Current design fads in laptops that you hate.

Chicklet keyboards/poor designed boards
16:9 screens
cheap plastic (been around for a while though)
Glossy screens on EVERYTHING
Low resolutions
auto switching GPUs
lack of num pads on 15in and larger notebooks

 

The color silver. It's very very very played out.

 

chicklet keyboards
low resolutions
Optimus
"branding" (Beats on HP systems, for example)

As far as glossy screens go, I'm fine with it if I'm indoors and in a dark/dim room (my usual setting). Anywhere else I'd rather have matte.

So is white >.>

On top of that, I (somewhat) dislike weird paint/decal designs, especially overly feminine styles. They just don't look right to me and they make me think that the user is childish (for example, Pavilions in baby blue with a bunch of painted flowers on them).

 

Are you questioning the manhood of my dell candy pink and red paisley flower patterned inspiron?! I agree though. I was really not a fan of the apple ibooks for that very reason. Who wants a key-lime or tangerine or blueberry laptop?! It's a machine not a bowl of captain crunch... Furthermore those engraved or patterned HP palmrests collect dirt in the grooves. Gets kinda gross if you don't clean it often enough.

 

Wedged designs
Auto switching GPU's (Would prefer waiting a measly second of black screen to be able to switch manually)

Everything else is eh. I think Matte screens and stuff should be offered more for people who want them, but matte vs glossy (as well as 16:9 vs 16:10) is opinionated. They should offer everything in a perfect world lol. I for one support the "branding" and stuff though. Even if its not amazing for example, at least with Beats audio being advertised on the DV6 it sounds better than most other computers. Same with subwoofers, not amazing but it makes laptops sound awesome. Plus its not like Samsung could make a screen in a laptop called "The best. Period" and make it crap, itll be somewhat better than the current stuff most have. Does that make sense?

 

I like my delete/insert/home/end/pgup/pgdn where they are. Putting them on a row on the side involves making keys thinner on smaller notebooks that barely have enough width to fit a full sized keyboard without an added column.

On the topic of numpads. I was using a coworker's laptop that had one for something and it was not comfortable typing since the homerow was really far off center.

The only color that laptops should ever come in is matte black. Soft touch finish is also nice.

 

What indeed....

 

^^^ Palmrests are for suckas.

 

My biggest pet peeves at the moment are:

- Home/End buttons being integrated with the arrows keys thus requiring you to hit fn+arrow key
- Not separating the arrow keys from the other keys
- Normal size left and right arrow keys with small up and down keys. Surely it's not that difficult to make all of the arrow keys the same size whether small or normal.
(Check the hp dm1z to see precisely what I'm talking about)
- Integrating the mouse buttons into the actual touchpad instead of having two separate buttons.

 

I used to rant about how touchpads have been moved off-center to the left side of many laptops now. I recently realized they did that to center it up with the keyboard keys, I guess in an attempt to cut down on accidental swipes and clicks with your wrist. But with pretty much any laptop now, you can easily turn the touchpads off, so it seems moot. AND, if you've decided you absolutely must move it to one side, I say why not the right side? Most people use a mouse with their right hands, so why go farther away from that hand?

Also, while I am on the subject of touchpads, I hate these (I think HP has them?) textured laptop surfaces that also have matching textured touchpads... just... yuck.

Sorry If these things have already been mentioned previously btw.

 

A thing I'd like, after having seen the Razer Blade (as Gimmicky and Over Priced as I think it is) would be for the touch pad to be relocated to where the Number Keys are. Rarely do I ever use the NumKeys on my laptop, but using the touchpad in it's current location, in any kind of a cramped environment (airplane, bus, etc...) is miserable and I feel if it was relocated to the side it'd be much more user friendly. Additionally maybe it'd be possible to game without needing an actual mouse...

 

shouldn't the keyboard be centered with respect to the body of the laptop? If not, you would have the laptop screen to the right of your vision, or you could look head on if you tilted your neck or contorted your arms... seems like there are already design issues if being centered to the keyboard's home row isn't the same as being centered to the laptop.

 

Well the home row isn't the center of the keyboard right, so if you centered it to the home row, the keyboard would be off center to the right. They center it to the keyboard, and so the home row is slightly left of center, as is the touch pad which is centered with respect to the home row.

 

1. Chiclet keyboards
2. Fat bezels

 

Anything shiny\glossy

 

Blame it on the separate number pads. Yes, the offset touchpads are truly awful, and yet another reason to avoid 15.6" notebooks, or to just go ahead and buy a Macbook Pro 15.

