4 ms·

That Dell Pro Max Plus (that I legit thought might be a joke) is a big horkin laptop for ~$6k+. 3cm thick, nearly 3kg, and you can do wireframes on it, wow! A

That Dell Pro Max Plus (that I legit thought might be a joke) is a big horkin laptop for ~$6k+. 3cm thick, nearly 3kg, and you can do wireframes on it, wow! A full HD screen with 500 nits brightness. What a piece of shit product comparatively speaking. I imagine someone would buy it for a niche specific engineering purpose that can only be practical on Intel Windows, but damn. I really don't think it would fair better than a less costly M4/M5 Pro, and would probably be just an awful experience to use daily.

grumpyprole 7mo ago
Yes, it will also have 5 mins of battery life when unplugged and have a power adapter the size of a shoe box. I tried a similar machine from Lenovo at work and quickly returned it.
- cosmic_cheese 7mo ago
  The thing is, I think there's probably a niche for a workstation laptop like that, but this doesn't really check the right boxes. For all that extra bulk it ought to be extremely robust and repairable, have the best specs possible, and be equipped with the kind of killer cooling system that a thin chassis can't deliver. Then the tradeoffs might make sense.
- p1necone 7mo ago
  My laptop is always either plugged into a dock at work, or plugged into a dock or just a power supply at home. I feel like there's an untapped market for 'same laptop, but slightly cheaper because there's no battery in it at all'. Like you say most windows laptops have such garbage battery life already that it's not practical to use them unplugged.
  - secabeen 7mo ago
    Eh, I want some battery, it's nice when you need to move rooms or someone kicks the power cable out. Even 15 minutes would be enough for a chonkster machine like this.
    - brailsafe 7mo ago
      The early hybrid car of computers
    - p1necone 7mo ago
      I wonder if a big capacitor would be cheaper than a battery, probably not with how huge in scale battery production is at this point.
  - arkh 7mo ago
    > 'same laptop, but slightly cheaper because there's no battery in it at all' So, a simple computer? You can even choose your keyboard, mouse and screens.
    - brailsafe 7mo ago
      It seems ridiculous on the surface, since you'd think you'd just buy a desktop or something, but with a laptop with no battery, and hypothetically better everything else, it would eliminate the need for a bunch of other peripherals
    - p1necone 7mo ago
      Not the same - I still want to be able to just use and carry round the one thing without needing a monitor, mouse, keyboard etc at every single location, but I basically never need to use it somewhere where there isn't a wall socket available.
      - gvurrdon 7mo ago
        When I bought a Thinkpad a few months ago there was an option to order it with a smaller battery (which I selected).
  - brailsafe 7mo ago
    Kind of an interesting idea. Only the portability but none of the mobile computing capability. It does kind of seem like, outside a few select models, the PC market just gets the laptop part of laptops so so wrong. Bad touchpads, bad screens, no battery life, unpleasant industrial design usually, crammed with crapware and other bullshit. I hand it to the few companies that do try harder to remedy these.
  - Tyr42 7mo ago
    Ah but then you'd need to hard shut down to carry it home. The battery should keep the ram active to commute while sleeping
koyote 7mo ago
I use the non-Plus version as my work machine (not by choice). It's massive and heavy and feels less snappy than my personal X1 Nano after all the corporate malware uses up most of the CPU and RAM. The screen resolution is also shockingly bad (my 13 inch X1 Nano has a higher res than this 16 inch beast). That being said, it's nice having 64gb of RAM, a fast CPU and an Nvidia card (we build stuff that runs on CUDA). Build times are quick and I can run some of our more demanding test suites without RAM filling up and slowing everything down.
- brailsafe 7mo ago
  > That being said, it's nice having 64gb of RAM, a fast CPU and an Nvidia card (we build stuff that runs on CUDA). Build times are quick and I can run some of our more demanding test suites without RAM filling up and slowing everything down. No question there, more RAM and a specifically CUDA capable card make sense. At a big corp gig I did years ago, they issued me this atrocious HP thing they must have bought in bulk. I really tried to be optimistic, since it was just a tool and I was otherwise grateful for the work, and I'm sure the ram and CPU situation was fine, but for my use it only actively detracted from my ability to get things done. It pretty much had to be docked at all times, the screen had one viewing angle, Windows was functionally detrimental for my workflow (frontend web at that time), and the battery life was just sad. ThinkPads have always seemed a bit better, even their more chonkier versions.

