Interesting that Razer is targeting Linux before macOS. I bought a Logitech mechanical keyboard (G810) and mouse (G502) primarily because they are the only manufacturer that offers first-class drivers for their products on macOS.
EDIT: misread HN headline; article mostly about Linux support on their laptops so comment is somewhat moot.
Not really - Razer makes devices for gamers, and macOS support for gaming is abysmal - no Vulkan support, poor OpenGL implementation, no VR support... you name it. So focusing on Linux makes more sense for a gaming hardware.
As a datapoint from someone who uses razer software on macs: I use razer hardware with my macbook pro at work. I have a razer keyboard, a pretty LED firefly mouse pad and a pretty LED razer mouse and razer's "Synapse" software mostly works, but I definitely feel like razer has a long way to go with software in general. It forgets settings, the update process is weird, and compared with Corsair or Steel Series software it is definitely not as good. I tried the Razer nabu watch and its software was worse in every way when compared to a pebble. Bluetooth connectivity had issues, step tracking, sleep tracking, it was all significantly worse than a PT. I love razer hardware, but their software skills seem to be still catching up.
It doesn't require the driver, but it adds functionality, such as mapping function keys to shortcuts and customize the keyboard lighting. For the mouse, it also allows DPI configuration, which is very useful.
Keyboard drivers provide additional support for controlling LED backlight color (many of them are RGB per key) and for managing 'macro' keys which send bulk key sequences.
Both features are popular in the gaming community. But they are also useful in other ways, I've got a mod which blinks the F11 key when I've got a meeting/appointment coming up (for example)
This is why I bought a Ducky keyboard, which does all this via an ARM controller/firmware right on the board. Zero software for my macro, lighting, settings, etc.
For readers confused as I was, the Facebook post only says they're "looking at" better Linux support. The author buries in a comment a target for flawless Linux support[1].
But I'd expect if flawless Linux support was actually their goal they'd announce it more prominently, which they did not.
It's okay to vote me down but I really am wondering what Desktop BSD are doing? I have been an old Amiga guy that ended up finding a home with Linux. I tried BSD several times and have BSD running a server at my home. My experience with Desktop BSD just didn't see where you would use the available application that would need a strong computer except for developing for BSD?
FreeBSD laptop support is really specific and limited. I got FreeBSD-11 working perfectly on a Carbon X1 1st gen ... but the motherboard on it is going out and it likes to reboot randomly now (checked the ram, SSD and tried updating the BIOS .. BIOS update fails with a beep code whose only forum response on Lenovo's website is "return for warranty." :-/)
If you want FreeBSD on a laptop, check their wiki/list. There is a small subset with full suspend/resume support right now.
This is great! I picked up a Razer 2016/1060 a couple months ago and have been running Ubuntu on it since then.
There's been a few issues, but overall it's been a great machine to transition to after a decade of Mac usage. If you're interested, it will require a bit of configuration (and even then its not 100% perfect just yet). See here for a list of issues/solutions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jI2jlVi1V0H8SeNm5kspJ1qX...)
Feel free to ask any questions if you're curious about picking one up!
Once upon a time I installed Ubuntu on either first gen or second gen "Razer Blade" (since rebranded the "Pro"/17 inch) and the only real issue I had with it was the keyboard would send double input. Found someone who had put together a custom driver patch and it became usable.
I have been looking at the Razer Blade and the Alienware 13" recently and have been leaning towards the Alienware since I can replace the WiFi card...but if Razer brings 1st class support for Linux systems then I will have a much harder decision to make when I start looking again.
I recently purchased a Dell Precision 5520 because its linux support is terrific (or, it was on the 5510). If they pull this off then the next laptop I buy will almost certainly be a razer. No question.
I was in the market for a new laptop and strongly considered the 5510/5520s. They look amazing even when seen from the perspective of coming from a MBP. That said, the video cards on that series are optimized for CAD and not for gaming. If you are looking at a Razer at all, then you likely have some need for the gaming support, but if you bought the Dell, you are probably airing on the side of sensibility. If Razer were to make reliable products then the Razer Blade would be the perfect thing.
I recently bought a new laptop after considering the two above. My final choice was one I wouldn't typically wouldn't have made: MSI Ghost GS63VR. I needed to have the computing and graphics power at a low enough price point that I could afford to bounce back if the laptop goes bad (the first one I bought last week failed within 2 days).
This isn't even the laptop, it's for Razer Synapses which is their cloud mouse/keyboard settings program. This is literally nothing to do with their laptop line up.
it's the same brand, I think if they have the tendency to do this for their keyboard and mouse, who knows what they'll end up doing with their laptops.
This seems to be how the world of Windows works. Every peripheral I have seems to need an account to save your settings in the cloud, a feature I pretty much never care about. Every vendor wants you to know that yes, you're using their thing, and that they employ an entire team of engineers and designers that have never seen a computer before. I wish someone would put a stop to it.
This is why I had reservations about many high end mechanical keyboards that had all their macro/lighting/etc support done via software. Found out that Ducky makes keyboards that are 100% hardware configured, no OS even needed, just power. (Also IKBC keyboards do configuration via firmware too, I believe.)
As for my mouse, I had to use some Corsair junk to configure the button mappings, sensitivity, and turn down their ridiculous LED, but then it saved the settings to the mouse firmware so I can uninstall it and use it just fine on Linux. No more touching it again. Still not happy about it. Would rather it had been some tiny DIP switches underneath.
Yeah, I got on board the mechanical keyboard train before it was cool, and as a result my keyboard has no software that can configure it. There's a DIP switch to make caps lock into control. Perfect.
I have a Corsair mouse, and their software is spectacularly awful. (Their other software is also terrible; like configuring fan speed profiles for the water cooler.) No account required, but the button configuration is horrendously complex and in the end completely useless. I never figured out how to make a mouse button show up to Windows as an extra mouse button. Switched to a DeathAdder, and while their software is also terrible, at least the extra mouse buttons show up to the OS as mouse buttons. (Razer's software is terrible in a different way; the UI is overdesigned and I don't want to type in a username and secure password to change my fucking mouse settings... but once you're in there, the software does actually work well, letting you configure what you want in a relatively straightforward manner.)
All in all, this stuff is all super gimmicky. I want the marketing people to know I bought their product _in spite_ of the software they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing. I would be happier without it. The company would be more profitable without it. The mouse is for pointing at enemies and clicking when their head is under the crosshairs. I don't need a "brand experience". I don't need fancy colors or "game optimization". Just translate my hand motion to input events. I'll do the rest. Thanks.
I suspect the marketing department got too much say in this part of what they are offering. The drivers seem to be ok otherwise (I use a Naga Hex mouse and a Nostromo one hand keyboard).
They use Synapse for everything now, you can't use any of their peripherals or do anything to the local hardware (even on the blade) without their bullshit cloud service.
Worth noting that you can use synapse (the driver software in question) in offline mode. Launching it during the s3 outage wasn't possible without manually editing the config XML file, but you can change to offline mode directly in synapse if their system isn't down.
Once you're in offline mode, you don't get cloud sync (nbd, honestly, except for when I get a new machine) and everything else works fine.
