Articles like this are what i love about HN. You may call it some techies wet dream, but the dedication to detail for this dream embodies this community for me.
Except I get the impression that the author/designer would need to hire 5 different roles just to get this to stage where the CM says ok but it will cost you 4x what you thought it would. Has he ever implemented any of these connectors? That along with the promises of galvanic isolation mean there will be so many magnetics, all needing their fields accounted for. Look at the struggles Bunnie and a whole team had putting a laptop together, sure they had other goals, but a laptop is a serious design challenge and you can't do low volume because you're basically tied to the screen and all your compliance requires you can't change the chips as they go end of life.
This feels like it's an unrealistic Christmas present list. By that I mean having a laptop with everything in this article would be absolutely amazing, but is it even possible to mass produce something like that, let alone even build the thing as a one-off?
What would a more realistic sysadmin notebook look like?
Like a Macbook with a bag that has plenty of hubs and adapters and a Raspberry Pi in there just in case.
Perhaps the middle ground would be a box with all the ports this design has that you can plug into a USB-C laptop or tablet.
The GPD MicroPC actually exists and is not too far off of this thing in terms of ports, sadly it lacks the trackpoint. Especially sad since GPD has already released a system with a trackpoint.
I'd vote for getting a disposable laptop with good enough hardware to do most sysadmin things. A 2006/7/8 macbook isn't a bad choice IMO since it has all the standard ports. It supports two disk drives and the keyboard works OK.
If you poke around you can usually get one in the $20-40 range. No USB-C or large processing power, but if you're mostly networking into other computers it shouldn't really be a bottleneck, right?
I dunno. The market for something along these lines is probably as big as a substantial portion of the entire portable computer market was in, say, the late 90s. And it'd have basically no competition (at least at launch). Seems like it should be a viable product that could be brought to market at a non-insane price. Should.
Capitalism's weird. We end up with the most popular version of a thing being dirt cheap and common as air, and anything even slightly different or better being impossible to get or absurdly expensive.
I think a mobile/phablet with usb adapter(s) could do the job. I'm currently working on an IDE with built in terminal emulator for mobile phones, where the hard lifting is done by the IDE backend running on a server. I think you either want a "full" laptop experience, or something more mobile, that fits in your pocket. Not something in-between. But it would look cool in a hacker movie!
Do you have your mobile IDE available somewhere? I am looking for a way to code from my cellphone and I can't user Termux without a code keyboard (to get ctrl, tab, etc.) which takes most of the screen space on my phone.
The volume buttons become control and alt in Termux, and if you swipe from the left and open the keyboard menu, you can enable a little overlay that includes keys like tab and escape.
"Isn't it too expensive and heavy for daily tasks?"
At my job, we're carting 50+ lb solar panels around every other minute, by hand. All of us here right now are just in fits of giggling at the thought of any laptop being too heavy to carry around all day.
To quote my Lay-up lead: "Si piensan que llevar una computadora portátil todo el día es un dolor, ¡deberían tratar de cargar a un niño durante 9 meses!"
On a serious note, I mostly disagree about the small size. The author mentioned his preferred size being A5, which is about half a letter. Having to type commands on machine that just fits under your palms is painful. I'd rather have a large keyboard, large screen and a large battery.
My current EDC setup is an X250 with a huge bag of adapter dongles, carried in a Falcon II.
I guess odd because it’s really only used in North America. I’ve never seen a piece of letter sized paper although I’ve heard of it (first after deciphering the weird PC LOAD LETTER error on HP laser printers which is extra confusing if you don’t realise that letter is a paper size).
Unless you know about the particulars of US paper sizes, it sounds like they mean 'half the length of a letter that you might write to someone' which does sound odd. What letter? What about? My letters may be one paragraph or three pages.
I guess it depends on how often you need to use the notebook standing besides some server while carrying the notebook in your hand. Or just move it around; take it out of the bag and put it back again..every day, sometimes multiple times.. Weight can start being annoying at some point.
This size and resolution Works for my smartphone well enough. And I don't think such a notebook is meant as a developers permanent workstation. Likely more a mobile terminal for the job on site or some short change on the go. For those things it's should be good enough.
Some of us (I assume OP is one of them) think that since your screen won't be large anyway, there is little point to having a screen bigger than your preferred keyboard size.
And since your battery won't be large enough to support compiling LLVM in reasonable time anyway, it's better to just get used to do CPU-heavy stuff by ssh-ing to a rackmount somewhere use the laptop for terminal-ish tasks.
Did you read the text? The goal is not a portable SSH client, but a sort of traveling admin's Swiss army knife device, hence relatively small size (but large enough to host a keyboard), and a lot of ports. Isn't it obvious that iPad cannot conform to the requirements?
