Episode: 2777
Title: HPR2777: The quest for the perfect laptop.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2777/hpr2777.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 16:42:50

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This is HBR episode 2007-777 entitled The Quest for the Perfect Laptop.
It is hosted by ITWI's and is about 31 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is ITWI's about looking for a new laptop and describes what he is looking for and why.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by archive.org.
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On the edge of real and cyberspace, there is well place you can go and you found it.
Welcome to theknightwise.com podcast.
If you want to know only podcast with hacks, tips and weeks for cross-platform geeks.
My name is Knightwise and for the coming drive, I will be your host on this episode of theknightwise.com podcast.
Looking for the perfect computer.
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Hey guys and girls, it's been ages since I have been in the car on my way to an appointment.
Finally, having the time to talk to you guys.
Last couple of months, I have been commuting by train and I have found out that podcasting on a train or trying to podcast in a busy city is not really that easy.
But today, I am on my way to Antwerp and hopefully I will get there in about 45 minutes and I decided to record something.
So what are we going to talk about today?
Well, I wanted to talk to you guys about one of the things that I am doing right now, which is I'm on a quest.
I'm on a quest to find the new and perfect computer.
Well, it's a quest that's perpetual. We're always on the lookout for a new gear or new stuff to play with and this is my quest.
My quest is not easy. I have a very intricate list of requirements which I want set computer to conform to.
And I am hindered by the progress of technology, the differences in brands, all kinds of different standards in ports and connections.
And of course, also by the fact that there is just too much information out there to help me decide.
Well, what I want, where I'm going for and where I'll probably end up, we'll talk about that as we get into the meat of the mat.
All right, quick situation sketch. I want technology to work for me instead of the other way around.
I want the devices that I have to be an intricate part of my day, of my workflow, of my digital experience.
And I want those devices to be reliable and nearly transparent slash invisible towards this stuff I need to do.
They have to be tools to get something done. I don't believe in technology for technology sick.
That being said, it's not easy to find the right piece of gear.
I have a couple of machines at home. You all know that I am a cross-platform slider, so I like to be on multiple operating systems, preferably at the same time, or at least I want to do everything I do with technology across multiple platforms.
Well, the last couple of months I've been working as a consultant in Brussels, so I don't get to drive around anymore like I used to, but I get to ride by train.
That's nice because basically you are driven around and you have a lot more time to do stuff.
And it's also a little bit challenging because you have to be completely mobile. You don't have a car where you can leave stuff in or do stuff like that.
You are complete road warrior and you have to have everything on your person with you when you go from A to B if you want to get the stuff that you want to get done.
So, when I started working in Brussels a couple of months ago, I was confronted by a couple of problems.
First of all, I work in Brussels near Brussels North Station, so I get off at Brussels North Station every day.
And it's kind of a CD train station. I mean, it's one of the bigger real stations in Brussels, but it's not really a fancy neighborhood.
The train station, there are a lot of CD types walking around, there's a lot of pick pockets walking around.
You have to walk through a pretty CD part of town, at least for a short while before you get to be where I need to be for work.
And that posts some problems because I have to, for the client that I'm working on at the moment, bring my own gear.
It's a bring your own device environment where basically you get a Citrix connection and that's it, but you have to, as an external consultant, you have to bring your own gear.
So, having to bring your own gear, a CD environment, and still the requirements, you know, be productive during three hours a day, I'm about an hour and a half on the train every day.
Well, that was kind of like, what are we going to do? Because the first problem is wait.
I wanted to pack as little as possible because basically you have to carry everything on your back.
And your computer might not be heavy and whatever peripherals you're carrying might not be heavy, but add a bottle of water, your sandwiches, a banana, you know, the stuff you need to get things done to that.
And pretty, pretty soon your backpack is going towards a hefty three, four or even five kilograms.
Not really a big problem per se, but, you know, if you have to carry it around every single day, that is an issue.
And I see people lug around the most horribly, horribly packed backpacks that, you know, that make my neck hurt just looking at them.
The downside with backpacks and messenger bags is that, you know, you carry them on your person and the straps go along your shoulders.
Your shoulders sport some muscle knots, which if pressure is applied in the wrong way by a strap or something, you get a headache, at least I do.
So I'm always very, very careful about what I carry around because if I overload my backpacks or my messenger bags and the rest on my shoulder, I get headache.
So I had to have something that was really, really light I wanted to have as little as possible.
The second part is you're traveling on, you know, public transport.
And then we little train tables that we have on the trains that I have in the morning, they're tiny, they're really, really tiny.
And the morning I have the luxury of being the first, you know, station where the train departs.
So we kind of get this pick and pick the spots where we want to sit, but the tables are pretty small.
