Intel throws sand in the face of 'musclebooks' with 10nm Tiger Lake tech Intel is talking up a new generation of laptop and mobile workstation CPUs that it says will deliver modest performance gains and lighten laptops for power users. The new Tiger Lake processor range – officially the 11th-generation Core H – is built on a 10nm process and employs Willow Cove cores. PCIe4 and Wi-Fi 6 are …
I'd like to add a physical, full sized gigabit ethernet jack, a headphone jack, a full sized SD card reader (you can use an adapter to allow the smaller cards, but you can't go the other direction), and an SVGA port for those damned projectors that haven't been upgraded since before the last ice age.
I don't mind a heavy laptop, I had one of the early Compaq luggables & a Commodore spine crusher as a kid so the kids these days don't know WTF a *real* heavy machine feels like, and all those "Thin & Light" Calvin Kline crack model thingamajigs are so flimsy you don't dare even use one as a coaster.
BAH! Danged whippersnappers anyer newfangled pieces o' shite. Give me a REAL computer, dagnabbit!
*Shakes a palsied fist*
And get offn muh laaaaawn! =-D
+1 A solid frame and a bigger battery wouldn't hurt even if it added a kilo.
People must be so weak and feeble these days a couple of pounds would do them good.
While we're at it, a standard for swappable laptop components would be great.
With a 17" screen I assert that your device is not a laptop - it's a portable computer.
And those can rightfully have different requirements from a laptop.
If the M1 supported an eGPU then I'd get one pretty fast - I have a little doodad that translates USB-C to a variety of larger ports and takes up less space than a pack of cards, I have an eGPU to attach to my monitor array at home.
Not requiring a power adaptor all day would easily cover the additional "hassle" of carrying a dongle. And I don't need to beef up the whole chassis just to fit the port in...
USB-C might not be perfect for all use cases (in particular I think every manufacturer should adopt a magsafe style connector for power, even alongside USB-C PD), but it's actually extremely capable, and in the case of laptops makes a good deal of sense - you want 6 full sized USB ports? Fine - plug them in. You want HDMI, he wants 10GB ethernet, fine plug them in. You want serious storage capability, plug it in.
The only real question is "how many USB-C ports", and that's fairly easy to vary.
IIRC USB-C is a physical port specification, rather than an electrical one.
USB3 (and all the constantly renamed variants), USB4, Displayport (?), Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 are all possible electrical specifications which can be presented by a USB-C port - in addition, of course to power...
No, it's not confusing at all... < /s>
So yes - I'd like to see widespread adoption of thunderbolt, but not all the ports on every device need to support it (though they do need good labelling - maybe the TB ports could have a little dimple alongside them, and be coloured differently to the USB only ports - remember the green/purple for mouse/keyboard?, or the introduction of blue for USB3 (now called something else)).
For the type of person that "requires" 6 full size USB type A ports on their "laptop", I'd suggest that adding a couple of "only" USB capable USB-C ports is a reasonable choice for a manufacturer.
"In the presentation delivered to The Register, the company's most potent pitch was its characterisation of laptops offered to creative types and workstations as "musclebooks".
Things must be really bad at Intel, and it looks like they are really desperate.
They are talking to El Reg!
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