> And since your battery won't be large enough to support compiling LLVM in reasonable time anyway, it's better to just get used to do CPU-heavy stuff by ssh-ing to a rackmount somewhere use the laptop for terminal-ish tasks.
I wrote that. And the reason that I didn't go into connectivity/port issues is that they have almost nothing to do with battery lifetime. I saw no reason to digress into those topics.
Plenty of enterprise grade hardware (I'm looking at Cisco) provide telnet access over a serial interface - which is dead handy when the thing is running but stops responding to SSH connections.
I use Prompt these days, but iSSH's Remote Desktop client was super useful back when I was doing admin work and didn't have the luxury of never needing to work on a Windows server!
As I recall, I also used its X server for remote display from an OpenGenera instance running on a Tru64 VM, back when I was still indulging my hobby for Lisp system archaeology, and network problems were stopping me displaying to the VM host's X server. Good times...
lacking a keyboard is abysmal productivity vs being able to type and do key combinations.
try using stuff like vim/emacs or byobu/screen on an iphone, try to select and middle click to copy/paste, or any of the key combination we use all the time in the shell.
I think the old Fujitsu Lifebooks with the ~16:9 screen size and the nearly full sized keys is probably about the size you want on one of these things.
If I'm standing in front of a rack, plugged into another box—which is the primary purpose of this little guy—I'm gonna be holding it with one hand and typing with the other.
In that scenario, I'd rather have a keyboard of this size than a full-size one.
They really do fit in a jeans pocket. It was really nice to take on vacation as an emergency computer. I wound up printing a proof of car insurance document from it. It had a problem with the mouse pointer cable getting loose though.
My geek sense goes a tingling for everything small and compact. BUT I used to be a sysadmin, still perform some of those duties, and I don't really need a tiny laptop. I have no issue with carrying a laptop bag containing a Thinkpad X1 anywhere I might need it.
So outside of geekvalue I fail to see the market for this if the market is supposed to be sysadmins. Who thinks modern ultrabooks are too heavy? Considering it's a trade-off for having a full size keyboard and screen.
If the author thinks their x200 is too heavy I can heartily recommend the x260 or even x280 which I saw recently at a friends place.
I remember when laptops had all sorts of legacy ports all over them. Good times! While getting this thing built seems somewhat unrealistic, perhaps someone could build a USB-C dock that basically replicates the back of a late-90s ATX PC - if only for the geek value alone.
A bit small as others have commented but I like the 'Swiss army knife' approach. Perhaps a slightly larger version could be the future for the 'non-endpoint' laptop? Sound artists and so forth might find a use for such a thing.
I find my ancient Thinkpad X61s is the one I actually take around, even though my slightly newer X220 is faster, has more memory and has a brighter screen.
>I find my ancient Thinkpad X61s is the one I actually take around, even though my slightly newer X220 is faster, has more memory and has a brighter screen.
Using the laptop monitor as a display for external sources (and the video input port) is a good idea, I'm not sure why nobody is implementing it these days. Are there any technical challenges to this, or is it a feature considered useless by all of the laptop producers?
It's the latter. Displays of all types have been able to handle multiple sources since forever. The only people who want this are sysadmins trying to troubleshoot A/V systems or plug into a server and college students who want to use a laptop as a screen for a gaming system. Neither of those groups are large or make the laptop manufacturers much profit so they're not going to be catered to by the OEMs.
Tiny market share. With USB3, at least you can have video capture dongles with reasonable resolution. I know for HDMI they're quite common, but I'd assume someone makes a VGA version too.
Searched a bit: USB3 VGA capture things are surprisingly expensive, but there's some cheap USB2 ones around. Presumably a sysadmin doesn't need high resolution, so those should work too.
This is the part of the design that struck me as particularly useful -- that the monitor, keyboard, and trackpad/whatever can all be plugged in to external sources.
I just want a company to keep making the previous generation MacBook Air.
Keep the ports. Keep the MagSafe. Don’t screw with the keyboard.
More memory and disk space would be nice, but it’s not a deal-breaker. I don’t mind going for a walk or enjoying a cup of coffee while I wait for GHC to compile.
I bought the 13 inch one with 4gb after my 11 inch one died and that really doesn't work anymore either; for anything serious 4gb is just always thrashing seeing the lovely colored ball which makes you wanting to pull your hair out.
Yeah I have a 2011 with 4GB.. it's finally starting to show its age, and the 128gb disk is always full. 8/256 would be perfect... but the screen is just starting to wear my down. I'm thinking of "upgrading" to the new one because of the display...
