A thin & light Ryzen notebook would be awesome. Unfortunately, the ones that have been produced seem to be rather lacking in battery life. Not sure if that's because of Ryzen itself, or manufacturers just not giving a crap about power management and wanting a box to tick off for "more choices."
There's a known power bug that people have been talking about which I've experienced in practice.
I bought my machine anyway since 4-5 hour battery life is great from my perspective (previous laptop was 2 hours, yikes!), but it's definitely noticeable.
The reason it's clearly a bug: power usage while in sleep mode is almost 0, as expected, so it's not leakage or something. Power usage while being actively used at high utilization is also as expected, at nearly 5 hours (my personal nonscientific benchmark, but I was running a few VMs and compiling/deploying to them, etc.). It's power usage while idle that's somehow way higher than expected.
You may want to look at the Huawei Matebook D. Huawei use the same chassis for their Ryzen and Intel based models and configured it very properly. This is actually in the same category as the Acer, but you get the Ryzen Model for €/ GBP 599 rather than 1,099 that you pay for the Acer. Note: The Ryzen based Matebook does not have a touchscreen.
Ordered one myself as soon as it was launched in Europe and am very happy with it - no issues wrt battery life, noise, heat or configuration issues. It's a very nice notebook. Still need to test it for light gaming though.
For some yes / theoretically (same as ARM) but e.g. not Spoiler. The thing is that Intel CPU are the only ones who are vulnerable to *all* recently discovered security bugs.
No. AMD Ryzen CPUs are not as vulnerable as Intel.
There are some exploits for which AMD's products are virtually immune (because Google's research team worked on hacking them for like a year, but did not succeed) .
And for other exploits, you need to fulfill a lot of conditions to make your AMD system vulnerable (like install Linux and change the default Kernel settings to open up to the hack) .
I haven't dug into mitigations for these attacks yet, my Linux kernel-hacking season is usually after Spring break.
I am glad AMD is putting pressure on Intel, and still I love our little 7-Watt Chromebooks and HP Stream Windows things. My job as family IT manager is nearly obsolete.
Power efficiency is too low for thin&lights. There's only so much that can be blamed on "power bugs" and "it's just a poor thermal design" when every design from every manufacture has the same issues and the 'bugs' continue to remain unfixed after a year and a half and two generations of chip. Zen simply doesn't have the benefit of the last decade Intel has spend crushing Core's idle (and load) power and adding fine-grained power gating.
Less than 1kg means you can keep it on during take-off and landing (if you can convince the cabin crew): Perhaps they should laser engrave a big "Garanteed to weigh below 1kg" on the top...
Lithium in the chassis makes me think it can be charged... but shouldn't you be able to make it lighter (if thicker) with plastics or even bamboo?
Still bothers me that the chassis may be good for 50 years or even 500, while the content will age like the battery.
Why is the webcam in laptops worse than the cameras in $200 smartphones? Here we are several years since I got a C920 webcam, and laptops cannot beat it, while smartphones surpassed it years ago.
+1 on that! The selfie cam in a $200 smartphone beats the pants off most, if not all, laptop webcams. Really annoying shortcoming in a business laptop, which is highly likely to be used for at least occasional video conferencing. The sensor for a good selfie cam costs under $5 (Sony or Samsung make several variants), add maybe another $5 for the lens assembly, minus the cost or existing (bad) webcam, and for a few $ more in build costs, you (manufacturer) have something to crow about.
Because it's not needed. You don't want high resolution webcam in most situations because of bandwidth limitations in most places. So all you are going to do with a high resolution camera is cause problems for video conference, which if you worked in a business, then you don't want to be explaining to your boss why the video is choppy. Or the person on the other end trying to get your high resolution feed.
My lenovo yoga pro (not a thinkpad but still pro) has a next to perfect webcam. Don't know about the specs, only know I get a compliment ones and a while on the sharpness of my videofeed (doing a lot of videoconferences, but then again, who thinks of complementing on video quality?) So it can be done.
Acer has introduced its new thin-and-light commercial notebook aimed at small and medium businesses. Outfitted with a 14-inch display and based on Intel’s Core i5/i7 processors, the TravelMate X514-51 weighs only 2.16 pounds (980 grams). The laptop also supports a host of security features required by businesses. https://ttrockstars.org/
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Phartindust - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
Too bad they chose Intel. What with Specter, Meltdown, and now Spoiler, you'd think more business/travel laptops would be rocking Ryzen.FSWKU - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
A thin & light Ryzen notebook would be awesome. Unfortunately, the ones that have been produced seem to be rather lacking in battery life. Not sure if that's because of Ryzen itself, or manufacturers just not giving a crap about power management and wanting a box to tick off for "more choices."lmcd - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
There's a known power bug that people have been talking about which I've experienced in practice.I bought my machine anyway since 4-5 hour battery life is great from my perspective (previous laptop was 2 hours, yikes!), but it's definitely noticeable.
