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Ask HN: Do older devs buy lighter notebooks to reduce pain while carrying them?
And if so, at what age do older devs start doing this?
- t-3 4y agoI think most people who carry laptops regularly care about the weight. Having to travel with laptop made me replace the until-then-beloved thinkpad quite quickly.
- FeistySkink 4y agoThere are plenty of thin and light ThinkPads these days. Unless I misunderstood and you went for another ThinkPad.
- andrewfromx 4y agoha, this made me laugh out loud. For years I've been using the smallest laptop and complaining to my friends about the extra weight a big laptop causes in my backpack. I feel even a one pound delta. This started for me well, always. I don't think it was getting older. I've just always been a wimp I guess.
- sumtechguy 4y agoFor me lighter was better. But as I get older my eyes decided 'oh you want to use these to see things?! hahahaha' so now a bigger screen is my main requirement.
- SavageBeast 4y agoI've been running Apple stuff for years personally and every generation seems to become lighter and more powerful. But yeah, in my 30s I didn't mind lugging around the 17" Mac Book Pro with the CD drive removed and hackily replaced with an additional battery. Today its an up-to-date MBP 16" clamshelled away on my desk with wireless keyboard and the hot Apple display - but - when I travel its always the Mac Book Air ... because it weighs nothing. I do recall being a younger person and lugging around the latest, hottest Think Brick I could get my hands on but at the time nothing was "light" so there was no concept of "heavy". I don't think its so much an age thing so much as the fact that high power and light weight now come in the same package. Edit: Today its possible to be out on the town all day, meetings etc with a mere iPad and a keyboard. If I need to do some heavy lifting I'll bring the M1 Air - but remember having to lug around those gigantic charging bricks because machines ate watts and batteries sucked? I'll never miss that. So Lenovo shaved 1/4th a lb off the laptop but the charging brick got 1/2 lb heavier.
- melling 4y agoDo people “Ask HN” frequently to farm karma points?
- cheapliquor 4y agoAs long as its a viable discussion topic I don't really see an issue. At least it's not like Reddit's r/askreddit which is relentlessly inundated with the most absurd, or downright incomprehensible posts just for the sake of grinding karma points. But yeah, they probably do.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Kaibeezy 4y agoHm. One nearly every day. Some kind of journaling regimen or creative writing exercise? It's actually an interesting question if it had asked what adjustments people have made. I literally yesterday bought a 100g £10 keyboard to see if I could travel for a week with just a tablet. The GaN charger was a win.
- techdmn 4y agoAside from the question itself the posts seem pretty low effort. My experience is that a typical Ask HN has two or three paragraphs explaining the question in depth, why the question is important to the person asking, etc.
- Archipelagia 4y agoGuess it's a good place to ask – what would be the point of farming HN karma anyway? I guess on Reddit it might be considered a way of boosting the account's authority or whatever, but is there any impact to having high karma on HN?
- happymellon 4y agoIf they want to downvote I think you need a certain karma level. Do that with enough accounts and you can control the narrative on certain subjects such as downvoting/hiding all the Twitter news that is negative, or the latest FAANG layoffs? Unlikely though. Perhaps to positively promote your new startup? But then you don't need karma for that, so I have no idea.
- DarrenDev 4y agoThe trend is towards smaller lap tops anyway, regardless of developer age. But, carrying a heavy lap top in a backpack for long periods of time is not a good idea. A few years of this in my 40s led to shoulder tendonitis that still has me seeing a physio regularly. I carry it in a hand held brief case now. These North Face and Samsonite back packs designed for lap tops don't have the same supports that proper hiking backpacks have. You end up carrying all the weight on your shoulders instead of on your hips. Not a good idea!
- elviejo 4y agoYes. And you are forgetting the need for bigger screens. So that we can see bigger fonts. That's why the LG Gram 17inch 2020 is the best laptop I've owned. The screen is big enough to simulate two monitors and it is feather light.
