Laptop tech that would bring you to buy a new system

I have a 2014 Dell XPS 15 and am pretty happy with it. But I'm already thinking about the upgrade, a year or two down the line. Right now, it would take a number of new features to get me to upgrade. Such as:

• Improved screen: After using the XPS 15 qHD+ screen it would be hard to go back to 1080p even with Window's faults. 4K is my next target, but also looking for better screen tech (color, contrast, viewing angles, less glare).
• Much improved battery life: If Broadwell or Skylake can bring significant improvements (like 10+ hours), it would make a worthy upgrade.
• USB 3.1: It's coming in 2015. At least 1-2 USB 3.1 ports for future-proofing without need for adapters.
• HDMI 2.0: Not needed yet, but as someone who uses HDMI to output to my TV, might as well be ready for 4K output. Also DisplayPort 1.3 would be nice.
• Better GPU: Hoping 20nm/16nm brings a big upgrade.
• Better CPU: Pretty much a given but not a top priority right now since i7 Haswell is pretty fast already for most tasks. +10%-15% won't make much difference. +50% will but the days of that kind of annual improvement is over.
• PCIE based SSD: Still looking at real world benchmarks to know if it will make a noticeable difference. Might not be too much of a factor.

Things not expecting: lighter body, thinner design, quieter fans. At this point, I don't think the 15" design can get much lighter, thinner, or quieter in the near future (~5-7 years) without compromises. But if a laptop maker somehow makes a 3 lbs. 14mm 15" laptop without compromise, I would be tempted to upgrade. I also see DDR4 as not much of a real speed upgrade in the near future so don't really care about that just yet. In addition, more RAM (have 16GB) doesn't seem to be necessary in the next 2-3 years so not looking for 32GB models.

What about some of yours? And before anyone says, I know you can't totally future proof and if you need a laptop now, don't wait for future tech. This is for those who are happy with their current laptop and the question is what would it take to get you to upgrade?

 

IGZO PSR LCD screen

 

I just want to see a competently designed laptop that can manage games well. None of this, let's make it as thin as possible and throw thermal control and feature rich options out the window. I want to see some real engineering go into the thermal management of the CPU and GPU and system in general besides the standard heatpipe to heatsink with fan. There has to be a much more efficient alternative. Even with the Razer Blade I was expecting to see some very interesting cooling solution for the form factor, but no, it was nothing different, in fact, worse implementation than most laptops.

It would also be nice to see a full featured laptop. It seems they all are lacking in one respect or another: too few ports or badly placed ports, no screen options or just horrible screen quality, limited or no user upgrading, poor keyboard, tiny battery, bad speakers or placement, limited or no wi-fi options, etc.

I want The Full Monty. A highly engineered and well thought out design. I love my Clevo W230SS / Sager NP7338. But it has several things I'd like to see improved. Big one is most of the ports are on the right front. Move the three USB ports on the right over to the left side near the back (nothing there now). Ditch the VGA for DP and move that and the HDMI to the right rear of the laptop. Move speakers topside and get better speakers. Offer an LCD with brighter dark (I know seems odd, but dark scenes are real dark), and with no backlight bleed.

 

New system? Don't let me laugh.

I was looking at a new system yesterday since I really want to play some games again and the 1564 is my only machine. But seeing the laptops of today I felt like I was downgrading instead of upgrading. Except for the GPU, but that alone wasn't worth it to me so I decided against it.
Besides that I totally agree with HT. And to add to that, I'd love it if some manufacturers would upgrade from soldered to sockets (CPU, RAM, WIFI, some daughterboards)
As it is now it seems like I won't buy anything new until after Skylake, if Dell wasn't so stupid to block clarksfield quads/16GB support on my laptop then it would be even longer. Even then the only reason I'd do that is because my chassis is falling apart from usage. As a reminder, this machine was the cheapest 15" Dell around in 2010.

This industry just loves to keep innovation back as far as possible and sell us the same old crap in a more expensive package.
~Aeny

 

There is one thing that would certainly force me to buy a new system - overwhelming performance, i.e. situation when old system can't be upgraded to perform on par with cheap new ones and/or is unable to run the software I require well enough.

Another option would be much better storage expandability in the same or smaller form factor combined with noticeable performance boost, while not being worse in too many other aspects, especially if it can be fixed by upgrades.

Finally, I would obviously buy a new notebook that is better in all aspects than old one if there exists any.

 

Not necessarily thin but lighter machine. What is the point of a 17" ultra thin....

