7 ms·

i feel like a new trend is emerging with these nice, 15 inch non-apple laptops. i say non-apple because they are attracting the pro crowd that used to buy apple

by bronz 10y ago

i feel like a new trend is emerging with these nice, 15 inch non-apple laptops. i say non-apple because they are attracting the pro crowd that used to buy apple exclusively. my personal fantasy is a laptop that isnt shy about being thick, affording it a huge battery, tons of ports, OLED screen and solid state trackpad like the macbook. with very reliable linux drivers for all the hardware. a very utilitarian machine.

ohyoutravel 10y ago
Speaking of battery, I picked up an XPS 13 recently and am very happy with it. The battery seems to last forever, the 2016 model increases the battery size from 56(?) to 60w. The only reason I didn't go with the XPS 15 was that the battery life is supposed to be terrible, and it appears that even this newly announced model only has a 56w battery, which is surprising.
- bronz 10y ago
  out of all the laptops that are around right now, the xps series seems to be the closest to my fantasy -- this is due largely to their developer models which come with linux and linux supported hardware. when you say w do you mean Wh? ive heard murmurs of the legal limit for battery capacity in a laptop being 100Wh so that is very disappointing that the new xps would not even approach that anemic cap. i was in a mall the other day and happened across a windows store. i was very pleased to see they had a range of xps laptops on display. i found them to be very attractive and well made. IIRC some of them had a power button on the side of the laptop instead of the top of the keyboard. my current laptop has a power button like this and i cannot fucking stand it. i press it by accident at least twice a day. any sane person would realize what a terrible idea that is -- it totally baffles me why they do this. its very sad to see such an obvious flaw on these otherwise great laptops.
  - creshal 10y ago
    The biggest battery capacity I've had in a laptop was 160Wh with the Thinkpad X220, I'm curious where that supposed 100Wh limit comes from.
    - bronz 10y ago
      i was watching a laptop review on linustechtips and i think he said it. this is why i said i heard it instead of stating it like fact! e - i think that limit comes from airlines limiting the size of individual batteries they transport. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ash/ash_programs/hazmat/passenger_info/media/airline_passengers_and_batteries.pdf https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
  - deong 10y ago
    The whole 100W thing was, as far as I can tell, an almost completely unsupported theory advanced by a Mac blogger about why Apple doesn't put bigger batteries in their laptops. There is apparently some FAA document saying something to that effect, but of course there are lots of regulations on various books that are unenforced or unenforceable, and there have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of laptops made over the years with larger batteries, and none have ever been, to my knowledge, barred from flying.
    - deeth_starr 10y ago
      "Lithium ion batteries (a.k.a.: rechargeable lithium, lithium polymer, LIPO, secondary lithium). Passengers may carry all consumer-sized lithium ion batteries (up to 100 watt hours per battery)" https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ash/ash_programs/hazmat/passenger_info/media/airline_passengers_and_batteries.pdf https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
      - deong 10y ago
        I remember seeing the link in the original blog post, so I knew it was a real thing, but I'm extremely skeptical of the theory that it has anything to do with anything. The simple fact is that the FAA doesn't screen battery sizes. If you brought something the size of a car battery, they'd probably not allow it, but the difference between a 95WHr and a 140WHr laptop battery is something they're neither interested in nor capable of actively checking. Apple put a small battery in the laptop because it's more important to them to have a thin light laptop than it is to have more battery life. This random person unaffiliated with Apple then decided with no evidence that it was because of some basically unknown FAA document. That's all I meant.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  I'm guessing the extra space is going to the (optional) discrete GPU. That doesn't appear to be an option on the XPS 13.
- unknown2374 10y ago
  I am in the same boat, even under Linux and no configuration at all, the new XPS 13 lasts an incredibly long time. Just a minor correction, the battery in the previous (early 2016 - 9350) model was actually 52W, not 56.
creshal 10y ago
These laptops have been around, and successful, for years. They've just been snuffed by hipsters because they weren't Apple.
- StevePerkins 10y ago
  Feel free to provide some recommended examples instead of just being snarky.
  - creshal 10y ago
    Dell's XPS series has been around since 2013, they just didn't make it to HN. Lenovo also had more compact-ish 15" models with the T540p and later the T550/T560. Not sure about HP's Envy series, I'm not following them too closely.
    - webaholic 10y ago
      what? I have a 2008 dell xps. XPS is Dell's premium laptop line that has been around since forever now.
      - slantyyz 10y ago
        I found that after Dell went private, their XPS'es (and other products, for that matter) all of a sudden became machines I'd actually consider buying.
      - mikestew 10y ago
        I had an XPS when I worked Microsoft. I haven't worked at Microsoft in over ten years. IIRC, XPS goes back to the 90s.
      - Chant-I-CRW 10y ago
        I had an m1530 from 2008. It was still working great until 2015 when it stopped booting. I gave it to a friend for parts, but he used a blowtorch to redo the GPU solder. Says it is still working just fine today.
slantyyz 10y ago
I've been planning for my next laptop purchase next year, and for some reason, I can't pull the Alienware 13R3 off the top of my short list. It's big (for a 13"), heavy, ugly and adorned with hideous gamer bling (WHY, WHY, WHY??), but it also has all the ports and features (discrete trackpad buttons!) I want in my work machine. Right now, it's basically between the new XPS 15 and the 13R3 (or R4 if it's out by the time I am ready).
- bronz 10y ago
  the gamer bling thing is so funny. why does nobody in the laptop business understand that people are buying those laptops despite the bling, not because of it? every ad that i see for a gaming laptop emphasizes the competitive advantages that these laptops offer, letting "gamers" "dominate" and so on. how could they be so disconnected that they don't realize that what everyone wants is to enjoy their crispy, high definition graphics on a sleek master race machine? what the world needs is a merging of gaming laptops with xps-like pro machines. utilitarian, powerful, well made and visually inconspicuous.