So synapse is online by default and has bad error detection (should just fall back to offline on timeout), but doesn't, strictly speaking, require cloud services to work. Not great design choices here, but not as bad as it sounds.
source: I am an owner of a razer mouse, couldn't configure it in windows on S3 day until I changed my config.
That's absolutely worth nothing if you already have a Razer mouse, but it's still a good reason to avoid Razer hardware. This is not the sign of a company that has their priorities straight.
My razer mouse has a twelve button thumbpad on the side of it. It sounds kind of ridiculous but it's an amazing piece of tech. I got it for gaming originally (and still use it for that), but it comes in handy in a lot of regular-work environments.
So I'd personally be happy if there were synapse drivers for linux, as I do work in linux and I'd love to be able to program macros and whatnot onto those buttons like I do when I'm booted into windows. It is a fairly handy piece of software, and I challenge you to find a better seventeen button mouse.
I think the developer community right now is siganificant enough to offer a meaningful market for smaller shop like Razer. If they manage to deliver a relatively well-built (not to the level of apple, something close to xps or thinkpad), with solid linux integration, slightly expensive (like 10% over the mass market models with equivalent hardware spec), I will buy for sure.
I don't own a Razer, although I've been thinking about buying one. My understanding is they're top notch, maybe even on par with Apple, if you get one without issues. They have above-average defect rates and way-below-average customer support. If you check out forums or /r/razer you'll find some people gushing over their laptops, and many complaining about support.
I know some people love them but compared to the massive glass trackpad with multitouch that I have on my MacBook I don't understand the appeal. Is it a portability thing?
It's a not-having-to-move-your-fingers-from-home-row thing. It is extremely important for people like me that suffer from repetitive strain disorders, if we want to keep maximum productivity.
Trackpoints are better when in a cramped situation such as air travel. No readjusting of elbows are required when switching between keyboard and trackpoint.
I have not used a Thinkpad in 10 year but I have never seen anything that compares to the Trackoint. Anything else has always given me the urge to use a mouse.
I won't vouch for the productivity savings from moving your hands less, since I think that's an absurd micro-optimization. Rather, I prefer it because I find it to be quick and accurate. After a week or so of getting used to it, when I first got a ThinkPad that only had it, it became the most natural and comfortable way of navigating. Not having to repeatedly paw at the bottom of the laptop and confort my hand to make a click (or deal with a single-finger click0 has been nice.
Mind you, I'm only speaking for the real ThinkPad trackpoints. The one in a Dell laptop I had for work was nowhere near as comfortable, and felt slippery and awkward.
Exactly, it is about not having to "paw". I own a 2016 MBP and even with the massive trackpad I end up having to swipe and reposition at least a couple times for big movements, unless I set the sensitivity to a level that makes precision movements impossible.
Adding to what others already said: for me it's more precise and easier to use trackpoints when inside a vehicle - train, bus, car, airplane - and the vehicle is moving.
Buses and airplanes are GREAT reasons for the nub. When you're already in really cramped space, sometimes it's elbow gymnastics to move your hand down to the touchpad, and the nub allows fairly quick/accurate mouse movements without bending your wrist into some weird contortion or elbowing the person next to you.
I fell in love with it after building a large bulk of an app on the 17 express bus over the course of a year.
I definitely do not think adding an archaic input to a gaming focused laptop is a killer feature, nor should it be configurable, at least on this brand.
Hey, the pointing stick is an excellent input device. They are used in joysticks and gamepads all the time - hat switch and analog controller are essentially the same thing with slightly different implementation.
It works much better for many kinds of games actually than a touchpad. Heck, I'd take two or four of these in a gaming laptop, you'd essentially have a gamepad included with a real keyboard.
As a huge gamer, yea, that type of input makes sense _on a controller_ type form. In the middle of a keyboard doesn't make sense _on a gaming_ focused machine.
I am one of many disgruntled Razer Blade Stealth and razer core owners, currently awaiting a refund.
Some customers are on as many as their 4th or 5th replacement unit. They have no English support in the UK, just a couple of german phone numbers which nobody seems to answer. The forum is terrible and they can't translate emails correctly. It's insulting.
The typical issues are usually related to firmware, which myself and other users would be willing to wait for to be fixed, but Razer's default, almost auto-response, solution is to just send you another unit, with the same issues.
In general though, the razer blade stealth is not even in the same league as an x1, mbp, or xps, and it's not supposed to be. It's just priced the same.
Just wanted to say that I'm looking to an existing ultraportable and hearing stories about how poor Razer's quality control and customer service is (from /r/razer and from friends) means I won't be buying a Razer Blade Stealth.
It's a real shame, it fits the bill perfectly but Dell will almost certainly get my money for an XPS 13 instead.
Yes, I had an awful experience with the stealth also, though it had nothing to do with linux support (managed to get everything working).
Multiple hardware failures and eventually had to return it. They should probably learn basic quality control techniques before spending any energy on better linux support.
I've had very similar experiences with their support on other devices, very displeased. For a mouse of theirs, I ended up writing a kernel extension to fix the issues myself.
Another signal about the reliability of the company is how they handle logistics.
So if you are an US citizen living in Germany, you cannot buy a laptop with US keyboard layout.
The assumption that razer makes is that if you access the website from a Germany, you are a german citizen, speaker and someone who uses a QWERTZ keyboard..
Im literally trying to purchase their product, but they discourage me with this absurd logic and unhelpful support.
The answer that support gives ia that if you want a different keyboard layout, you need to purchase it in a different country.
That's not going to happen
Have you had a different experience with other companies?
My experience living in Germany has been that its been pretty hard to get American keyboards. Apple for instance only lets businesses oder laptops with US keyboards in Germany.
Two differences are 1) you accessed that site in the US(?) and 2) GP said businesses, which indicates a business portal rather than the consumer store.
I wouldn't be so quick to call GP a liar. If you haven't encountered it, trying to do things online in another country is an eye opening experience. For example, indeed.com wouldn't even let me go to US job listings when I was in Hong Kong. Products, pricing, everything is different. How can round trips on airfare be so different just by switching departure points? Take a one way to Thailand before you buy airfare to the US from Hong Kong. You'll save a small fortune. Do I believe Apple has silly rules based on geography, just like every other company? Yes, I do.
See, it's not hard to find examples. Now we can conclude by robertdpi's assessment that Apple is an unreliable company, because they assume all people living in South Korea want the same keyboard.
I bought a US layout Das Keyboard from getdigital.de, only because it was out of stock on Amazon.de. And from my regular window shopping it's pretty easy to find US layout laptops as well.
It's a mixed bag. I live in Germany as an expat and found giants like Dell (incl. Alienware) offered QWERTY options for their laptops, and so did the smaller Clevo resellers who pride themselves on custom builds. But in between, with the mid-size players like MSI and ASUS, there's no such luck.
I ended up getting an MSI when I stopped over in Taipei on a trip, after hearing about the Razer reliability issues last year. Mind you, I am not considering MSI to be any better, given my experience so far.
Is it that different between Germany and Austria? I've ordered Apple laptops with en_GB keyboards with no problem. Well, they arrived with UK power plug too ;).
