6 ms·

Outshone by Smaller Screens, PCs Aim to Be Seen as Cool Again

31 points by apeconmyth 11y ago

thescribe 11y ago
I feel like the features proposed to make PC's 'cool' are all things that a power user isn't interested in or actively avoids. My educated guess is that this won't win over the masses who love tablets and it will further alienate the PC core audience.
- zamalek 11y ago
  Considering that the cloud is a PC customer, I'm not sure what needs to be fixed. Furthermore, as "PC core audience" I completely agree with you: I want nothing to do with this Spectre. It has to compromise on power and PC has never been about that. It sounds just like a tablet.
- shirro 11y ago
  Spot on. They went chasing television viewers with 16:9 glossy screens and all the productivity types held onto their old machines and wept for the future. I don't want a paper thin Netflix viewer. I have a tablet and a huge tv for that. And I sure don't want to do work on a tablet PC. I want to see some context on the code I am editing or view a PDF full page. Sure you can go side by side on a huge 16:9 screen but on a compact laptop my vision can't do it even at retina levels. I get sick of squinting at everything through a mail slot. Lets get back to productive screens and keyboards and sensible designs that aren't going to sacrifice battery life or functionality to be the thinnest and shiniest. Dell and HP are going to be the last places to look for innovation. I suspect 90% of what they do these days amounts to slapping a badge on a generic Chinese machine. Most of the innovation seems to be from Microsoft, Apple and Google. The future of PCs will likely come from Surface, Pixel and whatever Apple does next.
  - TTPrograms 11y ago
    Maybe AR optimized for productivity would be a useful innovation in the space. Higher resolutions (with possibly lower fields of view if necessary) and maintained visibility of keyboard/mouse should be possible with slight modifications to the VR / AR coming out now (like Microsoft's offering) - then you've got "infinite" virtual monitor space.
  - ScottBurson 11y ago
    Still nursing along my beloved 17" MacBook Pro with matte screen, now almost 5 years old and irreplaceable. How ironic that you can get a huge iPhone and a huge iPad, but the 17" MBP is history.
- analog31 11y ago
  Oddly enough, the power user is often not seeking a lot of power from their computer. I'm quite happy with a reasonably large display and full size keyboard, plugged into a cheap 10" laptop that I can walk away with. I think there will always be a divide between "create" and "consume" uses of computers, of any display size. For me, the dividing line is that I need a keyboard to create stuff. As a secondary issue, I have to be able to position the display to avoid eyestrain and neck fatigue, limiting my ability to use a laptop for real work. That could just be a concession to old age. But my creative apps -- code editors, compilers, and Jupyter, require very little real computing power.
kalleboo 11y ago
The article seems to be saying that PC makers are looking for some way to woo back tablet/mobile users to using PCs instead. But tablet sales are flat too, aren't they? Rather what they're looking for is to sell some reason for people to upgrade their 5 year old PC that still works fine. And all they can think of is "thinner" and crazy gimmicks.
- santaclaus 11y ago
  > But tablet sales are flat too, aren't they? At least for Apple, since 2012 that seems to be roughly the case. iPad sales are about on par with Mac sales, maybe a bit higher, but both iPad and Mac sales are dwarfed by iPhone sales [1]. [1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-rev...
  - djrogers 11y ago
    Just for clarification, that's revenue, not unit sales. iPads outsell macs by a little more than 2:1 today based on box count.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  > But tablet sales are flat too, aren't they? Yes, yet the hipster journalists are not claiming the "post-tablet era" yet. Maybe they will realize it in 10 years from now.
stegosaurus 11y ago
I just wish all devices were more like PC's. My desktop computer is a glorious, glorious device. I have millions of different bits of software for it, many operating systems, open source, proprietary, etcetera. It's all there. It really feels like my machine. If I don't want Windows, I blow it away and install Linux, BSD, Plan 9, code my own bootloader, whatever. My laptop is a bit less so (can't find the perfect form factor for me, can't upgrade it, etc) but it's very similar. It's mine. I have spice, vnc, rdp, ssh, sftp, ftp, irc, <insert a million other things here regardless of whether I actually ever use them> as commandline tools that just work and aren't filled with adverts or in app purchases or 'please add this to your google account'. Phones and tablets? Complete write off. My smartphone is basically a toaster. Android and iOS make what could be a general purpose computer into a Fisher Price experience. It's really sad to me. I'd love a modern version of the Psion Series 5. The Pyra (https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/) looks like a decent candidate. All I need is a Linux distribution with an API or commandline 'sms' and 'call' tool. The mainstream is basically focused on creating a slightly more interactive version of a portable television, which I find deeply saddening.