Re: New laptop time

In <https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=173604207306423&w=1>,
Courtney Hicks wrote:
> I'm looking at replacing my current laptop, so I wanted to see what's good
> that other people are using.

Since so many attributes of a laptop are mutually exclusive, the answers
to "what's a good laptop" depend greatly on what you want. E.g.:
* what size screen do you want?
* do you want/need a 4K screen?
* how much CPU power do you want/need?
* how much memory do you want/need?
* does an "embedded" GPU suffice for you, or do you want/need a more
powerful "discrete" GPU; for the latter, how much performance do you
want/need?
* do you want/need very long battery life?
* what I/O ports do you want/need?
* how much weight can you tolerate?
* do you want lots of expandability and user servicibility,
or are soldered-in components (e.g., memory, SSD) ok?
* for high-performance laptops: do you want/need ECC memory and/or
slots for multiple SSDs?
* for larger laptops: do you want/need a separate numeric keypad on
the keyboard?

Many of these attributes can be traded off amongst each other (and
against cost), so it would be useful to know a bit more about which
attributes are important for you, and which attributes you're ok with
sacrificing.

And finally, Murphys's law applies to laptops: they break, often at
quite inconvenient times. The worst OpenBSD laptop I've ever owned
was the one I had to buy (around 2008) at a small-town big-box retailer
in a snowstorm the night before I was flying to a foreign country, after
my previous laptop died 2 days earlier. After that experience I switched
to owning pairs of slightly older/cheaper laptops, so I always have a
spare on hand.

--
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currently on the west coast of Canada
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