HP Claims Innovation Over Apple With 'World's Thinnest Laptop'

[KPandian1]

Thinness does not matter here, a couple of mm or so. The weight will be the winning innovation. In these laptops already weighing about 1 kg, the difference will not be much too! But, the weight difference of more than 1 kg when the MacBook or this PC are compared to "regular" laptops is not acceptable anymore these days - neither should the lighter ones cost three times as much. At $1200+, they are just PC laptops that run the lousy Windows 10.

 

[igorsky]

Can’t you read?
……….that fold flush for a "nearly hingeless look”.
Bit of deduction for you. If they’ve included the words 'that fold flush’, in the sentence, it means when the laptop is closed.

Thank you...your use of bold and italic fonts helped highlight HP's meaningless design claims. If you added "almost", your post would've been perfect.

 

[brewmonkey]

I own an HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 G1610T which I use as a FreeNAS file server.

To get access to certain basic software updates for this server past the one year warranty, including BIOS updates, one is required to maintain an active paid support contract with HP indefinitely. Have you ever seen the prices of those contracts? And to require one for a server clearly designed and marketed to SOHO customers? Well, after the monumental abuse I've taken from them over this 'policy' (especially in light of some rather egregious firmware bugs in early versions), I can confidently say I shan't be supporting HP again with my 'voting' dollars.

 

[pat500000]

This thing got TB3. NNNIIIICCCEEE.

 

[nt5672]

I don't know about anyone else, but personally I'd prefer a slightly thicker/heavier laptop that was more repairable, had a longer lasting battery, and faster.

Exactly, but the world now caters to the 50% that don't really work, just tweet and store their selfies. I'm sure this will work fine for that.

Oh, and heavy enough that it would not get blown off the desk when someone opens the window.

 

[gnasher729]

Yeah well, most people want a real operating system that runs everything, not just some things.

People who want a computer that runs everything buy a Mac. Runs MacOS X, Linux, Windows with no problems. I suppose that's what you wanted to say, you just expressed it a bit clumsy.

 

[GeneralChang]

Out of genuine curiosity, what are you looking for in an OS. You said that Windows is "miles off what [you] want", so I'm just wondering if you can expand a bit more.

I'll try to shoot for "a bit more" instead of "rant," but the vast majority of it is a pervasive sense of indecision about what this OS actually is trying to do. Is it a hand-holder or does it trust you to know what you're doing? There's a delicate balance to those things, and I think Win10 has erred too far on the side of "I'm your nanny," especially when it comes to updates.

Then there's the fact that I've been using unix-based OS's for so long that I can't help but feel hemmed in by Win10. Basic things I feel like I should have control over just don't work. Or at least, not the way I expect them to. Part of that is a paradigm shift between OS's and I just like what I'm used to, but other parts of it are that I really feel like, in this day and age, it should be much easier to set sleep/wake schedules for a computer than Win10 makes it (for example).

So it's mostly personal preference, as with pretty much everything OS related. But I use Win10 on a daily basis and I'm always eager to get back onto my Mac where I can get stuff done without feeling like I have to fight the OS to do it.

 

[nilk]

1080p display

What year is this? Can't claim innovation over Apple with a 1080p display.

 

[cult hero]

There is nothing worse than mentioning a competitor like that. "For years we've been second or third fiddle. Maybe worse. Now we think we're relevant again."

Interesting laptop. I like the color but am pretty meh on the design. More than one port is nice though.

 

[dogslobber]

Anyone using "...compared to Apple" and using that in marketing, clearly see Apple's vastly superior products as a huge threat... else why compare?

Here's the things Apple has that make them rise far, far above this nonsense by default:

#1: Apple
#2: Did I mention Apple?
#3: OS X
#4: Force Touch/Taptic engine

There's no doubt Apple is the benchmark for aesthetics, but it's easier to come from behind than continue to be the market leader. Apple has gotten wayward with the Mac design and OS X in recent years such that you now have companies like HP(!) out designing them. Then consider Windows 10 is more than a match for OS X El Capitan nowadays. Perhaps if Apple didn't spend all their time focused on iphones and ipads then they'd still have the lead in the computer space, but as of now the gap is minimal.