 

Profits.....!!

 

Ooh, so shiny!

 

It's funny to read this as someone who's still using a 2007 laptop. Granted, part of that is because I have a desktop. But HTWingNut and Aeny hit on some good points. I looked at replacements for my current laptop last year. And by and large, it wasn't possible to find a no-compromises upgrade, particularly with long-term reliability taken into account, and admittedly somewhat that now that I have a good desktop, I don't want to spend tons on a laptop, too. Really, there's two targets that could make me buy a new system.

The Mobile Warrior

This one's a tougher sell now that I'm not traveling much. But basically, it would be a mobile laptop that could still perform like a champ. None the the U series ULV processors; it'd have the real deal. Think the second-to-last generation VAIO Z, but modernized. It would have:

- 13-14" screen size. Not too big to travel, but not to small to enjoy using.
- Full power CPU, equivalent of high-end i5 or low-end i7. Dual-core would be acceptable, but it'd have to be fast dual-core.
- Dedicated GPU of at least mid-range calibur. Better than integrated graphics (even AMD integrated graphics, to really convince me to get it), but doesn't have to be the most powerful since it's not a huge laptop.
- Gorgeous screen that is not too glossy, and is not 1366x768 like most laptops of this size. Preferably 16:10 since vertical pixels rule. This has been one of the biggest reasons I haven't upgraded.
- Impressive speakers for a laptop.
- USB 3.0 ports, at least three of them. Also needs Ethernet and video out - either VGA or DVI.
- User serviceable without undue difficulty.
- Includes an optical drive.
- Ideally has some style as well.

Sony was able to do all this around 2009 - 2010 (save the USB3, of course), but what they had then was above my budget at the time, and by 2013 they didn't have anything in a similar category. And by now, that particular model is pretty old and wouldn't really be a significant upgrade for me. I haven't seen anything that quite fit the bill since. Felt like Dell could've done it with a more powerful Adamo, but their second-gen was not good.

The No-Compromise

This would be a 15-16" system. It would have:

- Gorgeous screen, at least 1440x900 resolution, preferably 1680x1050 or 1920x1200.
- Enthusiast class CPU and GPU. Perhaps a nice beastly desktop CPU... either a Core i5 quad-core, or maybe one of AMD's new power-optimized Vishera octo-cores. Either way, some definite horsepower.
- A plethora of ports. 4x USB, Ethernet, VGA, throw in some DVI, why not a PS/2 port for good measure? I've never needed an adapter for my current laptop, and a successor shouldn't need that, either.
- Very well-built. Runs cool, built to last. Think IBM ThinkPad or the older Dell Precisions.
- Respectable battery life with replaceable battery. Say 6-hour? I'm not too demanding by today's standards.
- Easily serviceable.

I've actually considered buying a previous-gen Precision with dedicated graphics to replace my laptop since they meet my criteria fairly well, and better than most of today's laptops. This would essentially be an updated version of that, perhaps slightly beefier. The ThinkPad W series is the other main inspiration for this one.

Now, realistically? It may well be when my laptop stops working properly. Short of that, it's likely to be wanting to play games on the go that just won't play on it. Alternatively, if there's ever a well-built laptop with a good screen with AMD's latest integrated graphics, it might be enough of an upgrade to convince me to trade up. But I'm not holding my breath on that.

I didn't mention storage/RAM since that's easy enough to upgrade. By and large, I'd just go with the cheapest configuration option and put whatever I wanted in later.

 

This would make me start saving: HP saying it's going to offer its 17" Mobile Workstation with a higher-than 1920x1080 resolution DreamColor 2 display. The successors to my 8740w Mobile Workstation were and continue to be gimped with a 1920x1080 version (mine has 1920x1200).

Nice thread idea.

 

Don't get your hope up. A possibly better screen doesn't make up for compromise here and there.

 

Two things:

1) A T100TA type system WITHOUT the ability to remove the screen from the keyboard (no docks; tablets suck). Along with 24+ hrs battery life.


2) An Broadwell i7 QC, 14.1" ThinkPad IPS 1920x1200 or higher display, with fingerprint sensor, dedicated mouse buttons and TrackPoint, along with DDR4 64GB+ RAM capability, 4x NGFF connections (or more), 12 hrs battery life (light usage) and non-white/blacklisted BIOS for AC wifi 3x3 cards too.

