Current design fads in laptops that you hate.

Heh, didn't realize so many people had issues with the chiclet style keyboards. When I see a laptop with the classic style keyboard, it looks like they've come straight out of the 90's. From a functionality perspective, I really don't care as I've used both styles without issues, but classic keyboards just bring back memories of Windows 95 and old laptops to me.

 

My question to OEMs about the keyboard is "What was wrong with the old style?" Personally, I could give two (you knows) about if it looks dated, because function > form any day of the week. I've used both as well and while some island-style keyboards are okay (Lenovo), most have absolutely garbage key travel and aren't comfortable to use at all for long periods of time (for me), which is a major problem as far as I'm concerned.

 

I think the older style keyboards have a thicker design making the overall laptop thicker.

The island/chiclet style provides for a thinner footprint and probably even better performance as far as durability since unlike desktops, it's not user replaceable.

 

First, no it doesn't improve performance. And second, if any item on a laptop needs to be completely replaceable, the keyboard would be it. I won't even consider a laptop where that's not the case. That would be just asking for trouble.

Some things that aren't broken don't need to be fixed. Chiclet doesn't do a thing to make the typing experience better.

 

good point Krane!! - Best keyboard I have ever owned (and it still works great!
My beef - the newer Rj45 jacks, I have been told that they are supposed to be very tight (the type with the spring loaded cover). On my sager it is almost impossible to remove a cord so I just leave a 2 foot cable and coupler in.

 

Not exactly sure how you can draw the conclusion that newer laptops are more durable simply due to the keyboard. A Thinkpad T520 is a lot more durable than something like a MBP, but then so is a T530. And a MBP is more durable than an Acer Aspire One, both using the same type of keyboard.

 

I think you are misreading me.

I'm saying the *keyboard* is more durable.

From what I remember from taking apart my older laptop years ago, the keyboard was more of a mechanical version where each key had a separate post/spring. The newer keyboards have a membrane construction.

Just compare your older style desktop keyboard to the Apple chiclet desktop ones and that will show you the difference in thickness and construction.

The older keyboards you can pull individual keycaps off, not as easy with the island type ones, which also lends to durability (in my opinion).

And I did not say it makes *typing* performance better... although I have adjusted as I use it more.

Does anyone think it does affect thickness?

 

A List from my side
Cheap, Glossy screens everywhere
Mainstream laptops are stuck on 1366x768, whereas even 16k Mobile phones sport Full HD displays
Utter lack of ports compared to yesteryears (E-sata, Expresscard, DVI,Audio Line in)
Small tinny speakers with no improvement at all (My samsung NOTE is louder than my Acer 5560)
Poor viewing angles
Wrong Positioning of Fan and vents (Total mess when laptop is used on lap)
No Direct charge USB ports (for charing Mobile when Laptop is off)
Lack of Quick play (came on very few laptops) mini OS that could play Music and small tasks with Main OS not reqired.

 

As others have said the standard resolution of 1366x768 is atrocious. All 15.6" and larger laptops should have 1080p screens as the standard. Laptop screen quality overall needs to be improved; with better color reproduction, contrast, brightness and viewing angles.

Also those horrid "buttonless" touchpads. There is nothing wrong with having two mouse buttons separate from the touchpad, but everything wrong with the current integrated button trend.

 

Well, you can always do that by yourself...

If the goal is to provide lager touchpad area, I guess they could just push physical buttons to the very edge of the chassis.

But they don't.

 

-Laptops which go from thin to thick, like wedges.
-No removable (UPGRADABLE) battery
-Trash keyboard font (This is why I never got into Vizio laptops as much as I could, or the MSI GS series)
-Glossy Laptop Housing (Thank you Mac circa 2008 and HP)
-Embossed branding
-Bad power button placement
-No external mic port.

 

That's a really good one. I absolutely love the look and feel of the Dell XPS 15... but damn that keyboard font ruins it.

We have a saying in industrial design.

"If I give you a glass full of clear, delicious, clean water with a single drop of urine in it, you won't drink from it. Industrial design is the same."

Referring to how I feel about the Dell XPS 15.... everything about that laptop is gorgeous, but I'm so hung up on the stupid looking keyboard font that I can't say it's a beautiful laptop.

