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I have owned 4 or 5 Optimus laptops and have never gotten a practical benefit from Optimus. At best I leave it switched to the fast GPU permanently. At worst, s

by jblow 13y ago

I have owned 4 or 5 Optimus laptops and have never gotten a practical benefit from Optimus. At best I leave it switched to the fast GPU permanently. At worst, something goes wrong. The state of Windows laptops these days is really kind of embarrassing. Nobody knows how to build something of quality. Everything appears to be driven by bullet-point features with a goal of providing USPs, but nobody really cares if the features work or if the overall product is good. This extends to everything (keyboard and trackpad design, screen, preloaded software, function key mappings, etc). I buy 2 or 3 laptops a year; traditionally the case has been that most laptops were kind of bad but if you looked hard you could find something good. Now it has gotten to the point that the something good no longer seems to exist at all. I dread the idea of buying a new laptop now. This can't be the high-level result that these OEMs really want.

aram 13y ago
I thought the situation improved a bit with the appearance of ultrabooks; however I haven't had a chance to test one of them thoroughly. Did they bring higher quality or they are just thinner with slightly better specs/battery?
- dangrossman 13y ago
  If you're willing to spend at least $1500, you can find some ultrabooks with decent build quality from Lenovo/Asus/Samsung/Sony. None of them get every detail right; keyboard layout is always a challenge, and I had to remap home/end/pageup/pagedown to make this one usable for programming. Vendor-specific apps for the trackpad and power management suck and they'll be installed on even the most expensive systems. One problem seems to be that we're such a tiny addressable market at this point that the best PCs never make it into stores. You won't find any Haswell i7's in ultrabooks at Best Buy / Staples / etc; just the lower-end i5 and HD5000 graphics clones each brand made. This one was only available from Amazon, which seems to pick up something like 30 units a month from ASUS. Samsung makes a very nice configuration of their Ativ Book 9 Plus that's both beautiful and powerful, but when I checked my local stores they only stocked cheaper models.
- cabbeer 13y ago
  Apple has economies of scale to their advantage, the macbook air is really competitively priced compared to their windows alternative.
jonhohle 13y ago
> I buy 2 or 3 laptops a year; traditionally the case has > been that most laptops were kind of bad but if you looked > hard you could find something good. Now it has gotten to > the point that the something good no longer seems to exist > at all. Have you looked at MacBooks? There is a significant difference between a $300-$500 box of crap and a $1,000 MacBook. It seems like they would address most of your concerns - great trackpad, screen, no crapware (you bring your own Windows if that's your thing), map your own function keys, reasonable quality keyboard (at least a constant layout), and extremely solid build quality.
- marvin 13y ago
  I am genuinely surprised that no good Windows laptop seems to exist. I've been using Apple for the last 4 years and I hoped that finally one of the Windows OEMs had managed to cobble together something that can get cloes to the Macbook Pro in build quality and interface. Apparently not?
  - chime 13y ago
    Samsung Series 9. Not cheap though.
    - masklinn 13y ago
      No good laptop is cheap. Thinkpads were not cheap (they now have cheap lines, they're crap). Toughbooks are not cheap. Macbooks are not cheap. Design, components and assembly quality come at a price, that's all there's to it.
      - frou_dh 13y ago
        Indeed, but fat margins are welcome too. It's 2014 and doesn't the MacBook Air ship a TN display?
  - cabbeer 13y ago
    I don't think you've been looking hard enough. Thinkpads are amazing, you also have high end sony vaios, and the Microsoft surface pro 2 is also a really great portable device.
doubt_me 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence Yes it is the result they want. You can custom order a nice laptop if your willing to spend 800+ and not have to worry about getting a macbook http://www.powernotebooks.com/ASUS-Custom-Built-Gaming-Laptops-Notebooks-cat-65.html http://www.powernotebooks.com/ASUS-Custom-Built-Gaming-Lapto... But at the same time I just looked up optimus and most of the new GPUs are listed as having it http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/optimus/supported-gpus http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/optimus/supported... I would generally avoid Nvidia until this optimus stuff gets enough press until they are forced to retire this or at least make it optional. Or just wait until someone decides to start a class action lawsuit against them like how HP knowingly sold and entire family of defective Elite desktops

by jblow 13y ago

aram 13y ago

I thought the situation improved a bit with the appearance of ultrabooks; however I haven't had a chance to test one of them thoroughly. Did they bring higher quality or they are just thinner with slightly better specs/battery?

dangrossman 13y ago
If you're willing to spend at least $1500, you can find some ultrabooks with decent build quality from Lenovo/Asus/Samsung/Sony. None of them get every detail right; keyboard layout is always a challenge, and I had to remap home/end/pageup/pagedown to make this one usable for programming. Vendor-specific apps for the trackpad and power management suck and they'll be installed on even the most expensive systems. One problem seems to be that we're such a tiny addressable market at this point that the best PCs never make it into stores. You won't find any Haswell i7's in ultrabooks at Best Buy / Staples / etc; just the lower-end i5 and HD5000 graphics clones each brand made. This one was only available from Amazon, which seems to pick up something like 30 units a month from ASUS. Samsung makes a very nice configuration of their Ativ Book 9 Plus that's both beautiful and powerful, but when I checked my local stores they only stocked cheaper models.
cabbeer 13y ago
Apple has economies of scale to their advantage, the macbook air is really competitively priced compared to their windows alternative.

jonhohle 13y ago

> I buy 2 or 3 laptops a year; traditionally the case has > been that most laptops were kind of bad but if you looked > hard you could find something good. Now it has gotten to > the point that the something good no longer seems to exist > at all. Have you looked at MacBooks? There is a significant difference between a $300-$500 box of crap and a $1,000 MacBook. It seems like they would address most of your concerns - great trackpad, screen, no crapware (you bring your own Windows if that's your thing), map your own function keys, reasonable quality keyboard (at least a constant layout), and extremely solid build quality.

marvin 13y ago
I am genuinely surprised that no good Windows laptop seems to exist. I've been using Apple for the last 4 years and I hoped that finally one of the Windows OEMs had managed to cobble together something that can get cloes to the Macbook Pro in build quality and interface. Apparently not?
- chime 13y ago
  Samsung Series 9. Not cheap though.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    No good laptop is cheap. Thinkpads were not cheap (they now have cheap lines, they're crap). Toughbooks are not cheap. Macbooks are not cheap. Design, components and assembly quality come at a price, that's all there's to it.
    - frou_dh 13y ago
      Indeed, but fat margins are welcome too. It's 2014 and doesn't the MacBook Air ship a TN display?
- cabbeer 13y ago
  I don't think you've been looking hard enough. Thinkpads are amazing, you also have high end sony vaios, and the Microsoft surface pro 2 is also a really great portable device.

doubt_me 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence Yes it is the result they want. You can custom order a nice laptop if your willing to spend 800+ and not have to worry about getting a macbook http://www.powernotebooks.com/ASUS-Custom-Built-Gaming-Laptops-Notebooks-cat-65.html http://www.powernotebooks.com/ASUS-Custom-Built-Gaming-Lapto... But at the same time I just looked up optimus and most of the new GPUs are listed as having it http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/optimus/supported-gpus http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/optimus/supported... I would generally avoid Nvidia until this optimus stuff gets enough press until they are forced to retire this or at least make it optional. Or just wait until someone decides to start a class action lawsuit against them like how HP knowingly sold and entire family of defective Elite desktops