I'm on one right now, it has magsafe (good), 3.5mm (good), 2 usb and a thunderbolt
I'd rather it was a little thicker and had two ethernets and a second thunderbolt, but aside from that it's a great alternative to a chromebook. I wouldn't do real work on it though
I do lots of real work on mine. I wish it could do 4K output to an external monitor. But I run things like Emacs and VS Code for smaller projects, iTerm for SSHing into all my beefier machines. Battery life is still great for a machine almost 5 years old now: I still get about 5 hours. And then, I can also do writing with the keyboard I prefer, over the newer style.
I'm even keeping my eyes open for a used MB Air 11" with 8 GB ram, and 128 GB storage for when this one breaks, unles I find something more suitable.
Like the people talking about using old Surface Pros from eBay, I really like a low priced, almost disposable computer that I don't care about, especially since most my tool-chain is legacy at this point....
> I really like a low priced, almost disposable computer that I don't care about
I use the X220 for that; it's a nice, robust device, great keyboard, I like a trackpoint better than a trackpad, runs Linux well and excellent battery life with the 9 cell battery (which you can still buy on Ebay & Amazon). And it's cheap enough now to just rip everything out and get a new one without even thinking about it.
Seconded on the x220. Makes a great Hackintosh with minimal fiddling. Can be upgraded to 16GB RAM for practically nothing and genuine power adaptors are only a few dollars each. More than fast enough to get real work done.
Hmm, I did not know that (never searched for it) but that's a good plan. I currently have an air 13 and x220; I do 90% of everything on my x220 (because it has far greater battery life and I prefer the keyboard and trackpoint), but when I need to do iOS app work I use my air. Better if I did not need to bring both on my travels.
Edit: Ah, just see [0]; I need the latest because everything stops working in app development if you don't and that seems to not workable anymore.
I've not really been a fan of iOS, but for the holidays this year, I got a cheap 10" iPad 6, and and add-on Brydge keyboard for it. It makes for a small 10" laptop and I'm finding myself using it for 90% of my home computing tasks.
My favorite computer of all time was my 11" MacBook Air. I almost wish that apple would make a clam-shell iPad. I find the clamshell design makes for a superior stand, that works better in angles, and I almost always prefer to use a keyboard, except when I'm reading a book on the iPad. I also wish for some more software, like maybe native Emacs and some other system-level tools. I'd be open to even newer android clamshell designs....
Anyway, for the other 10% of my tasks, I still reach for my 11" MBAir.
I bought both. The Brydge keyboards always had quality issues with wobbly keys and such. You have to keep sending it back until you get one that's acceptable.
I prefer the Slim Folio for everything except it can't do the clam shell mode.
Buy a few. Insurance if they’re discontinued and also send the message about what is valued by their customers. I bought one for my wife for Christmas.
Well now. I'd probably buy one for novelty if the price wasn't absurd. Bonus points for trackpoint. More bonus points for the USB in power supply brick. I do wish that was standard rather than usually one "power" USB port in the laptop.
Lots of interesting ideas, many of which simply don't seem that useful any more. Having to carry around a bag of gender changers, PS2<-->USB and all the rest is thankfully becoming rarer. I'm not the target though, as I don't need a lot more than ability to ssh somewhere these days.
> Well now. I'd probably buy one for novelty if the price wasn't absurd. Bonus points for trackpoint. More bonus points for the USB in power supply brick. I do wish that was standard rather than usually one "power" USB port in the laptop.
The Surface Book 2 has a USB slot on the charge brick.
Last I checked, the surface book 2 under load consumed more power than the brick could provide. If it functions anything like my sp3 brick did, if there's a phone or whatever plugged in in such situations, they don't get enough juice to charge.
Yeah, but you gotta get to serious load. If you use it as a mining rig it might go flat, but I've trained ML models, done 3d rendering, and played some demanding games on mine without any problems.
Sorry but the trackpoint is probably gonna be dropped from this design. This is thing is heavily patented and costs a fortune that makes it unrealistic to add to a niche market product.
This is learned from experience by the team who designed the openpandora.
I recently found my old netbook while going through some stuff. The netbook trend was short lived, but I really like this machine (Acer Aspire One ZG5). Ethernet and card ports, plenty of USBs. And it has VGA, which for some reason I still have more use for than HDMI. They keyboard and mouse were better than my current laptop, a Lenovo Yoga 2 that I can't seem to get the hang of. And it has an Atom processor and really good battery life.
Sadly I slipped on ice in a parking lot and broke the screen. I ordered a new one on ebay a few days ago, so hopefully I can revive it.
I still have a Dell Mini 9. Everything still works apart from the battery which doesn't last long. I recently built a very minimal Gentoo on there and it's very quick. I use it as a coffee table computer in my living room.