 

Matte screens, I hate them and they seem to be coming more and more common, If i want to deal with dull colours i'll go out and by a generation one Panel, Not something that i've spent 2k+ On, I like everyone else am quite capable of moving to a low light area if i want to (and often do) Stop giving me faded out matte displays on high end laptops

 

Screens on which you can't see anything the moment sun strikes, keys that are too close and too small -.-

 

Wat...

Matte coating does NOT shift your panel's emission spectrum. It's not physically possible (at least with normal screen coating material). If you see crappy gamut screens, blame crappy gamut screens, not the matte coating.

 

Got to agree with this. From personal experience, my W520 and desktop monitor both ate much more vivid and much brighter than most laptops I've seen in my personal experience (typically Walmart specials). Garbage displays look like garbage and great displays looks great, regardless of coating.

 

This is why I love industrial design.

Also I was super hung up about the Dell XPS (2013), aside from the fact that they're a little pricey for what you get, the biggest thing that was bugging me about that laptop over all was the keyboard, honestly I feel like the MacBook pro's beautiful unibody chassis is amazing, but my view of a good looking laptop isn't limited to just Mac. In all honesty without the keyboard, the XPS 15 is the perfect laptop design antithesis to the MacBook pro. I hope they get on that.

 

This. That font is so juvenile it turns me off completely.

If they used the font from the inspiron/latitude line, it'd be just fine

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Amen to that, I'm using a n E6400 for work, it is such a classy font.

 

Integrated track pads.
Disappearing no-numpad option on anything 15.6" and up.
The removal of the Menu key (this is an absolute deal breaker for me)
Moving keys from their conventional locations in the name of innovation and saving space.
Right arrow keys that extend into the numpad block.
Having Fn keys that show their "secondary" functions as primary over the actual Fn#.
16:9.
Side (especially right side) exhaust fans.
RAM that is not user expandable.
Hard drives that can not be removed.
The mindless emulation of smartphone design.

On the plus side, it seems that most models no longer have connections and slots on the front, or the back. But that's probably because they're eliminating as many connections and slots as they can get away with.

 

Add ports on the side near the front of the notebook, say where you usually have a mouse, etc. Ports on the side are fine, but sheesh, don't put them where people are more likely to have their hands around.

Agreed on sunken hinges, it makes tilting the screen back at more than a certain angle impossible. 180 ^o tilt might a bit overkill, but if you can't even do 120 ^o, something is wrong.

 

I've only very recently started noticing sunken hinges. During this round of shopping. Is it just an illusion or do those usually limit how far back the screen can go? I assume they help reduce casing depth?

I have also only just started using Windows 8.x, and a touchscreen. It's a little like being suddenly submerged in what the fads and trends have produced since I last shopped around for a Windows laptop, which was on the eve of Windows 7.

The smartphone influence is producing mixed results.

I am finding touch compelling.

 

I have to agree that some of the worst trends in both software and hardware can be traced back to Apple. That goes way back.

 

I thought we figured it out in the thread of yours that no such thing exists?

 

I could be mistaken, but doesn't the post you're quoting precede my determining that I could likely upgrade both HD and RAM by breaking my way into the not-designed-for-easy-upgradability case?

Either way, requiring anything more than turning a few screws and lifting off a removable panel to access those components is definitely a "current design fad" worthy of inclusion in this thread. Especially for laptops above the least expensive price points.

The mfgs (and their apologists) can justify it all they want, and there's no reason to doubt that it does marginally lower their mfg costs, perhaps their support costs as well. That doesn't change the fact that it's a giant middle finger to the consumers whose good will the mfg's brands depend on.

RAM and HD upgradeability has gone from being a nearly taken for granted characteristic of the product category to a possible product "feature" that is increasingly simply missing. I think I mentioned this in the other thread, but I only found that the HD was considered non-consumer replaceable when a sales rep happened to mention it when I asked about the RAM. AFAICT, it is not mentioned on the mfg site or in the pdf spec sheet.

Also, non-replaceable (as described by the mfgs) batteries are also increasingly part of the feature sets of these dumbed-down, user-hostile devices.

 

Note that most sales reps (in my experience) don't know what the heck they're talking about 99% of the time, so I wouldn't take anything they say as fact without confirmation from at least one other source.