Don't care about weight or how thin this is; make sure it is designed to cool properly, has a huge battery that I can remove/replace at will and is NOT touch enabled and make it matte black and sturdy enough to use as a weapon.

Lenovo, a (blank) cheque is ready - give me a model number and we can trade now.

 

I'd buy a new system if it had 12 hours or more battery life when web surfing and doing office work, double or more the graphics power of my current system, enough of a better processor to be easily noticeable (let's say between 1.5-2 times the speed of my current one), NVMe or faster storage (around 2 GB/s sequential R/W), digital audio output, and does not sacrifice any of the advantages of my current system to achieve this (less than 16" screen at 1920x1080 resolution and outdoor-readable, lid that extends 180 degrees, full complement of ports, decent speakers, optical drive, solid keyboard & trackpad, 6.5 lbs or less, 1.4 inches thick or less, effective cooling with quiet fan, user serviceable and upgradeable, built to last)

 

Good topic.

• 18.4"-20" 1600p+ no-touch DreamColor+ (with OLED-type blacks)
• 2x GPU as MXM-type in 5+ year form factor
• 4x DDR4 for 32GB+ (need them)
• 2x CPU sockets (again 5+ yr) with non-compromising powerful 1-core/2-thread max. (more cores ≠ better)
• No eGPU; redundant on proper gpu-downclock and sacrifices raw cpu power
• 4x M.2 NGFF (nice suggestion)
• 4x PCIe v4 slots for the wifi, soundcard, tv-decoder etc.; think 'user-choice'
• A better cooling solution, HT's right; nothing's changed in 14+ years (year 2000 Dell had pipes), so:
• 1.) An aluminium body, lid too; it can dual-function as a heatsink
• 2.) No fans; pump cooling liquid through the hollow aluminium body, that's one vast dissipation area
• Battery only of use as a steady UPS (don't bother with mAh's when capacity drops 80% in 2 years)
• All ports in the back, where they belong, with extra USB's, BD-device, eSATAp and SDXC on the left
• Cost: NA

Sure, it'll weigh some 10kg/22lb+, but it's modular/upgradable, you can stand on it and there's no longer need for a desktop, workplace-KV(M) stuff or TB data-pumping. And forget this 3x devices for 3x situations hassle ('the cloud' ... ); one device for everything. Damn thing's not going anywhere, so might as well run 24h and access remotely with tablet/phone, if so desired.

 

What I've been saying all along: a more modular design. Particularly the display, since right now there's probably more potential innovation there then anywhere else. Besides, the idea of buying a premium machine just to have it upstaged by a medium tier model just a couple years later doesn't sit well with me. But for right now, a 4k 10 bit display, and the ability to support 64 GB ram.

The other things mentioned like more and faster ports (minimum 6 on DR) a lighter machine and longer battery life are nice, but none alone would compel me to upgrade. Definitely need to get rid of VGA/DVI. Yes, I know there're a lot of VGA monitors left. But to me, they're just a waste of space. Just go Apple and sell a dongle/converter. As a last incentive, I'm sure at least two SATA 6 eSATA ports could be placed in the average DR.

One more thing, speakers! I know there's so much you can do with such small package, but most iPhones can do a better job with audio. And that shouldn't be the case.

 

CPU increases are slowing way down now so it makes the need for upgrading for that reason much longer. GPU improves a bit more, but it's still wattage bound. To me, if companies and people embrace it, the e-GPU is the only path for significant annual performance gains. But this requires a very fast, low latency bus. Thunderbolt might have been it but it was just too expensive for mainstream.

As for battery life, it is continuing to improve and by Broadwell a full day usage should be possible in many laptops. See AnandTech. But we are a long way from 24 hour continuous usage.

Display quality is one area that continues to improve yoy with new materials. Sapphire glass, Gorilla Glass, IGZO, OLED, etc.

 

want a laugh? with the exception of a 1600 screen, my husband actually custom builds more or less this for some people using specialized desktop parts and either a pelican case or aluminum case. doesn't bother with ngff though as a riser cables let him use PCI SSD's etc and huge SAS or SATA drives. I wish I had pictures of it but the last one had dual K4000's, dual Xeon 8 core 64GB and watercooling. ( built for a datalogger / processor / 3D render unit for oilfield geology and well testing

now admittedly its a BIT large and not exactly a budget type computer or even practical for most but it is necessary for some.

edit: oops he did keep a 120MM fan on the lid of it for more airflow for the water unit. many of his design ideas actually come from Ben Heck and others whom have built many systems and consoled into briefcases etc.

a simpler less pain in the to build version without a keyboard and Wacom tablet on the top plate.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1206406/...ando-a-suitcase-briefcase-computer-done-right

and here is the pelican used as a chassis and casing
http://www.pelican.com/cases_detail.php?Case=1730

 

I wouldn't actually want 4K on a laptop screen size. At least, not now when the scaling for it is not particularly good. The 1920x1080 on my 15.6" work laptop is at the upper end of the pixel density I'm okay with. Keep it at non-scaled, native resolutions so everything works well, and keep the number of pixels reasonable is my current preference. Others can be the early adapters and iron out the scaling issues.