That you claim Apple is vastly superior because they're Apple doesn't work in a post-Jobsian society.

 

[ZMacintosh]

ugly as sin. didn't apple already make the thinnest notebook (replacement)? iPad Pro?

 

[nt5672]

I don't care about "thin" and "blingbling" bring us a real powerhouse MBP 15" or even 16" and a up to date cinema display.

Yes a 16 inch MBP with no bezel, 32 GB replaceable memory, replaceable SSD, magnetic power connector, ethernet connector and 3 usb connectors, a powerful GPU and CPU. That would be perfect.

 

[uid15]

There's no doubt Apple is the benchmark for aesthetics, but it's easier to come from behind than continue to be the market leader. Apple has gotten wayward with the Mac design and OS X in recent years such that you now have companies like HP(!) out designing them. Then consider Windows 10 is more than a match for OS X El Capitan nowadays. Perhaps if Apple didn't spend all their time focused on iphones and ipads then they'd still have the lead in the computer space, but as of now the gap is minimal.

That you claim Apple is vastly superior because they're Apple doesn't work in a post-Jobsian society.

Let's agree to disagree, and hugely so. I'm sure voters will decide on either of these posts - yours and mine - with their likes.

Windows 10 a match for El Cap? Okkkkk... enjoy.

 

[bodonnell202]

[doublepost=1460044225][/doublepost]

That is definitely a winner in my book, thanks for sharing. I'm tired of picking up a laptop and it feeling like a LeapPad Laptop. Sad thing is you actually Bing that and a Lenovo is suggested.
[doublepost=1460038222][/doublepost]

Tell that to my daughters friends at school and you will find yourself in an angry mob getting ushered to the door.

That's fair, I maybe should have qualified that as "most people". Some people still wanted something thinner and don't care about the lack of ports and limited key travel and the 12" MacBook is for them.

 

[mildocjr]

[doublepost=1460044225][/doublepost]

That's fair, I maybe should have qualified that as "most people". Some people still wanted something thinner and don't care about the lack of ports and limited key travel and the 12" MacBook is for them.

I agree, I'd much rather have thicker and more capable myself.

 

[selfsilent]

HP must have been hanging around on Android fan sites reading about how Apple innovates.
Unusual materials and being thin isn't what makes Apple innovative.

A machine that runs Windows is no innovation.

 

[jedifaka]

That Register editorial is terrible. I didn't catch an example of anything to do with Windows 10 the product. The piece was all about the author's opinion of Windows 10's reputation. Hardly interesting enough for a tweet.

If he'd said, "Windows 10 is awful because..." and had some reasons, he'd have an article. As it was, Orlowski's got kind of a mess where a blog should be.

I didn't think so either, i'm a casual user sometimes on a vm. But after reading this, maybe you'll change your opinion:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/25/reputational_damage_and_windows_10/

 

[gixxerfool]

Can’t you read?
……….that fold flush for a "nearly hingeless look”.
Bit of deduction for you. If they’ve included the words 'that fold flush’, in the sentence, it means when the laptop is closed.

You feel better about yourself now? Doesn't make it any less ugly and I don't hear a lot of people complaining about the look of the hinge when closed.

 

[H2SO4]

Thank you...your use of bold and italic fonts helped highlight HP's meaningless design claims. If you added "almost", your post would've been perfect.

Say what you want. The point is made and the point is valid, however you personally choose to interpret it.
[doublepost=1460044801][/doublepost]

You feel better about yourself now? Doesn't make it any less ugly and I don't hear a lot of people complaining about the look of the hinge when closed.

See above.

 

[gixxerfool]

Say what you want. The point is made and the point is valid, however you personally choose to interpret it.
[doublepost=1460044801][/doublepost]
See above.

I didn't realize it was required to be snarky in order to make a valid point. You must be fun at parties.

 

[Roessnakhan]

Can’t you read?
……….that fold flush for a "nearly hingeless look”.
Bit of deduction for you. If they’ve included the words 'that fold flush’, in the sentence, it means when the laptop is closed.

