Paper Tiger Lake? El Reg gets its talons on the first Intel Core i7 Honor MagicBook 14 In November, Huawei bid farewell to Honor, its youth-focused brand that spanned mobile, PC, and wearables. The reason was obvious: American sanctions had devastated the company supply chain and it was unable to effectively target customers outside of China, or produce kit to the same volumes it once did. As an independent …
The article fails to mention that Honor is a Chinese brand and as such is under control of CPC.
I think the review could be much more interesting if covered what kind of telemetry is being sent, what chips are being used and so on.
I would think that it is a bit like buying a communication device from the Soviet Union - probably includes your personal handler that you don't know about :-)
There are a lot of Chinese companies making computers and a lot of non-Chinese companies making them in China. While it's theoretically possible that all those people are making compromised kit, you'd expect someone to have found something about it by now. I require more proof when dealing with such an accusation. If you can prove they produced something with a deliberate security flaw before, that would change things. I know of no such proof.
I'm happy to have something thicker, if it means more ports, occasionally useful stuff like an optical drive, better battery (preferably easy to remove and replace), better ventilation / cooling. Don't get this mania for the ultra slim... Obviously you don't want something massively heavy but the thinness mania irritates me (same on phones - give me a thicker phone with an easy* to replace battery please FFS)
* and by easy I mean a few seconds (unclip the old one, clip in the new one) - not "easy" in terms of a "solution" that involves faffing around with screwdrivers to remove screws (that always seem to be the one head type you don't have a tool for) and / or heat guns to melt glue etc.
There are options for us nerds but have to look a bit harder. I recently got myself a Fujitsu E series lifebook - amazingly still made in Japan. It's a reassuringly thick (but not excessively heavy) black brick. Trapdoor on the bottom for RAM, will eat two 2.5" drives and an SSD, has an old school docking port and full size ethernet plus oodles of USB ports. I paid around US$1200 for it in Taiwan which I think is pretty reasonable for a Japan made i7 laptop with 3 year warranty. I originally wanted a Toughbook but they are way overpriced and screen quality is not great.
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