And I'd rather have a VGA port than have to have dongles (which take up more physical space than an extra port). Sure, VGA is from 1987, but it works well and is ubiquitous. Nothing like planning to watch a film on a projector, running into a roadblock because your friend's Mac can't connect to the projector and your friend either doesn't have a dongle or doesn't have it with them, and grabbing your Dell and saving the night because it has VGA.

DVI is okay, too, but has complications like two types of connectors (DVI-D and DVI-A) meaning sometimes your cables won't work, and still not being as reliably present on random external monitors you're likely to want to try to connect to. And DVI's maximum resolution of 1920x1200 is lower than VGA's (which tends to go up to 2048x1536 at 85 Hz, but can be higher resolution at lower frequencies with higher-enough quality equipment). Equipment quality does matter for VGA, though. VGA input is nice and crisp, indistinguishable from DVI, at 1920x1200 on my UltraSharp, but my parents had a noticeable difference going from VGA to HDMI on their lower-end twisted nemantic monitor (don't remember the exact manufacturer).

DisplayPort and HDMI only really are better at higher resolutions, and being pretty satisfied with 1920x1200 is definitely part of why I'm just not that interested in them. If I had an external 2560x1600 monitor, it probably would be worthwhile to get a graphics card with one of them rather than using dual-link DVI. But for the near-term (read: new laptop life expectancy) future, I expect to run into more cases where I need VGA than where I need > 1920x1200 resolution on an external display.

That is pretty awesome. In some ways that would be the ultimate LAN machine. Doesn't quite replace a traditional laptop for the lounging-around-on-the-sofa-surfing-the-Interwebs use case, but for a literal "mobile workstation", it's pretty great.

 

:laugh:

From that first link:

Low profile ... uhuh . Love the idea though, excepting the Xeons, it needs adequately programmed software to make them worthwhile (bet the oil companies write their own). Thanks for the suggestion, this would make a nice project ...

Maybe a tad more portable though ... and the cooling is still old-school, need a large 3D printer to make perforated aluminium. Or assemble scaled-down window frames (large inner surface area) for the outer case or some hollow panels. Dedicated design would be preferable though, perhaps IBM's interested .

 

Interesting question. My current machine is a 3 year old HP Pavilion dv6 (i7-2720, Radeon 6770M). I would buy something similar, but HP literally doesn't make this kind of laptop anymore -- in their idiotic quest for thinness, the closest they now come is a machine where you can have either an 850M GPU or a Core i7 CPU (but not both!). If I absolutely had to buy a laptop right now (and I would if my current one broke), it would be the ASUS N550JK. It's actually reasonably close to what I want, but not quite there. Ideally:

• 15" high quality display (IPS or better)
• Broadwell Core i7 quad-core
• >= 16GB RAM
• GPU with power/performance similar to the Maxwell 860M or better
• 1TB SSD
• >= 6 hours battery life
• Weight <= 6lbs

 

I want a razer blade 13"

Weight - 1.8kg
Chassis - same build quality meanwhile being smaller on the sides (less bezel please!)
Better speakers!
CPU - Skylake quad
Connections - 1x TB, 2x USB 3, 1x HDMI
GPU - 970m with a decent heatsink
screen - 1600p
RAM - 32GB

 

Razer blade has always been a laptop that I've wanted but they are extremely overpriced

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

CPU increases are not 'way down'. Single digit increases? Sure, but still significant when time is money.

It is easy to get 24 hour battery life. Just like I mentioned in my post you quoted; give me a bigger battery. (Thin and svelte=dumb but pretty to me).


Display quality is not something that needs new materials - we know how to do quality... just give it to us already.

 

I'm not really interested in any "new tech" as such, as laptops are more than fast and powerful enough as it is. someone just needs to make one good solid laptop that does everything right (like someone said earlier) and has all features and doesn't skimp on anything. the technology to make my perfect laptop is already out there scattered around existing laptops, someone just has to put it all together, and to be honest i don't know why they haven;t yet.

