Review: Huawei's Matebook X Pro laptop is forgetful and forgettable Rightly or wrongly, Huawei has acquired a reputation for being a risky proposition, security-wise. It almost beggars belief, then, that the Chinese goliath's flagship Matebook X Pro laptop contains a literal hidden webcam secreted under a fake function key on the top row of its keyboard. Touch the key and it clicks lightly, …
Try and argue the point: did Huawei acquire a reputation or did the USA bestow it upon Huawei?
Yes.
The two statements are not mutually exclusive. If someone bestows something upon me, I have acquired it. Rightly, wrongly, willingly or otherwise. It seems to me that the "Rightly or wrongly" part of the line is probably more worthy of debate than the exact semantics of the word "acquired".
On the actual point you are bringing up, I am in no doubt that the USA saddled Huawei with that reputation. I strongly suspect that there is no single reason why they did so, but fear of the Chinese government planting security vulnerabilities in their gear and the opportunity to give USA companies a leg up both played a major part, I believe.
Come off it.
The only point you tried to make was to claim that the article author was being a shill and to do that you deliberately removed the context from the quote by removing the first part of the sentence.
Where or why or how Huawei gained that reputation is utterly irrelevant to the article so not something that I need to address.
You are, of course, free to babble on about it to you heart's content.
In 2003 Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler traveled to Shenzhen to confront Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei with evidence of Huawei's theft of Cisco IP. The evidence included typos from Cisco's technical manuals that also appeared in Huawei's, after being presented with the evidence Ren replied "coincidence".
In June 2004, a Huawei employee was caught diagramming and photographing circuit boards after-hours from a competitor booth at the SuperComm trade show.
Huawei added to it's reputation by selling kit to Iran in violation of sanctions. It even produced internal company records in 2010 that show it was directly involved in sending prohibited U.S. computer equipment to Iran’s largest mobile-phone operator.
In July 2010, Motorola filed an amended complaint that named Huawei as a co-defendant in its case against Lemko for alleged theft of trade secrets.
In 2012, Australian intelligence officials informed their U.S. counterparts that they had detected a sophisticated intrusion into the country's telecommunications systems. It began, they said, with a software update from Huawei that was loaded with malicious code.
In September 2014, Huawei faced a lawsuit from T-Mobile US, which alleged that Huawei stole technology from its Bellevue, Washington, headquarters. T-Mobile claimed in its filed suit that Huawei's employees snuck into a T-Mobile lab during the period of 2012–2013 and stole parts of its smartphone testing robot Tappy.
Just to name a few things.
I agree, this struck me as an odd way to start this review. As if setting us up for the rest of what is to come.
Frankly, if my choice of network kit (some bits I'm in charge of currently) comes up and it's between Cisco (way overpriced, and with known backdoors, and a very poor security record) and Huawei (moderately priced, "alleged" backdoors [none alleged by actual infosec pros but by beaurocrats], and *some* bungled releases from a security perspective), it'll be an easy one to make.
It is possible that there exist people who don't use webcams (or if they do, prefer using a dedicated webcam) but *do* like the prospect of a 3:2 screen. (MS Surface devices are often 3:2, some previous Matebooks, like MacBooks, are 16:10). They know who they are.
It's rare to read a laptop review that mentions strange general glitchiness. The prospective buyer is left scratching their head at whether it was a single duff hardware component in that particular laptop, or if the model range uses drivers that aren't of the best quality. Maybe it worked perfectly in the factory but a later Windows update broke something. It's not a reviewer's job to diagnose these things.
"It's not a reviewer's job to diagnose these things."
But "a laptop review that mentions strange general glitchiness" is quite correct. Reviewer was sent a machine _to review_ that had strange glitches and odd choices. What were they supposed to comment on?