I got the Dell Mini 10v and I think it's still my favorite machine of all time. I've dj'ed several weddings with it, using mocp. It was the only machine I used in grad school. That was a truly righteous machine.
I remember when Eee PC's came out and all the buzz about them. What do you mean by Microsoft and Intel killed them? I just assumed it was lack of market interest.
In my experience, they were abruptly killed. I remember when Asus pulled everything days after releasing a new model. Something happened, because I wanted to buy one, and then they mysteriously disappeared. HP is about the only company making them now.
Microsoft hated netbooks because they ran on Linux and low-spec older versions of Windows, rather than the latest full-price versions. Intel hated netbooks because they used low-end, low-margin Atom CPUs.
Microsoft's response was to put a variety of netbook-gimping restrictions on the things they allowed OEMs to do if they wanted to be able to sell machines with Windows preinstalled. Some of those tactics are recounted in this 2009 article from PC World: https://www.pcworld.com/article/169919/5_netbooks_microsoft_...
Intel's response was to develop and drive OEMs to the competing Ultrabook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook) standard, which kept the netbook's focus on "small and light" but replaced the "inexpensive" part with premium materials and full-fat Core processors.
The release of the iPad put the final coup de grâce on the netbook market, but its success there was driven at least in part by the ways MS and Intel had forced OEMs to kneecap their netbook products in order to stay in good graces with the two companies you absolutely had to be in good graces with to make any products (netbook or otherwise) in the PC business.
They were also unfairly crippled because of the drive to be ultra-cheap. I think that hurt them in the market.
Netbooks became amazingly better with a bit of a RAM upgrade to 4 GB,a real SSD, a real Debian installation and a light-weight window manager.
The Atom CPU is slow, yeah, but CPU speed does not matter for most things. I can run a 2017 Dell or Lenovo laptop locked at 800 MHz and hardly notice unless I have to compile something. Having enough RAM and fast IO matters much more.
I think there was a lot of market interest in Eee PCs which quickly dried up after people got them home and realized how bad they were. An extra $200 in cost would have made it a much better experience. Of course, some of that market interest was just from being cheap, so I dunno.
I still use a fanless NC10 to run an IRC bot after a few years lent to my parents for writing emails. Removed the dead battery, replaced the disk with a small SSD and set it to power saving so it never goes above 60ºC while being completely silent. Best bang for the buck I've had with hardware.
Chromebooks don't offer the freedom that a regular netbook does, though. Last time I looked, it seemed like a real pain to get your own OS or dev environment on.
But I agree it's the same concept for what was the original intention of a netbook.
Hilarious! Would love to see something like this. I have the Thinkpad X220, and it is really a nice size for getting something serious done while still on the small side.
Like a lot of people mentioned, there are some obvious shortcomings. What I really like is all the thoughts are original ideas the author came up for this render. So many amazing little details.
That's the only comment you have on a detailed technical post that spans several pages?
This is not a snide remark. The site is habr.com, which is a Russian resource. So what you perceive is an offensive faux pas, is just a dry and cynical joke of a kind very common to the IT people of the former Soviet Union space. It's not a terribly funny joke, nor do I personally like this brand of humor, but it's clearly not made in bad spirit or meant to offend.
> That's the only comment you have on a detailed technical post that spans several pages?
Yes it's a shame that it lets down the rest of the article, isn't it?
> This is not a snide remark.
Maybe you have a different idea of what snide is. I don't think it's 'offensive' I just think it's a bit nasty. Why can't they talk about their work without saying that what someone else does isn't work? What's the need for it? What does it add? This is 'snide' to me - derogatory and mocking.
When reading an article written by someone that clearly doesn't have English as a first language, I don't believe its altogether fair to criticize the tone of language as if it was written by a native speaker. More so when a literal reading of the sentences I assume you refer to, doesn't seem to support the interpretation you are criticising.
It might be useful for the author to know how the text might be read, but otherwise one is probably better off reading the text with some lenience towards weaknesses, or mistakes in style and tone.
The author clearly did quite a bit of work, writes an article in decent English, and I believe they deserve a little slack for what is most likely a minor cultural gaffe, or a joke that doesn't translate that well.
Probably because it’s much easier to post pictures on Instagram than to be a sysadmin? Or requires different hardware (in the author’s opinion, anyway, not mine, I don’t get why you need any of this to admin a system).
Do you think that being a social media person is equally valuable to being a sysadmin? If so, why do sysadmins get paid more? It’s because fewer people have those skills, and everyone and their mother can most pictures on Instagram. There’s no reason to put people down, but the answer to your question is also pretty straightforward.