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Have a look at http://maruos.com/ http://maruos.com/, the dev has an interesting idea - AOSP when the phone's working by itself, plug in a Slimport connector and pair a Bluetooth keyboard and there's Debian running, ready for you to use. I'm not sure what's going on with the project. Two months later you still have to email the developer to get a beta build, even though it was supposedly open sourced. Approaching it from the other direction, https://plus.google.com/111524780435806926688/posts/fkQ1BMjNNcn https://plus.google.com/111524780435806926688/posts/fkQ1BMjN... shows a nearly mainline kernel running on the 2013 Nexus 7, including hardware accelerated graphics. It should be a hop skip and 14 hour build step [1] to get Debian running on it. [1] repo sync -j24 / make -j24 droidcore can be painful
  - stegosaurus 11y ago
    Very interested in the Nexus 7 progress. I may have to pick one up and grab a hardware keyboard. Killing off Android and getting X11/Wayland on there with a regular DE would be amazing. I can deal with WiFi only - a workaround would be to just carry around an android device or similar as a hotspot.
w1ntermute 11y ago
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Houshalter 11y ago
Speculating from a single anecdote, I have a nontechnical friend that switched to using a smartphone instead of a PC. Part of it is that the smartphone can do everything they need from a computer. Browsing the internet, messaging and email, etc. But that answer alone isn't very satisfying, because even when doing nontechnical stuff on a smartphone, like browsing reddit or watching youtube, I find it very inconvenient compared to a desktop. I think the real reason is, when she needed to use her computer for something, it took 15 minutes to start up. That's super inconvenient. People talk about how small 15 second delays can discourage behavior and cause frustration. 15 minutes is just ridiculous, and really discourages using the thing unless you really need to. I installed a pure copy of windows 7 on an old computer recently. Nothing installed on it at all, no connection to the internet, nothing put on it by the manufacturer. And the specs weren't that good. Yet it took 30 seconds to boot up. I was amazed, I didn't think that was possible for a modern PC. Even my phone takes longer to boot up.
- drakenot 11y ago
  I generally agree. For most things I find trying to do complicated tasks on my phone just an exercise in pain. However, I find browsing reddit on my phone a more pleasant experience than on a desktop computer. Swipe gesture to collapse comment threads and the improved UI that some of the reddit apps have make it easier to consume comment threads than when I'm on a PC.
voltagex_ 11y ago
When I was young, my Dad paid $4000AUD for a 486-DX clone. I can see the day coming where I'll have to pay that again to get a decent desktop. Have you seen the low-end laptop market? 1366x768 and terrible build quality everywhere. Everyone else might love their tablets and phones, but you can pry my desktop from my cold, dead hands.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  Second hand server and workstation equipment is extremely cheap, high quality and powerful. Take a look at z600 and z800 workstations. I'm eyeballing getting a pair of 4.4 ghz dual core CPUs for fast single threaded compile times. They don't require any particular special heatsinks and reach nearly 5ghz with turbo boost. And that's under 600-700 dollars total for those chips. It's a great time for desktop users.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    Heh, at least I'd save on my heating bill in winter. Where I live I pay about 30c/kWh. I wrote about that the other day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378704 I'm not sure I share your enthusiasm for fast single threaded compile times. Some basic testing on AWS showed benefits jumping from c4.xlarge all the way to 4xlarge (but not 8xlarge) and using appropriate -j parameters. I'm not sure you're IO bound at that point either because compiling into a RAM disk didn't seem to make much difference.
    - bitJericho 11y ago
      I pay 8! My work that i do is definitely CPU bound but ymmv. These CPUs don't consume any nor energy than is normal for the architecture and die size, which is to say its not the best today's tech has to offer but its no P4.
WalterBright 11y ago