- PaulHoule 4y agoA few years back I twisted my ankle dismounting from a bus when I went to NYC for a business trip (expecting to walk 5+ miles a day) and I blamed an overpacked bag. It took at least six months to recover and I made a point to not overpack my bag. I figure it is ok to have a heavy laptop but a heavy laptop plus a lot of other stuff is too much. It is bad when it is a heavy laptop, a netbook, a tablet, portable game console, minidisc player, several books, etc. I walk to and from a parking space or bus stop to get to my office and lately I have been overpacking my backpack again. Maybe it is a mistake but I justify it in that soldiers train by carrying a heavy backpack. I sure am careful about getting on and off a bus. For years i thought I had trouble with my shoulders but I found out it was TMD, a bite guard made a huge difference.
- markus_zhang 4y agoNot really. Since I carry them in backpacks the priority is durability and larger screen, both may lead to extra weight. 40+ so may not be considered as "older" but I'm definitely far from my prime and sick very often.
- shapefrog 4y agoAsk HN: Do older devs buy heavier notebooks so they can see the screen with their diminishing eyesight? And if so, at what age do older devs start doing this?
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoThis is actually a more relevant question, the answer being sometimes "yes". Or, prefer to have a large high-rez external display at your usual places of work.
- mojuba 4y agoI began using reading glasses at the age of 43. Ten years later, I'm at +2 and it's not enough, need to move up a notch again. Age related long-sightedness is one of the most annoying things. You can see far away sort of OK, but you can't read your phone or something printed in small letters right under your nose. You also realize how this is an invisible and largely ignored problem by the fact that packaging designers (and most designers in general) don't care about you at all. It only gets worse as you age but you are of course reluctant about "upgrading" your glasses because you know they only make it worse and there's no going back from each upgrade. As for laptops, I do prefer 16" since I move cities and countries a lot, can't afford moving a desk monitor with me.
- throwup 4y ago> you are of course reluctant about "upgrading" your glasses because you know they only make it worse Is that actually true? I always assumed my lenses would harden at a more-or-less constant rate no matter what I do. I wouldn't think wearing glasses could the speed up or slow down the process.
- mojuba 4y agoYes I heard from a doctor that reading glasses only make the process faster because occasionally and inevitably you look at distant objects, i.e. much further than your screen, which your reading glasses are not meant for.
- Apreche 4y agoI've always bought smaller everything. I really miss my Fujitsu Lifebook P7230. I wish I could get an iPhone that was the size of an iPod nano.
- elzbardico 4y agoRegular weight training and correct adjustment of the straps in a good backpack should be enough. If the few pounds of a 16” MacBook Pro are causing you pain, even if you are over fifty, you should concern yourself more with taking better care of your body.
- gwbas1c 4y agoI'm almost 42 and I carry my laptop in a backpack. Sometimes I carry two laptops. The backpack is one of those designed to carry a laptop. I recently started carrying a full size keyboard and mouse, because I find it harder and harder to adapt to the laptop keyboard and touchpad for extended periods of time. The weight never bothers me; but again, it's a properly-designed laptop backpack. If I used a (cough) "professional-looking" briefcase or shoulder bag, it would really hurt to carry. If you really need to look professional, I suggest finding a very small computer that can fit in the pocket of a trenchcoat. Keep in mind that today's computers are very fast, so they might be "good enough" to run Visual Studio / XCode / whatever on a moderately-sized project.
- shmoogy 4y agoYes, typically weight is a concern for a lot of my purchases I carry around now. Moving from the m1 air to a 14 mbp pro was not something I really wanted to do, but I needed the extra ram. Also downgraded my camera kits, and often dont bring them places anymore.
- jacknews 4y agoIt's because of the weight of our experience. Also you can never be too thin or too rich. Older devs can afford the sleeker laptops. And we don't need to do hard grunt work, so having a lightweight 'supervisor-top' is a mark of that. Look at briefcase dimensions, the C-suite always have the smallest/thinnest, if any at all. Seems like you were born yesterday.
- yread 4y agoNo we get stronger with time. Bro do you even lift? /s
- drewbug01 4y agoI’m only 33, so hardly “old”. But I have started to feel the effects of age in small ways. I prefer larger screens so that I can increase font sizes and strain my eyes less. I also worry much more about ergonomics, because lots of laptop hacking has started to turn into RSI. And that all means bigger laptops are better, and they are usually not lighter. I used a netbook in college - I can’t fathom it now.
- johnea 4y agoCompared to what we used to have to carry, _every_ notebook today is lighter 8-)