 

Mobile workstations are currently the best "no compromise" systems available (in my opinion), and even with those, some compromises still exist. The reason for the remaining compromises is partially financial and partly physics and technology limitations. The financial part is because no company wants to sink research and design money into building a machine that only a handful of people will buy. And then the physics and technology limits kick into place. As some examples, there are currently systems available with top-end graphics cards and processors. There are also currently systems that get 10 hours of battery life or even more, and there are systems that are very thin and svelte. There are systems built like a tank and systems that have more ports than most people would ever use at once. But there are no systems with top end performance, top tier battery life, the best possible build quality, all the ports anyone could need, and in a thin and light form factor. And despite all those things existing separately now, putting them all together would be extraordinarily difficult. So it's really not true that the technology's there and companies are just sitting on it. It would be much more accurate to say that while the technology is there to get one or two killer features on a system, the technology is not yet advanced enough to do it all in one.

 

It's not so easy as that. You can get long battery life with a larger chassis and power sipping components but there isn't a big demand for that. As djembe said above, manufacturers are looking at what sells the most and building systems for that. You might find boutique shops that cater to smaller user bases, but they tend to not have the R&D of the mass produced manufacturers.

Same with displays. Sure you can put an OLED screen, but until it is cost effective, you won't see them in laptops. Just because the materials for the so called dream laptop exist doesn't mean it is feasible to build.

Tech gets better. Battery life improves, performance improves (unfortunately slowly for CPU if Broadwell's rumored 5-7% increase are true for example), and display quality improves, but it takes time. The laptop 4 years from now will be better than the one built today, but you can't build the laptop 4 years from now today. That's why we are always in a constant cycle of upgrading.

 

My hang-ups are 2-fold:

a) Want 4K support to be stable for dual screens (+ onboard) through a docking station.

b) Want an Ultrabook from Dell with the docking connector that has a 6-10 hour battery life instead of the E7450's alleged life of only 3 hours.

If Dell can fix those two problems, which they probably will, then my D830's will be rightfully relegated to the scrap heap.

 

First things laptops just should have.

Narrow bezel screen

Spoiler

At this point it is absurd how few laptops have narrow bezels a few rare ones do, and plenty of DESKTOP monitors do. The technology IS there and laptops benefit from it more than anything except phones. Most laptops could either become 1" thinner or add under 1/2" and go up an entire screen size category.
Alienware 18 : could fit 20" (17"x10.6") 16:10 screen and have 13mm bezels
MSI GT70/Aorus x7 : 18.4" (16"x9") screen with 11mm bezels
MSI GS60 Stealth : 17.3" (15.1"x8.5") 16:9 screen need to add 10mm width for 8mm bezels though
some 13" can nearly handle 15.6" screens too

Laptops should either be smaller or have bigger screens almost across the board.

Speakers

Spoiler

Some laptops actually have good speakers, but most have truly terrible ones, same with headphone ports, many have an awful white noise constantly going through it ruining sound. Headphone and speaker ports should always be high quality, there are plenty of cheap high quality options out there and no excuse not to use them. Speakers themselves should either be good enough to be worth using, or truly tiny and not wasting valuable space. After all most people that care about sound quality will use headphones or external speakers anyway.

Even cell phones normally have better speakers than most laptops it seems.

screen Viewing angle and color

Spoiler

There are actual advantages to certain types of screens, like TN that tend to have poor viewing angles, and most people don't need screens with near perfect picture over 30 degree+ angles. That said it is unacceptable for a screen to have such bad viewing angles that no matter how you position it at least part of the picture is washed out or color shifted. At very minimum you should be able to get at least a 5 degree angle without losing quality. Even many TN screens manage this and a laptop using a worse one is not acceptable.

On color by now every screen should hit at least 70% sRGB. Some people prefer wide gamut near 100% aRGB or NTSC, but those do have drawbacks of there own so that should be more of an optional thing. I personally want around 90-100% sRGB OR 100% aRGB not 85% aRGB or some such though, those inbetweens get the disadvantages, but fail to get the true advantages.Screens with only 45-60% sRGB though are sad with present technology, and yet are all too common.

