David Hess (davidwhess.delete@this.gmail.com) on September 28, 2013 10:58 am wrote:
> RichardC (tich.delete@this.pobox.com) on September 28, 2013 6:02 am wrote:
> >
> > If you look at laptop design and then smartphone design over the last 10-12 years,
> > everyone else has tried their damnedest to copy Apple just about as closely as they can.
> > And with good reason, because Apple has figured out the trick of taking mostly commodity
> > components and making a premium product which commands a high margin, through a
> > combination of excellent design, manufacturing, marketing, and support.
> >
> > Aluminum-case laptops, chiclet keys, online app stores, touchscreen smartphones,
> > usable tablets, superthin laptops, retina screens. Where Apple goes, the others
> > try to follow. Often with great success (I just got a Samsung Galaxy S3 myself ...)
>
> Many of the features Apple introduced and other copied are things I do *not* want in a laptop.
>
> Chiclet keys just take me back to the days of the TRS-80 Color Computer.
> I did not like Chiclet keyboards then and I still do not like them.

Apple CARES about ergonomics, it only looks like a chiclet keyboard. That said you cannot do full travel keys in a thin design, it will take a week to get used to.

> I dislike glossy and glare prone displays even more. For a desktop display where
> I control the lighting environment, I might find them acceptable but in a laptop intended
> for portable operation where that is unlikely to be the case? No thanks.
>
> I would much prefer "tough" to "thin" and the whole embedded non-replacable battery thing
> just rankles me because of my existing experience with the life expectancy and failure
> modes of prismatic lithium-polymer batteries. When they wear out they have a tendency
> to expand in volume and crush everything normal to their largest area surfaces.

You cannot build a thin laptop with round cells in a cartridge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlUBBwEuHCs

With flat pack polymer cell batteries you can have more individual cells (~ten) and wire them up with smart electronics so you discharge them one at a time and do wear leveling. So a half discharged laptop has half its batteries go though a recharge cycle. You can also pack in 10 hours of charge into that weight/space instead of the more typical 6.
Apple expects you to get 5 years of use out of their batteries, three times the lifespan of (smart?) replaceable batteries. By then you will be wanting a new laptop anyway.

Only cheap junk does not take into account battery expansion over time, Apple does rigid aluminum and can leave an air gap inside. Cheap plastic cases cannot, the case would be squishy and break, so they design the cases to bulge over time. If the cheap case is not designed to bulge the battery can damage itself and turn into a fire bomb. Another reason you want smart electronics monitoring your batteries.

I went to the Dell site for comparison, but they do not list how many hours a laptop will last, and the online customer rep would only quote "4 Cell 40 WHr Battery", for a Inspiron 15 Touch which actually has a 6 cell battery... Trying to ask if the battery was smart or dumb is just futile.
Dell quotes 600 recharge cycles, verses 1000 for Apple, and you have to figure it is a dumb battery charging/discharging all six cells at the same time, so it will last ~2 years.
On the upside $300 is sure a lot cheaper than ~$1000.

HP quotes 80% initial capacity after 300 cycles, giving me severe doubt about Dells 600 cycle claim. I have a rarely used cheap laptop that I left plugged in, and after 3 years when I went to use it, it lasted 2 minutes. Recharged the battery to full and got another 3 minutes out of it. Works fine with a new battery, battery management by me and the software was poor. If this was a smart battery it was so cheap that it did not matter.

> Had I built a few small form factor PCs with arrangements to carry data back and forth between
> them instead of buying my last last laptop, then the PCs would still be usable while the expensive
> laptop which I had to return twice for warranty repairs is now a pile of junk.

You got robbed, which is why people buy cheap crap, so they know what they are getting and paid that much for it.
If you want to know which laptops are lemons go on eBay and look at the resale values.

Basically you can pay $300 for cheap heavy junk, or $1000 for a nice light Apple with Windows dual boot. I went with cheap crap as I don't need a laptop except when traveling on vacation, but now that use is getting replaced by iPad. I cannot see that I will ever buy another laptop.