Thinking about a new laptop

[dreamshark]

Current one is heading towards 6 years old: Lenovo X1 Carbon 14" / Windows 10. It still works fine, but Microsoft is dropping support for Win10 in the fall, so it's time to move up. I'm having a hard time finding what I want, which is pretty specific. 

I want a 14" model, very durable, excellent keyboard, touch screen, and as many USB ports as I can possibly get. I also want Windows 11 Pro, not the crippled "Home" version, but may have to buy that separately and upgrade. And no, my geeky friends, I have no interest in running Linux. I was all about the Linux when I worked in a networking lab, but it does not meet my needs at home. 

Connectivity is the hardest thing. It is increasingly difficult to find laptops with more than one USB-A port. I do not understand why people don't care about this. Although 95% of the time I use my laptop as if it were a desktop (connected to a hub with 2 monitors and a fancy keyboard) I seem to be constantly plugging and unplugging devices from the 2 USB ports I have. Webcam, DVD drive, RFID mouse, thumb drives, external backup drives, occasionally even an Ethernet dongle. And that's not even counting the keyboard and whatever else is connected to that steaming hot USB-C hub. 

Anybody have suggestions?  I won't really need it until October, but with the on/off tariff situation I might want to make a purchase before prices go through the roof. I don't think there are any laptops manufactured in the USA, and even if they are they are probably using mostly imported electronic components. 

So far, the ASUS Expertbook line looks promising.

Comments

[quadong]

I have lots of USB devices and don't find it a problem to use a USB hub to supplement my laptop's ports. A lot of things are incidentally also USB hubs. My monitors are, and also my keyboard. Each of those supplies two more USB ports for "free". Sometimes I have used an actual standalone hub, but I haven't found it necessary lately.

I carry my laptop to and from work every day, and on trips, etc., so I'm happy they saved the space and weight on ports that would be rarely used.

[dreamshark]

I find that some devices work through auxiliary USB hubs and some do not, at least the little USB hubs that I have. And I certainly don't feel like carrying yet another extra device when traveling just so I can plug in a thumb drive without disconnecting my mouse.

In any case, I want 2 USB-A ports, and I don't understand why none of the laptop vendors have a filter option for port configuration in their product search engines. In most cases it is literally impossible to learn what the port configuration for a specific model is without clicking on it and drilling down two or three levels. Frequently the listing just says something like "3 USB ports" without specifying what type of USB port and I have to do a separate search for "tech specs" or just end up squinting at fuzzy images of the "left side" and "right side" of the computer.

What confuses me about all of this is not so much that some people don't use their USB-A ports anymore, but the presumption that laptop buyers simply don't care about port configuration. It seems like a pretty important component of the product design to me.

[carbonel]

I also have a Lenovo (don't remember model, but purchased in late 2019). It updated to Windows 11 without any problems. Is it different for yours?

[dreamshark]

It seems very eager to update to Windows 11 but I don't want to do that. I HATE HATE HATE updating OS's - some important app always seems to break. So I stay on the OS I am used to until forced to move forward, by which time I'm usually ready for a new computer anyway. So I buy a new one and move the old one to backup status until I figure out how to function without whatever the upgrade broke.

[carbonel]

Honestly, the only reason I updated my laptop was because it's a work laptop and I didn't have any choice in the matter. But it was a lot more painless than I expected, though the interface did change a bit. On the other hand, because it is a work laptop, there aren't as many apps on it as there are on my desktop machine (which is my personal machine and is still on Windows 10), so there wasn't all that much to break.

[mdlbear]

Consider a Framework laptop. Ports are on little hot-swappable blocks. I recently pre-ordered a 12, and am resisting the temptation to buy more parts.

[dreamshark]

Intriguing. I'll look into that. I'm not fond of tinkering around with hardware, but I can perform simple tasks if I have clear instructions. Have you owned one of these before? How much of this computer do you have to assemble yourself?

[mdlbear]

I haven't owned one, but I've been drooling over them for several years. I think it comes with the motherboard installed, so all you have to do is install the RAM, mass storage, and ports. Maybe the keyboard. But the only tool you need is a screwdriver, and they give you one with every machine you order.

[dreamshark]

I just spent the last 2 hours reading up on them, and the DIY version does sound pretty easy to assemble. The reviews I found were mixed, to say the least, including some quality issues, poor BIOS support, and incompatibilities with some Linux distros. Some of the quality issues have apparently been addressed in the last year (e.g., floppy hinges). And of course, pretty much every component can be swapped out and upgraded, including those substandard hinges.

I LOVE the plug and play ports! Although there are only 4 slots, it is apparently so easy to snap them in and out that you can buy a small stack of port modules and install them as needed. I think I would set up my system with one Thunderbolt-C port for power and USB-A in the other 3, since all my auxiliary devices are USB-A. But if I were going on a trip with a camera with an SD card, I could pop in an SD port. Or an HDMI if I needed to connect directly to a monitor or an LCD projector. Or even an Ethernet one if I unexpectedly became a traveling network support engineer.

Maybe in a few years that feature will become standard across the industry.