"The prospective buyer" is rightly warned there may be dragons in those machines. (Pun intended)
Sorry, I wasn't clear: I meant it *was* the reviewers job to mention glitches, but that it is beyond their remit to *diagnose* the cause of said glitches. The mere idea of diagnosing glitches makes me shiver in fearful memory of 1990s PC gaming because the fault could be hardware, drivers, Windows oddness, intermittent, and or never to be fixed. Urgh. I couldn't be arsed to troubleshoot that sort if thing, and I wouldn't expect the reviewer to faff around troubleshooting either.
My comment at how unusual it was to read of general glitchiness wasn't meant at a criticism of the reviewer. However, I can see how it could read as such, so I'm sorry that I left room for ambiguity.
I don't often read of vague glitchiness in laptop reviews, that is all. It seemed worth remarking on. I hypothesised, a, duff unit, b, immature drivers, c, duff windows update, d, random annoying shit the way of all computers ever e, unknown unknown, f, etc etc. g, cat...
If he's testing alternative operating systems, that's hardly Huawei's problem. And of course running an emulator in Windows will be slower. He may as well criticise the hardware for not running Apple macOS.
It would have been more informative to report on the transcode time after booting with a Linux USB stick and using Handbrake.
Regardless, it looks like linux may be thermally throttling the CPU by default, see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=272947
@Martin an gof
You don't say. See i9-10980HK vs i7-1165G7.
Apples and oranges. They're different. Who'd have thought?
Why did the reviewer think the comparison is relevant?
The article compared the machine under review with another machine and pointed out that there is a distinct difference between their ability to cope with the sort of task that someone reading The Register is likely to be interested in.
That is pretty much a text-book example of telling your audience something relevant.
This is only a short End-User review of a commodity laptop, not a complete technical breakdown, so the precise reason *why* the difference in performance exists isn't really important.
Ok, I'll bite.
It is entirely expected that natively the i7 is slower at transcoding than the i9 - six minutes against four minutes, or in other words, half as long again (150%). Transcoding is usually a highly parallel task, but the i7 is a newer generation processor, has more L2 and L3 cache (per core - according to your link), has a higher base clock speed, faster all-core turbo, faster memory (if fitted) and faster PCIe, so slightly unexpectedly it doesn't take twice as long as would be expected if the core count was the only thing that mattered.
However, it was slightly unexpected that under virtualisation the same task took "more than double the time". There's obviously something else going on. Where is the bottleneck under virtualisation that doesn't show up natively?
Not that I'm in the market for either, but yes, absolutely this is the sort of "oh, by the way, I noticed this interesting thing" I quite appreciate in reviews.
M.
All valid and relevant points but I would have expected the readers of this site to also be interested in the root cause of the observed symptom. Apparently they aren't - they're more interested in defending their own corner.
Personally, I think the cause is almost certainly software related and the hardware discussion is a red herring. It would be useful to know if the same issue was observed with different virtualisation software or version of Ubuntu. If the fans are coming on more often than under Windows, there's a good chance there are other things at play. There are also hints, in other forums, that incorrect graphics drivers under Linux impact performance under virtualisation.
Did you miss how it got compared to a different laptop doing the same thing, I.E. also in a VM? It's a test of performance of a demanding task under Linux in a VM under Windows running on the machine, and the Huawei did worse than the Asus. That's a comparison. Why that is is not the reviewer's job to explain, but there are various possible reasons that virtualization might be slower on one machine versus another.
Starting to thing that you are trying to say that reviews should only compare two machines when they have the same CPU? What about if they have different amounts of RAM or different drive technologies?
Perhaps the only unbiased review is one where you refuse to compare two laptops because one has a dark grey shell and the other is more of a bluey grey?
Sure, a different CPU. However the performance difference in Windown vs a VM is dispropotianate, which is something that is likely to be a factor for many El Reg readers. There are times when Linux/FreeBSD/etc in VM is more convenient than dual booting despite how much one might dislike Windows.
From the article:
The machine did decently on my go-to nasty job: running Handbrake to transcode a five-minute 4K video file down to 1080p, consuming six minutes and 20 seconds for the job. That was just two minutes slower than the Corei9-powered Asus laptop I used on my last Desktop Tourism adventure.