Also, in Russia, people don’t coddle each other like they do in The States, so if they think uploading things to social media isn’t skilled work, they just go out and say it. I personally find that refreshing on some level, because then you can actually talk to people straightforwardly. Russia sucks in lots of ways, but at least you can communicate with people directly there.
The original comment didn't say it was worth less - they said it wasn't real work at all. If someone's willing to pay you for it then it's real work.
So saying it pays less is irrelevant. It's not a competition to see how can look down on whom.
And it's not just Instagram. They said that the MacBook Air wasn't suitable for work, and just gave Instagram as one example of what it is suitable for. I could do my job (programming language research) on a MacBook Air. I know someone who writes medical text books on a MacBook Air. Are these things not real work?
I don't know why the author couldn't just say 'A MacBook Air wouldn't be suitable for my work'? Why add the extra snide bit that if you could then you aren't doing real work? Why communicate that idea at all, directly or indirectly?
Yes, I agree it is inane. I think he’s trying to set up a vibe wherein this whole thing is separate from the “Mac people” scene. Doesn’t that make sense? The author is trying to establish his or her audience. He does this snidely, but I think that’s the goal: to exclude a certain cohort and to cozy up with another. I mean MacBook Air people wouldn’t find this compelling, and the author clearly doesn’t find the MacBook Air compelling, so he or she just nukes the whole platform to establish a niche.
> (in the author’s opinion, anyway, not mine, I don’t get why you need any of this to admin a system).
The author isn't a typical corporate sysadmin running between offices and the server room; he works with wide variety of hardware and in conditions including outdoors and on top of antenna masts.
There are basically no laptops with good keyboards anymore. I've given up on trying to find one. Thinkpads have gone down the drain. Lenovo aren't even offering on-site support or extended warranty on all models anymore (even if you want to pay more!). They've gone from quality business models to, well, slightly better than garbage.
You can install a T420 keyboard into a T430/T430s/x230. This requires a really tiny modification to the plastic, cutting/filing it to fit, but the connectors are the same. There will be a couple keys that remain dead, but aside from that, it works great. There is also the Thinkpad 25 retro, if you have a ton of money, but I haven't gotten a chance to try that keyboard.
> Such notebook is suitable for posting photos on Instagram, but not for work.
There's something about that statement that put me off the entire article. Maybe the author truly is 3l337, but it just comes off as condescending. Plus, who uses a notebook for Instagram? The author managed to be simultaneously derisive and clueless.
I think he's doing the tech equivalent of pretending not have heard of a popular band or not knowing what the Super Bowl is to try to make yourself look extra cool.
> All of them imitate the MacBook Air: thin, shiny, glamorous, and they all critically lack ports.
This is the sentence before. IMO you’re being way too harsh. He is clearly trying to emphasize that the average consumers has lost their need for ports, thus, most lightweight computers aren’t sufficient for the author’s line of work. But OMG the author doesn’t know the proper context of Instagram! This whole article loses credibility! Listen to yourself.
What does it matter who real users are and aren't ? The author has requirements which are not met. Judging by the fact that it's a popular post, several others have similar requirements too. That someone may not have such requirements is quite obvious. Hence the current state of affairs and the post in the first place. The author's jokes may be a bit off, but this sub thread in this discussion that has devolved into whether or not instagram users are real users or if you need a laptop to use instagram is utterly useless. Like what does it add ?
Yes. As a sysadmin myself, my immediate reaction was slow jerk and "I've worked with this guy before".
But, everyone's welcome to their own opinions and hobbies. My best sysadmin laptop was probably my 13" macbook pro before they took away the ports. Built in ethernet and real USB for the KVM crash cart, which is the only dongle you'll typically need (other than, say, a usb-serial adapter, but even if you had a native serial port you're carrying a handful of console cables and adapters anyway, so the usb-serial part is hardly an additional hassle).
I haven't had a work provided laptop with with a decent screen in at least 10 years- 4:3 1600x1200 became 16:9, matte became glossy, and of course real keyboard keys became buttons.. so I get where this guy is coming from. Laptops now are great for streaming movies.
The designer made Tab the smallest key on the keyboard, but left two Windows keys, Caps Lock instead of control/super, a full Fn row instead of an numrow layer, Page Up/Down right next to the arrow keys, and designed the color-coding for someone who looks at the keyboard for each keypress instead of touch-typing. I'm not sure what they consider Real Work to be, but it's not text editing or writing.
I'd recommend that the author look at small mechanical keyboard layouts, like the HHKB [1].
Also I'd suggest you may be interested in reading the article properly because he clearly explains and has a reason for the color-coding and for it to be visual.
Yeah a bit too much stuff that just seemed like arbitrary gate keeping.