Lenovo let's you chose a US Keyboard for ThinkPads. This is what I'm doing despite living in Europe. This, the Trackpoint and the Linux support are the main features that make me still by ThinkPads.
Apple for instance only lets businesses oder laptops with US keyboards in Germany
In Sweden, at least 3 years ago, Apple was the only company that would sell a laptop with a US keyboard to consumers, and that was one of the main reasons my last laptop was an Apple.
I live in Sweden and gave had no trouble finding other language layout keyboards and laptops the last 15 years. Never had to look at apple devices for that :)
I looked, a lot. Checked both Dell and HP and they both said No. Dustin might occasionally have one or two, but then you're forced to take what's on offer. Apple was the only company that let you choose US keyboard layout directly on their order page for all their laptops as a normal config option.
Here in Japan, their keyboard options are: Japanese, Korean, US, UK, Arabian, French, Spanish and Danish(!).
Why Danish?! Not German?! And if they have Danish, why not, e.g. Italian, Swedish, all more populous countries? I'm almost tempted to believe the Danish option is due to a dk/de mixup.
This is definitely not only a Razer problem. I've been trying to buy a Dell with an ANSI keyboard for a while, in the end I asked my company to buy it at one of their US studios and send it to me in Sweden. :(
At least Razer offers ISO keyboard layouts. I'm very grateful for that. All their competitors offer only US layout, no matter where you buy. [1]
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[1] Apple Macbook Pro is the closest device that has a ISO layout option. ASUS/Acer/HP/Dell/MSI/Gigabyte etc only offer ISO layouts for their "mainstream" devices which are nowhere near the level of performance that a Razer Blade has. All "gaming models" are US keyboard only.
> All their competitors offer only US layout, no matter where you buy.
I am so happy about that. These continental European keyboards have symbols in wrong places, useless (unused) symbols (like ± in place of a colon in case of the Dutch one) and a short left shift (German QWERTZ, Belgian/French AZERTY and Dutch QWERTY all have that).
I remember doing a PHP web development internship once (like 4-5 years ago) where they had keyboards with a short left shift key. Two weeks into it I gave up trying to get used to it and remapped the < key (that's the one left of Z on those keyboards) to shift with autohotkey.
I also remember buying a mechanical keyboard that had a long left shift on the cover but after unpacking turned out to have a short one. Felt silly to return it over that (by now I would) so I gifted it to my brother instead.
God I hate those non-US keyboards. French/Belgians are the worst, having to hold down shift to type a freaking number and that while having a short left shift key.
I had a similar problem getting a new MacBook Pro with a UK keyboard. I live in Hungary. Ordering online in Hungary or buying in a store gets you a Hungarian keyboard. The U.K. store won't deliver to Hungary. In the end I got a flight back to the UK to pick one up.
I also got bit by this. Razer's simpler wired keyboards and mice might be OK, but their systems are fundamentally broken.
The Razer Blade Stealth (7500u) has broken Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C support. Most popular devices simply won't work at all, even though they work with other Kaby Lake computers, and even though they work with Razer's own previous Stealth laptop (6500u model).
The Razer Core has broken display software (double vsync lag) which makes it not work properly if you use an external GPU and monitor (which is ostensibly the purpose of the device)
Additionally, the Razer Core's USB ports just flat out don't work. There's a power short of some sort in the internal USB hub, so that if you plug in a device that draws any more than the lowest amount of power, it cycles through a connecting/disconnecting state, looping forever.
All of these are fundamental flaws with the product itself, so you can (and will be asked to) RMA units over and over for eternity, but you'll never get the problem fixed.
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Razer Support has known about all of these issues for months now. There is zero communication coming from Razer -- they won't discuss their design flaws, they won't support their devices, they won't even acknowledge these issues as happening.
When asked directly, the CEO claimed he "wasn't looking at product reliability because we're actually one of the top few in terms of product quality". - https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/5v8zkh/improving_raz... Since Razer's leadership doesn't care about quality at all, I can't imagine the company will ever care either.
At this point, I'm not spending another dime with Razer ever again, and certainly couldn't recommend any one else do so.
Seems they have rushed a design to production. When this happen, except if the design flaws are utterly catastrophic (read on the level of batteries exploding here and there; or perhaps slightly marginally less grave problems), production will happily happen and only actual production flaws will result in the possibility of an effective RMA. This is the case for any hardware mass-producing company. This is actually also the case for production of dedicated hardware at intermediate volume. "Of course" in that situation pretty much no company will publicly acknowledge about the design flaws, even when obvious -- I put "of course" between quotes because this is hugely ridiculous, and I predict that state of doing that part of the business will change to far more transparency in a few years.
Even Razer's mice are pretty shit quality. I've had them going back to the original Boomslang, and I don't think I've ever had one last more than two years. I just like their ergonomics and features -- and the fact that Razer is good about replacing them when they break quickly, which they often do -- enough to put up with it.
I'm probably harder on input devices than most people, but I have working Logitech and Microsoft mice that are older than Razer itself.
Well that's about how long the Naga lasts for me. I just budget ~$50/year or so for a new one and don't really worry about it. If I could find a quality replacement that has the like 14 or so buttons it has then I'd go for it. But at the moment I use every single button and wouldn't give it up for anything less.
I'm on my third Naga. Once you get used to the extra buttons of "MMO mice" it's hard to use anything else. I tried to switch to the Logitech G600, but the shape is all wrong.
I've had a WASD Code keyboard for a few years and it's been great. I picked up the Razer BlackWidow Chroma TE TKL a few months ago in order to reverse-engineer the USB protocol for Chroma so I could get a Teensy 3.6 to emulate a Chroma device in order to get an off-screen notification LED in Overwatch when my abilities were off cooldown (the keyboard does this with a pulsating key). Couldn't get the Wireshark USBPcap stuff to work but it's been an OK keyboard. I like the clack of their Cherry KX Blue alternative switches. It does feel a little cheap though...the Code feels like a professional piece of hardware (nicer plastics, feels solid) while the BlackWidow feels much more like an EXTREME GAMING ACCESSORY. In practice it hasn't broken or anything close, but it just doesn't feel solid like my WASD, and given that they're comparable price-wise ($100-$150 range) I'd expect a little better.
The Zowie FK1+ mouse is great if you like the Intellimouse Explorer. It's ambidextrous and symmetrical. No software to install, you just click the button on the bottom to switch the DPI setting, or some chords when you plug it in to set things like handedness. Works great, can't recommend enough. The only not-amazing part is the scroll wheel for desktop use; the detents are spaced pretty far to ensure accuracy when switching weapons or whatever in a game and work less well when trying to e.g. Rip through source code, but MW acceleration mostly fixes that for me. I'd totally try a Zowie keyboard after being so impressed with their mouse. Zowie is made by Benq, so they've been around for a while and have made professional products for a while too (I love my BL3201PH 32" IPS 4K screen).
I use a Razer mouse at work, and it's still going strong after five years of heavy usage. So, like anything, YMMV.
To be honest, even if they only ever lasted a couple of years, I'd still buy Razer mice. All non-gaming mice nowadays seem to be awful, cheap crap, and most gaming mice are over-decorated contraptions. Razer mice seem to be the only one they combine good, simple ergonomics with high precision and a quality feel.