However, the Huawei struggled mightily running the same workload in an Ubuntu VM under VMware Workstation. The laptop's fans got quite a workout as it struggled through the job in 16:11, more than double the time needed by the Asus.
So 130% time taken in Windows, 200%+ in VM. May not matter to you but would do for me. Although to be fair i'm in the awkward minority where lack of WWAN will make it no sale anyway.
I've been in video conferences with people whose laptops' cameras and microphones are below the screen rather than above it. It's a very creepy camera angle and when they start typing it gets worse. The microphone is also far too close to the speakers and the resulting sound quality is terrible.
I don't understand how manufacturers consistently get it so wrong.
"you can do better for the $2,000 or so Huawei charges for it"
This perhaps begs the question as to why this review series didn't start with the MacBook Pro as its first test?
Yes, I am a bit of a fanboy (but not droolingly so), but I also rather suspect that any other laptop available this year is just simply going to struggle to compare favourably with it, if you're looking for something with serious oomph?
Dunno why you got downvotes - Apple haters I guess; they're a horrendous company, but then, show me a big corporate that isn't? Google, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo... Huawei?
At $2000 I'm kind of astounded at the poor value indicated here. Apple charges a LOT under Tim Cook for just about anything, but for $1999 US I can get the 14" MBP with 16GB+512GB and the M1 Pro that'll beat this Lenovo machine in just about any test with a battery life that by the sounds of things would be at least double, if not triple, the reviewer's quoted uptime of 6 hours, coupled with maximum performance available at all times, rather than only when plugged into the mains.
Now, OK, sure, it's heavier and bigger and maybe you want 3:2 etc. etc; the Mac *will* run Windows 11 ARM unofficially and very fast too, but yeah, it's macOS native and Linux almost-native, not x86, so we're not comparing like with like. Even so, if the size and weight are the issue, the 13" MBP same spec with M1 would almost certainly still outperform the Lenovo in just about every metric and cost "only" $1699 despite Apple's horrific markup for the 8->16GB bump from standard MBP 13" spec.
The PC world is meant to offer better value - but clearly, not in this case. It seems that some PC vendors need to catch up; prices need to drop, stability needs to improve and surely 11th gen or earlier Intel is largely a joke at this point, unless (IMHO) it's only at a 3-figure "budget"-ish price tag.
Desktop Tourism My 20-year-old son is an aspiring athlete who spends a lot of time in the gym and thinks nothing of lifting 100 kilograms in various directions. So I was a little surprised when I handed him Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio and he declared it uncomfortably heavy.
At 1.8kg it's certainly not among today's lighter laptops. That matters, because the device's big design selling point is a split along the rear of its screen that lets it sit at an angle that covers the keyboard and places its touch-sensitive surface in a comfortable position for prodding with a pen. The screen can also fold completely flat to allow the laptop to serve as a tablet.
Below is a .GIF to show that all in action.
It seems promoters of RISC-V weren't bluffing when they hinted a laptop using the open-source instruction set architecture would arrive this year.
Pre-orders opened Friday for Roma, the "industry's first native RISC-V development laptop," which is being built in Shenzen, China, by two companies called DeepComputing and Xcalibyte. And by pre-order, they really mean: register your interest.
No pricing is available right now, quantities are said to be limited, and information is sparse.
Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE has announced what it claims is the first "cloud laptop" – an Android-powered device that the consumes just five watts and links to its cloud desktop-as-a-service.
Announced this week at the partially state-owned company's 2022 Cloud Network Ecosystem Summit, the machine – model W600D – measures 325mm × 215mm × 14 mm, weighs 1.1kg and includes a 14-inch HD display, full-size keyboard, HD camera, and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. An unspecified eight-core processors drives it, and a 40.42 watt-hour battery is claimed to last for eight hours.
It seems the primary purpose of this thing is to access a cloud-hosted remote desktop in which you do all or most of your work. ZTE claimed its home-grown RAP protocol ensures these remote desktops will be usable even on connections of a mere 128Kbit/sec, or with latency of 300ms and packet loss of six percent. That's quite a brag.
