Hacker News Reader

Comment by sseagull | Hacker News Reader

I mean, unless you are an extreme outlier, you spend more time on the ground than on an airplane. Why would you optimize for working on an airplane over your typical workday?

For me personally, 99.9% of my work is done at my desk (1), so why not have a more powerful, upgradeable, repairable computer to work with?

(1) I'm not hip enough to work from coffee shops

View on HN

I agree with you. When I travel I just take a tablet for some reading on the flight and maybe some light HN reading before bed. To do actual work, I kind of like my split keyboard, mouse, and 32 CPUs. I don't bother trying to get a ton of work done on the road; if I need to talk to someone in another state or country for work, we have video conferences now.

It's amazing how much shit you get on HN of all places for sitting at your desk programming.

> extreme outlier

Contrary to popular myth, not all of us live and work in a basement. Myself and many people I know, my non-technical girlfriend included, use our laptops all around the country and in multiple other countries.

I do agree about upgradeable and repairable, which is why the Framework laptop is getting pretty attractive. But there's still nothing that compares in performance and portability to my M1 Air.

Right, that's why they said "outlier". Most people aren't going all around the country and multiple other countries. Most people sit at home on a computer, and sit at work on another computer.

Like you, I am also an outlier, using my MacbBok all over Hades.

That also suggests that modern tech workers who have a hybrid work arrangement are outliers. That's getting to be a pretty large group.

Heck, even before COVID, my previous company only gave out laptops. Those things would get moved all around the office - from desk to desk, to multiple conference and meeting rooms, home, etc. This has been the norm for at least 5 years in my experience.

From my experience it's better to use both laptop and workstation. When I'm normally working I use the comfort/performance of the workstation, when I'm on the move I can use the portability of the laptop.

Basically all developers I know have "hybrid work arrangement", working some days from home/travels and some from office. They all remotely connect to their workstation at work either from their home computer of from laptop when traveling.

Maybe it depends on type of development or age of developers, but I'm not 20 anymore and laptop is an ergonomic nightmare. If you want to use it for a longer period of time and avoid health issues you should get an external keyboard/mouse/screens anyway. Which means you just recreated workstation, but it costs more money, has worse performance and all kinds of issues while connecting so much stuff to it.

We all had external keyboards, mice, and multiple monitors on our desks. The only time we were ergonomically constrained was when we were mobile. But we could be mobile at a moment's notice, and with all our stuff still running.

Now what I really would like is a high quality, low latency complete remote system. I got pretty close to this with a recent experiment, but it took a good bit of effort (and I still had some weird issues). It was great in that I could go to any computer with enough power to drive a browser, remote into my server "desktop", and continue right where I left off.

If that could get perfected, I would probably switch to an iPad Pro with optional keyboard.

> Most people sit at home on a computer, and sit at work on another computer

a) You don't know what most people do.

b) I would add that those of us that are in a hybrid mode e.g. working equally from home and work are given laptops specifically because we are expected to use the same computer in both environments.

a. Sure I do. It's pretty easy to reckon. I don't see "most" people traveling across the country and countries on a regular basis.

b. Sure, but again, that's a minority of even the professional demographic. Now, if you're thinking the developer demographic, sure I might agree with you, but that's not what OP said.

You think a minority of professionals are going to the office full-time ?

Because in Australia at least that is not what is happening at all.

Occupancy levels in the CBDs of our major cities are still well below pre-COVID averages.

I wonder how energy prices are going to change that. If someone needs to pay $1000 a month to heat their homes all day in the winter because of WFH, I can see that tipping over lots of folks to go back to the office.

If that becomes an issue, I think it's reasonable that companies will start providing extra money to remote workers to cover operating costs. After all, those same companies will need to lease less office space (meaning lower costs for space and electricity).

They don't need to travel across the country to need a laptop.

I have two data points for you:

The company I work for does little dev work. 99% of the people have laptops. They don't travel cross-country, mostly work in the office. But they also need to move to conference rooms, work from home, etc. We only have to handle one PC per person this way, instead of figuring how to handle their own personal PC when at home, etc. These are mostly "non IT people". Sure, you can argue they don't need the power of a desktop anyway. Which is absolutely correct.

I have a friend who does "actual dev work" working for an "actual software company". Java and C++, so they actually require powerful machines to compile (at least more than my company), etc. They used to have big-ass Xeon workstations. Those were replaced with some kind of Dell laptop [*] with a bunch of cores and RAM. He also basically never travels for work, but can now easily work from home without installing the company crap on his own PC. My friend is much happier with this arrangement.

Both companies provide multi-monitor setups with external keyboards and mice, so the comfort part of a desktop is still present when they're sitting at their desks.

---

[0] They look like the XPS line, but seem somewhat thicker and don't have the XPS logo.

The only use case for a laptop is when you are travelling across the country? What sort of bizarro argument is this?

My work is done almost 100% at a desk, in different rooms of my home depending on the season (some get too cold or too hot) or on a whim. A desktop won't do. And sometimes I really take my laptop to somewhere else.