Screen Resolution

Spoiler

In general display resolution should fall into 1 of 3 categories 120-160ppi low end cheap screen for inexpensive laptops. 160-200ppi high quality screen for nice multimedia and gaming laptops. 230+ ppi 100% aRGB for professional graphics work and such.
in 16:9 ratio these convert to
screen: 3840x2160 / 2560x1440 / 1920x1080 / 1366x768
size : 4k / WQHD/ HD / Low
20.6 : 213 / 142 / 107 / 76
18.4 : 240 / 160 / 120 / 85
17.3 : 254 / 170 / 127 / 90
15.6 : 282 / 188 / 141 / 100
14.1 : 312 / 208 / 156 / 111
13.3 : 330 / 220 / 165 / 118
there obviously are other resolutions these are just examples.

Beyond this no display should ever go below max 60 hz, and 120 hz should be standard for displays on gaming oriented laptops.

Thickness heat and noise

Spoiler

Many laptops are presently trying to go ulrathin at the cost of sounding like a hairdryer, and sometimes even being hot enough to cause burns. At the same time there are some relics from the past that are still pushing 60mm (2.5") thick.

By now lower TDP CPU and GPUs have made it very possible to go thinner, however except for true ULV models Laptops should not be trying for 15-20mm. And ones with discrete GPUs shouldn't be going under 25mm (1"). 25mm is plenty thin enough to be highly portable but still leaves room for nearly double the fan thickness of 20mm (have to exclude thickness caused by display, keyboard, and case bottom from available fan thickness), going up to 37mm (1.5") is still portable and can quadruple fan size. Only top tier GPU in SLI machines like an alienware 18 should be going over 38mm (1.5") though and even they shouldn't be breaking 51mm (2") anymore.

On the topic of noise this should mostly be covered by proper thickness affecting fan speeds, but more specifically it would be good to avoid fan/harddisk/keyboard noise that breaks 35db during regular non-gaming usage. Going above that makes a computer annoying to others in situations such as classrooms, offices, etc... Having them go louder on the fans is fine when maxing out a gaming machine but some hit 40db or more while webbrowsing or such which should not happen.

More specifically on heat if the case is breaking 50 celsius, or the cpu/gpu is breaking 80 celsius after 30 mins of stress, it probably needs to be thicker or have a better cooling system.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Ok after that TLDR on the minimum laptops should have now for what I actually want.

A Razer blade pro but 30-35mm thick and with a 18.4" narrow bezel screen
-OLED display : WQHD or 3k screen : 90-100% sRGB coverage : 120 hz
-2 x SSD in Raid 0 : 1TB each if I could afford it otherwise a single 1TB and an open slot.
-no HDD or Optical drive to save on weight and space, but if possible space wise an ultrabay like on the y500 for if I ever needed either of them or another GPU in SLI or such. Be nice if the ultrabay could also handle an extra battery for extended use might be too difficult though.
-good headphone adapter that doesn't give white noise and has a wide frequency range.
-a 980m GPU assuming they are as good as I hope (pretty much want a top tier one)
-probably a I7 4712hq CPU its really powerful enough and runs cooler, otherwise if the cooling system can handle the heat without sounding like a lawnmower, maybe a 4800 or 4810. 49xx would be nice but they are so pricy for the minimal performance gain.
-16gb of RAM preferably with 2 open slots though I can live with 16gb max
-at least 1 USB 3.x port near the rear on each side.
-a non buggy switchblade that lives up to how cool it could be

__________________________________________________________________________________

Some ideas that could be cool but harder to do or maybe total flops

Spoiler

-full keyboard with keys like razers switchblade - could be really cool for multi language support or keymapping in games, keymapping to functions in photoshop, etc...
-phone/phablet dock instead of touchpad that uses the phones screen as a touchpad, but can easily be removed and still used to control the laptop during a presentation or such.
-not truly a laptop, but with vr such as oculus rift coming soon, a very compact laptop with no screen, or keyboard but good GPU designed to fit in a camelback style harness or such. Preferably under 2 kg. That has enough ports and good bluetooth etc capability to do VR gaming without being wired up to desktop or such. Be nice for if you just move your laptop from location to location, but always hook it up to external monitors and keyboards too.
-verticle pointing USB port instead of webcam so you can insert a one of your choice, preferably moified to be able to insert facing forward or reverse though not certain how possible that is using USB. Also would allow replacing your webcam with a 3D cam, or Track IR, etc...
-on a 17.3"+ model with a great display have a builtin wacom tablet where the razerblade pro put the swithblade.

