what happened to the class of laptops that i really like?

[Ashleyyyy]

so i really like old pro laptops. those bulky machines that have all the I/O you could want and decent specs. no over the top gamer looks or a massive gpu, just the stuff you need to get work done. 

 

however i look up hp elitebooks for fun and all i found were these thin machines... like what? 

 

i kinda blame Apple for this, they made the Pro machines not pro at all...

[terrytek]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

so i really like old pro laptops. those bulky machines that have all the I/O you could want and decent specs. no over the top gamer looks or a massive gpu, just the stuff you need to get work done. 

 

however i look up hp elitebooks for fun and all i found were these thin machines... like what? 

 

i kinda blame Apple for this, they made the Pro machines not pro at all...

They still exist, but they're just not as advertised as the current laptops you see at like Best Buy and shit.

[Acid Panda]

you talking about the old XPS series the one with SLI

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

so i really like old pro laptops. those bulky machines that have all the I/O you could want and decent specs. no over the top gamer looks or a massive gpu, just the stuff you need to get work done.

Lenovo ThinkPads are what you're looking for.

 

As to what happened to them, I would say blaming it on Apple is logical. Apple does tend to lead a lot of companies in this way, they were one of the first to ditch 1394, ODDs, headphone jacks, etc.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Acid Panda said:

you talking about the old XPS series the one with SLI

nope. 

 

more like old macbook pro's that actually have I/O and the bigger thinkpads and stuff. 

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

Lenovo ThinkPads are what you're looking for.

kinda. modern one's like this:

https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/ThinkPad-T580/p/22TP2TT5800

have ethernet and stuff, but still not as much as this:

https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/T540p/p/22TP2TT540P

which has a dvd drive and stuff too. 

 

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

As to what happened to them, I would say blaming it on Apple is logical. Apple does tend to lead a lot of companies in this way, they were one of the first to ditch 1394, ODDs, headphone jacks, etc.

yeah. i'm lucky to have an older macbook pro that actually has usable I/O. i have 2 usb ports, an sd card slot, ethernet and even a dvd drive  

[Electronics Wizardy]

dell rugged 14? Docking port, lots of io(serial, rj45, sim card, multiple usb), durrable nice handle. I have a older version I use as my normal laptop, works fine and can take a beating.

[Ashleyyyy]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

dell rugged 14? Docking port, lots of io(serial, rj45, sim card, multiple usb), durrable nice handle. I have a older version I use as my normal laptop, works fine and can take a beating.

that's too extreme. too bulky. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

42 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

kinda. modern one's like this:

https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/ThinkPad-T580/p/22TP2TT5800

have ethernet and stuff, but still not as much as this:

https://www.lenovo.com/nl/nl/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/T540p/p/22TP2TT540P

which has a dvd drive and stuff too.

The P-series ThinkPads are still powerhouses, I like those quite a bit. No ODDs, unfortunately.

 

43 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

yeah. i'm lucky to have an older macbook pro that actually has usable I/O. i have 2 usb ports, an sd card slot, ethernet and even a dvd drive  

That's not too bad. Thunderbolt helps a lot on the MacBooks, but then you get locked into the dongle life.

[EPENEX]

Get a W or P series Thinkpad and a docking station if you want.

[Ashleyyyy]

12 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

The P-series ThinkPads are still powerhouses, I like those quite a bit. No ODDs, unfortunately.

yeah. ODD's are so nice to have if i can't find a decent usb drive to install an OS... 

 

12 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

That's not too bad. Thunderbolt helps a lot on the MacBooks, but then you get locked into the dongle life.

true. exactly what i don't want. because dongles are expensive and i'll forget to take them with me  

the only thing they are handy for is that you don't need a giant dock to use your laptop as a desktop... a dongle with usb, ethernet and displayport is enough. 

 

5 minutes ago, EPENEX said:

Get a W or P series Thinkpad and a docking station if you want.

i'm not in the market for one. i just looked around for fun.

i wasn't going to get a docking station anyway, because i have a good desktop pc.

[Acid Panda]

extreme? try the Dell XPS M1730. its a thicc boi

[Crunchy Dragon]

18 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

yeah. ODD's are so nice to have if i can't find a decent usb drive to install an OS... 

 

a dongle with usb, ethernet and displayport is enough.

ODDs are good to have, yeah. I had one system I had to work on that would not boot from a USB no matter what I tried. So I fell back to the ODD. Worked like a charm.

 

Why get a dongle when you can just have all of those integrated into a laptop...

[Ashleyyyy]

10 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

ODDs are good to have, yeah. I had one system I had to work on that would not boot from a USB no matter what I tried. So I fell back to the ODD. Worked like a charm.

for me it's more about boot loader crap. just burning the iso to a dvd is so much easyer. 

 

10 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Why get a dongle when you can just have all of those integrated into a laptop...

i fully agree, i meant that's the only thing i'd ever use a dongle for, because it's a lot neater if you put the dongle and the cable mess away somewhere and use an extension cable to connect the dongle to the laptop. 

 

4 minutes ago, James Evens said:

-> cd drives -> too thick  -> use cheap usb 3.0 sticks for OS installation

the reason i still want a dvd drive is because i've had so many stupid problems with cheap crappy usb drives in the past it was easyer to just burn a dvd. 

[Ashleyyyy]

3 minutes ago, James Evens said:

you mean like lenovo bios randomly not accepting sandisk usb sticks? this is the moment where you will hate that 90% of your sticks are sandisk

no like usb drives not wanting to be formatted, giving input output errors... just the result of using cheap crappy stuff. 

 

however, i could just use 2 dvd's every 6 months. 1 with whatever is the latest release of Windows 10, and 1 with the latest release of ubuntu. that's all i need if i have to reinstall one of my machines. 

[MandoPanda]

Does this count as thin? I didn't think this was too thin, but the weight is not bad. I like the amount and variety of I/O on this laptop. It's a good business / school solution if you get the base spec and throw in an extra 4GB of RAM.

[AndreiArgeanu]

4 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

so i really like old pro laptops. those bulky machines that have all the I/O you could want and decent specs. no over the top gamer looks or a massive gpu, just the stuff you need to get work done. 

 

however i look up hp elitebooks for fun and all i found were these thin machines... like what? 

 

i kinda blame Apple for this, they made the Pro machines not pro at all...

Sadly they are quite rare. Manufacturers these days are aiming for laptops as thin as air in all fairness.