Hey, at least the textured touchpads that were integrated into the palmrest didn't pop out of the palmrest - a major issue for HP. Yes, a number of HP touchpads popped right out. Of course, HP has had a spate of awful buttonless touchpads, including Envy 14 notebooks. Maybe they're finally getting rid of garbage hardware, although I'm sure that other flaws will remain. I have mixed emotions about HP. They can produce fairly sound hardware, and still ruin it with something like a lousy, unintentionally detachable touchpad.

 

I hate that my AW has the battery pack in the bottom instead of jutting out the back. If it juts out the back, I can get an extended battery...
Glowing apples too, I hate those computers.

 

You can get extended batteries which just jack the laptop up a bit. Helps with cooling too.

I don't know if they're available for alienware, but I know other laptops use a system like that.

 

I personally like the textured surface far more than smooth ones.

I only use my trackpad for scrolling so maybe its one of those things that is only good for shorter periods of time. Like how the cat's tongue style trackpoint caps are really nice until it starts hurting your finger.

Extended batteries. I prefer sticking back instead of down. It provides a convenient place to hold the laptop when using it while walking.

Or a Thinkpad T520.

 

I actually thought those Dells a few years back where the extended battery extended out the palmrest was a nifty idea... Probably wouldn't work on a full sized laptop but the ultraportable it makes sense since ultraportables are uncomfortable to use sometimes due to a lack of palmrest. Kills two birds with one stone.

 

i used to hate my late laptop asus g50vt. the 3rd year on my ownership its overheating a lot, low res screen and the design i can't really stand off is the protruding battery at the back.

 

I feel like they could put SOMETHING in that empty space next to the touchpad

--
Sent from my SGS2 Skyrocket using Tapatalk

 

I hate those chiclet style keyboards. They sucked way back with the IBM PC Jr., and they suck now.

 

720p being "the norm" and standard for entry/mid level consumer laptops.

 

Lack of ports in the rear.

 

Chiclet keys that have little key travel.

 

I at least can understand the supposed purpose of glossy screens and bodies as there can be some aesthetic benefits/appeal to them. I cannot say the same for those glossy keyboard keys (like on those alienware laptops). My little cousin actually covers the keyboard with a little microfiber cloth to prevent smudging. x.x Every time I visit him I ask him why he begged so hard to buy that thing.

A few other things:
-weird design "aerodynamic" vents like they want us to think it's a jet or a sports car... yea because I take my laptop to the wind tunnel all the time...
-numberpads for making me type on one end of the laptop instead of the center
-internal batteries
-power ports placement that have no awareness of where exhaust vents will be (like the port being on the back center when there's a vent to the left and right of it, which guarantees that the power cord will partially cover one of the vents and get insanely hot)
-excessive physical hotkeys (really? I need physical "web" "email" or whatever else buttons cluttering up my real estate?)
-stickers. not a fad since it's never going away

 

Things I hate:

Chicklet keyboards!
16:9 resolutions/screens
16:9 thick screen bezels
Glossy anything
Cheap plastic (my 90s plastic laptops were at least solidly built)

Im sure there are other things but these are the top issues Im concerned with.

 

-Fake metal stuff that is actually plastic, usually on palmrest.
-Stickers, even on the bottom.
-thick bezels.
-shiny plastic everywhere.
-Paint chipping off panels
-Alps touchpads
-Fn keys taking over the F keys (although that usually can be switched in bios)
-Branding e.g. Beats, SRS Premium sound, etc.
-15.6" without a numpad
-USB ports blocking eachother.
-letters getting rubbed off the keyboard keys.
-badly designed cooling system.

I'm sure most of them are already mentioned.
My Dell Inspiron 1564 is guilty of all I listed except the numpad which it has.

~Aeny

 

This is a big one as I dont see a need for HUGE speaker grills when you can have something that is actually useful instead.

 

A numpad on 15 inch laptops puts homerow really far off center. It makes extended typing uncomfortable. Numpads are for 17+ inch imho.

 

Agreed. I'd prefer to see more 15" laptops like the Thinkpad T520/W520 that leave off the numpad. A good use of the extra areas on the side could include volume and other media buttons, fingerprint reader, etc.

 

Coming from thinkpads and center keyboard 15.4in its not bad at all. Takes a week to get used to at most, but since I have had a 17in with numpad(no different feel then a 15.6 with one) it was a day at most to adjust. I dont think I could go back to a non numpad workstation.

 

bright white light on the outside of laptop that you can't turn off. YES, white.

Power cord on the side- can never understand this. Back is always the best.

Function key equal spaced on a non back-lit keyboard. F9 where are you?

Put multimedia keys on fn+x instead of the whole blank row next to the one power on button.