I also have had countless problems with Razer products. I own a couple blackwidow keyboards and have had a few of their mice. The Naga Epic is littered with complains about the scroll wheel not working and their draconian approach to installing mouse drivers that remind me of how HP's printer drivers pop adds in the system tray. Apparently I was not alone in noticing these issues; ArsTechnica did a scathing story about this:
Additionally, the Razer Core's USB ports just flat out don't work. There's a power short of some sort in the internal USB hub, so that if you plug in a device that draws any more than the lowest amount of power, it cycles through a connecting/disconnecting state, looping forever.
This probably isn't a short; it's more likely a software problem. I can see how they could get into that mess. Remember, with USB, you're only allowed to draw 100mA until you've negotiated with your power source for more, and the power source can say no. USB interface chips enforce this[1], and cut power and send a fault signal if a device pulls too much power.
The Razer Core is basically a docking station. USB-C power is complicated to begin with, and they've set up one of the most complex situations. The way they're using this, the dock is providing power to the laptop, but the laptop is the data master for the USB ports on the dock, which is also providing power to the peripherals. This is something USB-C allows; a device can be a power slave and a USB master at the same time.
This is even more complex. The dock is a source to both sides for power management purposes, but a pass-through for data purposes. This is unusual. I've skimmed the USB-C spec but don't recall that being mentioned. They probably have to MITM the power handshake to get this to work. The laptop is running Windows 10, so they don't control the USB drivers and their power handshake. It's entirely possible that Windows doesn't support that configuration fully.
* Plugable report similar problems with their dock.[1] They also power both sides while trying to pass through data.
* Similar problems reported for Anker.[2]
* And CalDigit.[3]
This may be a generic problem with USB-C middle boxes which power in both directions. Some configurations don't work, and this is tough to troubleshoot. The standards compliance test procedure for USB-C hubs [4] doesn't seem to contain this case. The test designers were still thinking "tree with computer at root" in 2015.
same here. the macs are under powered and overpriced but razer's quality is not high enough imo. I had to return my razer blade because of the constant fan noise even on idle. I just can't even take it to meetings or work in quiet rooms
Then again, I have yet to witness any laptop that is as quiet as a MBP. Every Windows laptop I've encountered, no matter if at university, at work or at home, had its fans spinning even at idle - while it takes a 2015 MBP to do a full recompile of all Macports packages to noticeably heat up, much less engage the fans.
It's a side effect of both Apples unibody aluminium cases which are way better at heat dissipation than any plastic based case and Apples extreme level of control - they can optimize every tiny chip as well as the OS to be as power efficient as humanly possible, which avoids creating heat to dissipate.
It's fair game to compare Windows laptops for their noise level but seriously, comparing anything with Apple for noise is unfair.
Yes, noise and battery runtime are the only two things keeping me with a MacBook. I'd be willing to compromise on other things (resolution, CPU, aesthetics), but there is still no alternative. But currently still happy with my 2015 MBP Retina.
That's the thing that people don't understand if they've never owned a MacBook. Build quality and noise are not in the specs, so they only compare it on price / power. Also some people just don't care that their fans are running constantly...
The biggest problem I have with Apple is that they've completely lost track when it comes to their core user group.
A modern MBP still can't have more than 16GB RAM, it has 0 legacy ports, and cannot be upgraded at all.
Yes it might be a perfect laptop for hipsters who just want to show off their MBP and do the occasional Photoshop, but without developers who create programs for OS X or professional users who make their entire company buy MBPs there will be no ecosystem to lure in said hipsters... more sooner than later.
How many developers actually need >16gb for normal work? They exist for sure, but I would posit that its only some vanishingly small portion in practice.
For example when you work with dockerized enterprise CMSes on a Mac - you'll need 8GB RAM at minimum for the Docker VM, 4+GB for your browser, 4GB for the IDE (although IntelliJ can eat even more RAM easily!) and suddenly there is no more RAM.
Basically, you can easily use 32+ GB of RAM as soon as anything Java is involved. For what it's worth I usually don't do Java stuff but my Chrome RAM usage alone easily exceeds 8 GB. I could really use more than 16 GB.
Anyone running a handful of VMs for DBs/apps/services while also developing Java or .Net "enterprise" (fat-stack) applications. It's pretty easy to hit very high usage.
I do mostly web-stack stuff with node, and chrome is probably my biggest offender... But I've also got multiple tabs in firefox open, not to mention VS Code and other desktop-ified apps (spotify, slack, etc). I do okay with 16GB... but I know when I fire up a windows VM with Visual Studio, man does it get tight.
I'd add the touchpad to that... second to none imho... my logitech keyboard for my htpc feels about as good, but the fixed (not able to be adjusted) right click region is irritating over two/three finger clicks.
How do you figure they are under-powered and overpriced? Compared to what?
They have some of the fasted SSDs on the market [1], their battery has been reported to go for 18 hours after they fixed the software issues [2], and how many laptops do you know that have high-DPI wide color gamut screens? The Touch Bar is also actually a very nice new class of input device with lots of potential, especially once you've tweaked it a little. [3]
Even without counting the value of macOS, how many competitors offer the same or better overall features, AND good build quality and customer support? (which Razer clearly doesn't as you can see from the comments on this very page.)
I was initially going to skip the 2016 MacBook Pro myself, mostly because of their price, but I got one recently and it's actually a very solid and I would even say amazing machine. The need for dongles/adapters can be overlooked as a transitionary pain.
Honestly, the only real use I have for dongles is USB hard drives and displays, but for that case I can just get usb-c to usb-micro-3 cable and a usb-c to DisplayPort cable and I'm back into the same situation as before.
Seems to be a mixed situation. I've got a Razer Blade and have bee quite happy with it so far, other than a few small driver issues under Linux that would be fixable if I spent a little bit more time on it.
I ended up on a much more expensive Surface Book. I gave Razer a shot, but the screen was jacked up right out of the gate. Real shame.. the machine is beautiful.
That's unfortunate. Razer was my leading choice to replace my aging Dell laptop. Thank you for taking the time to let other people know about these issues.
Same story here. Had to replace my 4yo Dell. I suggest you look at XPS 15 or Precision 5520. Extremely good value for money (and you can get them with quite beefed up specs)
People with bad experiences are usually the loudest. I don't think Razer would continue to be in business if problems were commonplace. I suggest going to your local Microsoft Store or Fry's Electronics if you have one near you. Both carry Razer laptops. You can see one, buy one, and if necessary, return one, all in one place. Brick and mortar. Good stuff. At least that way you get to see one before you make the big decision.
Sure. I try to make a judgement call on the nature of the complaint and the person complaining too. Some people have unreasonable expectations from a company or product.
But in this case, we're on HN, and the person is describing both firmware issues and customer service issues and they're being specific enough that their complaint has credibility. In the same way that people vote with their money on issues that are important to them, like sustainability or social matters, I entirely avoid companies with nonexistent customer service. Dell doesn't have a perfect track record, I've had some infuriating experiences with them, but at least they pay people to answer the phone and with some effort you can usually get an issue resolved.
If I find out ahead of time that a particular company doesn't provide any customer service whatsoever, or the only way to contact them is on Twitter or to write a scathing blog post and submit everywhere, I will try not to do any business with them.