Hah, I need a huge 4K screen and a full size keyboard to do programming. I only use a laptop when I travel, and even then I bring along a full size bluetooth keyboard. (I had to look through endless lists of Bluetooth keyboards before I finally found one, and only one, that was full size.) And I want an even bigger screen! I'd like one the size of my desk, with retina pixel density.
taneq 11y ago
Saying phones are stealing market share from PCs is like saying that shoes are stealing market share from cars because people spend more time wearing shoes than driving cars. They're different devices with different purposes. Phones are OK for media consumption but terrible for anything creative (other than maybe photography.)
- alkonaut 11y ago
  I think the thing is that 90% of computer/internet users are media consumers and very few are media creators, apart from as you say - photos. Writing the occasional email is clunky on a phone but the experience of using a phone still beats worrying about your backup, the location of your photo files, the OS license or Antivirus on the PC. "People in general" simply don't write large documents, programs, create music etc. They email a friend, browse instagram and take photos. The smartphone form factor happens to be the perfect match for this usage pattern. So much so that if there was a fraction of the use cases they can't do on their phones - people much rather just skip doing those activities entirely and stay on the smartphone.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
buro9 11y ago
Things a PC should be better than a laptop at: 1. Graphics power 2. CPU power 3. RAM 4. Size (smaller) 5. Any/all of the above (Storage wasn't included in that list as who hasn't already externalised all storage?) I'm seriously considering not buying another laptop and instead purchasing an Intel NUC. I've got to that point where owning a laptop has led me to have a NAS, a decent DAC and stereo, a big panel for viewing films... aside from web browsing it feels like the things I do on my laptop are not in the laptop's sweet spot (gaming, graphics, video editing, encoding, compiling, spinning up VMs and dockers, etc). Then I look at my full-size keyboard, my external display that is better than the laptop display and I wonder why I have a laptop. A machine that is compromised in every way to make it portable when I barely take it anywhere (and always will have a work laptop I do work trips with, and a smartphone for recreation trips). I'd rather a tiny, but powerful, silent PC. I view my primary PC (the laptop presently) as disposable... because I've externalised storage, display, audio... I feel I just want a small powerful generalised computing machine. Nothing more. PS: If anyone can recommend something not far from the NUC in size, but with higher CPU + RAM capabilities, and potentially that looks aesthetically pleasing then I'm all ears. PPS: Not the Mac Mini, it's ugly, has a large footprint, tops out at 16GB (costs a lot to get there) and all of the ports seem very outdated. More towards a Mac Pro in CPU and RAM, but with a lower price tag and can run Linux (or whatever) without sulking. The NUC for me would be a cheap stop-gap until something like this emerges.
- ktamura 11y ago
  I have a friend who does exactly this. He has two NUCs, one at work and one at home. When I asked him about working away from his desks, he said, "I shouldn't be doing that =p"
Animats 11y ago
Note that by "PC", the article means "Windows laptop". Desktop machines are not even mentioned.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
505 11y ago
The pen-portrait of the nested computers was fine. I looked around a bit for a photo or a movie, but to no avail. I guess that's not the kind of news that the NYT likes to report. But I'm not a paying subscriber, so I guess I can't complain.
flohofwoe 11y ago
Windows laptop makers should really concentrate on fixing the simple things first, since currently they are actively trying to drive people away from their products. My last HP Spectre x360 with Windows 8.1 (and now Windows 10) was an absolute disappointment: - it couldn't connect to my Fritzbox WLAN router (very mainstream here in Germany) unless I installed an old Intel driver from 2014, the last time this happened to me was 10 years ago when trying to install Linux on a laptop - the touchpad is barely usable since it uses some crappy 3rd party driver (Synaptics), sometimes the touchpad simply stops recognizing gestures, and the Synaptics control panel has a "Reset" button which must be pressed in this case - the keyboard tends to ignore the second keystroke if the same key is pressed quickly in succession - HighDPI displays on Windows machines are useless since at least half of the tools (even Microsoft's own VC runtime installers) are upscaled and the upscaling quality is really terrible - plus it had the usual amount of crapware preinstalled (including completely useless custom driver update and customer support tools) My current Asus Zenbook is slightly better, but still has a crappy 3rd party touchpad driver. With this situation, it is no wonder that people are moving away from laptops and Windows.