I'd call my computer "Nearly Hingeless Nick"

 

[kingtj]

Being totally honest here? I think this laptop will sell pretty well for HP, at least initially. There's a BIG market out there for laptops that AREN'T Macs running OS X, and a surprising lack of any of them that are thin, lightweight and stylish while still offering good performance and features.

I have plenty of reasons to dislike HP these days, and would probably hesitate to recommend one of these for those reasons. But those are all issues surrounding their support and service after the sale, and tendency to release products too quickly. (My office has a number of HP Elitebook 840's that are just now getting BIOS updates and driver patches to fix 1+ year old issues with such things as machines blue-screening when ejected from a docking station. Seriously!? You didn't test that stuff at all before putting the product on the market?)

But purely hardware-wise, HP did succeed in making a very thin notebook here that still uses a respectable CPU. By contrast, I still think Apple's new Macbook 12" is a complete fail with that underpowered Intel Atom CPU in it. It's sluggish and unimpressive even at half the asking price -- not to mention the boneheaded move of only putting 1 USB-C port on it and not including any of the dongles with it that allow attaching a regular USB 2.0/3.0 device to it.

 

[uid15]

Some words I'd like to bandy about a bit... Hideous, ostentatious, vulgar, bling, insecure, unsure, pandering.

Thoughts...

 

[GeneralChang]

Boy, am I getting tired of this meme. Clearly, the editorial staff of MacRumors has zero engineering background.

HP didn't "sacrifice" anything. They reduced parts cost and enhanced reliability. Greater reliability = fewer repairs = longer life = lower warranty service costs. Got that?

Every connector/socket is a potential point of failure. The only question is whether the component fails more frequently than the socket. These are engineering decisions, not marketing department decisions.

Modularity is beneficial to manufacturers when it comes time to fine-tune inventory and reducing component costs through mass-production, but at some point, other factors win out over being over- and under-stocked on certain configurations, or having fewer part numbers in the warehouse.

Sure, fewer sockets means thinner, too, and thin is in. But the notion that a manufacturer would make a product thicker solely for the purpose of making room for sockets is ludicrous - the demand just isn't there. They would make it thicker if there was a significant demand for larger batteries. I'm quite confident that in a survey of average consumers (not here at MacRumors), longer battery life would trump "repairability" or "upgradability" by a very large margin. Yet people also want light weight, and I suspect "light" would trump battery life, so long as battery life was in the 8 hour range. You wouldn't find a whole lot of takers for a heavier laptop with a 12- or 14-hour battery.

One of the two key selling points for SSD/Flash is long-term reliability. Why socket/connectorize Flash as if it was a failure-prone component? It's not a spinning HDD. RAM is no more failure-prone than any other chip.

My repair experience goes back to vacuum tubes and discrete transistors. One of the biggest jokes was the socketing of low-power transistors, logic DIPs, and the like. Tubes burned out, so sockets were a necessity. Why treat highly reliable solid-state parts as if they were failure-prone? Socket failure and improper inserting of components into those sockets (bent leads) was by far the largest cause of failure. Back then, cigarette smoke residue was a common cause of connection-point failure. Soldering components directly to the circuit board eliminated that failure mode. Sure, there's potential for soldering failures, but does it matter whether it's the connector that's poorly soldered, or the transistor/chip? Hardly.

In the end, "repairability" is just a lame stand-in for "upgradability." As if upgradability was a standard expectation of consumer goods. "Oh, goody, I can buy a cheaper pickup truck today, and slap a bigger engine in it later, if my needs change!" Yes, computers have a hobbyist heritage. But it's been quite a long time since they graduated from the category of hobbyist/tinkerer's toys and became a ubiquitous part of every workplace and home. Get over it!

This post is my new favorite thing on these forums.

 

[uid15]

Just you wait until that chrome plating starts to wear and peel off showing the white plastic of truth, underneath... ewwwwww. This is hideous. Really hideous, and also hilariously misunderstanding what style is.

This "style" will soon look tired and dated, it's clothes will become tattered and worn. Next, please....