The reason it's clearly a bug: power usage while in sleep mode is almost 0, as expected, so it's not leakage or something. Power usage while being actively used at high utilization is also as expected, at nearly 5 hours (my personal nonscientific benchmark, but I was running a few VMs and compiling/deploying to them, etc.). It's power usage while idle that's somehow way higher than expected.
Irata - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
You may want to look at the Huawei Matebook D. Huawei use the same chassis for their Ryzen and Intel based models and configured it very properly.This is actually in the same category as the Acer, but you get the Ryzen Model for €/ GBP 599 rather than 1,099 that you pay for the Acer.
Note: The Ryzen based Matebook does not have a touchscreen.
Ordered one myself as soon as it was launched in Europe and am very happy with it - no issues wrt battery life, noise, heat or configuration issues. It's a very nice notebook.
Still need to test it for light gaming though.
abufrejoval - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
Unfortunately most people were unhappy with the speed of in-order designs like the first Atoms.And while Ryzen may be safe against some of these exploits, return oriented programming can still ruin your day or your livelyhood.
Blame it all on John von Neumann or even Eckert and Mauchly.
watersb - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Stupid question: aren't Ryzen processors vulnerable to these attacks?Irata - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
For some yes / theoretically (same as ARM) but e.g. not Spoiler.The thing is that Intel CPU are the only ones who are vulnerable to *all* recently discovered security bugs.
IGTrading - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
No. AMD Ryzen CPUs are not as vulnerable as Intel.There are some exploits for which AMD's products are virtually immune (because Google's research team worked on hacking them for like a year, but did not succeed) .
And for other exploits, you need to fulfill a lot of conditions to make your AMD system vulnerable (like install Linux and change the default Kernel settings to open up to the hack) .
watersb - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link
Thanks for answers!And today I found
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-processor-in...
I haven't dug into mitigations for these attacks yet, my Linux kernel-hacking season is usually after Spring break.
I am glad AMD is putting pressure on Intel, and still I love our little 7-Watt Chromebooks and HP Stream Windows things. My job as family IT manager is nearly obsolete.
edzieba - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Power efficiency is too low for thin&lights. There's only so much that can be blamed on "power bugs" and "it's just a poor thermal design" when every design from every manufacture has the same issues and the 'bugs' continue to remain unfixed after a year and a half and two generations of chip. Zen simply doesn't have the benefit of the last decade Intel has spend crushing Core's idle (and load) power and adding fine-grained power gating.abufrejoval - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
Less than 1kg means you can keep it on during take-off and landing (if you can convince the cabin crew): Perhaps they should laser engrave a big "Garanteed to weigh below 1kg" on the top...Lithium in the chassis makes me think it can be charged... but shouldn't you be able to make it lighter (if thicker) with plastics or even bamboo?
Still bothers me that the chassis may be good for 50 years or even 500, while the content will age like the battery.
Sttm - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
Why is the webcam in laptops worse than the cameras in $200 smartphones? Here we are several years since I got a C920 webcam, and laptops cannot beat it, while smartphones surpassed it years ago.GreenReaper - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
People buy smartphones based on the camera, but it's generally just a tick-box on laptops.eastcoast_pete - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
+1 on that! The selfie cam in a $200 smartphone beats the pants off most, if not all, laptop webcams. Really annoying shortcoming in a business laptop, which is highly likely to be used for at least occasional video conferencing. The sensor for a good selfie cam costs under $5 (Sony or Samsung make several variants), add maybe another $5 for the lens assembly, minus the cost or existing (bad) webcam, and for a few $ more in build costs, you (manufacturer) have something to crow about.Dug - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Because it's not needed. You don't want high resolution webcam in most situations because of bandwidth limitations in most places. So all you are going to do with a high resolution camera is cause problems for video conference, which if you worked in a business, then you don't want to be explaining to your boss why the video is choppy. Or the person on the other end trying to get your high resolution feed.Foeketijn - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link
My lenovo yoga pro (not a thinkpad but still pro) has a next to perfect webcam. Don't know about the specs, only know I get a compliment ones and a while on the sharpness of my videofeed (doing a lot of videoconferences, but then again, who thinks of complementing on video quality?)So it can be done.
Prestissimo - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
Are Travelmates still a thing? Seems like LG's Gram 14 is still the leader in the sub 1kg category.sharath.naik - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
LG gram is betterRoger3698 - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
Acer has introduced its new thin-and-light commercial notebook aimed at small and medium businesses. Outfitted with a 14-inch display and based on Intel’s Core i5/i7 processors, the TravelMate X514-51 weighs only 2.16 pounds (980 grams). The laptop also supports a host of security features required by businesses. https://ttrockstars.org/