I have a low tolerance for "this is exactly how you do this job" when jobs like sysadmin and coding can involved a great deal of variation and variety.
I have no idea who these folks are who can't see all that variety. I do know they're horrible to work with.
To each their own, but personally I reacted positively to that sentence and immediately knew I want to read the whole article - because I knew the author feels the same way as I do: that computers are increasingly built for casual consumption, and are optimized to be toys, not tools.
I've used a 2012 MacBook Air 11,6" till 2018 for 3D development among other tasks. It's not a toy only usable for consumption. It's simply a good compromise when you care about mobility.
The author is probably working quite a bit in cramped network closets with unmanaged, or only partially managed networking gear. While these environments might be becoming less common, they will still exist for many years to come.
To work in these environments efficiently, an air is far from ideal. It's a good machine, but the amount of dongles you'd need to carry on a typical day would be rather intimidating, hooking it up and managing the rats nest of adapter cables would be tedious.
From this perspective, it's not unreasonable to call them toys. Simple things like having prominent rubber feet helps a lot with not having to worry the machine will slip and fall if the surface isn't perfectly flat and level.
With that said, I believe introducing an idea through calling other things toys without explaining why they are akin to toys in your line of work, is absolutely not the best way to present an idea.
Anyway, some features, like having the laptop be able to work as screen and keyboard for a headless machine would really be amazing in this line of work!
Maybe it's my hate of the macbook air for lacking ports combined with my hate of people used by instagram on top of my hate of everything faceboook, but I had no problem with this particular sentence about the trend hardware has been following for a few years.
I actually agree with it, the macbook air is not for work, at least not technical. it's akin to a toy for rich kids that like to brag and live pretend lifes on instagram.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 245 ms ] threadWhat would a more realistic sysadmin notebook look like?
If you poke around you can usually get one in the $20-40 range. No USB-C or large processing power, but if you're mostly networking into other computers it shouldn't really be a bottleneck, right?
Capitalism's weird. We end up with the most popular version of a thing being dirt cheap and common as air, and anything even slightly different or better being impossible to get or absurdly expensive.
See more info at the Termux wiki: https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Touch_Keyboard
And, there's more ports on the sides too.
At my job, we're carting 50+ lb solar panels around every other minute, by hand. All of us here right now are just in fits of giggling at the thought of any laptop being too heavy to carry around all day.
To quote my Lay-up lead: "Si piensan que llevar una computadora portátil todo el día es un dolor, ¡deberían tratar de cargar a un niño durante 9 meses!"
On a serious note, I mostly disagree about the small size. The author mentioned his preferred size being A5, which is about half a letter. Having to type commands on machine that just fits under your palms is painful. I'd rather have a large keyboard, large screen and a large battery.
My current EDC setup is an X250 with a huge bag of adapter dongles, carried in a Falcon II.
What oddly specific unit of measurement is this?
And since your battery won't be large enough to support compiling LLVM in reasonable time anyway, it's better to just get used to do CPU-heavy stuff by ssh-ing to a rackmount somewhere use the laptop for terminal-ish tasks.
> And since your battery won't be large enough to support compiling LLVM in reasonable time anyway, it's better to just get used to do CPU-heavy stuff by ssh-ing to a rackmount somewhere use the laptop for terminal-ish tasks.
If your goal IS NOT that, then clearly what I suggested isn't going to be applicable is it?
Where is the serial ports etc
https://github.com/tbodt/ish
As I recall, I also used its X server for remote display from an OpenGenera instance running on a Tru64 VM, back when I was still indulging my hobby for Lisp system archaeology, and network problems were stopping me displaying to the VM host's X server. Good times...
lacking a keyboard is abysmal productivity vs being able to type and do key combinations.
try using stuff like vim/emacs or byobu/screen on an iphone, try to select and middle click to copy/paste, or any of the key combination we use all the time in the shell.
no keyboard = no go.
I think the old Fujitsu Lifebooks with the ~16:9 screen size and the nearly full sized keys is probably about the size you want on one of these things.
Evidently some people can become friends with some very small keyboards.
In that scenario, I'd rather have a keyboard of this size than a full-size one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Vaio_P_series
So outside of geekvalue I fail to see the market for this if the market is supposed to be sysadmins. Who thinks modern ultrabooks are too heavy? Considering it's a trade-off for having a full size keyboard and screen.
If the author thinks their x200 is too heavy I can heartily recommend the x260 or even x280 which I saw recently at a friends place.
This is a small nitpick but the battery should be listed as 42 Wh, not W/h.
I find my ancient Thinkpad X61s is the one I actually take around, even though my slightly newer X220 is faster, has more memory and has a brighter screen.
You may be interested in the x62: https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/
Keep the ports. Keep the MagSafe. Don’t screw with the keyboard.