  - slantyyz 10y ago
    In fairness, I think ASUS gets it - they make non gamer versions of their thin gamer machines. My main problem with ASUS - they make nice machines - is that for a work machine, I want to buy a decent extended warranty where I know I'll get OK service, so that narrows it down to the bigger vendors like Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc.
    - chx 10y ago
      AFAIK Asus doesn't yet have the Kaby Lake - Pascal combo out but they are coming https://www.nextpowerup.com/news/32428/list-of-asus-laptops-with-high-end-kaby-lake-cpus-and-nvidia-pascal-based-gpus-leak-online/ https://www.nextpowerup.com/news/32428/list-of-asus-laptops-... in droves and soon. Some Belgian retailer already has some of them listed http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS694149 http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS694149 http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS695109 http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS695109 etc
lmm 10y ago
I used to think that was what I wanted. But I think at this point a thin laptop can be good enough, and being able to get away from having a dev laptop and a travel netbook is a huge win. Moving all the ports onto a dock - provided it's a first-party fully-supported dock - is also a win, since it enables me to leave everything plugged in at home and take my computer travelling without having to unplug and replug everything. /huge Surface Book fan
- Yhippa 10y ago
  First-party docks are very underrated. I like having one connection from the laptop that gives you access to KVM or whatever. I love my MBP (early 2015) but the thing looks like Medusa and I think twice about having to remove all the cables from it to use it on the couch.
  - irontoby 10y ago
    But that's part of the promise of USB-C / Thunderbolt 3... interchangeable, standards-based docks that work with a single connection. I'm currently using my Dell XPS 15 (9550) with the Plugable USB-C Docking Station which uses a single cable to power the laptop, drive two monitors (one DisplayPort alt mode, the other over USB), gig ethernet, and a few USB devices. Granted, it's not as seamless as it could be, but it's still new technology. There are issues with the USB-C connection cutting out when wifi is also on, so I've gotten in the habit of just turning off wifi when I'm docked. We're currently in the "first generation" of consumer USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 devices, so I expect those issues to get ironed out pretty quickly.
    - lmm 10y ago
      I don't know. Switching to Surface made me a lot more conscious how nice it is when everything comes from the same manufacturer and there's no way to pass the blame around. I would like standards-based USB-C docking to be sure, but I will definitely want my first USB-C dock to be a first-party one so that I have a single point of contact for issues like the one you describe (which would actually ruin my use case - my desk at home is across the room from the phone line and it wouldn't be easy to run a cable, so I need to use wifi when docked). After the technology has matured and the bugs are ironed out then I think we'll start reaping the benefits of competition and interoperability.
lucideer 10y ago
The Dell Precision range (and probably the old Thinkpad W-range, which has since been renamed...) used to be the laptops targeted at people with your utilitarian requirements list. It's a few years since I retired my old Precision laptop, but it definitely ticked the thick, durable, huge battery, tons of ports and reliable Linux drivers back then. I'm not sure how the contemporary models hold up.
- nine_k 10y ago
  Thinkpad T range is also right about this: a thick, powerful, utilitarian machine.
  - lucideer 10y ago
    The high-powered "Txxp" models in the T range were what lead to the creation of the W range. More recently, I think the W range might have been superseded by some certain models in the P range, though I'm not too sure about this.
giancarlostoro 10y ago
I have an ASUS ROG laptop[0] which looks pretty sweet, but sort of reminds me to some degree to the MBP my girlfriend has, it's just black and red instead. If you want a total lookalike I think the Razer Blade[1] is pretty scarily close. You'd still spend quite a bit for anything from Razer though. Edit: [0] Asus ROG: https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-G501JW/ https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-G501JW/ [1] Razer Blade: http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade There were other laptops I've been shown from Razer that looked way too much like a 'sexy' Macbook Pro style. Of course Razer / ASUS ROG are gaming specific laptops, so the specs and the prices will be higher than most laptops.
bitwize 10y ago
Look into the Dell Precision 7xxx series. Expensive, and bulky and heavy enough to kill a man with one nice hard swing. But they are meant as serious portable workstations, and come with the fastest processors and GPUs, up to 32 GiB of memory, and bulky hard drives. They're not trendy terminals for hipsters' cloud dev environments. They can be purchased equipped with Ubuntu off Dell's site (in the USA, I dunno about other countries).
- micaksica 10y ago
  I am Precision 7 owner. With Skylake you still have 4 SODIMM slots and the new ones are a little lighter than the older ones, so you can have 64 GB RAM, a proper quad-core i7 (or Xeon), and discrete, removable graphics - the video card is on a daughter card that can be swapped out. Mine has an M.2 SSD and a big hard disk in it, a real GTX 960 eGPU via Thunderbolt 3, and only 32 GB RAM for now. Running Linux it has tons of overhead for multiple VMs (my Win10 VM has 8GB RAM), and lots of processing power. Unlike most laptops the Precision 7x series also is built to run flat out without throttling under load. Yes, it weighs like 8 lbs, and I don't think the new "carbon fiber" ones feel as durable as the older tan aluminum ones, but it's definitely a worthy replacement for a desktop. I just take a netbook with me most of the time when I need portability, but it's great when I know I need horsepower somewhere other than my own office.
usrusr 10y ago
This is a logical consequence of slower hardware replacement cycles: now that a reasonably fast system can be expected to still be very much acceptable five years down the line (I am writing this on an early 2011 machine that would not be much cheaper to match today), a much larger fraction of the market is willing to pay for qualities that are not represented in benchmarks. The fastest silicon in the cheapest casing that would do the job was a reasonable strategy back when even the best hardware became obsolete within three years, but now this is much less dominant. People who are not willing to spend on build quality are likely to just stick to what they have.

