightness (with the larger going all the way to 1600nits for HDR content) which is usable in a much better range of environments. You’d have to be sitting in direct noon sunlight to really have a problem.
I wish the minimum bar for screen brightness would increase, 200-300 nits really just doesn’t cut it with fewer of us working in artificially lit offices with almost no sunlight.
My only concerns would be:
1. Paying the "gamer" tax. I assume these are going to be higher priced because they're targeting a culture big on edgy aesthetics and with plenty of disposable income.
2. Do the GPUs on these come on discrete cards that can be removed? I have no need for a gaming GPU... On my current laptop, I removed the nVidia GPU it came with and just run the laptop on the integrated Intel graphics. Zero problems with it ever.
Regarding the discrete GPU, I actually don't know if you can remove it from budget gaming laptops, I'd think you usually can't, but there are some expensive Alienware gaming laptops which I think could allow this.
As it was mentioned, the brightness could be a pain point, I'd double check about it in notebookcheck (the site).
You say it as if it was a good thing. I expect at least 8 years of use from a laptop and having such a short guarantee says a lot about reliability.
Gaming laptops are known for being especially focused on performance over reliability.
For us occasionnal users just having one of those 5 in 1 adapters in the laptop bag is enough. The thinner/lighter form factor is more comfortable most of the time and said adapter can be shared accross different devices. If I do the count I have 5 laptops in my own, 2 personnal, 1 professionnal, the other 2 are used by my partner and kids. I am very unlikely to need to hook a RJ45 cable on all these laptops at the same time.
Sometimes I miss having the damn LAN port, but you're right, for datacenter and field work, heavy hardware is a no go. I do know a number of people in the field using macbooks air for the work.
It’s thicker than the previous generation with more ports, with batshit crazy 20 hour battery life.
Or, if you’re my cable installer, you can still buy Panasonic Toughbook and similar jobsite laptops that have those features, but they’re a niche.
What do you need a physical LAN port for? In my experience that need is incredibly occasional, especially when compared to the need to actually go somewhere (these are laptops after all).
Modern Wi-Fi speeds are so fast and reliable there truly isn’t a need to use a wired connection regularly even if you are “professional.”
There are Wi-Fi routers that will beat 1Gb speed and maintain close to 1Gb even 75 feet away: https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/how-fast-is-wi-fi-6/
You want long battery life and a dedicated LAN port but why do you need long battery life if you’re just gonna sit connected to the wall?
We used to lug around laptops that had empty space inside just in case you wanted to pop in a PCMCIA card, which seems pretty insane when you think about it from a modern perspective. Empty space in a portable device for the chance that you might want to add an expansion card. Obviously, USB has long since decimated the need for something so, dare I say, crazy!
I think what you want is to go back in time for nostalgia’s sake. These old school features are gone because they’ve been supplanted, not because some big bad evil laptop OEM removed it to save a buck.