What features in a laptop in practice actually made you more productive?

Or accessories

and a second question unrelated to title: What features in practice actually made the laptop more enjoyable to use?

 

1. A good screen
2. A good keyboard

For accessories, I guess a mouse.

There's tons of other things, but these are the bare minimum, really.

 

Docking station, so I could use dual external monitors and kb/mouse

 

A good, high-resolution, matte IPS screen (no more garbage chean 1366x768 TN panels).
Strong battery life (no more 2-3 hour weaksauce)
Small, portable designs (no more 6-pound 15" plastic bricks)
External mouse
Good noise-isolating IEM headphones

 

A good keyboard is the most important thing for me and personally I find ones I like getting harder to find. Maybe my tastes are outdated but I dislike most modern keyboards, it seems like a secondary consideration for most people these days.

I also benefit from slim and light laptops especially at work as I move between offices and warehouses regularly, unfortunately I didn't get much choice with my current work laptop.

 

A high-gain wireless card and a high-capacity battery are the main features that allow me to be more productive.

Mid-level or higher dedicated graphics make the system more enjoyable to use.

 

First and foremost for me is the screen size and resolution. For example, on anything 15.6" and above, I would only go with at least a 1080p screen. I also feel that the keyboard needs to be backlit.

 

Features that actually work as intended.

 

3K+ screens (I use reading glasses). Screen quality doesn't matter if I'm just processing text or simple figures. Matte high gamut IPS(-like) would be preferred if there's anything graphical to work with.

Good touchpad/trackpad + external mouse + clean hard mousepad. Good keyboard if working with large amount of text.

Large SWAPPABLE battery.

Does that depend more on the card itself or the antenna attached to it?

 

Honestly, I don't know. But different wireless cards can generally be chosen when configuring systems and specific antennas cannot, so I focus on what I can change.

 

On laptop audio productivity, IEM on average does not cut it for me. Neither does built in audio. In my world, professional audio interfaces into balanced I/O into professional audio consoles and broadcast equipment is necessity. And for headphones, studio acceptable is the only way or better. And earbuds and IEM does not fit my ears or needs. Can't create good audio without hearing my results on accurate equipment. Beyer Dynamic DT 770 is my working reference headphones, and what all else is judged by. And M-Audio the bare minimum audio interface.

 

For me, first and foremost is a high-resolution display. Honestly, I have no idea how people can live with low-res displays like 768p or 900p. Matte would be preferred, and IPS would be a nice-to-have.

After that, a good keyboard/mouse combination. Personally would rather have a trackpoint than a touchpad or separate mouse for working, though I'd rather have a separate mouse if all I had was a touchpad. I'm personally a fan of Logitech's wares in this field.

Everything else is a nice-to-have for me, though if possible I always go for a SSD or SSD upgrade.

 

SSD
Keyboard
Mouse
Support for Multiple External LCD's
Quality high resolution (1080p) LCD
Fast CPU
Lots of RAM
Wired Gigabit Ethernet / 802.11AC if can't be wired

 

Dock
DisplayPort (Not many people know that you can attach multiple independent displays on a single jack)

 

not having one.

other than that maybe SSD, RAM, CPU, GPU, and high res (relatively to screen size). Good mouse helps too especially if I can set my DPI.

 

• Screen resolution
• Battery life
• Trackpoint/touchpad

 

1.) High Quality/Resolution display
This should be a given, but higher resolution = more workable space on the desktop. Higher quality means better viewing angles and versatility.
2.) SSD
What's more efficient, waiting 15 sec or 5 min for your laptop to completely boot up?
3.) Good Keyboard with backlight
Try typing on a horrible keyboard. Next try typing on a horrible keyboard in the dark.

 

To be fair, I can make a nice cup of tea or coffee in that five minutes

 

My biggest thing is the comfort of the keyboard and screen brightness. I dont need a super IPS panel just a bright one. The battery life is a close 3rd.

I am very happy with the clevo w230ss with the 860m graphics card. Light weight, mice GPU, good screen and good battery life.

 

I'll throw a vote for a solid docking station that can extend 4+ displays over DP.

 

SSD

Responsive keyboard and touchpad

Weight that's portable

 

Weight and size!

When I had a 15.6" HP laptop that weighed 8lbs+ I wouldn't want to take it places and carry it around other than for school. Then I bought my XPS 13 and can take wherever I want as it only weighs a couple of pounds. That difference definitely feels major!

 

not enough gym time

 

Keyboard. I spend a lot of time working with CLI utilities and email. Hell, at this point, I email so much that I use a BlackBerry PRIV.

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