by bronz 10y ago

ohyoutravel 10y ago

Speaking of battery, I picked up an XPS 13 recently and am very happy with it. The battery seems to last forever, the 2016 model increases the battery size from 56(?) to 60w. The only reason I didn't go with the XPS 15 was that the battery life is supposed to be terrible, and it appears that even this newly announced model only has a 56w battery, which is surprising.

bronz 10y ago
out of all the laptops that are around right now, the xps series seems to be the closest to my fantasy -- this is due largely to their developer models which come with linux and linux supported hardware. when you say w do you mean Wh? ive heard murmurs of the legal limit for battery capacity in a laptop being 100Wh so that is very disappointing that the new xps would not even approach that anemic cap. i was in a mall the other day and happened across a windows store. i was very pleased to see they had a range of xps laptops on display. i found them to be very attractive and well made. IIRC some of them had a power button on the side of the laptop instead of the top of the keyboard. my current laptop has a power button like this and i cannot fucking stand it. i press it by accident at least twice a day. any sane person would realize what a terrible idea that is -- it totally baffles me why they do this. its very sad to see such an obvious flaw on these otherwise great laptops.
- creshal 10y ago
  The biggest battery capacity I've had in a laptop was 160Wh with the Thinkpad X220, I'm curious where that supposed 100Wh limit comes from.
  - bronz 10y ago
    i was watching a laptop review on linustechtips and i think he said it. this is why i said i heard it instead of stating it like fact! e - i think that limit comes from airlines limiting the size of individual batteries they transport. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ash/ash_programs/hazmat/passenger_info/media/airline_passengers_and_batteries.pdf https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
- deong 10y ago
  The whole 100W thing was, as far as I can tell, an almost completely unsupported theory advanced by a Mac blogger about why Apple doesn't put bigger batteries in their laptops. There is apparently some FAA document saying something to that effect, but of course there are lots of regulations on various books that are unenforced or unenforceable, and there have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of laptops made over the years with larger batteries, and none have ever been, to my knowledge, barred from flying.
  - deeth_starr 10y ago
    "Lithium ion batteries (a.k.a.: rechargeable lithium, lithium polymer, LIPO, secondary lithium). Passengers may carry all consumer-sized lithium ion batteries (up to 100 watt hours per battery)" https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ash/ash_programs/hazmat/passenger_info/media/airline_passengers_and_batteries.pdf https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
    - deong 10y ago
      I remember seeing the link in the original blog post, so I knew it was a real thing, but I'm extremely skeptical of the theory that it has anything to do with anything. The simple fact is that the FAA doesn't screen battery sizes. If you brought something the size of a car battery, they'd probably not allow it, but the difference between a 95WHr and a 140WHr laptop battery is something they're neither interested in nor capable of actively checking. Apple put a small battery in the laptop because it's more important to them to have a thin light laptop than it is to have more battery life. This random person unaffiliated with Apple then decided with no evidence that it was because of some basically unknown FAA document. That's all I meant.
jdmichal 10y ago
I'm guessing the extra space is going to the (optional) discrete GPU. That doesn't appear to be an option on the XPS 13.
unknown2374 10y ago
I am in the same boat, even under Linux and no configuration at all, the new XPS 13 lasts an incredibly long time. Just a minor correction, the battery in the previous (early 2016 - 9350) model was actually 52W, not 56.