31 points by apeconmyth 11y ago

I feel like the features proposed to make PC's 'cool' are all things that a power user isn't interested in or actively avoids. My educated guess is that this won't win over the masses who love tablets and it will further alienate the PC core audience.

zamalek 11y ago
Considering that the cloud is a PC customer, I'm not sure what needs to be fixed. Furthermore, as "PC core audience" I completely agree with you: I want nothing to do with this Spectre. It has to compromise on power and PC has never been about that. It sounds just like a tablet.
shirro 11y ago
Spot on. They went chasing television viewers with 16:9 glossy screens and all the productivity types held onto their old machines and wept for the future. I don't want a paper thin Netflix viewer. I have a tablet and a huge tv for that. And I sure don't want to do work on a tablet PC. I want to see some context on the code I am editing or view a PDF full page. Sure you can go side by side on a huge 16:9 screen but on a compact laptop my vision can't do it even at retina levels. I get sick of squinting at everything through a mail slot. Lets get back to productive screens and keyboards and sensible designs that aren't going to sacrifice battery life or functionality to be the thinnest and shiniest. Dell and HP are going to be the last places to look for innovation. I suspect 90% of what they do these days amounts to slapping a badge on a generic Chinese machine. Most of the innovation seems to be from Microsoft, Apple and Google. The future of PCs will likely come from Surface, Pixel and whatever Apple does next.
- TTPrograms 11y ago
  Maybe AR optimized for productivity would be a useful innovation in the space. Higher resolutions (with possibly lower fields of view if necessary) and maintained visibility of keyboard/mouse should be possible with slight modifications to the VR / AR coming out now (like Microsoft's offering) - then you've got "infinite" virtual monitor space.
- ScottBurson 11y ago
  Still nursing along my beloved 17" MacBook Pro with matte screen, now almost 5 years old and irreplaceable. How ironic that you can get a huge iPhone and a huge iPad, but the 17" MBP is history.
analog31 11y ago
Oddly enough, the power user is often not seeking a lot of power from their computer. I'm quite happy with a reasonably large display and full size keyboard, plugged into a cheap 10" laptop that I can walk away with. I think there will always be a divide between "create" and "consume" uses of computers, of any display size. For me, the dividing line is that I need a keyboard to create stuff. As a secondary issue, I have to be able to position the display to avoid eyestrain and neck fatigue, limiting my ability to use a laptop for real work. That could just be a concession to old age. But my creative apps -- code editors, compilers, and Jupyter, require very little real computing power.

kalleboo 11y ago

The article seems to be saying that PC makers are looking for some way to woo back tablet/mobile users to using PCs instead. But tablet sales are flat too, aren't they? Rather what they're looking for is to sell some reason for people to upgrade their 5 year old PC that still works fine. And all they can think of is "thinner" and crazy gimmicks.

santaclaus 11y ago
> But tablet sales are flat too, aren't they? At least for Apple, since 2012 that seems to be roughly the case. iPad sales are about on par with Mac sales, maybe a bit higher, but both iPad and Mac sales are dwarfed by iPhone sales [1]. [1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-rev...
- djrogers 11y ago
  Just for clarification, that's revenue, not unit sales. iPads outsell macs by a little more than 2:1 today based on box count.
ekianjo 11y ago
> But tablet sales are flat too, aren't they? Yes, yet the hipster journalists are not claiming the "post-tablet era" yet. Maybe they will realize it in 10 years from now.

stegosaurus 11y ago

I just wish all devices were more like PC's. My desktop computer is a glorious, glorious device. I have millions of different bits of software for it, many operating systems, open source, proprietary, etcetera. It's all there. It really feels like my machine. If I don't want Windows, I blow it away and install Linux, BSD, Plan 9, code my own bootloader, whatever. My laptop is a bit less so (can't find the perfect form factor for me, can't upgrade it, etc) but it's very similar. It's mine. I have spice, vnc, rdp, ssh, sftp, ftp, irc, <insert a million other things here regardless of whether I actually ever use them> as commandline tools that just work and aren't filled with adverts or in app purchases or 'please add this to your google account'. Phones and tablets? Complete write off. My smartphone is basically a toaster. Android and iOS make what could be a general purpose computer into a Fisher Price experience. It's really sad to me. I'd love a modern version of the Psion Series 5. The Pyra (https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/) looks like a decent candidate. All I need is a Linux distribution with an API or commandline 'sms' and 'call' tool. The mainstream is basically focused on creating a slightly more interactive version of a portable television, which I find deeply saddening.