 

15.4" or 17.1" upgradeable chassis (socketed CPU, MXM-B or whatever is next, 4x RAM slots and couple of M2s) with 16:10 FED display - CRT quality (fast response, great colors, half pixel drawing/resolution independence, no input lag, various refresh rates) in TFT package anyone? Especially if someone manages to shrink it enough to fit in something smaller than say 20" at contemporary resolution, or close. Last time (2011) the dot pitch was around .304 if I'm not wrong. Sony's FW900 has .23~.25 and this translates to 1920x1200 over 22.1" viewable... and this was some teenager ago I hope that we can see at least WUXGA in 15.4" which could be cranked up to 2560x1600 (as FW900 can do @75Hz) if one has such needs, or down to pretty much anything (useable). Oh and outstanding cooling is a must. I don't mind to ditch the ODD for some big a$$ fan and radiator. So yeah, this is what is going to convince me. Till then I'll get the hell out of the next best thing - 8740w (incoming) with DreamColor display (will get one down the road)

 

A thicker razor pro with 120hz?

precision with a 3d screen, gather some parts and you can have it now.. oh, and there is a gigantic slice battery for those that want battery life.

 

A return of 4:3 aspect ratio...with a DreamColor-grade QXGA LCD, 32GB of RAM or more once DDR4 becomes available, swappable GPUs and *excellent* cooling...

Non-island 7-row keyboard strongly preferred as well.

 

Looked through notebook checks review of the dell precision 6800. Its possible some earlier ones have something better, butI am certain they are even further behind in GPU performance

80% only 17.3" screen (decent bezel size so not a big detriment though)
80% max at 1080p (that is below what I want though again non horrible)
95% good display color and viewing angles fine here
25% Nvidia quadro 3100 GPU (nice for cad, but for gaming only near a 850m)
90% Cpu i7 4800mq
Fail% Heat cpu breaks 98 celcius and throttles
50% Noise good at idle, but 52 decible under load is EXTREMELY Loud
Adds in heavy HDD and Optical drives and such making it around 4kg
60% really expensive mainly from features I don't want

Overall aside from the heat/noise and GPU it would be acceptable but only barely, and those are deal-breakers, especially considering the price.

 

It sounds like you might have an FW900? It sounds like a pretty awesome monitor to me, but I've never so much as seen one in action. As I understand it, a main reason LCDs lag behind CRTs with input lag is that they're digital, not analog, and the digital processing of the signal takes time and thus adds lag. So whether we're likely to see LCDs with CRT-like input lag is questionable. I would think that they could just put a faster chip in the LCD to speed up signfalling, but that hasn't seemed to happen yet.

 

Yes, I have it and yes it's 42kg of awesome 24" WUXGA Flat Trinitron, what's not to like There's a technology that's around the corner which should solve most of the issues and was mentioned already - PSR = Panel Self Refresh (pretty much equal to AMD FreeSync and nVIDIA G-SYNC).

 

Argggh! You're joking, right?

No, no. We're not talking about mere laptops we're talking about workstation. For people who want and need the pinnacle of technology and mobile development. For the rest of the world with spartan need and which are easily satisfied, there's Apple and their ubiquitous MBP.

 

No I'm not. Which doesn't mean that I actually expect anything similar to happen...

Hey, I'll even take a 3:2 if the screen is an excellent one and the resolution high enough...

 

I buy a new laptop whenever I feel that for whatever reason my current one isn't meeting my needs and there's something out there today that better meets my needs.

As a result, I've upgraded after as little as 8 months (Asus UX32VD in October 2013 to Surface Pro this May), but on the other hand there's also been spans where I stuck with the same laptop for years (I used a Thinkpad W510 from late 2010 until I got the UX32VD).

 

PSR =/= freesync/gsync. Freesync/Gsync simply allow the internal refresh rate of the LCD to match the GPU output, thus, there is greater fluidity at lower framerates.
However, you are correct in that PSR will solve most issues that plague laptops nowadays. The LCD is the single biggest power hog on a mobile device, with the iGPU components + bus link to that LCD being a close second. PSR will allow the LCD to store and display static elements from an internal RAM cache and thus allowing the iGPU + data bus to go in to deep sleep.
IGZO technology will reduce the operational wattage of the LCD screen by as much as 30-40% thus greatly reducing the power footprint. PSR + IGZO LCD technology has the potential to yield massive improvements to battery life.

I already have an example of PSR technology operational on my Nexus 5. The LCD only consumes about 30%-40% of the average battery runtime as opposed to 80% on my old SGS2.