creshal 10y ago

These laptops have been around, and successful, for years. They've just been snuffed by hipsters because they weren't Apple.

StevePerkins 10y ago
Feel free to provide some recommended examples instead of just being snarky.
- creshal 10y ago
  Dell's XPS series has been around since 2013, they just didn't make it to HN. Lenovo also had more compact-ish 15" models with the T540p and later the T550/T560. Not sure about HP's Envy series, I'm not following them too closely.
  - webaholic 10y ago
    what? I have a 2008 dell xps. XPS is Dell's premium laptop line that has been around since forever now.
    - slantyyz 10y ago
      I found that after Dell went private, their XPS'es (and other products, for that matter) all of a sudden became machines I'd actually consider buying.
    - mikestew 10y ago
      I had an XPS when I worked Microsoft. I haven't worked at Microsoft in over ten years. IIRC, XPS goes back to the 90s.
    - Chant-I-CRW 10y ago
      I had an m1530 from 2008. It was still working great until 2015 when it stopped booting. I gave it to a friend for parts, but he used a blowtorch to redo the GPU solder. Says it is still working just fine today.

slantyyz 10y ago

I've been planning for my next laptop purchase next year, and for some reason, I can't pull the Alienware 13R3 off the top of my short list. It's big (for a 13"), heavy, ugly and adorned with hideous gamer bling (WHY, WHY, WHY??), but it also has all the ports and features (discrete trackpad buttons!) I want in my work machine. Right now, it's basically between the new XPS 15 and the 13R3 (or R4 if it's out by the time I am ready).

bronz 10y ago
the gamer bling thing is so funny. why does nobody in the laptop business understand that people are buying those laptops despite the bling, not because of it? every ad that i see for a gaming laptop emphasizes the competitive advantages that these laptops offer, letting "gamers" "dominate" and so on. how could they be so disconnected that they don't realize that what everyone wants is to enjoy their crispy, high definition graphics on a sleek master race machine? what the world needs is a merging of gaming laptops with xps-like pro machines. utilitarian, powerful, well made and visually inconspicuous.
- slantyyz 10y ago
  In fairness, I think ASUS gets it - they make non gamer versions of their thin gamer machines. My main problem with ASUS - they make nice machines - is that for a work machine, I want to buy a decent extended warranty where I know I'll get OK service, so that narrows it down to the bigger vendors like Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc.
  - chx 10y ago
    AFAIK Asus doesn't yet have the Kaby Lake - Pascal combo out but they are coming https://www.nextpowerup.com/news/32428/list-of-asus-laptops-with-high-end-kaby-lake-cpus-and-nvidia-pascal-based-gpus-leak-online/ https://www.nextpowerup.com/news/32428/list-of-asus-laptops-... in droves and soon. Some Belgian retailer already has some of them listed http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS694149 http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS694149 http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS695109 http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS695109 etc

lmm 10y ago

I used to think that was what I wanted. But I think at this point a thin laptop can be good enough, and being able to get away from having a dev laptop and a travel netbook is a huge win. Moving all the ports onto a dock - provided it's a first-party fully-supported dock - is also a win, since it enables me to leave everything plugged in at home and take my computer travelling without having to unplug and replug everything. /huge Surface Book fan