NanoAvionics has unveiled a 4K satellite selfie taken by a GoPro Hero 7 as the company's MP42 microsatellite flew 550km above the Coral Sea and Great Barrier Reef.
Space selfies are hardly new. Buzz Aldrin snapped an image of himself during 1966's Gemini 12 mission, and being able to get a picture of spacecraft can be invaluable when diagnosing issues.
The MP42 microsatellite was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 earlier this year and the camera (mounted on a space-grade selfie stick) sprung out to snap shots to demonstrate techniques to check for payload deployment, micrometeoroid impacts, and general fault detection.
Arm has at least one of Intel's more capable mainstream laptop processors in mind with its Cortex-X3 CPU design.
The British outfit said the X3, revealed Tuesday alongside other CPU and GPU blueprints, is expected to provide an estimated 34 percent higher peak performance than a performance core in Intel's upper mid-range Core i7-1260P processor from this year.
Arm came to that conclusion, mind you, after running the SPECRate2017_int_base single-threaded benchmark in a simulation of its CPU core design clocked at an equivalent to 3.6GHz with 1MB of L2 and 16MB of L3 cache.
Updated Microsoft's latest set of Windows patches are causing problems for users.
Windows 10 and 11 are affected, with both experiencing similar issues (although the latter seems to be suffering a little more).
KB5014697, released on June 14 for Windows 11, addresses a number of issues, but the known issues list has also been growing. Some .NET Framework 3.5 apps might fail to open (if using Windows Communication Foundation or Windows Workflow component) and the Wi-Fi hotspot features appears broken.
If Windows Autopatch arrives in July as planned, some of you will be able to say goodbye to Patch Tuesday.
Windows Autopatch formed part of Microsoft's April announcements on updates to the company's Windows-in-the-cloud product. The tech was in public preview since May.
Aimed at enterprise users running Windows 10 and 11, Autopatch can, in theory, be used to replace the traditional Patch Tuesday to which administrators have become accustomed over the years. A small set of devices will get the patches first before Autopatch moves on to gradually larger sets, gated by checks to ensure that nothing breaks.
Dell has pulled the lid off the latest pair of laptops in its XPS 13 line, in the hopes the new designs, refreshed internals, and an unmistakably Apple-like aesthetic of its 2-in-1 approach can give them a boost in a sputtering PC market.
Both new machines are total redesigns, which is in line with Dell's plans to revamp its XPS series. Dell users considering an upgrade will want to take note, especially those interested in the XPS 13 2-in-1: There is quite a bit of difference, for both enterprise and consumer folks.
The XPS 13 maintains its form factor – for the most part – but gets a new smooth aluminum chassis that makes it look more like a MacBook Air than ever. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing: the new design is reportedly lighter and thinner, too.
The United States last week quietly eased its ban on investors holding stock in, or otherwise profiting from, Chinese companies that are felt to have ties to China's military.
The ban was first imposed by president Donald Trump with a 2020 executive order that forbade US-based individuals or entities owning shares in private Chinese companies identified as offering support to China's military, intelligence, and security agencies, by auditing their "development and modernization."
President Biden later issued a similar order of his own.
WWDC Apple opened its 33rd annual Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday with a preview of upcoming hardware and planned changes in its mobile, desktop, and wrist accessory operating systems.
The confab consists primarily of streamed video, as it did in 2020 and 2021, though there is a limited in-person component for the favored few. Apart from the preview of Apple's homegrown Arm-compatible M2 chip – coming next month in a redesigned MacBook Air and 13" MacBook Pro – there was not much meaningful innovation. The M2 Air has a full-size touch ID button, apparently.
Apple's software-oriented enhancements consist mainly of worthy but not particularly thrilling interface and workflow improvements, alongside a handful of useful APIs and personalization capabilities. Company video performers made no mention of Apple's anticipated AR/VR headset.
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