Portless Laptops are Coming! Run Away! or are they going to be awesome?

[jagdtigger]

Its going to be fun to watch the screen bend and die from the heat of the wireless power and data transfer....

[Areco777]

2 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Its going to be fun to watch the screen bend and die from the heat of the wireless power and data transfer....

and the fact that i dont think they are actually going to deliver what people really expect 

[GhostRoadieBL]

7 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Its going to be fun to watch the screen bend and die from the heat of the wireless power and data transfer....

wouldn't the same happen to wireless charging phones? I know OnePlus had a 50W wireless charger which would be more than enough for this laptop and their phones didn't melt from heat.

[poochyena]

43 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

A tablet isn't a laptop though, with a laptop you have more flexibility with devices you can plug in, and aren't being limited by performance.

The only difference between a tablet and laptop is if the keyboard is detachable or not. Thats it.

[dizmo]

47 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Nor with other existing thin, very thin laptop. Not to repeat a discussion and point I've said before but reducing chassis height removes an extremely small amount of metal/material so the weight reduction is next to nothing. You'd be saving more weight by removing the fans and putting in an even weaker and tinnier heatsink and/or making the chassis the heatsink which is not great for usability comfort at all.

 

The tradeoffs are worse, not saying it shouldn't exist but the benefits are VASTLY overblown like always.

 

You can go fanless with convection air current to aid in cooling without going thin to the extreme, that's a reason not to do this.

Correct. Weight isn't the only thing you need to factor in when thinking of portability. Thickness plays a huge part too. It was way easier to carry around my Series 9 vs the T470s, and the height differences aren't great. Worse is subjective, as someone who uses it for a daily email/web machine wouldn't really notice the reduced performance. Though, that does make the spec they chose to go with quite odd, which is why I mentioned the 9w i7.

[YellowJersey]

It speaks to the insanity of the modern world where removing functionality is seen as a good thing. I guess they just have Apple levels of "courage."

[GhostRoadieBL]

36 minutes ago, dizmo said:

which is why I mentioned the 9w i7.

It would be great seeing an i5 chip or the 9w i7 in this. I expect they are playing the halo product card to make sure they are noticed instead of the practical everyday user where they need to mass produce.

[suicidalfranco]

you donkey, you effing donkey

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

I know a product like this isn't for me at all, but how does having such a thin laptop actually improve the user experience in any way compared to laptops that are already considered thin? You'd have less cooling capability the thinner you go, so there's almost certainly going to be a performance tradeoff. Then you've got things like space needed for batteries and other components. 

It doesn't. It'll take one accidental drop, and the screen and battery will buckle. See tablets such as the iPad. If the battery buckles, fire.

 

There is a reason why I kept saying 7mm in the thread about USB-C.

USB-C ports are 7.35mm x 8.94mm x 4.3mm , and that 4.3mm thickness doesn't include chassis of the device. So unless you're going to make your device have sub-1.3mm material thickness, there is literately no room for USB-C.

 

I dog-eared my 3rd gen ipad by dropping it from the height of my suitcase. It didn't break the screen. The iphone 6 had bendgate. The iPhone 6 was 6.9mm thick. Current 13's are 7.65mm.

 

We basically learned, that for a phone, something below 7.5mm starts trading off strength. But for a tablet or a laptop, it needs to be even thicker, because people are going to hold onto it by the corner out of habit.

 

 

[RejZoR]

This is a stupid idea. Why everyone wants to use inefficient induction charging on everything? Everyone is obsessed with energy labels on devices and constantly bragging about efficiency and then they are throwing 1/3 of energy away before it even reaches devices. It's stupid. At least make magnetically attachable contacts instead of coils. And the hub with actual ports shouldn't be any larger than regular charger, otherwise what's the point, you're just shuffling ports from one device to another and you still need to carry both with you.

 

Also such laptop only makes sense if you absolutely know you'll never need to use a single port. Then it's cool to have something this thin. But that's a very niche group of people imo. Also battery must suck on such thin device unless it'll run some weak ARM or Atom CPU.

[jagdtigger]

2 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

wouldn't the same happen to wireless charging phones? I know OnePlus had a 50W wireless charger which would be more than enough for this laptop and their phones didn't melt from heat.

You dont beed to melt the plastic to bend or warp it....

[adarw]

4 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

concept

keyword!

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

2 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Its going to be fun to watch the screen bend and die from the heat of the wireless power and data transfer....