 

* Numpads on 15" laptops - unnecessary
* Lots of branding stickers (or worse, non removable logos)
* 4K screens with GPUs not able to properly drive them
* Warranty seals that prevent you upgrading the RAM or SSD/HDD
* Unnecessary bloatware and trial versions of software pre-installed
* Manufacturers who don't retail their computers in the UK/EU and who don't even let you order from the USA for delivery in the EU (I'm looking at you Razer)
* Matte screen models only available in low-end configurations (I'm looking at you MSI)

 

I'd disagree with this - perhaps the ideal is an optional numpad, as opposed to proclaiming one layout/setup 'best'?

 

I don't know. Usually, the numpad isn't the problem, but the "normal" doubling up layout of the num-lock, scroll-lock, insert keys, along with having the arrow keys in a separate block. Lots of good 14' solutions that drop those keys, or double the keys with an fn-* layout. And the arrow keys can be made smaller, the second shift key can be shrunk, etc. So then you have space enough to have a full-size num-pad on the side. Kind of wish more manufacturers started doubling the pgup-pgdwn-home-end keys on the arrow-keys+fn, for example. Putting them on the num-pad buttons when the num-pad is disabled is a good idea as well, imo.

 

Some of my own:

Flimsy, bendy keyboards
Excessive thinness
Laptops with soldered RAM
Touch Screens
Flimsy construction
Any design which does not allow easy access to RAM or to hard drives and other items which require access
Tablets except for selected convertibles
Laptops which are flimsy built
Any laptop which is not business rugged at minimum
Trialware and Crapware preloaded on laptops
Poorly laid out keyboards
Audio enhancements by tone deaf rap artists

 

Poor case design (flimsy) - This has been a problem for many years
Flimsy keyboards - the WORST
Chiclet keyboards should all die in a fire.

 

You said what I was going to say in a round about way. The worst trend in notebooks is anything with an apple on it.

 

One expection: MacBook's low load battery life was quite a productivity booster before the Ultrabook camp managed to catch up. Sure, you can always brute force it with swappable slice batteries, but why not have both? (We can have both nowadays, and I believe Apple played a positive role in this progress.)

 

what time frame are you talking about? I know that my timeline had better battery life against all the MacBook options when I bought it.

 

You did. But before modern Ultrabook time, how much extra space/weight compared to MB(A/P) was required for the same near-idle battery life?

I'm only talking about very low load battery life. With high load MB batteries are crap.

 

Well, not a lot really. My timeline is smaller than the 15" MBP of the same era, has better battery life and performance. BUUUUUTTTTTT, I do get what you are saying. I just personally think apple is Way more hoopla than it deserves. In 2010, I switched fully to apple products, buying two iPhone 4s, a MacBook, an ipad, a mac mini with 27" cinema monitor. The best of everything was the monitor. However, the os' was absolute garbage, the phone and pad were boring at best. Apples my way or the highway of doing things was the final straw. 6 months later, I sold everything at a huge loss, just to get rid of it.

I am glad I kept my 2 acer notebooks. They were both better in every way besides my acer's 17" size and weight compared to the 17" mbp. Performance was better, the notebook itself cost about 1/3 of the MPB's price and You could get service locally. As of right now, there is no Apple service center anywhere near here. Closest is 4 hrs away.

Apple is fluff and marketing where as a company like acer is quite the opposite. No one will walk up to you and go "hey, is that the new acer?" but You will be working away at whatever your doing with lots of cash left in your pocket instead of giving it all to the apple bean counters for the "privilege" of having an apple logo on your whatever your using.

 

lack of Ethernet port

 

Absolutely terrible track-pads. More specifically, bad track-pad drivers for Windows.

I run a hackintosh, and it's incredible to see how deep the support is for track-pads in OS X, when the vendors themselves (ELAN, Synaptics, etc.) have terrible, and near-non-existent support for their Windows drivers. Oh, and the OS X drivers are open source. The track-pads on OS X are nearly as accurate and as smooth as Mac track-pads themselves, and I refer to both my current Clevo and the Samsung notebook I had before this.

VoodooPS2 driver by RehabMan (for Synaptics)
Smart Touchpad driver by EMlyDinEsH (for ELAN, FocalTech and Synaptics)

 

Interesting - certainly for two finger scrolling, you're right. I have an ALPS touchpad and for scrolling it's superior when running on OSX than with Windows. With this said, for finger tapping it's jittery when used with OSX and this doesn't happen when using it with Windows.