More memory and disk space would be nice, but it’s not a deal-breaker. I don’t mind going for a walk or enjoying a cup of coffee while I wait for GHC to compile.
It’s a good machine. Now leave it alone.
I could upgrade the SSD to 128GB, but the RAM is soldered.
And it’s juat not enough for today.
I'd rather it was a little thicker and had two ethernets and a second thunderbolt, but aside from that it's a great alternative to a chromebook. I wouldn't do real work on it though
I'm even keeping my eyes open for a used MB Air 11" with 8 GB ram, and 128 GB storage for when this one breaks, unles I find something more suitable.
Like the people talking about using old Surface Pros from eBay, I really like a low priced, almost disposable computer that I don't care about, especially since most my tool-chain is legacy at this point....
I use the X220 for that; it's a nice, robust device, great keyboard, I like a trackpoint better than a trackpad, runs Linux well and excellent battery life with the 9 cell battery (which you can still buy on Ebay & Amazon). And it's cheap enough now to just rip everything out and get a new one without even thinking about it.
It’s fantastic.
One problem is how modular it is: there’s nothing holding you back from upgrading LCD panel, SSD, ...
I use it as the main driver for my home lab.
Hmm, I did not know that (never searched for it) but that's a good plan. I currently have an air 13 and x220; I do 90% of everything on my x220 (because it has far greater battery life and I prefer the keyboard and trackpoint), but when I need to do iOS app work I use my air. Better if I did not need to bring both on my travels.
Edit: Ah, just see [0]; I need the latest because everything stops working in app development if you don't and that seems to not workable anymore.
[0] http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/mojave/
My favorite computer of all time was my 11" MacBook Air. I almost wish that apple would make a clam-shell iPad. I find the clamshell design makes for a superior stand, that works better in angles, and I almost always prefer to use a keyboard, except when I'm reading a book on the iPad. I also wish for some more software, like maybe native Emacs and some other system-level tools. I'd be open to even newer android clamshell designs....
Anyway, for the other 10% of my tasks, I still reach for my 11" MBAir.
Unfortunately, it's not backlit, which is something I'd really enjoy, but since the SF is so good I can't see dumping it to switch to the Brydge.
I also love to use it as a stand for reading at lunch or whatever, which is nice.
(ZOMG native emacs on iOS would be KILLER.)
I prefer the Slim Folio for everything except it can't do the clam shell mode.
I put together a table comparing it with Apple's other laptop offerings: https://tinyapps.org/blog/mac/201811190015_last_decent_macbo...
Lots of interesting ideas, many of which simply don't seem that useful any more. Having to carry around a bag of gender changers, PS2<-->USB and all the rest is thankfully becoming rarer. I'm not the target though, as I don't need a lot more than ability to ssh somewhere these days.
If I wanted that small I'd probably go with a Gemini, the Psion 5 spritual successor, with proven great but tiny keyboard. Even that has proved too niche to part me from actual money: https://jmcomms.com/2017/11/29/gemini-pda-20-years-on-meet-t...
The Surface Book 2 has a USB slot on the charge brick.
This is learned from experience by the team who designed the openpandora.
Sadly I slipped on ice in a parking lot and broke the screen. I ordered a new one on ebay a few days ago, so hopefully I can revive it.
I miss netbooks. It’s too bad that we let Intel and Microsoft kill them.
Microsoft's response was to put a variety of netbook-gimping restrictions on the things they allowed OEMs to do if they wanted to be able to sell machines with Windows preinstalled. Some of those tactics are recounted in this 2009 article from PC World: https://www.pcworld.com/article/169919/5_netbooks_microsoft_...
Intel's response was to develop and drive OEMs to the competing Ultrabook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook) standard, which kept the netbook's focus on "small and light" but replaced the "inexpensive" part with premium materials and full-fat Core processors.
The release of the iPad put the final coup de grâce on the netbook market, but its success there was driven at least in part by the ways MS and Intel had forced OEMs to kneecap their netbook products in order to stay in good graces with the two companies you absolutely had to be in good graces with to make any products (netbook or otherwise) in the PC business.
Netbooks became amazingly better with a bit of a RAM upgrade to 4 GB,a real SSD, a real Debian installation and a light-weight window manager.
The Atom CPU is slow, yeah, but CPU speed does not matter for most things. I can run a 2017 Dell or Lenovo laptop locked at 800 MHz and hardly notice unless I have to compile something. Having enough RAM and fast IO matters much more.
I think there was a lot of market interest in Eee PCs which quickly dried up after people got them home and realized how bad they were. An extra $200 in cost would have made it a much better experience. Of course, some of that market interest was just from being cheap, so I dunno.