Different strokes for different folks and all, but it's hard for me to imagine this. I have 3 large monitors, so even if I had a laptop I would want to move those around as well.

After working with large monitors, I don't know how anyone gets serious work done on a laptop screen.

I do have a laptop, but it is relatively inexpensive and used mostly as a thin client to my desktop (as others have mentioned).

Edit: I will also add, I like having a dedicated space for work. This prevents work from creeping into my life everywhere in my house. I can't be on the couch, watching a movie, and have the urge to work - I'm not in my work space!

I mostly agree with you, in that I usually find working on only a laptop screen frustrating and love having a dedicated work area.

But it depends on the task I do. For example, I quite enjoy working from my parents' garden when it's nice outside and if I do some focused work. Like reading some "long-form documentation" (where I don't need to follow it along as I apply it) or when I do some routine sysadmin work.

I have a big monitor (don't like having multiple monitors) at my parents' house, with a dedicated desk in a "work area". I also have this at home. And I also have this at the office. It's much more comfortable to move around these locations with a laptop than it would be to haul around a desktop, or have multiple desktops and having to keep them in sync. When I need actual horsepower, I have a Xeon workstation at my house, and my work allows me to leverage it remotely if needed. Guess what? I basically only turn it on for games.

This is all getting rather stupid. Laptop aren't for serious work? What planet are you on? You like stationary devices because you like to compartmentalise your life. Well thats great for you, but it's hardly normal.

I mostly work outside in an Adirondack chair, so for me, it does make sense to optimize for mobility.

I don't have a Mac though... Dell XPS 13 running Ubuntu works great for me. Never had an issue with the three I've had over the years.

> For me personally, 99.9% of my work is done at my desk

And for many of us their computer is not used exclusively at a desk.

It's also used at work, on a couch, on a plane, in bed etc.

Yeah. Only thing I'll add is that I use my laptop as a thin-client, so I don't ever find myself pining for more power. Works great for watching YouTube, editing text and SSHing into my desktop via Tailscale when I want some more power. Using my Macbook in the same way is just more of a hassle, but that's probably because I don't use iCloud/the App Store...

You don't have to travel much at all before a laptop is essential.

And at that point I'd imagine it's way easier to optimize for mobility, for a vast majority of people - unless they're working entirely in virtual workspaces/the cloud - in which case a laptop is perfectly fine anyway.

I too don't get this transition to working on laptops. What a crappy form factor. I do have two of them - and they get used about 2 hours per month on average.

I actually understand the subjective differences for people to choose a desktop over a laptop.

But I really don't get your point about form factor. Using, external monitors and adding a keyboard and mouse to a laptop is a non-issue.

If you add external monitors, keyboard and mouse you just recreated non-mobile work environment that costs more money and has worse performance than workstation.

This site is just becoming ridiculous. You understand what a portable device is right? That you can UNPLUG the laptop from the external monitor and still use it.

But you do understand that owning a desktop does not preclude also owning a laptop, right?

I have a desktop, and a laptop used as a thin client. The laptop can be inexpensive or have nice features (like a touchscreen), while the real power, storage, etc, is on the desktop.

Not often you see someone use their own argument against themselves. Why buy a desktop with a thin client laptop (that are not in anyway cheap) when you could just buy a standalone laptop.

This isn't even an argument, the decades of the laptops continued popularity say enough.

My machine is way too valuable to risk traveling with is the primary reason. Another is that laptops are noisy due to fans.

My desktop is just a host for several VMs. If I actually need to travel with one of those "computers", I just shut down the VM and copy it's image from my NAS to my laptop.

If you are still buying a laptop for your stated reason, then you haven't embraced virtualization as a developer.

Your personal sensitivities about travelling with a laptop are not shared by the majority. Laptop fans are in no way noisy enough to cause a distraction for yourself or others.

Making a VM copy from a NAS every time I decided to step outside and work say on the back deck in a different environment with trees and some sun is anything but convenient.

There seems to be a perpetuation falsehood in these discussions that the only time you would need to use a laptop is when travelling a substantial distance from home, which can not be anymore further from the truth than is possible.

Lastly, laptops are not the sole domain of developers and you don’t need to ‘embrace virtualization’ simply because it exists.

A non-mobile work environment, but unplug one cord and you can take the laptop part to meetings, including offsite, you can travel with it, work from the coffee shop or roof or park, keep working if there's work being done on your office (painting or whatever) so you can't be in there at the moment, if you usually work in a corporate office but WFH some days you still have the same machine, can take it to co-workers' desks to show them stuff without having to screen-share and having both workstations together at once, which can be nice in some situations. Built in UPS is sometimes handy, too—no power-offs because you kicked a cord.

I'm not arguing against desktops for people who like them but this "I don't understand laptops" stuff (several posts, not just this one) is bizarre.

Would you be surprised if I told you that laptops have ports that allow for external devices like a display/keyboard/mouse.

Would it also surprise you that people would prefer a device that they can be used anywhere, rather than a fixed location.

The only way you could not get this transition is if you've never had to go anywhere outside your home.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com