voltagex_ 11y ago
Have a look at http://maruos.com/ http://maruos.com/, the dev has an interesting idea - AOSP when the phone's working by itself, plug in a Slimport connector and pair a Bluetooth keyboard and there's Debian running, ready for you to use. I'm not sure what's going on with the project. Two months later you still have to email the developer to get a beta build, even though it was supposedly open sourced. Approaching it from the other direction, https://plus.google.com/111524780435806926688/posts/fkQ1BMjNNcn https://plus.google.com/111524780435806926688/posts/fkQ1BMjN... shows a nearly mainline kernel running on the 2013 Nexus 7, including hardware accelerated graphics. It should be a hop skip and 14 hour build step [1] to get Debian running on it. [1] repo sync -j24 / make -j24 droidcore can be painful
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  Very interested in the Nexus 7 progress. I may have to pick one up and grab a hardware keyboard. Killing off Android and getting X11/Wayland on there with a regular DE would be amazing. I can deal with WiFi only - a workaround would be to just carry around an android device or similar as a hotspot.

w1ntermute 11y ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Houshalter 11y ago

Speculating from a single anecdote, I have a nontechnical friend that switched to using a smartphone instead of a PC. Part of it is that the smartphone can do everything they need from a computer. Browsing the internet, messaging and email, etc. But that answer alone isn't very satisfying, because even when doing nontechnical stuff on a smartphone, like browsing reddit or watching youtube, I find it very inconvenient compared to a desktop. I think the real reason is, when she needed to use her computer for something, it took 15 minutes to start up. That's super inconvenient. People talk about how small 15 second delays can discourage behavior and cause frustration. 15 minutes is just ridiculous, and really discourages using the thing unless you really need to. I installed a pure copy of windows 7 on an old computer recently. Nothing installed on it at all, no connection to the internet, nothing put on it by the manufacturer. And the specs weren't that good. Yet it took 30 seconds to boot up. I was amazed, I didn't think that was possible for a modern PC. Even my phone takes longer to boot up.

drakenot 11y ago
I generally agree. For most things I find trying to do complicated tasks on my phone just an exercise in pain. However, I find browsing reddit on my phone a more pleasant experience than on a desktop computer. Swipe gesture to collapse comment threads and the improved UI that some of the reddit apps have make it easier to consume comment threads than when I'm on a PC.

voltagex_ 11y ago

When I was young, my Dad paid $4000AUD for a 486-DX clone. I can see the day coming where I'll have to pay that again to get a decent desktop. Have you seen the low-end laptop market? 1366x768 and terrible build quality everywhere. Everyone else might love their tablets and phones, but you can pry my desktop from my cold, dead hands.

bitJericho 11y ago
Second hand server and workstation equipment is extremely cheap, high quality and powerful. Take a look at z600 and z800 workstations. I'm eyeballing getting a pair of 4.4 ghz dual core CPUs for fast single threaded compile times. They don't require any particular special heatsinks and reach nearly 5ghz with turbo boost. And that's under 600-700 dollars total for those chips. It's a great time for desktop users.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Heh, at least I'd save on my heating bill in winter. Where I live I pay about 30c/kWh. I wrote about that the other day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378704 I'm not sure I share your enthusiasm for fast single threaded compile times. Some basic testing on AWS showed benefits jumping from c4.xlarge all the way to 4xlarge (but not 8xlarge) and using appropriate -j parameters. I'm not sure you're IO bound at that point either because compiling into a RAM disk didn't seem to make much difference.
  - bitJericho 11y ago
    I pay 8! My work that i do is definitely CPU bound but ymmv. These CPUs don't consume any nor energy than is normal for the architecture and die size, which is to say its not the best today's tech has to offer but its no P4.

