calum.org:~#

2020 laptop

Tags: laptop, hardware, hp,

Added: 2020-05-05T17:20:06

2020 laptop

My current personal laptop at home is a 2009 HP Elitebook 8530w. Yes, really. I'm using an 11-year old laptop right now.
It was a monster in its time - 4GB RAM, dual core, 1920x1200 display, gigabit Ethernet port, lots of ports and slots, built like a tank.
I replaced the battery, and upgraded the disk to an SSD hybrid, but nothing else.

I really like the keyboard on it, and the touchpad (although it can't do the multifinger stuff).

But it's getting a little old now, and the time has probably come to find a replacement.

Ideally, what I'd like is just to have the same laptop but with more memory and faster CPUs.
But if I have to narrow down a list of must-haves, then this is what I come up with.

No numberpad

Numberpads on laptops perplex me.
Why do people want laptops where 20% of their keyboard is taken up with something they very rarely use, and that also means that the bit of the keyboard they do use most of the time is off centre?
I guess it doesn't matter too much if you're not typing a lot, but if you are a developer, you'll type a lot.
If people want a keyboard with a number pad, they could just plug in an external USB one for the short amount of time they need it for?

Must haves

15"

I bought a Thinkpad T490, but 14" just felt a little bit too small.

>= 32GB RAM

I don't want to have to buy another laptop for a good long time, so I want a big chunk of memory.

1TB SSD

I also want lots of space to store stuff on.

Intel Wifi

I'll be running Linux, so I want to be sure that all the important things work with it. Intel, to their credit, are pretty Linux-friendly, so I want an Intel Wifi chipset. This rules out most Dells that were in the running, as they had some Killer Wifi.

No touchscreen

I don't want a touchscreen, because I'll never use it. And I also don't want other people poking my screen with their mucky fingers.

100Ah battery, ideally user-replaceable




The laptop I've finally selected is the HP Z-Book G5 Studio 15.6" with the memory boosted to 64GB.
I've gone for the i9 processor, and the non-4K screen and Quadro P1000 graphics card, as I'm going to use this for Linux, not playing games.
The only regret I have is that it doesn't have a native Ethernet port on it, but a dongle is only £15.

I've been using it for a week now, and it rocks. I'm running Qubes on it (time will see whether I stick with that), and it performs very well indeed.

posted by Calum on 2020-05-05T18:00 under

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