It's still ongoing. We just call them Chromebooks nowadays.
But I agree it's the same concept for what was the original intention of a netbook.
Why do people feel the need to be so snide and put down what other people do as 'not work'?
This is not a snide remark. The site is habr.com, which is a Russian resource. So what you perceive is an offensive faux pas, is just a dry and cynical joke of a kind very common to the IT people of the former Soviet Union space. It's not a terribly funny joke, nor do I personally like this brand of humor, but it's clearly not made in bad spirit or meant to offend.
Yes it's a shame that it lets down the rest of the article, isn't it?
> This is not a snide remark.
Maybe you have a different idea of what snide is. I don't think it's 'offensive' I just think it's a bit nasty. Why can't they talk about their work without saying that what someone else does isn't work? What's the need for it? What does it add? This is 'snide' to me - derogatory and mocking.
It might be useful for the author to know how the text might be read, but otherwise one is probably better off reading the text with some lenience towards weaknesses, or mistakes in style and tone.
The author clearly did quite a bit of work, writes an article in decent English, and I believe they deserve a little slack for what is most likely a minor cultural gaffe, or a joke that doesn't translate that well.
Do you think that being a social media person is equally valuable to being a sysadmin? If so, why do sysadmins get paid more? It’s because fewer people have those skills, and everyone and their mother can most pictures on Instagram. There’s no reason to put people down, but the answer to your question is also pretty straightforward.
Also, in Russia, people don’t coddle each other like they do in The States, so if they think uploading things to social media isn’t skilled work, they just go out and say it. I personally find that refreshing on some level, because then you can actually talk to people straightforwardly. Russia sucks in lots of ways, but at least you can communicate with people directly there.
So saying it pays less is irrelevant. It's not a competition to see how can look down on whom.
And it's not just Instagram. They said that the MacBook Air wasn't suitable for work, and just gave Instagram as one example of what it is suitable for. I could do my job (programming language research) on a MacBook Air. I know someone who writes medical text books on a MacBook Air. Are these things not real work?
I don't know why the author couldn't just say 'A MacBook Air wouldn't be suitable for my work'? Why add the extra snide bit that if you could then you aren't doing real work? Why communicate that idea at all, directly or indirectly?
The author isn't a typical corporate sysadmin running between offices and the server room; he works with wide variety of hardware and in conditions including outdoors and on top of antenna masts.
What laptops do T420 users migrate to that has a non-terrible keyboard?
(I am not a big fan of the new Thinkpad keyboards)
Can I put a t420 classic keyboard on a new-gen Thinkpad? Is it a good idea?
There's something about that statement that put me off the entire article. Maybe the author truly is 3l337, but it just comes off as condescending. Plus, who uses a notebook for Instagram? The author managed to be simultaneously derisive and clueless.
I think he's doing the tech equivalent of pretending not have heard of a popular band or not knowing what the Super Bowl is to try to make yourself look extra cool.
This is the sentence before. IMO you’re being way too harsh. He is clearly trying to emphasize that the average consumers has lost their need for ports, thus, most lightweight computers aren’t sufficient for the author’s line of work. But OMG the author doesn’t know the proper context of Instagram! This whole article loses credibility! Listen to yourself.
But, everyone's welcome to their own opinions and hobbies. My best sysadmin laptop was probably my 13" macbook pro before they took away the ports. Built in ethernet and real USB for the KVM crash cart, which is the only dongle you'll typically need (other than, say, a usb-serial adapter, but even if you had a native serial port you're carrying a handful of console cables and adapters anyway, so the usb-serial part is hardly an additional hassle).
> I thought about how a notebook would turn out if it were developed not with design, but the needs of real users in mind.
I'd recommend that the author look at small mechanical keyboard layouts, like the HHKB [1].
[1] https://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/server1800/3cc7b/products/549/i...
I have a low tolerance for "this is exactly how you do this job" when jobs like sysadmin and coding can involved a great deal of variation and variety.
I have no idea who these folks are who can't see all that variety. I do know they're horrible to work with.
To work in these environments efficiently, an air is far from ideal. It's a good machine, but the amount of dongles you'd need to carry on a typical day would be rather intimidating, hooking it up and managing the rats nest of adapter cables would be tedious.
From this perspective, it's not unreasonable to call them toys. Simple things like having prominent rubber feet helps a lot with not having to worry the machine will slip and fall if the surface isn't perfectly flat and level.
With that said, I believe introducing an idea through calling other things toys without explaining why they are akin to toys in your line of work, is absolutely not the best way to present an idea.
Anyway, some features, like having the laptop be able to work as screen and keyboard for a headless machine would really be amazing in this line of work!