I feel like it doesn't need heat from the charger to bend. Looks like it might have the same problem as the iPhone 6. Bendy bendy. 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, poochyena said:

The only difference between a tablet and laptop is if the keyboard is detachable or not. Thats it.

I would also hope the OS is tablet optimized as well though, something Windows hasn't historically been good at though.

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, dizmo said:

It was way easier to carry around my Series 9 vs the T470s, and the height differences aren't great.

T470s isn't actually all that thin compared to other laptops. MacBook Air is a good example. This concept vs Air then Air easily, before or after the M1 switch.

 

There are a lot of other MacBook Air like laptops too, like the HP Spectre x360

 

 

 

 

Having the rear of the chassis slightly thicker to accommodate better cooling and 1 or 2 ports seems to me that it's an outright better design in every aspect including style. Seems to me CRAOB either forgot that tapering is a thing or they wanted to make a statement regardless of tradeoff, I'm going with the latter. How much sacrifices need to be made doesn't seem to matter.

 

Like I get it though, it's really cool looking design and being so thin conceptually is nice but my inability to turn my brain off invalidates all of that. Just my opinion though.

[mr moose]

It's great having these ultra thin laptops,  that you have to carry in a reinforced bag with extra padding so you don't break it when you rest it against a table leg.  

[Arika]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

It's great having these ultra thin laptops,  that you have to carry in a reinforced bag with extra padding so you don't break it when you rest it against a table leg.  perfectly flat floor

fixed

[Dreckssackblase]

design wise that is really cool, but I would straight up hate having a notebook without ports especially for work.

I'm also interested if the wireless dock already works in the BIOS of if you are just screwed if you want to boot from a USB drive.

[CephDigital]

Yeah, this is a yikes from me.

How tf are they going to cool a 28W part with something that thin? It's going to thermal throttle like crazy! And I bet that keyboard is gonna suck.

 

As for the concept of a portless laptop, ehhhh... Not sure how I feel about everything from power to data being reliant on a single connection.

[Brooksie359]

8 hours ago, dizmo said:

Sweet. Honestly I could get behind something like this. I very rarely if ever used the port on my laptop. Can't wait to hear all the crying about how it's stupid...almost as if these people don't understand that there can be more than one type of product on the market, and maybe it's just not meant for them

"But but, I don't like it! It shouldn't exist! "

 

I do hope they make that hinge extra strong though. Not that a charger like that would have much weight, but I've had some seriously light hinges.

 

7mm is a lot more than marginally thinner.

Let's be honest here. The laptop looks way dumber with that brick magnetically attached to the back that it completely takes away from the fact that it is portless. 

[Moonzy]

21 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Let's be honest here. The laptop looks way dumber with that brick magnetically attached to the back that it completely takes away from the fact that it is portless. 

i wish they were using something like a logitech powerplay mousemat instead of a brick attached to the display

i can get behind portless laptops, but this iteration is lowkey dumb

[Doobeedoo]

Yes age where less is more like baseline and DLC marketed as extra, of course.
I get the thin idea, cool and all not that it can't be usable, but yeah.

[SavageNeo]

Why? that huge cancer in the back is not convinient at all.

mayby get a wider bur thinner dock in the back so it actually looks like a laptop when it charges( which it needs to do a lot)

 

Also why such good specs in so thin laptop. that is also a bad idea. 

Mayby if you sit on your office all day, then it might get convinient, but the charger also needs cables, so whats the point? 

 

 

Only good thing I see is that, when thi launches, some companies might develop a better portless laptop. like laptop you can actually use, but that mgiht take a long time.

[19_blackie_73]

8 hours ago, dizmo said:

almost as if these people don't understand that there can be more than one type of product on the market, and maybe it's just not meant for them

The problem is that most companies follow such trends and the people who need the ports dont have much choice anymore

Same with the headphone jack on phones, sadly it got so widely adopted that the choices are very limited...

[Blademaster91]

8 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Its going to be fun to watch the screen bend and die from the heat of the wireless power and data transfer....

Or the screen get damaged or bent from having the port thing attached when you close the laptop.

8 hours ago, poochyena said:

The only difference between a tablet and laptop is if the keyboard is detachable or not. Thats it.

Maybe if you only use a laptop for browsing or basic office use, otherwise no, a tablet is performance limited by passive cooling, the keyboard usually is awful on detachable keyboards, and you often can't use a tablet with a keyboard on your lap because the tablet causes it to be top heavy. I don't see the point of a portless laptop, you're taking away all the convenience to need a large dock to get anything done.