I also have a 1/10 rule, which I tried to adhere to while running my own business: for every one customer complaint you hear about, there are at least 9 other dissatisfied customers that didn't make their complaints known.
I certainly don't want to put you off of buying a Dell. Props to them for shipping hardware with Linux pre-installed. I have no experience with them, but I would seriously consider what they have to offer when shopping as well.
> People with bad experiences are usually the loudest. I don't think Razer would continue to be in business if problems were commonplace
Sometimes that's true, but I don't think that's a fair assessment of the issues being presented here. These aren't some one-off bad units, Razer sells a couple products with fundamental design flaws that effect 100% of units shipped.
It's like telling Ford Pinto owners "Ford wouldn't be in business if their cars exploded"
As far as I can tell, nothing you've mentioned applies to people running Linux on a Razer Blade, Stealth, or Pro, which is the topic here. If that is the case, please make a specific point about it. The Razer Core was not mentioned for Linux support at all. My personal experience is that Razer hardware is glorious. Better than Apple. I have not needed to deal with support. It just works.
I agree with what you said, but would like to add that Razer in my experience has been bad two.
I bought a keyboard. It developed a defect and damaged the motherboard on two laptops. I won't be plugging it into a third. Their mouse software can't even be /configured/ on Windows without a login to their cloud goo.
I was thinking of buying a desktop replacement, with good gaming capabilities and for me it boils down to Razer or Alienware. But I prefer Alienware because it comes with a 15" screen, which is perfect for me (14" is too small, 17" is too big).
Are you sure that shitty support isn't coloring your view of the machine? I've got a RBS+Core and a MBA. Aside from the MBP having a better keyboard (and obviously TouchPad, as it does vs any PC) it's a great machine.
It's funny, but the touchpad is what kept me on a MBP for my late 2014 purchase... love the touchpad... not sure if I can stomach it again when I get another laptop, as everything else I like about mac has either gotten stale, soldered on, or simply not providing enough value to justify the cost.
I switched to a Lenovo P50 for this very reason (the one I have comes with a 4K display, an eight-thread Xeon processor, 64 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA Quadro M2000M with plenty of horsepower). The cooling systems on the Razer laptops are woefully inadequate for what they are supposed to handle.
The P50 is a bit heftier than the Razer, but it's built like a tank, and it has an awesome copper heatsink + dual cooling fan system that keeps my temperatures on the very low end relatively speaking.
Lenovo laptops are impossible to break as well, and the keyboards are immaculate, great key travel and response -- it feels like you are using a desktop machine instead of a laptop.
I'd love a laptop like that but all of Lenovo's spyware scandals and backdoors have made me wary. Also their trackpad doesn't look anywhere near as fancy as a Dell 9560, which I just spec'd to half the price with double the SSD (though which maxes out at 32GB).
There aren't any backdoors. Also, you don't use the trackpad on a Lenovo, you use the trackpoint.
Those DELLs have terrible keyboards (as a programmer, I spend most of my time typing in vim using i3 WM), and they aren't built to last.
If you have qualms about the pricing of Lenovos, its pretty easy to dig up corporate discount codes on /r/thinkpad or you can use a .edu email address if you still have one to get a student discount long after graduating. Usually that gets you anywhere from 25-40% off depending on the promotions.
Which specific firmware issues have you faced ?
The stealth runs almost perfectly on arch, if you add a kernel parameter workaround (namely i915.enable_rc6=0 button.lid_init_state=open)
Any Razer engineers here? I'm a proud owner that would like to work with you directly to fix some of the remaining driver support issues.
Also, has anyone gotten the Razer Blade to work with the Razer Core thunderbolt 3 expansion chassis? On default Ubuntu 16.04 it picks up the thunderbolt hub, but nothing underneath. This would be an amazing laptop for machine learning if I could supercharge it with a Titan-X.
I'm not sure that is something that could be "fixed" in 16.04 unless you can convince the Ubuntu kernel maintainers to backport patches for PCI-E hotplug / thunderbolt support.
LTS releases (like 16.04) get hardware enablement stacks where X/kernel/etc gets upgraded to the versions from the non-LTS releases. So if you make it work with ubuntu 17.04 for example it will trickle down to the LTS users. Makes LTS a much more attractive solution on the desktop. I've stopped bothering with the intermediate ones.
Razer's Synapse, or cloud based drivers seem like a huge step backwards. Needing to make an account so I can change the sensitivity of my mouse is crazy.
I've heard the argument
* they needed more space on the device so couldn't include the drivers and configuration
* cloud drivers allow portability of configuration
Both of those fall on their face in reality. Lan gaming is mostly dead since most multiplayer games are online and memory space is cheap.
Still worth avoiding. It's a bad precedent to have hardware on the "cloud" for no reason. I still need to interface with their online service to use my offline device. Having a keyboard capable of calling home is not something I want any part of.
Only if you're logged in already. Just look at their Facebook page during the S3 outage, on which Synapse relies on. That software is just a piece of crap.
I mean, this is one of those things where either you're a real company, or you're not. Half a company is, like, supply chain management. The other half is, pushing the perspective beyond the horizon. Razer solve all the supply problems, obviously, or else there wouldn't be a working catalog, but as far as pushing things beyond the event horizon, signs are that there is much more to come.
Look at it this way... what Apple did with NextStep in 1999, Razer, et al., could be doing right now, finally, and catching up. With Linux.
Only 20 years behind the ball, but .. then again .. these are not yet $Billion companies. Yet.
dang, can we get the link changed to this since most phones will redirect to the mobile version, but for some reason, people haven't figured a way to redirect to desktop versions from mobile?
I really like someone stepping up and making a high quality linux laptop. After the thread yesterday about System76 (who I thought was doing that) this makes me really happy. It's also somewhat a threat to Apple. If you aren't doing any iOS development you will now get a really nice alternative to a Macbook Pro.
They are but all my experiences with Dell have been really subpar so I am almost permanently turned off from them. The XPS Developer Edition does look interesting though. But I am biased towards Razer because I am a gamer and would love to have a laptop that is great at development and great at playing games.
Really not impressed with my XPS 13. The screen automatically changes brightness depending what is shown on it (dynamic brightness). The touchpad works really poorly, detects palm touches as clicks all the time. Nearly impossible for me to type without clicks. Messing with settings reduced palm clicks but made the pad unresponsive to clicks from my finger.
Had lockups until I upgraded kernel and flashed now BIOS. Audio had really loud hissing until I opened alsamixer and set controls to exactly the right values (got of a wiki page). To be fair, the audio is noisy on Windows 10 too.
My old Lenovo X200 works nearly flawless on Linux. Again, pretty disappointed with Dell.
I haven't tried an XPS, but the Precision 7xxx stuff definitely qualifies. My 7510 came with Ubuntu, and the experience was just as polished as any Windows machine (better in some ways, as they had configured their way around some Skylake-specific issues that still affected Windows at the time).
It's a high quality linux-ish environment and has a huge ecosystem of developer tools. You can get almost anything that runs on linux on your MBP and you can also get a ton of things you can't get on linux that come from Apple or from enterprise companies.
