What are your favorite insane laptops?

Mine is the Dell Rugged: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F56ION4_n0

Bump and fall proof, liquid proof, sand proof (and cat hairs proof I assume), extreme heat/cold proof, can be used as a blunt weapon in an emergency. Ridiculously overkill for anyone that’s not a geologist working in Antarctica or an archaeologist in the Gobi desert, and ridiculously overkill is fun

  • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    13·
    6 months ago

    Those things aren’t as rugged as they imply. Go for a brief jaunt and skip a little while swinging it by the handle. It’ll turn into a laptop shaped projectile and leave a dent in both the ground and your wallet.

  • drathvedro@lemm.ee
    151·
    6 months ago

    Mine.

    Quad screen portable setup, baybeh! Razer’s Valerie aint got nuttin’ on me!

  • HayadSont@discuss.online
    8·
    6 months ago

    I got a couple I really like, though for vastly different reasons:

    • The MNT Reform series takes the crown for their commitment towards open source software AND open source hardware.
    • The ASUS Zenbook DUO is an early entry in the direction of what I perceive as peak design. This technology will only improve from here and I hope other vendors will take cues from this one.
    • drathvedro@lemm.ee
      2·
      6 months ago

      Could you elaborate on the reform? I hear the hype yet to me it looks like a severely overpriced tv box with some low-grade peripherials strapped to it in the least space efficient way possible. Did they got rockchip to release sources instead of blobs or something? What is the praise actually for?

      • monovergent@lemmy.ml
        2·
        6 months ago

        I’ve sketched out ideas for something like the MNT Reform, but with a Framework motherboard, and it’s surprisingly hard to whittle down the form factor any more without sacrificing unique and useful features, like the user-replaceable battery cells and modular mechanical keyboard. Those were the main attractions for me, and it is indeed very weak hardware for the price. Tallying up the component prices, it’s about as good as it gets without economies of scale while insisting on libre firmware.

      • HayadSont@discuss.online
        2·
        6 months ago

        Could you elaborate on the reform?

        For some reason, I was under the impression that laptops in the MNT Reform series were the only laptops that were manufactured using open (source) hardware only. Or, if there were others, that it must have been doing something so special that they deserved to be put on a pedestal. But, currently, I don’t feel confident enough to state why it would be superior over say the Olimex TERES-I or Pinebook Pro.

        I hear the hype yet to me it looks like a severely overpriced tv box with some low-grade peripherials strapped to it in the least space efficient way possible.

        We definitely pay a premium, but I don’t know exactly why. Especially when the aforementioned Olimex TERES-I and Pinebook Pro are almost an order of magnitude cheaper.

        Did they got rockchip to release sources instead of blobs or something?

        From what I understood, Rockchip offers (at least some of) its SoCs as open source hardware. So, what MNT Reform did for the SoC is order them as open source hardware and include/publicize/provide all the schematics (etc).

        What is the praise actually for?

        FWIW, the open source hardware aspect is what I was intrigued by*.

    • Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org
      7·
      6 months ago

      It doesn’t look like this is even past concept stage, and it’s already mostly obsolete. Is there something close to this that’s a modern commercial product I can buy?

    • phantomwise@lemmy.mlOP
      17·
      6 months ago

      I would like to argue but I can’t… you win 😅 That’s just… I don’t have words. Just wow 🤯 🤯 🤯

    • d-RLY?@lemmy.ml
      3·
      6 months ago

      I wasn’t ready to see that thing. Would have sprayed my drink out if I were drinking at the moment your link loaded. lol

      I would love to have that just to show to co-workers and friends, just to see their reactions. I could see it being kind of nice to have if I really really needed multiple screens. But would never want to bring it anywhere unless it is staying in a hotel room for like a week and working (which I don’t have a job that would even give that situation to happen anyway). Still nice to see mobile workstations still have room for wild-ass designs like that. Kind of like how more smart phones used to have really wild selling points.

  • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
    161·
    6 months ago

    Fujitsu Lifebook P-2046. It was semi-rugged with a magnesium alloy chassis but, the real awesome bit was the Transmeta Crusoe processor. It was super power efficient (~15hr between charges with the extended battery) and performed decently. The thing was really ahead of its time.

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
        121·
        6 months ago

        Possibly but the CPU was pretty crazy. It used “code morphing” to translate x86 instructions to its internal ISA, something that just seems a bit ridiculous to do at the hardware level.

        • ferric_carcinization@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5·
          6 months ago

          It’s way more common than you may realize. Intel & AMD (and other x86 CPU manufacturers of the time) did it before the first Crusoe CPU launched. (2000 according to Wikipedia)

          CISC architectures are now seen as inefficient, so all the new ones are RISC and new CISC CPUs just translate the instructions to their intenal RISCier microarchitecture. The CPU’s microcode specifies what an instruction translates to.

          • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
            21·
            6 months ago

            Oh, absolutely. The thing that is weird is being non-x86 hardware and explicitly implementing the translation layer in hardware that has minimal field configurability (they did have the capability of loading something similar to microcode). It makes sense in some ways (performance being a big one) but, seems like it would be vulnerable to potential changes in the external ISA.

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
        51·
        6 months ago

        For my purposes (note taking in college), it absolutely lived up to the hype. No x86 laptop that I could find at the time came close to its battery life.

  • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world
    7·
    6 months ago

    Who’s going to start the YouTube channel for it called “Kennit?” where you see just what you can use it to do? First episode should be as an oar.

    • phantomwise@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      That’s needs to happen! I also want to see if it can be used effectively as a tennis racket.