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What Are Must-Have Specs for a Laptop in 2017?

posted by on Friday December 02 2016, @08:39PM   
from the price-is-no-object dept.

FakeBeldin writes:

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?

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Original Submission

• screen size compromise (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday December 02 2016, @09:03PM

  by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday December 02 2016, @09:03PM (#436213) Journal

  Dell has introduced "Infinity Edge" to its XPS line of laptops. The bezel is very small, so you apparently get a larger screen within a smaller sized machine:

  http://www.anandtech.com/show/8983/dell-xps-13-review [anandtech.com]

  Dell launched the 2015 version of their XPS 13 at CES in January, and it made a big impression because of something that was very small. The first thing you see when you look at the XPS 13 is how small the bezels are around the display. At 5.2 mm, they are easily the thinnest display bezels on any laptop made today. Dell claims the XPS 13 is a 13 inch display in the chassis of an 11 inch notebook, and while they have made that claim before, for 2015, it would be hard to argue with them.

  http://www.anandtech.com/show/10116/the-dell-xps-15-9550-review [anandtech.com]

  It was roughly a year ago that we had a chance to review Dell’s XPS 13, which was the first laptop from Dell to feature the Infinity Edge display. In addition to making the laptop look as much like a bezel-less display as possible, it also let Dell squeeze a 13-inch laptop into a much smaller chassis. The XPS 13 is still, to this day, unparalleled in the PC space in this context. So the obvious question at the time was when or if Dell was going to do the same to the rest of the XPS lineup? That question was answered in October 2015, when Dell launched the updated XPS 15 with Skylake and Infinity Edge. Just like the XPS 13 before it, the laptop was bezel-less and the larger 15.6-inch model fits into a laptop chassis that would normally house a 14-inch display.

  I'm sure other companies have done this too by this point.

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