The Problem with thinner and lighter Laptops

[KBD]

Thought this was interesting:
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... wed-us-all

[Stevo]

Yeah...learning about this with the MSI GP63 laptop, though it has two hefty fans, seven heat pipes, and four outlet vents. The i7-8750H will boost up to 4.1 GHZ if only one core is being tasked hard (as advertised), 3.9 if more than one is burdened, then drop to 3.2 if I have all of them running at 100%. Using iuvolt to undervolt the machine at -145 -120 -145 (mv for CPU-GPU-Cache) allows it to run at 3.6 GHz for an indefinite amount of time, though there seems to be a bug in the throttling that allows it to run faster at 3.9 if it hits 85-90 C, but it rarely gets that warm even after extended heavy use, such as compiling four Liquorix kernels at once. One user at notebookreview.com said he was able to fiddle with Throttlestop settings on Windows to allow it to run at 3.9 with all cores all the time, but I can't reproduce it with iuvolt. Maybe a BIOS update will eventually allow it run faster.

Apple released a firmware update for the new MacBook that they said would fix the faulty throttling. They said there was a rather glaring error in the original firmware, but you have to wonder why that wasn't caught in testing. Were they only concerned with its looks and never benchmarked it before release?

[KBD]

New laptops are not worth the money to me. Soldered on ram, soldered on ssd and cpu, glued on batteries.
A couple years ago I bought a Toshiba Chromebook. After 6 months I discovered hairline fractures on the case a few inches above the lid hinges. Then it started shorting out. The top layer of plastic glued to the other side of the screen was no more than 1/4 thick and could not take the simple stress of opening and closing the lid. I quickly realized that I had $180 piece of garbage on my hands, nothing was worth saving, everything was soldered on. I threw it away. That's when I started looking for higher quality used laptops. I now own 4 Thinkpads. Even the oldest one will last far longer than that piece of garbage, and will have parts that can be salvaged when I'm through with it.

[Richard]

Marketing rules!

[sdibaja]

My wife and I both use HP 820 Elitebooks. they were going for $200 to $300 on ebay.
The size and weight are fine for us. (my heaver use is on Desktops)
The cool thing (pun intended) is that they can use both a M.2 SSD and a normal SSD... dual drive! and SSD produces much less heat than the HDDs they came with, and if I manage to be super butter fingers and it hits the floor, the SSD will survive when a HDD probably will not.

We were both using T61 thinkpads, with docks... they are great. But the weight on my lap was too much so I move up. Now they are in the office closet running Syncthing and LuckyBackup for backup and archive tasks.

everything runs 24/7 here, except my HP z620... it gets suspended because of the power cost. I am always on the edge of being dinged with the "Domestica de Alto Consumo" power rates.

[KBD]

My wife and I both use HP 820 Elitebooks. they were going for $200 to $300 on ebay.
The size and weight are fine for us. (my heaver use is on Desktops)
The cool thing (pun intended) is that they can use both a M.2 SSD and a normal SSD... dual drive! and SSD produces much less heat than the HDDs they came with, and if I manage to be super butter fingers and it hits the floor, the SSD will survive when a HDD probably will not.

We were both using T61 thinkpads, with docks... they are great. But the weight on my lap was too much so I move up. Now they are in the office closet running Syncthing and LuckyBackup for backup and archive tasks.

everything runs 24/7 here, except my HP z620... it gets suspended because of the power cost. I am always on the edge of being dinged with the "Domestica de Alto Consumo" power rates.

I have 2 HP Elite desktop computers. 1 regular size, 1 mini that I use as a server. Those are nice machines. T61 Thinkpads are still popular. But I can imagine they would be a bit heavy. Even my newer T series Thinkpads are not lightweight.

[Stevo]

Follow up to the MSI GP 63 above: I was just reading this thread about those here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads ... 213/page-5

followed the directions to unlock the secret advanced options of the BIOS settings and changed the IMON settings, and now along with undervolting, the laptop can compile at 100% CPU use at the CPU's maximum 3.9 GHz all day, staying around 88-90 C with the automatic fan settings, at normal room temperatures. So there's no thermal throtttling at all now. Chew on that, Apple! There's also a panic button for the fans that I can hit to provide even more cooling, but it's pretty noisy.

[Bamber]

There's nothing a laptop does a desktop won't do several times better except portability.
And it'll always be so because there's no squaring of the circle: more performance=more power=more heat.

[asqwerth]

Just being a portable, super light laptop with good battery life is a brilliant, separate quality in itself. Better still if its management of heat is good.

As stated in the post above, portability is the benefit of a laptop over a desktop pc.

I'm just happy I don't have to lug my older heavy laptop on my trips now that I have my ultrabook. And since it's just for work, music and browsing, I have no underpowering or overheating problems .

[clicktician]

"...The pursuit of thinner, lighter laptops, a trend driven by Apple..."

Nope. The trend is driven by consumers not Apple. Apple is simply following their demands, and Apple is good at making products people want.
It is quite easy to build laptops that are way smaller and lighter than anything in the Mac line, and most manufacturers tried and dropped these products in the 2000's. It turns out that there is a limit to how small a laptop can get before consumers complain that it's too cramped and just not ergonomic enough to be practical. There seems to be a current sweet-spot of size that consumers are most receptive to -- no smaller than 12 inches, no larger than 17.

Oddly, may fave computer, and the one I use every day, is a tiny 4.5 X 4.5 inch desktop built from laptop parts. Lol. A dozen years ago, I never would have seen that coming.