 

This is a chicken-egg problem, both a driver issue and an app issue. Smoothing scrolling requires a non-HID proprietary interface which Apple can use easily but causes resistance on the supposedly "open" Windows platform. The touchpad driver itself can be as smooth as the hardware allows, but the interface is asking to resample that input into an ugly sequence of jumps. And that's the only thing Windows apps understand.

Blame the spec if you must, which ironically was made by Microsoft initially (for mouse scroll wheel, not touchpad scroll).


BTW, the GTK guys on Linux/BSD have been doing smooth scrolling for a while by taking a "lets hack every drive there is to work for us" approach, but it's still far from standardized and only works with build-in touchpads. I'm not sure to what extent could MS copy this practice if they want to. Even if they did, existing apps would still annoy people for the years to come.

 

Have a like for that - it was well worth a read. Thanks!

More on topic: I'd probably nominate trackpads without physical buttons as something I'm not so keen on. Yes, you can click the bottom right part but a physical button works better for me. This feature tends-thankfully-to feature on business class laptops so it's not hard to find a system with actual trackpad buttons.

 

Since you are a hackintosher, I have a question. Have you been able to get mobile kepler/maxwell cards working full qe/ci in OS X? I'm talking like GTX 780M/980M? Did you have to custom patch nvcap or nvdaresman or just graphicsinjection from bootloader?

 

No, my laptop comes with Optimus, and I have Prema Mod's custom BIOS, so I just switch off the Nvidia GPU in the BIOS and boot to OS X using the Intel HD 4600 iGPU. I didn't mess with any NVDA* kexts; also note that I use Chameleon, not Clover.

 

Hot keyboards. Manufacturers seem to think it's ok to vent heat through the keyboard.

It's not.

 

I hate thin, light, BGA turdbooks. I hate most of the lousy trackpads in current notebooks, in particular those that lack discrete left and right buttons and the clickable area where buttons should be also track movement. They are miserable to use.

In the opposite train of thought, I started a new thread and stickied this one and the new one. Hopefully, the OEMs and ODMs will discover and take the content of both threads to heart. Perhaps the Clevo resellers can point Clevo to them and some of the big boys like Dell/Alienware will do what Micro$loth claimed to do (tongue in cheek) and "listen" to their customers.

2016 and Beyond: What are we missing in laptops/notebooks?

 

Am I the only guy who has gotten used to taps and prefer not having physical buttons... I find tapping to be faster especially when switching quickly between typing and mousing.

Simulated click zooms are what get me mad. There's usually no feedback wahtsoever from such a feature, you only know you're tapping the wrong place when triggering a wrong action.

 

Whatever I do, cursor always seem to move when I try to drag and drop or simply select something when there is no physical buttons.

Those touchpads just don't want to understand that I might use two fingers: one to move the cursor and the other to tap button 1 or 2 at the target underneath the cursor. Instead it is usually recognized as a click somewhere between of those fingers or activate some swirly twisty function I did not even know to exist

That's not so much problem with my own computers but whatever random laptop I'm currently using for my clients. Can't even throw them out of the window.

 

Are you using click zones like I described above?

 

Yes, all six of them above and under the touchpad. However I cannot change settings on my customers laptops and I never know what waits me when I get one in my hands

 

Personally, I'd love to see all laptops natively support eGpus for at least one lane to an actual (don't have to open the case) external port. Potentially with optional extra power. 16 lanes in the expensive laptops +1500-3000$ that you'd WANT to have upgradeability over time since you paid so much initially. Potentially as thunderbolt now. Or a mini pci-e port.
Also more standard form factors and less blacklisting certain components or ram in bioses. Make laptops worth it to buy over desktops basically.

OH....and get rid of bloody touch screens on laptops, they aren't phones. That's why there's a touchpad. Having a sort of ultrasonic sensor like phones do would be a nice option to put your laptop to standby or wake it up as an option to configure. More freedom in the BIOS. More ability to control your entire PC experience. Manual control of fans and less overzealous throttling in place for better cooling systems regardless of extra cost. No more one year ponies that die once their limited warranties are up. Resolutions of 720p should be standard on even netbooks.