grumpyprole 7mo ago

Yes, it will also have 5 mins of battery life when unplugged and have a power adapter the size of a shoe box. I tried a similar machine from Lenovo at work and quickly returned it.

cosmic_cheese 7mo ago
The thing is, I think there's probably a niche for a workstation laptop like that, but this doesn't really check the right boxes. For all that extra bulk it ought to be extremely robust and repairable, have the best specs possible, and be equipped with the kind of killer cooling system that a thin chassis can't deliver. Then the tradeoffs might make sense.
p1necone 7mo ago
My laptop is always either plugged into a dock at work, or plugged into a dock or just a power supply at home. I feel like there's an untapped market for 'same laptop, but slightly cheaper because there's no battery in it at all'. Like you say most windows laptops have such garbage battery life already that it's not practical to use them unplugged.
- secabeen 7mo ago
  Eh, I want some battery, it's nice when you need to move rooms or someone kicks the power cable out. Even 15 minutes would be enough for a chonkster machine like this.
  - brailsafe 7mo ago
    The early hybrid car of computers
  - p1necone 7mo ago
    I wonder if a big capacitor would be cheaper than a battery, probably not with how huge in scale battery production is at this point.
- arkh 7mo ago
  > 'same laptop, but slightly cheaper because there's no battery in it at all' So, a simple computer? You can even choose your keyboard, mouse and screens.
  - brailsafe 7mo ago
    It seems ridiculous on the surface, since you'd think you'd just buy a desktop or something, but with a laptop with no battery, and hypothetically better everything else, it would eliminate the need for a bunch of other peripherals
  - p1necone 7mo ago
    Not the same - I still want to be able to just use and carry round the one thing without needing a monitor, mouse, keyboard etc at every single location, but I basically never need to use it somewhere where there isn't a wall socket available.
    - gvurrdon 7mo ago
      When I bought a Thinkpad a few months ago there was an option to order it with a smaller battery (which I selected).
- brailsafe 7mo ago
  Kind of an interesting idea. Only the portability but none of the mobile computing capability. It does kind of seem like, outside a few select models, the PC market just gets the laptop part of laptops so so wrong. Bad touchpads, bad screens, no battery life, unpleasant industrial design usually, crammed with crapware and other bullshit. I hand it to the few companies that do try harder to remedy these.
- Tyr42 7mo ago
  Ah but then you'd need to hard shut down to carry it home. The battery should keep the ram active to commute while sleeping

koyote 7mo ago

I use the non-Plus version as my work machine (not by choice). It's massive and heavy and feels less snappy than my personal X1 Nano after all the corporate malware uses up most of the CPU and RAM. The screen resolution is also shockingly bad (my 13 inch X1 Nano has a higher res than this 16 inch beast). That being said, it's nice having 64gb of RAM, a fast CPU and an Nvidia card (we build stuff that runs on CUDA). Build times are quick and I can run some of our more demanding test suites without RAM filling up and slowing everything down.

brailsafe 7mo ago
> That being said, it's nice having 64gb of RAM, a fast CPU and an Nvidia card (we build stuff that runs on CUDA). Build times are quick and I can run some of our more demanding test suites without RAM filling up and slowing everything down. No question there, more RAM and a specifically CUDA capable card make sense. At a big corp gig I did years ago, they issued me this atrocious HP thing they must have bought in bulk. I really tried to be optimistic, since it was just a tool and I was otherwise grateful for the work, and I'm sure the ram and CPU situation was fine, but for my use it only actively detracted from my ability to get things done. It pretty much had to be docked at all times, the screen had one viewing angle, Windows was functionally detrimental for my workflow (frontend web at that time), and the battery life was just sad. ThinkPads have always seemed a bit better, even their more chonkier versions.