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Ars Technica has an editorial on what they'd want in a laptop in 2017. Inspired by this, I figured to make my own list and ask SN for input. I'm not looking for a laptop, but it's fun to think about specs, right?
Anyway, I do think use case is important. My use case: working and travelling daily with laptop, sometimes to various institutes to give presentations. This already leads to some important requirements:
- Lightweight (I frequently take the laptop somewhere)
- Not needing a plethora of dongles. (I've forgotten the power supply more than once already, I'm sure forgetting a dongle or two will happen more frequently).
Thinking about it more, most of the things the Ars Editor loves are things I honestly don't use, or actively do not want (touch screen).
With that in mind, I'd arrive at:
- No touchscreen - it adds weight while I don't use its features
- 13 inch screen seems to balance portability and screen size well.
- 1920x1080 resolution - higher will drain the battery faster, and is not needed on 13 inch
- VGA port - almost all presentation places I come across need converters (dongles) for anything else.
- USB 2 and 3 ports - again, for compatibility
- 512 GB SDD
- 10GB or more memory
- Dual boot compatible with Ubuntu (I use Ubuntu, but for the occasional gadget that can get updates via your computer, you'll still need Windows or MacOS)
- Preferably with regular ethernet port - there are still hotels where wired is free, but wifi is paid.
Other than that I'd go for modern iterations of specs for things like ethernet, wifi, CPU, etc. So Kaby Lake processor, things like that. GPU is not a big issue, so probably the integrated Intel thing on a modern Intel CPU will be sufficient.
Anything I missed? Anything you'd do radically different? If so: why?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Friday December 02 2016, @08:48PM
I would not buy a laptop before AMD Zen mobile chips are released. It seems that it will narrow the instructions per clock gap with Intel. On the desktop front, Zen seems to have pressured Intel to consider releasing mainstream desktop chips with 6 cores for the first time. AMD's (APU) integrated graphics performance and performance per dollar are typically better than Intel. So we have a situation where the AMD Zen laptop chips will recover significantly in the area of CPU performance, and each of them should have 2 threads per core as well (some of the cheaper Intel laptop CPUs have 2-4 cores but only 1 thread per core).
I'm not saying that you shouldn't consider Kaby Lake or Cannonlake, but wait for AMD Zen to hit the market.
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(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday December 02 2016, @09:37PM
My newish laptop for work a Lenovo(thinkpad) W541 has VGA and Thunderbolt with no HDMI. Other than that oddity it's decent for ports. 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, Intel Core i7-4710MQ. My only other gripe is the intel HD graphics 4600 paired with the nvidia Quadro K1100M. In theory the integrated intel does lightweight work and the nvidia kicks in for heavy stuff. In reality, shit crashes or has hiccups randomly. Much rather have an AMD APU.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Sunday December 04 2016, @06:23AM
I've got the same laptop for work. The W-series has been discontinued however, and the W541 is the last of the line. The replacement is the P50 and P50s, which by all accounts seems to be an improvement. However, the P50 lacks a VGA port, which I don't mind because IMHO the VGA port should have been gone 10 years ago but otherwise meets most of your other requirements except for having a 15" screen. I also can't speak towards Ubuntu, but I would give it a good chance of working just fine. I've not had any crashes/hiccups with my W541, but it has ended up spending almost all its time sitting in its docking station. I know others with same or similar W540 who do use it more as a laptop do experience some crashes, as well as having some problems with the wireless.
If I needed to buy a new laptop for myself, the P50 would be in the running, though like you I'd prefer it with a smaller screen. There is a P40 and while the name suggests it's just like the P50 but smaller, in reality it's one of those convertible tablet/laptop things and really is a completely different kind of machine.
I'm still hoping Lenovo actually puts the Thinkpad Retro into production but the prospects aren't looking too good.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday December 03 2016, @05:31AM
I'm also eager to see Zen hit the market. I find the $100 stick computers very interesting, but the good x86 ones are all Intel, with Intel's integrated graphics. Admittedly, Intel's integrated graphics have improved tremendously from the days of being a complete laughingstock, barely able to update the screen acceptably fast for word processing, never mind any real gaming. I checked into what AMD had to compete with an Atom Z8300, and learned that currently, they don't have anything to match it. AMD products capable of about the same level of performance take 3 times the power, while those that use about the same amount of power are half the performance.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:33AM
Late to the party, but I'll point at PC specialist [pcspecialist.co.uk] if you're in europe/the UK, who supplied the laptop I'm on right now. (a Clevo 650SJ, I believe) and do a few VGA capable base models in the laptops range.
The killer feature for me on these is that it supports both a VGA and an HDMI port, and it can run both of those plus the internal screen at 1920*1080 simultaneously, giving a laptop with triple display support out of the box, as well as flexible external presentation capabilities.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 03 2016, @06:56PM
Unless it appears on a deals site like Slickdeals.net (or UK equivalent), I ain't buying it.
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