Edit: was looking at my HP "multimedia" machine

 

I think that Apple is somewhat responsible for most of these stupid fads.

Chicklet keayboards - Sony was the only one that used them, until Apple started using them and now all of the mainstream manufacturers are doing it.

lining up USB ports, stupid thing dont know why everyone is doing it. Again Apple started this BS

Large touchpads that dont work properly, we need buttons. Apple actually pulled it off but only in OSX, using that thing in Windows is still a pain in the ___

 

Chicklet keyboards aren't that bad. No complaints from me about the keyboard on my Sager NP8170 with the exception of not having a backlight option.

 

I think there is a bit of nostalgia filter for chiclet haters. Before chiclet keyboards became popular, there were crappy keyboards with traditional style keycaps too. Now all of those manufacturers switched from making crappy keyboards with traditional style keycaps to making crappy keyboards with chiclet style ones.

 

I tend to agree with this. It's not so much the design, but rather the quality that makes the difference.

Going to comment on stickers/case badges next. I like having case badges on my systems, but agree with some of the previous comments regarding placement....the palm rest is a horrible place to put case badges or just abut any other decal for that matter. When I ordered my Sager, I had XoticPC remove all branding which resulted in removal of stickers under the 'hood' as well (I think it was just the 'HDMI' sticker). Wanting to 'show-off' what hardware my system is sporting, I ordered a couple case badges from ebay, a black intel i7 badge and the other an ATI Radeon badge. I put these across from each other on either side of the keyboard to help fill in some of that wasted space .

 

Things I dislike about current laptops:
- Buttonless touchpads...seriously, only Apple pulls this off well
- Mediocre TN displays. I don't mind 1366x768 that much, I just want better color with less dependency on the angle
- Silver-painted plastic, especially on high-wear areas where it just chips/rubs off
- Glossy screens...I don't mind a glossy bezel but the screen should be matte
- Half-height keys. HP does this with the up/down keys on the nav cluster.
- Fn key on the bottom left corner
- Mushy keyboards
- Displays/lids without enough reinforcement

I think I'll stop there.

 

Regarding all of the complaints about glossy screens. While I prefer a matte screen for glare reduction, the color vibrancy and text clarity of a glossy screen is simply superior. Blacks are also richer and unaffected by the backlighting. I have yet to run into any situation/environment where the glare from the glossy screen was overwhelming.

 

I have yet to find a chicklet style that is even remotely decent.

 

Glossy trackpads.

Yuck.

 

Ever used one of the current gen Clevo/Sagers? Their keyboards are just fine imo.

 

The X1 chiclet is excellent.

We have different standards of decent. You're probably used to lower quality keyboards so they don't bother you as much as they bother a person that is used to typing on a really good keyboard. It's sorta like how I don't really care that my earbuds are pretty crappy while an audiophile can't stand listening to them.

Personally, I draw my line of decent at the X120e keyboard. A bit shorter depth than the typical Thinkpad chiclet, but the rest of the typing characteristics are good, and the keycap design is still logical (curve bottom, dimple in center, etc) even if its a chiclet. Most of the business laptop keyboards are pretty good with a few exceptions. Most everything else is crap tier.

 

I have tried budget laptops to high end asus, apple, sony, and sager and none feel right. In fact the only ones that seem like I could use if they were the only style left on this planet was the vostro and the thinkpad x series. But even then they were still terrible. So no its not a budget based concern, rather its the entire genre of chicklet keyboards that bother me. As for the keyboards I use, well Im an avid dell business and thinkpad user so I only use the best keyboards in the world.

I kinda think about it like touchpads, when they were released I thought "now thats cool!" But once I used one I instantly hated them and despite the technology advancements they have done to touchpads decades later I still hate them. In fact in the past 8 years I have always disabled them for a trackpoint/pointstick or external.

So yeah chicklet is just sadly a popular trend I wont ever like. Sorry yall.

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Like in the older HPs? Gah!

 

In my mind 1366x768 is acceptable in 13.3" or less. It's the terrible quality and color reproduction that bothers me.

I also hate the use of glossy plastic, and buttonless trackpads.

 

It would have to be the rubbish (NOISY) fans i see on a lot of laptops. Nothing more annoying that a constant high pitched hum to me.

 

Heavily textured touch pads, tiny touch pads, button less touch pads. Non standard MXM implementations, the overuse of 1366x768 panels (single LVDS channel cables making upgrading impossible), poor heatsink design, non standard power cable plugs, glossy plastic and large bezels.

 

Especially in MY laptop.

But nothing an iPhone matte screen protector or carbon fiber vinyl couldn't fix!