 

I agree with this one. Ideally a 10" with 1366x768 is fine, but with an mSATA or M.2 slot and 4GB or 8GB RAM and 64-bit support, < $500 I'm sold. They could knock 0.5 lbs out of that thing without the dock/tablet configuration too.

edit: apparently there will be a new quad core Atom chip in H1 2015 with 64-bit support and can use up to 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM, not to mention faster yet, although I think a slightly higher TDP (I think current Z3740/3770 are ~ 4-4.5W TDP). Even at 6W TDP it should be able to be passively cooled. Would be nice to see a 10" built around that guy.

 

As far as I know both FreeSync and G-SYNC are build over PSR with performance in mind rather than economy as it is intended.

As for IGZO, it's nice, but if paired with TN it would still suck picture quality wise. A bit less, but yeah, still crappy. I'm not very sure but the very first laptop to feature IGZO was indeed paired with a TN panel and everyone was disappointed. Other technology to look forward is IGZO MEMS, a lot closer to the market than FED (no news since the AUO acquisition, although the wikipedia article was edited recently to exclude some of the drawbacks), but not as awesome

 

Amoled............

 

ToughBooks with Core I7 Quad, 8 to 16 GB RAM capable, and better Iris Pro Graphics and still Full Rugged.

 

You can put 16GB of RAM in the CF-31/CF-52 right now...and I wouldn't expect an i7 in a Panasonic...:hi2:

 

Considering the fact that I just bought a new laptop, I'll be waiting 4-6 years. Anyways...

- Anti-reflective touchscreen. 1-2 years ago I read about the development of a touchscreen that combined the qualities of glossy and matte screen while still retaining a smooth surface.

- Panel Self-Refresh panel (less power consumption when a static image is being displayed)

- 16nm post-Maxwell/Tonga and if the Tock of Cannonlake (new architecture on 10nm) is appealing

OR: AMD APU has stacked DRAM cache by then, or at least something to increase bandwidth over just relying on faster DDR4

- +12 hours of WiFi/movie battery usage, preferably if it can be extended with a larger battery or an external battery slice

- Cheaper M.2 SSDs. Right now they're fairly expensive compared to 2.5" SSDs.

 

If you consider that SATA has only been mainstream since 2005, there's a decent chance that M.2 will be replaced by another form factor or transfer protocol in 6 years.

 

Most likely it's just going to be something like SATA Express and M.2 2.0.

PCI-E 4.0 final specifications are suppose to be available around 2015, which means it will show up on consumer hardware in 2016-2017. I presume the next SATA Express revision will use PCI-E 4.0.

 

Dude, that's one ancient laptop ... * cough* .

 

The X1 Carbon high-PPI screen seems to have some kind of anti-glare surface.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...ays-imply-glass-therefore-glossy-screens.html

The NotebookCheck review update called it " semi-matte" which "still outperforms a similarly bright glossy panel".

 

Regarding large screen portable briefcase computers...

Some people would like larger high-density screens and/or greater screen area, like this developer.
Currently two alternatives are external displays or briefcase computers.

External displays:

• External desktop displays are usually heavy and not designed to be moved.
• Portable USB DisplayLink monitors are one solution, but currently are usually not high resolution.
  (Asus does offer FHD, landscape or portrait. Pogue)
  (Also, USB displays that run off the notebook power may also make the notebook fans run more noisily.)
• Portable not-only-USB external displays might be an alternative, such as
  NextComputing Viewport (17-inch WUXGA 1920&times;1200 16:10 dvi/html/displayport), though it is not high-PPI either.

Briefcase computers with fold-out display options:

• NextComputing Vigor (screens like the ViewPort)
• MaxVision MaxPac XL (currently up to three 23-inch FHD displays, or 21.5-inch for the non-XL version).
  Announced versions can have up to six 24 inch displays.

(Apparently, no UHD 3840&times;2160 LCD screens between 24-inch and 15.6 inch are manufactured, so the 24-inch displays may be necessary for UHD.) [Panasonic's 20-inch 3840×2560 (3:2) display in its Toughpad 4K might be an option.]

(Unfortunately, these briefcase computers currently appear to be over airlines' carry-on weight limits ( varies as of 2009). Building a computer in a Pelican case might help reduce the weight, though airflow is more limited.)

 

Funny how that so often manages to be the case. I'm sick and tired of airlines and their restrictions. Who died and made them king anyway? @#$%$%^^&&*^*!


/rant.