I hate modern laptop design

[The_Prycer]

#en

#conf salt

#salt ENGAGED|

 

I despise modern laptop design. Don't get me wrong, the hardware and software capabilities of modern systems is amazing and I love that, but the physical design infuriates me.

 

To start, not having both power and RJ-45 jacks on the back of the laptop is nonsense. Power on the back was beautiful as it no longer mattered what your orientation was in relation to wall jacks instead of having a 50% chance of having to awkwardly drape your cables over yourself or you desk. Not having your Internet in the back is also nonsense. Aside from power, the one other thing I'm going to be plugging in on a long term basis is Internet. Not having a smooth and easy port location that doesn't discriminate based upon your orientation is nonsense.

 

Trying to plug anything in to modern laptops is bollocks as it requires a dongle array. It's one thing to just have your singular USB C port on thin & light laptops, but if I'm dropping used Mazda 3 money on a pro level machine, I better be getting SD card readers, USB 3.1 ports, display outs, and maybe even an optical drive in addition to the USB C/Lightning ports. I realize we're moving towards USB-C for all the things, but a number of professional level tools still are not using USB-C so now I've got to carry dongles on top of dongles to connect anything to newer machines. 

 

Typing on newer laptops is also terrible. No one seems to understand that the 2010-2014 Macbook keyboard was the best  laptop typing experience and we as humanity should have just stopped right then and there.

 

And another thing, the pursuit of thin & light over everything else in the world of laptops has led to terrible thermals and decreased performance just to shave a few millimeters here and there. Thin & Light is great if all you're doing is basic internet browsing and word processing while being on the move, but laptops are now used for actual work. I don't want a thin & light work laptop, give me the thicc bois that won't throttle and can get extra performance boosts because of it.

 

Looking at you Apple, but soldering your SoDIMMs and now even your hard drives is a dick move, especially with that T2 chip.

 

I don't need a 4K laptop display. 1080p is fine for any screen of 13 inches or fewer. Focus on better display technologies and refresh rates before you come at me with high res displays on screens so small that you can't even notice them.

 

Gaming on laptops is still ass unless you want to connect an external mouse, keyboard, and even monitor. Stop trying to shove a 2080 in to a laptop, put the 1650 in there for the lowered power consumption and just accept that gaming laptops will be dependent on lower power cards to stop them from sounding like a jet engine taking off when you want to use them for anything and you will be playing at 720 or 1080 resolution.

 

#copy run start

#shutdown salt

 

 

[Origami Cactus]

Atleast the power plug problem is taken care of by type-c, because on some laptops all the type c ports can take power in, so you can use any of the ports.

[The_Prycer]

2 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

Atleast the power plug problem is taken care of by type-c, because on some laptops all the type c ports can take power in, so you can use any of the ports.

The ONE advantage to type C everything is having power capable on either side unless you want to be a doombag and put both your ports on one side only.

 

I still maintain that back mounted power is the superior mounting position as is back mounted external display.

[Origami Cactus]

2 minutes ago, The_Prycer said:

The ONE advantage to type C everything is having power capable on either side unless you want to be a doombag and put both your ports on one side only.

 

I still maintain that back mounted power is the superior mounting position as is back mounted external display.

yeah, having an extra thunderbolt on the back would be cool, you could use it for a display/power/ethernet whatever and it is a very small port.

[Mnky313]

7 minutes ago, The_Prycer said:

-snip-

Still got myself a precision M6700, love the amount of ports, it has everything except thunderbolt, sadly there isn't really an upgrade path in sight, nothing compares to the older workstation class laptops  . The closest thing is the precision 7720 but even that isn't that much faster and sacrifces a good amount of I/O.

[The_Prycer]

Just now, Origami Cactus said:

yeah, having an extra thunderbolt on the back would be cool, you could use it for a display/power/ethernet whatever.

I still miss having a DVI port on my MacBook. I could screw the cable in with no concerns about it coming loose.

 

Also MagSafe charging was the tits and they should have never gotten rid of it until the USB C thing.

[aisle9]

9 minutes ago, The_Prycer said:

Typing on newer laptops is also terrible. No one seems to understand that the 2010-2014 Macbook keyboard was the best  laptop typing experience and we as humanity should have just stopped right then and there.

Blasphemy.

 

Seriously though, people want thin and light, which means businesses want thin and light. I miss the days of swapping crappy i5-2520M CPUs with a quad i7, but those sockets take up space. With U and H CPUs cornering the market (I don't think Intel even makes socketed mobile CPUs anymore), the logical move is to thin the laptop by moving the charging port to the side. USB-C makes that port even smaller, saving more space and weight. Oh, and did I mention laptops are cheaper to produce than ever, meaning that while you and I are paying comparatively more for our high-end machine while most of the world is using cheaper-than-ever Celeron and Pentium Silver processors.