It's also probably the number 1 dev environment for a ton of use cases so you get support and network efforts in the ecosystem. Are you a fullstack dev? Then OSX is for you. You have all your IDE, servers, Chrome, etc up and running very quickly.
If by 'almost anything' you mean 'some, mostly using node.js or ruby', then yes. Otherwise, no. For example, Docker has to run a Linux VM underneath to just work.
Both linux and macos have different strengths and weaknesses, and one is not a fully capable replacement of another, not even just for the cli/daemon stuff.
I'm writing this on a rMBP - and there are still reasons to ssh into a centos box.
Docker is an extreme example. Of course things relying on Linux-only kernel features are unlikely to run natively. You'll find plenty of compiled stuff on OSX (wkhtmltopdf, freeciv, postgres, inkscape, clojure, etc., etc.).
I know, I run postgis+mapnik on OSX. It is quite PITA to build, postgres clients usually link against wrong (system-supplied & ancient) libpq[1], everything links against wrong (system-supplied & ancient) zlib, half the things link against wrong (system-supplied & ancient; see the pattern?) sqlite, etc. Yes, it is problem with the build scripts, but I don't have an ambition to fix all the packages, and Linux packages do not have this problem. Actually, they have usable and maintained binaries just a single yum command away, so you are up and running in no time, compared to solving build env problems in OSX.
[1] - /usr/lib/libpq.dylib is especially annoying offender. Most dylibs are at least fat ones, but this one is x86_64 only. That means, when you want to build a fat binary of some libpq client, and it is being linked against system one, the build will fail. That includes building i386/fat version of postgresql itself.
Dell is much closer to this than Razer. Razer hasn't stepped up yet. To quote Tyler Durden, "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
Since Lenovo's three spyware scandals, I'm never touching one again. I love my t410, but it's showing its age (or, has been for years) and as much as I wanted to go with Lenovo for a new machine, I can't bring myself to buy something that's MITMing my TLS connections or has firmware that persists spyware. These issues may be fixed in the newer models, but the company has lost all trust in my eyes.
At first I thought the coloured keyboard on most of their systems was useless, but I wonder if I could rig it up to switch colour based on vim mode. That might be fun. Is it controllable from software?
Anyone else own a Razer mechanical keyboard that doesn't work in GRUB/BIOS menus?
I have a Black Widow Stealth and it works great... except not in BIOS menus or GRUB menus. In those cases I have to plug in my old keyboard to get a response.
Warning: They keep using underspecced parts in the cpu supply, and treat customers like idiots by pretending to never heard about the problem(Apple tactic to avoid warranty/lawsuit).
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[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadEDIT: misread HN headline; article mostly about Linux support on their laptops so comment is somewhat moot.
Both features are popular in the gaming community. But they are also useful in other ways, I've got a mod which blinks the F11 key when I've got a meeting/appointment coming up (for example)
Huh, that's a clever idea. I should look into that!
I've been collecting a list of features that I'd like if I had a completely hackable keyboard (or built one).
I'm wondering if any of the DIY keyboard controllers are hackable. That'd be a nice future project.
I wonder if they will add compatibility for the Razer Core on the Linux side of things.
https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/razer-core-o...
Hopefully, that changes in the future.
But I'd expect if flawless Linux support was actually their goal they'd announce it more prominently, which they did not.
[1]https://www.facebook.com/minliangtan/photos/a.11684295504016...
"Well - our objective is to get the Blades to be running Linux flawlessly."
That seems like Razer is setting a clear target for Linux support.
If you want FreeBSD on a laptop, check their wiki/list. There is a small subset with full suspend/resume support right now.
There's been a few issues, but overall it's been a great machine to transition to after a decade of Mac usage. If you're interested, it will require a bit of configuration (and even then its not 100% perfect just yet). See here for a list of issues/solutions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jI2jlVi1V0H8SeNm5kspJ1qX...)
Feel free to ask any questions if you're curious about picking one up!
If you have a solution / issue that isn't listen - please add it as a comment on the doc :).
I have been looking at the Razer Blade and the Alienware 13" recently and have been leaning towards the Alienware since I can replace the WiFi card...but if Razer brings 1st class support for Linux systems then I will have a much harder decision to make when I start looking again.
Given your praise of the Precision 5520, why would you get something else next time?
I recently bought a new laptop after considering the two above. My final choice was one I wouldn't typically wouldn't have made: MSI Ghost GS63VR. I needed to have the computing and graphics power at a low enough price point that I could afford to bounce back if the laptop goes bad (the first one I bought last week failed within 2 days).
As for my mouse, I had to use some Corsair junk to configure the button mappings, sensitivity, and turn down their ridiculous LED, but then it saved the settings to the mouse firmware so I can uninstall it and use it just fine on Linux. No more touching it again. Still not happy about it. Would rather it had been some tiny DIP switches underneath.
I have a Corsair mouse, and their software is spectacularly awful. (Their other software is also terrible; like configuring fan speed profiles for the water cooler.) No account required, but the button configuration is horrendously complex and in the end completely useless. I never figured out how to make a mouse button show up to Windows as an extra mouse button. Switched to a DeathAdder, and while their software is also terrible, at least the extra mouse buttons show up to the OS as mouse buttons. (Razer's software is terrible in a different way; the UI is overdesigned and I don't want to type in a username and secure password to change my fucking mouse settings... but once you're in there, the software does actually work well, letting you configure what you want in a relatively straightforward manner.)
All in all, this stuff is all super gimmicky. I want the marketing people to know I bought their product _in spite_ of the software they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing. I would be happier without it. The company would be more profitable without it. The mouse is for pointing at enemies and clicking when their head is under the crosshairs. I don't need a "brand experience". I don't need fancy colors or "game optimization". Just translate my hand motion to input events. I'll do the rest. Thanks.
Once you're in offline mode, you don't get cloud sync (nbd, honestly, except for when I get a new machine) and everything else works fine.
So synapse is online by default and has bad error detection (should just fall back to offline on timeout), but doesn't, strictly speaking, require cloud services to work. Not great design choices here, but not as bad as it sounds.
source: I am an owner of a razer mouse, couldn't configure it in windows on S3 day until I changed my config.
So I'd personally be happy if there were synapse drivers for linux, as I do work in linux and I'd love to be able to program macros and whatnot onto those buttons like I do when I'm booted into windows. It is a fairly handy piece of software, and I challenge you to find a better seventeen button mouse.
If you're worried about buying a lemon, they sell them at the Microsoft store. In stock. You can buy and return all in the same place.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick
Trackpoints are better when in a cramped situation such as air travel. No readjusting of elbows are required when switching between keyboard and trackpoint.
Mind you, I'm only speaking for the real ThinkPad trackpoints. The one in a Dell laptop I had for work was nowhere near as comfortable, and felt slippery and awkward.
I fell in love with it after building a large bulk of an app on the 17 express bus over the course of a year.
It works much better for many kinds of games actually than a touchpad. Heck, I'd take two or four of these in a gaming laptop, you'd essentially have a gamepad included with a real keyboard.
The typical issues are usually related to firmware, which myself and other users would be willing to wait for to be fixed, but Razer's default, almost auto-response, solution is to just send you another unit, with the same issues.
