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The Acer Swift is limited to only 8GB of (non-upgrade) ram, which is a deal breaker for most developers. I also wonder about that Wi-Fi 6 chip and its Linux sup
by djsumdog 6y ago
The Acer Swift is limited to only 8GB of (non-upgrade) ram, which is a deal breaker for most developers. I also wonder about that Wi-Fi 6 chip and its Linux support. If it wasn't for those factors, I'd probably get one.
- generalpass 6y agoI wonder how much money non-upgradable RAM actually saves.
- analog31 6y agoI wonder if it's mainly an issue of finding empty space for it.
- bArray 6y agoNot much. Probably less to do with saving money and more about locking you into a specific amount of RAM. That way you spend the extra schmeckles in the first place rather than upgrading the machine yourself 2 years down the line.
- Someone1234 6y agoIt is also space. Non-upgradable ram can be put on when the circuit board is assembled, by robot. Upgradable ram has the socket installed in the same process, but then needs the ram put into the socket by low cost workers. But as I said, space is likely the biggest reason.
- nrp 6y agoIn this instance, both laptops use LPDDR4x, which doesn’t exist in stick form. DDR4 SO-DIMM sockets are a challenge to fit though, so most OEMs take the easy path and go with soldered RAM there anyway.
- analog31 6y agoThis is totally an aside, and probably shows how out of touch I am, but there must be developers who need 8+ GB, and others who don't. I was always under the impression that things like editors and compilers didn't need a lot of computing performance. So I'm curious what kinds of development demand more performance. Is it a hard wall that you hit, or more of just a progressive degradation of performance?
- mh- 6y agoThe kind that requires you to collaborate on Slack.
- OJFord 6y agoI certainly won't defend Slack's RAM usage, but assuming only people doing certain sorts of work use it - or rather work at a company that uses it - is just ill-informed.
- saagarjha 6y agoSlack works fairly well in the browser, if you have one that’s not a resource hog.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoIt does until you need to do video calls. Then it tells you to either download Chrome or download the Slack app aka Chrome. :(
- saagarjha 6y agoPeople actually use Slack for calling? Color me surprised…
- mxz3000 6y agoI routinely go over 10GB of ram with a bunch of chrome tabs, IDE windows, Spotify, chat app, outlook, etc... It's really not hard.
- earthboundkid 6y agoI was using 8GB until recently. It was hell because I was always swapping. Even with an SSD, the lag changing apps was painful.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoI routinely run several VMs and my next laptop soon will be 32 or 64GB. On Windows my dev machine already uses 8GB with just a few browser tabs open.
- patd 6y agoI've purchased an Acer Swift 3 (the Intel version) with 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 3:2 screen (which I prefer) but it was 1000€, not $650.