[The_Prycer]

9 minutes ago, Mnky313 said:

 sacrifces a good amount of I/O.

Before me right now is a 13 inch 2012 MacBook Pro. It has 10 different openings with 8 of them being used for data.

 

power

RJ-45

 Firewire

Thunderbolt

2 USB 3.0

 SDXC card reader

3.5mm headphone jack

Optical Drive

Physical lock option

 

In comparison, the 13 inch 2019 MacBook pro has only 2 thunderbolt 3 ports, 1 USB C port, and a headphone jack.

 

Now, I realize things like Firewire, optical drives, and older thunderbolt ports become obsolete, but why not just keep adding USB C or thunderbolt 3 ports for every obsolete technology you get rid of? USB 3.2 is still relevant and useful for a multitude of products and SD card readers are one of my more used ports. Also where the hell is my ethernet port on a PRO model laptop?! That should just be included as a basic feature.

 

I would happily pay Apple Macbook Pro money for a laptop with 2 thunderbolt 3, 2 USB C, 2 USB 3.2, RJ-45, SDXC, and a headphone jack.

[The_Prycer]

9 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Oh, and did I mention laptops are cheaper to produce than ever, meaning that while you and I are paying comparatively more for our high-end machine while most of the world is using cheaper-than-ever Celeron and Pentium Silver processors.

Its all a work. I get that I pay a premium because I like Apple's proprietary software versus just buying a cheaper laptop and then buying all the software I'd need to use on top of that, but even trying to find business laptops to give to our legal department is a nightmare because everything is so expensive for what amounts to very little in performance gains

[Mnky313]

19 minutes ago, The_Prycer said:

-snip-

My precision has:
2 USB 3.0
2 USB 2.0
1 eSATA/USB 2.0 combo
1 Full size DisplayPort
1 Smartcard Reader (and one wireless reader)
1 SDXC card reader
1 Expresscard 2.0
1 firewire 400
1 RJ45 gigabit ethernet
1 HDMI
1 VGA
2 3.5mm jacks (one headphone, one mic)
and that's without the dock!
with the dock it has (it replaces some ports, so i listed all available ports with dock connected):
4 USB 3.0
5 USB 2.0
1 eSATA/USB 2.0 combo
2 Full size DisplayPort/ DVI-D (can only use a combo of 2)

1 more DP on the laptop
1 Smartcard Reader (and one wireless reader)
1 SDXC card reader
1 Expresscard 2.0
1 firewire 400
1 RJ45 gigabit ethernet
1 VGA

4 3.5mm jacks (one headphone, one mic)

2 PS/2 ports
1 parallel
1 serial
This s*** has more I/O than my desktop .

There is also space for:
1 ODD

2 2.5 inch HDDs

1 mSATA SSD
3 mPCIe (1 full size, 2 half)
a fingerprint reader
120hz 1080p display
dedicated media keys

Obviously some of this stuff (like parallel & firewire) is obselete, but even serial is a nice touch and eSATA is awesome, don't @ me.

[The_Prycer]

4 minutes ago, Mnky313 said:

sexy laptop I/O

 

Unnnnnnnfffffff.

 

That's hot.

 

I use an older HP Probook (running Linux) for work because it has eSATA and that is the most useful thing in the history of ever when it comes to drive cloning.

[Zando_]

Mid-2012 MacBook Pro gang 

Other than the low res screen they're pretty damn solid. Quiet under full load, don't get unbearably hot, only throttles from 2.9Ghz to 2.85Ghz on the tail end of a Cinebench R20 run. Best laptop keyboard ever, Magsafe so tripping over the power cable isn't a problem, two actual USB ports, and a full RJ45 port. Only thing it's missing is an HDMI out, IIRC they added those on the 2015 MBPs (my favorite gen of retinas), but those lost the RJ45 port. Given that I'm an IT lad, being able to easily hook straight in to a router via hardline is super handy, no need to hunt a dongle. 

 

Oh and also it doesn't get loud at all, whereas the 2019 MBP I have here to muck around with (it's a spare, no user for it yet so I'm running macOS Catalina on it to see how it behaves) gets loud under load. The fan is an annoyingly high pitched, almost whiny one so it's not the greatest. Both hit around 96-97 in CB20, but the 2012 runs the fan at 2000-2500rpm to keep that, whereas the 2019 waits a while and then slaps the fan to 3700-4700rpm.