In general though, the razer blade stealth is not even in the same league as an x1, mbp, or xps, and it's not supposed to be. It's just priced the same.
Razer. Apple prices, gateway support.
It's a real shame, it fits the bill perfectly but Dell will almost certainly get my money for an XPS 13 instead.
Multiple hardware failures and eventually had to return it. They should probably learn basic quality control techniques before spending any energy on better linux support.
Between UK English and US English?
Im literally trying to purchase their product, but they discourage me with this absurd logic and unhelpful support.
The answer that support gives ia that if you want a different keyboard layout, you need to purchase it in a different country. That's not going to happen
My experience living in Germany has been that its been pretty hard to get American keyboards. Apple for instance only lets businesses oder laptops with US keyboards in Germany.
I wouldn't be so quick to call GP a liar. If you haven't encountered it, trying to do things online in another country is an eye opening experience. For example, indeed.com wouldn't even let me go to US job listings when I was in Hong Kong. Products, pricing, everything is different. How can round trips on airfare be so different just by switching departure points? Take a one way to Thailand before you buy airfare to the US from Hong Kong. You'll save a small fortune. Do I believe Apple has silly rules based on geography, just like every other company? Yes, I do.
Right now I'm configuring a MB Pro in Apple.de with US keyboard
http://www.apple.com/kr/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MLH...
See, it's not hard to find examples. Now we can conclude by robertdpi's assessment that Apple is an unreliable company, because they assume all people living in South Korea want the same keyboard.
I ended up getting an MSI when I stopped over in Taipei on a trip, after hearing about the Razer reliability issues last year. Mind you, I am not considering MSI to be any better, given my experience so far.
In Sweden, at least 3 years ago, Apple was the only company that would sell a laptop with a US keyboard to consumers, and that was one of the main reasons my last laptop was an Apple.
Dustin often has some for sale.
Here in Japan, their keyboard options are: Japanese, Korean, US, UK, Arabian, French, Spanish and Danish(!).
Why Danish?! Not German?! And if they have Danish, why not, e.g. Italian, Swedish, all more populous countries? I'm almost tempted to believe the Danish option is due to a dk/de mixup.
--
[1] Apple Macbook Pro is the closest device that has a ISO layout option. ASUS/Acer/HP/Dell/MSI/Gigabyte etc only offer ISO layouts for their "mainstream" devices which are nowhere near the level of performance that a Razer Blade has. All "gaming models" are US keyboard only.
I've never heard of a major vendor not shipping ISO layouts before
I am so happy about that. These continental European keyboards have symbols in wrong places, useless (unused) symbols (like ± in place of a colon in case of the Dutch one) and a short left shift (German QWERTZ, Belgian/French AZERTY and Dutch QWERTY all have that).
I remember doing a PHP web development internship once (like 4-5 years ago) where they had keyboards with a short left shift key. Two weeks into it I gave up trying to get used to it and remapped the < key (that's the one left of Z on those keyboards) to shift with autohotkey.
I also remember buying a mechanical keyboard that had a long left shift on the cover but after unpacking turned out to have a short one. Felt silly to return it over that (by now I would) so I gifted it to my brother instead.
God I hate those non-US keyboards. French/Belgians are the worst, having to hold down shift to type a freaking number and that while having a short left shift key.
The Razer Blade Stealth (7500u) has broken Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C support. Most popular devices simply won't work at all, even though they work with other Kaby Lake computers, and even though they work with Razer's own previous Stealth laptop (6500u model).
The Razer Core has broken display software (double vsync lag) which makes it not work properly if you use an external GPU and monitor (which is ostensibly the purpose of the device)
Additionally, the Razer Core's USB ports just flat out don't work. There's a power short of some sort in the internal USB hub, so that if you plug in a device that draws any more than the lowest amount of power, it cycles through a connecting/disconnecting state, looping forever.
All of these are fundamental flaws with the product itself, so you can (and will be asked to) RMA units over and over for eternity, but you'll never get the problem fixed.
---
Razer Support has known about all of these issues for months now. There is zero communication coming from Razer -- they won't discuss their design flaws, they won't support their devices, they won't even acknowledge these issues as happening.
When asked directly, the CEO claimed he "wasn't looking at product reliability because we're actually one of the top few in terms of product quality". - https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/5v8zkh/improving_raz... Since Razer's leadership doesn't care about quality at all, I can't imagine the company will ever care either.
At this point, I'm not spending another dime with Razer ever again, and certainly couldn't recommend any one else do so.
I'm probably harder on input devices than most people, but I have working Logitech and Microsoft mice that are older than Razer itself.
The Zowie FK1+ mouse is great if you like the Intellimouse Explorer. It's ambidextrous and symmetrical. No software to install, you just click the button on the bottom to switch the DPI setting, or some chords when you plug it in to set things like handedness. Works great, can't recommend enough. The only not-amazing part is the scroll wheel for desktop use; the detents are spaced pretty far to ensure accuracy when switching weapons or whatever in a game and work less well when trying to e.g. Rip through source code, but MW acceleration mostly fixes that for me. I'd totally try a Zowie keyboard after being so impressed with their mouse. Zowie is made by Benq, so they've been around for a while and have made professional products for a while too (I love my BL3201PH 32" IPS 4K screen).
To be honest, even if they only ever lasted a couple of years, I'd still buy Razer mice. All non-gaming mice nowadays seem to be awful, cheap crap, and most gaming mice are over-decorated contraptions. Razer mice seem to be the only one they combine good, simple ergonomics with high precision and a quality feel.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/why-the-hell-does-th...
This probably isn't a short; it's more likely a software problem. I can see how they could get into that mess. Remember, with USB, you're only allowed to draw 100mA until you've negotiated with your power source for more, and the power source can say no. USB interface chips enforce this[1], and cut power and send a fault signal if a device pulls too much power.
The Razer Core is basically a docking station. USB-C power is complicated to begin with, and they've set up one of the most complex situations. The way they're using this, the dock is providing power to the laptop, but the laptop is the data master for the USB ports on the dock, which is also providing power to the peripherals. This is something USB-C allows; a device can be a power slave and a USB master at the same time.
This is even more complex. The dock is a source to both sides for power management purposes, but a pass-through for data purposes. This is unusual. I've skimmed the USB-C spec but don't recall that being mentioned. They probably have to MITM the power handshake to get this to work. The laptop is running Windows 10, so they don't control the USB drivers and their power handshake. It's entirely possible that Windows doesn't support that configuration fully.
[1] https://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/NCP380-D.PDF
* Similar problems reported for Anker.[2]
* And CalDigit.[3]
This may be a generic problem with USB-C middle boxes which power in both directions. Some configurations don't work, and this is tough to troubleshoot. The standards compliance test procedure for USB-C hubs [4] doesn't seem to contain this case. The test designers were still thinking "tree with computer at root" in 2015.
[1] http://plugable.com/products/ud-ca1/ [2] http://www.macworld.com/article/3057186/macbook-accessories/... [3] http://caldigit.com/usb-3-1-usb-c-dock/faq.asp [4] http://www.usb.org/developers/compliance/usbcpd_testing/3.1_...