And in the evening, I start out from one of Brussels's three major stations, so the trains are packed and I don't always have room to sit.
So bringing that laptop along is great, but you have to have room to put it down.
And then there's the third factor that I basically want to, you know, do my stuff.
I want to be able to create documents, create presentations, have all of my files with me, have a computer that is powerful enough to do what it needs to do when I get to the clients and I hook it up to a Citrix connection.
And that also helps me read stuff, watch stuff, annotate stuff, stuff like that.
And where did I start off? I started off by going to work with my MacBook Pro, because at the client's place, they only have a USB-C dock, a keyboard and a mouse.
That's your workplace, so you come in, you plug in your USB-C cable to whatever device that you have, you get power and it gets stuck to the keyboard and a mouse.
Your device needs to have USB-C. In the beginning, I used my MacBook Pro, and because I also wanted to read and annotate, I took my iPad Pro along.
Now these two form an extremely powerful environment, but also a pretty hefty and expensive one, because one day I was sitting down and putting my bag right next to me in the coffee shop in the train station,
I thought like, wow, there's like $3,000 of gear sitting right next to me, and if you get stolen, I have a serious problem.
It's going to cost me a lot of money. And I'm not squeamish or anything, and I'm not a prude, prude?
Is that? No, somebody who's cheap. I'm not a cheap guy, I have to have the best gear, because I work on it all day long, and it's my profession.
But taking my gear that was that expensive into an environment that was pretty risky, train station, a lot of luggage gets stolen,
I got to know, they tried to nick my phone out of my bag pocket ones, and you know, I thought like, wow, do I really need to bring my most expensive computer to, you know, with me every single day.
So that was one issue, and the other issue was, wait, because it was just too darn heavy, and it was too darn expensive.
So I started looking for something that would be less, less in weight, less in value, if that at all was possible, and even less in devices,
because I was carrying along a laptop, I was carrying along an iPad, I was carrying along a phone, as cables.
So I started looking for something that would, you know, allow me to read and annotate ePubs and PDFs, but also serve as a desktop, it's kind of a two in one.
I found it in the form of the Surface Go, a couple of months ago, I got me the eight gigabyte memory, 120 gigs storage, 9.6 version of the Surface Go, the light cousin in the Surface family.
And I'd own some Surface Pros before, I really like those devices, they are fast, they are powerful, the form factor is great, but they're a little bit too big to actually use as a tablet.
Now with the Surface Go, that is not the case, it's a 9.7 inch full HD display, or it's a 9.7 inch form factor with a full HD display.
And it comes with a little flap on keyboard, and it's actually a very, very decent piece of kit, it's not really expensive, I think I'd paid about 600 euros for mine.
It comes with a USB-C port and a Surface Connect, I increased the storage by adding another micro SD card, so I had 128 gigabytes of storage extra.
And it comes with one USB-C port, and basically it was a very, very good two in one device to take with me, because it kind of like a mix between something that was light, something that was cheap, something that was a two in one that let me read books and annotate them that let me use this stylus.
You know, basically it was kind of ticking all the boxes, except for the fact it doesn't even come with an i3, it's a Pentium mobile processor, and I don't know the designation, I'll see if I can punch that into the show notes.
And, well, darn it, it's just not heavy enough, it's just not powerful enough. For everyday use, it's Oki-Doki, but I did notice that when I would, you know, have it do some powerl stuff like, you know, serious accelerers, some serious graphics, it would start to really get hot and start to lag behind.
Basically, I was sporting a, well, a very, very, very speedy notebook, but for all in all, it wasn't a bad device to carry around, and I kind of still carry it around with me to work every day, because I used the Surface Go to, in tablet mode on the train, because I can just flip the keyboard back and take it on my lap or hold it like,
like an iPad, which is great if you want to read. I have a bamboo stylus, I didn't go for the Microsoft stylus, so a little bit too expensive, so I decided to try the cheaper bamboo stylus.
And, you know, annotating PDFs and doing stuff in one node, it kind of works, not bad. Connecting to Citrix, that kind of works. I had some issues with temperature, but where I would connect it to the dock, at work, and draw both power and USB and display port data over the same mini USB port, or USB-C port.
But that turned out to be very taxing for the Surface Go, and it would actually overheat and shut down. I found a work around there where I now have to take the power supply of the Surface Go with me, plug that in and everything works. It's a combination of the Surface Go and the dock at work that causes this.
But all in all, not a bad contraption to work with, and it has served me well, and it will continue to do so until I get the perfect machine.
Because of the speed issues, I thought like, yeah, but, you know, I would rather have, you know, on some days I would take the MacBook Pro with me, and I would enjoy the fact that I would have a actual powerhouse with me on the train if I wanted to make a presentation, or do something that was a little bit more taxing to the processor, I would, you know, have a decent laptop with me.