Yhippa 10y ago
First-party docks are very underrated. I like having one connection from the laptop that gives you access to KVM or whatever. I love my MBP (early 2015) but the thing looks like Medusa and I think twice about having to remove all the cables from it to use it on the couch.
- irontoby 10y ago
  But that's part of the promise of USB-C / Thunderbolt 3... interchangeable, standards-based docks that work with a single connection. I'm currently using my Dell XPS 15 (9550) with the Plugable USB-C Docking Station which uses a single cable to power the laptop, drive two monitors (one DisplayPort alt mode, the other over USB), gig ethernet, and a few USB devices. Granted, it's not as seamless as it could be, but it's still new technology. There are issues with the USB-C connection cutting out when wifi is also on, so I've gotten in the habit of just turning off wifi when I'm docked. We're currently in the "first generation" of consumer USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 devices, so I expect those issues to get ironed out pretty quickly.
  - lmm 10y ago
    I don't know. Switching to Surface made me a lot more conscious how nice it is when everything comes from the same manufacturer and there's no way to pass the blame around. I would like standards-based USB-C docking to be sure, but I will definitely want my first USB-C dock to be a first-party one so that I have a single point of contact for issues like the one you describe (which would actually ruin my use case - my desk at home is across the room from the phone line and it wouldn't be easy to run a cable, so I need to use wifi when docked). After the technology has matured and the bugs are ironed out then I think we'll start reaping the benefits of competition and interoperability.

lucideer 10y ago

The Dell Precision range (and probably the old Thinkpad W-range, which has since been renamed...) used to be the laptops targeted at people with your utilitarian requirements list. It's a few years since I retired my old Precision laptop, but it definitely ticked the thick, durable, huge battery, tons of ports and reliable Linux drivers back then. I'm not sure how the contemporary models hold up.

nine_k 10y ago
Thinkpad T range is also right about this: a thick, powerful, utilitarian machine.
- lucideer 10y ago
  The high-powered "Txxp" models in the T range were what lead to the creation of the W range. More recently, I think the W range might have been superseded by some certain models in the P range, though I'm not too sure about this.

giancarlostoro 10y ago

I have an ASUS ROG laptop[0] which looks pretty sweet, but sort of reminds me to some degree to the MBP my girlfriend has, it's just black and red instead. If you want a total lookalike I think the Razer Blade[1] is pretty scarily close. You'd still spend quite a bit for anything from Razer though. Edit: [0] Asus ROG: https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-G501JW/ https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-G501JW/ [1] Razer Blade: http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade There were other laptops I've been shown from Razer that looked way too much like a 'sexy' Macbook Pro style. Of course Razer / ASUS ROG are gaming specific laptops, so the specs and the prices will be higher than most laptops.

bitwize 10y ago

Look into the Dell Precision 7xxx series. Expensive, and bulky and heavy enough to kill a man with one nice hard swing. But they are meant as serious portable workstations, and come with the fastest processors and GPUs, up to 32 GiB of memory, and bulky hard drives. They're not trendy terminals for hipsters' cloud dev environments. They can be purchased equipped with Ubuntu off Dell's site (in the USA, I dunno about other countries).

micaksica 10y ago
I am Precision 7 owner. With Skylake you still have 4 SODIMM slots and the new ones are a little lighter than the older ones, so you can have 64 GB RAM, a proper quad-core i7 (or Xeon), and discrete, removable graphics - the video card is on a daughter card that can be swapped out. Mine has an M.2 SSD and a big hard disk in it, a real GTX 960 eGPU via Thunderbolt 3, and only 32 GB RAM for now. Running Linux it has tons of overhead for multiple VMs (my Win10 VM has 8GB RAM), and lots of processing power. Unlike most laptops the Precision 7x series also is built to run flat out without throttling under load. Yes, it weighs like 8 lbs, and I don't think the new "carbon fiber" ones feel as durable as the older tan aluminum ones, but it's definitely a worthy replacement for a desktop. I just take a netbook with me most of the time when I need portability, but it's great when I know I need horsepower somewhere other than my own office.

usrusr 10y ago

This is a logical consequence of slower hardware replacement cycles: now that a reasonably fast system can be expected to still be very much acceptable five years down the line (I am writing this on an early 2011 machine that would not be much cheaper to match today), a much larger fraction of the market is willing to pay for qualities that are not represented in benchmarks. The fastest silicon in the cheapest casing that would do the job was a reasonable strategy back when even the best hardware became obsolete within three years, but now this is much less dominant. People who are not willing to spend on build quality are likely to just stick to what they have.