It's a side effect of both Apples unibody aluminium cases which are way better at heat dissipation than any plastic based case and Apples extreme level of control - they can optimize every tiny chip as well as the OS to be as power efficient as humanly possible, which avoids creating heat to dissipate.
It's fair game to compare Windows laptops for their noise level but seriously, comparing anything with Apple for noise is unfair.
That's the thing that people don't understand if they've never owned a MacBook. Build quality and noise are not in the specs, so they only compare it on price / power. Also some people just don't care that their fans are running constantly...
A modern MBP still can't have more than 16GB RAM, it has 0 legacy ports, and cannot be upgraded at all.
Yes it might be a perfect laptop for hipsters who just want to show off their MBP and do the occasional Photoshop, but without developers who create programs for OS X or professional users who make their entire company buy MBPs there will be no ecosystem to lure in said hipsters... more sooner than later.
Basically, you can easily use 32+ GB of RAM as soon as anything Java is involved. For what it's worth I usually don't do Java stuff but my Chrome RAM usage alone easily exceeds 8 GB. I could really use more than 16 GB.
I do mostly web-stack stuff with node, and chrome is probably my biggest offender... But I've also got multiple tabs in firefox open, not to mention VS Code and other desktop-ified apps (spotify, slack, etc). I do okay with 16GB... but I know when I fire up a windows VM with Visual Studio, man does it get tight.
How do you figure they are under-powered and overpriced? Compared to what?
They have some of the fasted SSDs on the market [1], their battery has been reported to go for 18 hours after they fixed the software issues [2], and how many laptops do you know that have high-DPI wide color gamut screens? The Touch Bar is also actually a very nice new class of input device with lots of potential, especially once you've tweaked it a little. [3]
Even without counting the value of macOS, how many competitors offer the same or better overall features, AND good build quality and customer support? (which Razer clearly doesn't as you can see from the comments on this very page.)
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/
[2] https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/13/macbook-pro-battery-issu...
[3] https://alexw.me/2017/01/what-if-you-could-customize-your-ne...
I really really want that 1060.
But in this case, we're on HN, and the person is describing both firmware issues and customer service issues and they're being specific enough that their complaint has credibility. In the same way that people vote with their money on issues that are important to them, like sustainability or social matters, I entirely avoid companies with nonexistent customer service. Dell doesn't have a perfect track record, I've had some infuriating experiences with them, but at least they pay people to answer the phone and with some effort you can usually get an issue resolved.
If I find out ahead of time that a particular company doesn't provide any customer service whatsoever, or the only way to contact them is on Twitter or to write a scathing blog post and submit everywhere, I will try not to do any business with them.
I also have a 1/10 rule, which I tried to adhere to while running my own business: for every one customer complaint you hear about, there are at least 9 other dissatisfied customers that didn't make their complaints known.
Sometimes that's true, but I don't think that's a fair assessment of the issues being presented here. These aren't some one-off bad units, Razer sells a couple products with fundamental design flaws that effect 100% of units shipped.
It's like telling Ford Pinto owners "Ford wouldn't be in business if their cars exploded"
I bought a keyboard. It developed a defect and damaged the motherboard on two laptops. I won't be plugging it into a third. Their mouse software can't even be /configured/ on Windows without a login to their cloud goo.
No more Razer for me.
I was thinking of buying a desktop replacement, with good gaming capabilities and for me it boils down to Razer or Alienware. But I prefer Alienware because it comes with a 15" screen, which is perfect for me (14" is too small, 17" is too big).
http://www.schenker-tech.de/index2.html
At least in Australia, they're way cheaper than Apple.
Was looking recently and prices went:
Razer Blade Stealth < XPS 13 < Apple
But the touchpad is far and above anything else.
The P50 is a bit heftier than the Razer, but it's built like a tank, and it has an awesome copper heatsink + dual cooling fan system that keeps my temperatures on the very low end relatively speaking.
Lenovo laptops are impossible to break as well, and the keyboards are immaculate, great key travel and response -- it feels like you are using a desktop machine instead of a laptop.
Those DELLs have terrible keyboards (as a programmer, I spend most of my time typing in vim using i3 WM), and they aren't built to last.
If you have qualms about the pricing of Lenovos, its pretty easy to dig up corporate discount codes on /r/thinkpad or you can use a .edu email address if you still have one to get a student discount long after graduating. Usually that gets you anywhere from 25-40% off depending on the promotions.
Also, has anyone gotten the Razer Blade to work with the Razer Core thunderbolt 3 expansion chassis? On default Ubuntu 16.04 it picks up the thunderbolt hub, but nothing underneath. This would be an amazing laptop for machine learning if I could supercharge it with a Titan-X.
Also, consider a 32GB build for us developers...
FWIW the kernel in 16.04 does support that. But I've tried with newer kernels too.
But it required patching BIOS to allow the user to toggle some legacy settings.
I've heard the argument
* they needed more space on the device so couldn't include the drivers and configuration
* cloud drivers allow portability of configuration
Both of those fall on their face in reality. Lan gaming is mostly dead since most multiplayer games are online and memory space is cheap.
Look at it this way... what Apple did with NextStep in 1999, Razer, et al., could be doing right now, finally, and catching up. With Linux.
Only 20 years behind the ball, but .. then again .. these are not yet $Billion companies. Yet.
https://www.facebook.com/minliangtan/photos/a.11684295504016...
dang, can we get the link changed to this since most phones will redirect to the mobile version, but for some reason, people haven't figured a way to redirect to desktop versions from mobile?
Had lockups until I upgraded kernel and flashed now BIOS. Audio had really loud hissing until I opened alsamixer and set controls to exactly the right values (got of a wiki page). To be fair, the audio is noisy on Windows 10 too.
My old Lenovo X200 works nearly flawless on Linux. Again, pretty disappointed with Dell.
It's also probably the number 1 dev environment for a ton of use cases so you get support and network efforts in the ecosystem. Are you a fullstack dev? Then OSX is for you. You have all your IDE, servers, Chrome, etc up and running very quickly.
Both linux and macos have different strengths and weaknesses, and one is not a fully capable replacement of another, not even just for the cli/daemon stuff.
I'm writing this on a rMBP - and there are still reasons to ssh into a centos box.
[1] - /usr/lib/libpq.dylib is especially annoying offender. Most dylibs are at least fat ones, but this one is x86_64 only. That means, when you want to build a fat binary of some libpq client, and it is being linked against system one, the build will fail. That includes building i386/fat version of postgresql itself.
There is a ton of good software for macOS that isn't available on Linux.
- Functional command line + command line developer tools
http://developer.razerzone.com/works-with-chroma/download/
I have a Black Widow Stealth and it works great... except not in BIOS menus or GRUB menus. In those cases I have to plug in my old keyboard to get a response.
Other than that, some of the advanced devices initialize too slow and firmware is not waiting on them long enough.
Did your Razer die? Did manufacturer propose $700 fix? Watch this: https://mailin.repair/blog/razer-laptop-motherboard-failure-...
Or you can stick with low power cool hardware but that defeats the point of the gaming laptop.
Its interesting we have Game/Business centric notebooks. No Development centric notebooks.
[0] https://www.razerzone.com/project-valerie