So I thought, well, I've managed to kind of combine my iPad Pro and my laptop, my MacBook, into this Surface Go.
How about I would be able to combine the Surface Go and a decent laptop into a two-in-one convertible, hence the quest for a new laptop, which is nothing urgent, but it's just something that I'm...
requesting, like, you know, bringing back the ring to mortar.
So what are the requirements? Well, the requirements are size, it shouldn't be quite small, power, I would like an i7 and 16 gigs of RAM, storage, 512 gig SSD, please, so I will have, you know, all of my data with me and then some.
And if possible, a good keyboard, that's really important to me. One of the pet peeves I have with my MacBook Pro is that I absolutely hate the butterfly keyboard.
The keyboard on the Surface Go is a little better, but I wanted something that, you know, would really work as a keyboard.
So I started looking around, and the first thing I thought of was the Dell XPS 1321, Dell XPS 1321, not bad.
As a foreign factor, it's a very thin device comes with two flavors, you know, i5, i7, and also into screen resolution favors.
QHD, so high, high resolution, and full HD standard 1920 by 1080.
Now for a 13-inch screen, the Dell XPS was kind of ticking all the boxes, you know, there is an i7 version, it comes with 16 gigs of RAM, it comes with a 512 SSD, it comes with a touchscreen, you have to buy the digitizer or the pen separately, and you can even get it in that QHD resolution.
Upside, it looks really sleek. Downside, three things, A, it only has two USB-C ports, so whatever you are doing, you have to go to Dongle Town to stuff up.
Two, it doesn't come with a built-in 3G, and that is something that would definitely be a wood like on my list, because I would like to have my next laptop to have, you know, just 3G or 4G built-in, so I don't have to pair my phone all the time.
Sort of like a ports, like a 4G, and the QHD display was a little bit of a, I don't know, that's something I could definitely live with.
The form factor was okay, but the processor is a Y-8300-something, but it's basically a mobile processor, so performance is not whoop to do when you compare it to a regular Dell XPS 13.
Upside of the XPS 13, two-in-one is that it is completely fabulous, but it's a mobile processor, so not the highest CPU rate.
Another laptop that I've been looking at is the Spectre X360, it's also a two-in-one with a little bit of a pimpy, blingy, special outline.
It's the Spectre 2-in-one diamond cut, which is basically a brown laptop, or with a gold trim finish, looks very, very hip, very much like, I don't know, a modern bling version of the G3 clamshell iBook.
Yeah, that's actually quite a good comparison. Not a bad laptop, weight-wise, it's pretty okay, ports, it actually has USB-A ports, which is also a big upside, adds some USB-C thumbable ports.
The keyboard is also actually quite okay, it's a two-in-one, it comes with a digitizer, so you get the pen with it.
The webcam camera is on the top of the screen, as opposed to with the Dell XPS 13 where it's at the bottom, and you are basically video conferencing with your own nostrils, so it doesn't have the nostril view.
And there is a model out there that sports the i7 regular processor, 16 gigs of RAM, and a 3G LTE chip.
Price-wise, a little bit more expensive than the Dell XPS 13, but you get a, you know, actual full-call KVLake, whiskey-lake, I always forget the names, you know, 8th generation Intel processor, not bad.
I have, however, learned on the subreddits that there is a lot of issues going on with this laptop as to build quality, and for me personally, one of the things that's holding me back is, it just, you know, looks so blinging, you know, it's, it's bullying.
My wife said, yeah, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's much too extravagant for you, you are, you are, you're much more, you know, boring than that.
So, okay, then I was looking for the next option, and the next option is a ThinkPad, a ThinkPad X380.
ThinkPad X380, 13-inch 2-in-1, so X380 Yoga, 13-inch 2-in-1, completely configurable with a 4-core i7, 16 gigs of RAM, 512 SSD, built-in LTE, and a full HD touch, touch display.
Upsides of Lenovo are, of course, that the keyboard is absolutely gorgeous.
The downside is that this thing is the laptop version of Chernobyl, where they constantly need to,
to downclock the i7 processor to prevent it melting through the chassis, and it is so bad that on some of the reports or the, the benchmarks that I saw,
that whenever you kick that i7 into high gear in order for it not to melt through the laptop, your lap, and the, the, the crust of, of the earth,
they have to throttle it down to something that resembles an i5.
So, temperature issues.
The one laptop that doesn't have that is the X1 Yoga, also ThinkPad X1, absolutely gorgeous keyboard, i7, 16 gigs of RAM, 512 SSD,
and a 14-inch, either full HD or QHD display.
Now, price-wise, we are, we have started out at about 1500 euros for the XPS, 1700 euros for the X360, 1800 euros for the X380 by Lenovo,
and we are going towards 2,200 euros for the X1 Yoga.
