5 ms·

It's funny how out of touch you are. At CES this year even the gaming laptops have moved away from thicker, boxier designs capable of housing elaborate cooling

It's funny how out of touch you are. At CES this year even the gaming laptops have moved away from thicker, boxier designs capable of housing elaborate cooling systems and a full array of ports. And instead resemble traditional thin laptops. The reason is that the majority of people want sleek, thin, usable form factors that isn't out of place in a cafe or library. And it is the priority over all else.

lpapez 3y ago
I agree. If I wanted max power and cooling efficiency, I'd go for a PC anyway. When picking a laptop, my first question is whether I would be able to carelessly carry it around every day. The compromise with bulky gaming laptops is simply not worth IMO - it's not as good of a desktop computer as an actual desktop, and not as good of a laptop as some notebook. It's nice to be ocassionally able to do something more serious while on the go, but that is optimizing for the 10% use-case instead of the 90% use-case.
- jusssi 3y ago
  There is the case of "home laptop". Something that you rarely or never carry around, but you still don't want a stationary desktop PC for whatever reason.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    If you aren't staying somewhere permanently but also aren't moving in the immediate future (eg: college dorm) or your living space is constrained (eg: a trucker or an RVer), it definitely makes sense to have something powerful in a form factor that is "temporary", low-maintenance, and mostly self-contained.
  - andruby 3y ago
    I suppose the market for those is probably too small for the manufacturers to invest in.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    My home laptop is my work laptop, a 30 mm thick ZBook 15 from HP. I move it in several rooms according to the season. Some rooms get too hot in summer, others are OK. Same thing for winter. I could buy a desktop and remote desktop to it from a lighter laptop (maybe with a monitor, mouse and keyboard? too much stuff to move) but sometimes I don't work from home. Not every year now. Thankfully covid took care of nearly all of those days spent at a customer's premises.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    Not having a "PC desk" is common in some countries. They need laptop even if it's not quite portable.
nkrisc 3y ago
I assumed it was because those bulky gaming laptops were the worst of both worlds.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chx 3y ago
> The reason is that the majority of people want sleek, thin That's what they are told and that's what they are sold. You can't compete with a billion dollar marketing machinery by saying "hey my machine is not 9mm but 25mm but in turn it runs cooler and doesn't require dongles".
- acdha 3y ago
  This is only correct if all of the companies making thicker laptops had no marketing budgets. They did, of course, so clearly the reason consumers overwhelmingly picked thinner devices is unlikely to be as simple as “they were brainwashed walking by an Apple Store”.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    Apple themselves is selling thicker laptops than they did 5 years ago. Demand hasn't really faltered because of it, and some people are even complimenting it for being less hot and having a better keyboard. Despite weight and thinness being the center of Macboook marketing a mere few years ago, now consumers have rationalized a new preference. The value of a thin laptop honestly depends on what you sacrifice to get to that point. Jony Ive's entire career should stand testament to the fact that people honestly don't care after a certain point.
    - hollerith 3y ago
      Once upon a time, I switched from commuting with a Macbook Air to commuting with a Mac mini (obviously I always had access to electricity at both ends of the commute) that weighs about the same, and the sudden quintupling of the thickness of the device I was transporting (on the bus and sometimes on foot) never bothered me.
    - threeseed 3y ago
      > and some people are even complimenting it for being less hot You do know that's because they moved away from Intel to their own M CPUs. It has nothing to do with the case.

lpapez 3y ago

I agree. If I wanted max power and cooling efficiency, I'd go for a PC anyway. When picking a laptop, my first question is whether I would be able to carelessly carry it around every day. The compromise with bulky gaming laptops is simply not worth IMO - it's not as good of a desktop computer as an actual desktop, and not as good of a laptop as some notebook. It's nice to be ocassionally able to do something more serious while on the go, but that is optimizing for the 10% use-case instead of the 90% use-case.

jusssi 3y ago
There is the case of "home laptop". Something that you rarely or never carry around, but you still don't want a stationary desktop PC for whatever reason.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  If you aren't staying somewhere permanently but also aren't moving in the immediate future (eg: college dorm) or your living space is constrained (eg: a trucker or an RVer), it definitely makes sense to have something powerful in a form factor that is "temporary", low-maintenance, and mostly self-contained.
- andruby 3y ago
  I suppose the market for those is probably too small for the manufacturers to invest in.
- pmontra 3y ago
  My home laptop is my work laptop, a 30 mm thick ZBook 15 from HP. I move it in several rooms according to the season. Some rooms get too hot in summer, others are OK. Same thing for winter. I could buy a desktop and remote desktop to it from a lighter laptop (maybe with a monitor, mouse and keyboard? too much stuff to move) but sometimes I don't work from home. Not every year now. Thankfully covid took care of nearly all of those days spent at a customer's premises.
- fomine3 3y ago
  Not having a "PC desk" is common in some countries. They need laptop even if it's not quite portable.

nkrisc 3y ago

I assumed it was because those bulky gaming laptops were the worst of both worlds.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

chx 3y ago

> The reason is that the majority of people want sleek, thin That's what they are told and that's what they are sold. You can't compete with a billion dollar marketing machinery by saying "hey my machine is not 9mm but 25mm but in turn it runs cooler and doesn't require dongles".

acdha 3y ago
This is only correct if all of the companies making thicker laptops had no marketing budgets. They did, of course, so clearly the reason consumers overwhelmingly picked thinner devices is unlikely to be as simple as “they were brainwashed walking by an Apple Store”.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  Apple themselves is selling thicker laptops than they did 5 years ago. Demand hasn't really faltered because of it, and some people are even complimenting it for being less hot and having a better keyboard. Despite weight and thinness being the center of Macboook marketing a mere few years ago, now consumers have rationalized a new preference. The value of a thin laptop honestly depends on what you sacrifice to get to that point. Jony Ive's entire career should stand testament to the fact that people honestly don't care after a certain point.
  - hollerith 3y ago
    Once upon a time, I switched from commuting with a Macbook Air to commuting with a Mac mini (obviously I always had access to electricity at both ends of the commute) that weighs about the same, and the sudden quintupling of the thickness of the device I was transporting (on the bus and sometimes on foot) never bothered me.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    > and some people are even complimenting it for being less hot You do know that's because they moved away from Intel to their own M CPUs. It has nothing to do with the case.