WalterBright 11y ago

Hah, I need a huge 4K screen and a full size keyboard to do programming. I only use a laptop when I travel, and even then I bring along a full size bluetooth keyboard. (I had to look through endless lists of Bluetooth keyboards before I finally found one, and only one, that was full size.) And I want an even bigger screen! I'd like one the size of my desk, with retina pixel density.

taneq 11y ago

Saying phones are stealing market share from PCs is like saying that shoes are stealing market share from cars because people spend more time wearing shoes than driving cars. They're different devices with different purposes. Phones are OK for media consumption but terrible for anything creative (other than maybe photography.)

alkonaut 11y ago
I think the thing is that 90% of computer/internet users are media consumers and very few are media creators, apart from as you say - photos. Writing the occasional email is clunky on a phone but the experience of using a phone still beats worrying about your backup, the location of your photo files, the OS license or Antivirus on the PC. "People in general" simply don't write large documents, programs, create music etc. They email a friend, browse instagram and take photos. The smartphone form factor happens to be the perfect match for this usage pattern. So much so that if there was a fraction of the use cases they can't do on their phones - people much rather just skip doing those activities entirely and stay on the smartphone.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

buro9 11y ago

Things a PC should be better than a laptop at: 1. Graphics power 2. CPU power 3. RAM 4. Size (smaller) 5. Any/all of the above (Storage wasn't included in that list as who hasn't already externalised all storage?) I'm seriously considering not buying another laptop and instead purchasing an Intel NUC. I've got to that point where owning a laptop has led me to have a NAS, a decent DAC and stereo, a big panel for viewing films... aside from web browsing it feels like the things I do on my laptop are not in the laptop's sweet spot (gaming, graphics, video editing, encoding, compiling, spinning up VMs and dockers, etc). Then I look at my full-size keyboard, my external display that is better than the laptop display and I wonder why I have a laptop. A machine that is compromised in every way to make it portable when I barely take it anywhere (and always will have a work laptop I do work trips with, and a smartphone for recreation trips). I'd rather a tiny, but powerful, silent PC. I view my primary PC (the laptop presently) as disposable... because I've externalised storage, display, audio... I feel I just want a small powerful generalised computing machine. Nothing more. PS: If anyone can recommend something not far from the NUC in size, but with higher CPU + RAM capabilities, and potentially that looks aesthetically pleasing then I'm all ears. PPS: Not the Mac Mini, it's ugly, has a large footprint, tops out at 16GB (costs a lot to get there) and all of the ports seem very outdated. More towards a Mac Pro in CPU and RAM, but with a lower price tag and can run Linux (or whatever) without sulking. The NUC for me would be a cheap stop-gap until something like this emerges.

ktamura 11y ago
I have a friend who does exactly this. He has two NUCs, one at work and one at home. When I asked him about working away from his desks, he said, "I shouldn't be doing that =p"

Animats 11y ago

Note that by "PC", the article means "Windows laptop". Desktop machines are not even mentioned.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

505 11y ago

The pen-portrait of the nested computers was fine. I looked around a bit for a photo or a movie, but to no avail. I guess that's not the kind of news that the NYT likes to report. But I'm not a paying subscriber, so I guess I can't complain.

flohofwoe 11y ago

Windows laptop makers should really concentrate on fixing the simple things first, since currently they are actively trying to drive people away from their products. My last HP Spectre x360 with Windows 8.1 (and now Windows 10) was an absolute disappointment: - it couldn't connect to my Fritzbox WLAN router (very mainstream here in Germany) unless I installed an old Intel driver from 2014, the last time this happened to me was 10 years ago when trying to install Linux on a laptop - the touchpad is barely usable since it uses some crappy 3rd party driver (Synaptics), sometimes the touchpad simply stops recognizing gestures, and the Synaptics control panel has a "Reset" button which must be pressed in this case - the keyboard tends to ignore the second keystroke if the same key is pressed quickly in succession - HighDPI displays on Windows machines are useless since at least half of the tools (even Microsoft's own VC runtime installers) are upscaled and the upscaling quality is really terrible - plus it had the usual amount of crapware preinstalled (including completely useless custom driver update and customer support tools) My current Asus Zenbook is slightly better, but still has a crappy 3rd party touchpad driver. With this situation, it is no wonder that people are moving away from laptops and Windows.