Seeking advice, a friend recently asked me my opinion on Chromebooks. I think they would meet the needs you’ve described, I said. That at least had the virtue of being true, but it also got me thinking.
What I actually want from a computer is laughably simple. And yet, I have been completely unable to find any machine that meets my needs.
As someone who writes for a living, for me the keyboard is the single most important part of a computer. That’s why I’m now stuck with old corporate castoff Lenovos, and even these are a shadow of previous models. Frankly, the now total ubiquity of the hateful ‘island’ or ‘chiclet’ keyboard is a sore that I can’t stop scratching, mostly because it demonstrates a total lack of respect for what I do for a living but also, more broadly, it ignores what most of us do with computers, most of the time.
After that, comes the screen. As bright as possible and able to work in daylight, thanks very much. E-ink would be lovely, but I realise that’s pushing the boat out a bit far.
Next up is battery life, an area where Apple has put clear blue water between itself and the competition. It also charges more, though. Even the new low-cost model, the MacBook Neo, is not actually cheap, though presumably that also goes some way to explaining why it is, unlike some machines I’ve seen, not made of plastic thinner than a single atom.
Any CPU is fine, as long as it can render Web pages, which, bizarrely, we have let become the wild card when it comes to pure computation. Memory, the more the better, and being able to add more would be nice. Sadly, this is a fool’s errand in the era of soldered components.
Likewise, I would also like the power circuitry (which is now inevitably USB; which is a real mistake), to not be permanently attached to the motherboard. For, you know, repairs.
Thinness doesn’t come into it. No, I don’t want to carry a breezeblock around, but we’ve long passed the point of diminishing returns with this diet regime.
Recent trips to electronics stores have been horrifying. Apple and Samsung models stand out for apparent build quality (I say apparent as I didn’t have a hammer to hand), but they also cost a lot. Lenovo’s consumer range seems good, but a pale shadow of its, still good despite it all, ThinkPad line. Gaming laptops are, well, aesthetically offensive, which I admit is a matter of taste but it is interesting to note that at least one taste beyond ‘thin’ is catered for.
In fairness, most of the machines on display are cheap. Comically so. What do you expect for €300? The answer appears to be: not much. And, soon enough, it may become: nothing.
A recent report said that the rising cost of RAM may not just narrow the options, but blow a hole in the market with manufacturers no longer able to turn a profit at the low-end. This story has been rumbling along for some time, but when you strip away the AI doom narrative what it comes down to is a failure to plan. What strikes me about the ongoing RAM shortage is that it’s nothing new: I remember similar ones in the 1990s and late 1980s, and have read about previous ones, too. And there has been no shortage of shortages of other crucial components over the years.
Getting the basics right
But even without supplier crunches and supply chain problems, why is there no laptop manufactured today that can meet these simple criteria: a keyboard with sculptured keycaps that doesn’t flex when you type, a screen that doesn’t shave your eyeballs, plus reasonable power and decent build quality and at a reasonable price?
Even forking out giant wads of cash can’t solve my problem, either. Repairable, high-end laptops do exist, but they typically have to be ordered online (I’d like to touch the thing before buying it) and they, as do all laptops today, all come with finger-proof keyboards.
It’s not a massive complaint, I admit, but it is an interesting one, or at least it is if you step back from the man-dislikes-laptops frame I’ve been using to trick you into reading this article about economics.
The tech industry, like all industries, claims to respond to customer needs. This happens through the market, which is basically a giant abstraction and aggregation of similar but unrelated individuals. We are told, warned even, that data is now used to not only design products, but to target hitherto unserved micro-niches. I suppose it depends on which data points you consider. And which you ignore.
Ltd