Upsides, all kinds of ports, very business-y laptop, looks absolutely gorgeous, keyboard is fantastic, you know, it has everything that you want,
but the price is not, you know, very friendly.
And those are the convertibles that I'm looking at, and it's really, really hard these days to make a choice between portability
price and features, and I'm still a little bit on the edge on what I'm going to do, because if I really think about it,
the X380 by Lenovo is the best bet to go if I want, 3G connectivity, a compact size, and a 2-in-1, and a good keyboard.
But if price is not an issue, well, the X1 Yoga should be better.
And if I really have to look at price, and I think I look at ports and stuff that you get for the money, the X360 is actually by HP is one of the better choices,
because it's a good price point, comes with the I7, comes with LTE, comes with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, but quality control on these things is abysmal.
So if you get a good unit, you get a good unit, if you don't get a good unit, you're screwed, and that's something I'm a little bit afraid of.
So it's really hard to find that perfect laptop, you know, if I want to go for the best screen I am going towards the X1 Yoga,
which comes with probably one of the best PC screens on the market, and I really would like that, but it's also very, very expensive.
There are two more contenders that I might consider, one is the X280, which is a 12.5 inch thingpad with a full HD screen, i7, 16GB,
kind of like the X380, but not convertible, and half an inch smaller.
Also, a very small and powerful little laptop, price-wise, it's somewhere between the X380 and the X1 Yoga, I think it's at 18 or 1900 euros,
which is actually quite a lot for 12 inch, 12.5 inch laptop, and then there's, of course, the X1,
so the regular, non-convertible X1 thingpad with 16GB of RAM, and the full QHD display.
Those are price-wise also very budget-friendly, while still getting a lot of back for your buck.
And that's the dilemma that I had facing today, you know, do I want to be, do I want something small, or do I want a convertible,
do I want power, or do I want, do I want size, stuff like that, it's really hard to try to decide what would be the best choice to make.
And it has brought me to the fact that having the internet doesn't make all of this a lot easier.
I have watched a lot of review videos, a lot of review videos, which don't really help me, they only get me aching for the thing more.
It's not like they inform me like you have to do this, or you have to do that, you know, after watching a 20 minute review video,
I'm going like, it's like watching a giant ad, it's like, you want this, which doesn't really help.
Then there's Reddit, there are a couple of subreddits for the thingpads, and for the X360, and for the XPS that I've been on for a while now.
And they are also quite fantastic, I really like those communities, but you know, people say all kinds of stuff,
and the more information you get, the more confusing it gets.
So in the meantime, as I'm still trying to decide, and since I am spending hours, wasting hours of my life looking for the perfect laptop,
that probably doesn't exist, I guess, at least perhaps not for the budget that I want, I'm not sure.
And it's really hard to make up your mind.
And until then, I still drag along the Surface Go, which is a 600 euro low-end student laptop, or two-in-one.
That is turning out to be an amazingly good investment.
And yes, I have thought about perhaps getting the new Surface Pro.
Downside there is no LTE, and that they don't have a USB-C port, which is insane.
There is a dark out right now to hook up your Surface Go to a USB-C port, so that might still be an option, just getting an i7 Surface Go.
But to be very honest, these things are so extremely expensive.
Wow, they are really, really, really expensive, but you know, we'll see.
So I will get back to you when I have clarity in my dilemma.
For the moment, I am leaning towards the Lenovo X380, the i7 configuration, even though it gets throttled down.
I am praying for the BIOS updates to hopefully resolve that.
But the thing is there, when you go for an i7 4-core CPU into a laptop chassis, you're looking at fans, baby, and fans make noise.
And I have heard the noise that the X360 is making, and it's noise.
It's really a lot of noise.
Or go for a mobile processor, and cut back on CPU power, but go for a fanless design, like for example, in the XPS 13.
Not sure, or in the Surface Go models.
Not sure.
What I'm going to do yet?
Not sure what I should buy, and I'm even not sure if I should buy anything, but I'll probably will.
I'm not really sure, not even when.
But hey, until then, I will continue my quest to find the perfect laptop, which is a powerful battery-friendly small two-in-one with a great screen and a low price point.
And that is quite a set of requirements that is very, very hard to find.
Oh yeah, that doesn't melt down when you use it.
That's the final one.
Hopefully fanless, preferably fanless.
Yeah, go look for that.
I think the technology will probably catch up with me in a year or so.
Well, that's a lifetime for today.
I'm curious for your suggestions.
What would you get as a laptop with those requirements?
Let me know in the comments below, or get back to us on the social media channels or our telegram.
This was Nightwise, signing off.
Letting you know that the technology worked for you instead of the other way around.
Bye guys.
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