
HP's Spectre 13.3 laptop is as thin as an AAA battery - elorant
http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/05/hp-spectre-13-3/
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Brendinooo
Silly question, but...how is this as thin as a AAA battery? Especially given
this gallery image:

[http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/05/hp-
spectre-13-3/#gallery=...](http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/05/hp-
spectre-13-3/#gallery=377680&slide=3849084&index=6)

~~~
techthroway443
Not only that but the featured image is purposely placed on a dark surface
with shitty lighting to give a much thinner impression.

Look, I want my laptop to be as thin as a AAA battery as bad as the next
battery enthusiast but going around claiming a laptop is AAA battery thin when
it clearly is barely AA battery thin then it's time to go back to the drawing
board.

~~~
Brendinooo
I don't agree with going back to the drawing board, but HP should be more
honest about its claims and Engadget should absolutely vet the claim before
using is as the headline for the article!

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jseliger
I have a Retina Macbook, but I'm really pleased that PC makers have, finally,
in the last two or three years started producing better laptops. For the
longest time, only IBM and then Lenovo made laptops that were reasonably
svelte and not actively hideous. But Lenovo ships malware in its laptops:
[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-
malware...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malwares-
lenovo-laptops/) and should probably not be trusted.

Now Dell's XPS series is widely admired and HP is actively making good
laptops. It's a miracle that shouldn't be miraculous!

Paul Graham wrote "Return of the Mac" in 2005:
[http://paulgraham.com/mac.html](http://paulgraham.com/mac.html):

 _Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need
to know?_

 _I got a Powerbook at the end of last year. When my IBM Thinkpad 's hard disk
died soon after, it became my only laptop. And when my friend Trevor showed up
at my house recently, he was carrying a Powerbook identical to mine._

It took seven or eight years between "Return of the Mac" and decent PC laptops
to show up. Way too long.

~~~
PaulHoule
Ugh, the PC industry has been dying like lemmings ever since the "Return of
the Mac" and since it gave up power for the pursuit of fashion.

Just because they make machines look like Macs doesn't mean they will get the
high profit margin Apple gets. Today you can buy a Mac or buy a fake Mac so
people will just buy a Mac. If somebody in the PC industry was competing on
power they might be getting the high profit margin 2 years from now and
Apple's profit margin will collapse the way Wall Street has been expecting
since "Return of the Mac".

~~~
dingaling
> and since it gave up power for the pursuit of fashion.

PC manufacturers with a corporate target market have never stopped selling
'power'.

Dell will happily sell you a Precision laptop with quad Xeons and 64GB of ECC
RAM. It has the aesthetics and portability of a paving slab but by Jove it has
_power_. They'll even knock-off $100 if you choose Ubuntu...

I've seen a few in ${WORK} and they were awesome beasts even beside otherwise
impressive mid-tier Latitudes.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
A former coworker ran a VMware lab environment of several VMs off his
Precision laptop. Being told I could play with the test environment while his
laptop was in the building and on was funny.

I have two 2.5" SATA drives in my Precision, and I have room for an M2 slot
SATA left. And it has three network card slots, effectively.

Also, I had to buy a bigger laptop bag for my Precision, and carrying it to
and from my car counts as an exercise regimen.

------
chx
Let me be that guy and ask: what's the point? Who wants a thinner laptop
(besides Steve Jobs)? I understand the drive for lighter laptops but thinner
poses engineering challenges (in cooling) which drives up costs. I just don't
understand the point.

~~~
Brendinooo
I think thinness and lightness makes devices more usable. I currently own a
2007 MacBook Pro and a Dell XPS 13 (2014 I think), and the difference in
traveling with them is so much more significant than I ever would have guessed
before getting the XPS.

Thin and light go hand-in-hand too; speaking in generalities, one probably
begets the other.

And, as the tech gets smaller and lighter, it can go in more places. I have to
think that Apple's obsession with thinness on the iPhone led to the Watch
(which receives criticism for...being too thick).

~~~
cptskippy
I have a Lenovo T450s and Yoga 2. The Yoga 2 is probably half the thickness of
the T450s but weights about twice as much. I prefer carrying the T450s.

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jordanthoms
Why are they still releasing laptops that top out at 8GB? It feels like the PC
manufacturers have some rule where they must have at least one major
deficiency preventing me from considering their laptop.

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vardump
For my usage patterns, 8 GB is too little RAM. I suspect same is true for a
lot of developers. 16 GB is the bare minimum, 32 GB or more is desirable.

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m3rc
And so the keyboard is going to suck :/

I really wish long-throw style keyboards on the thinkpad lines were still a
thing business class laptops included. I hate feeling like I'm typing on a
touch screen no matter what device i use.

~~~
chx
ThinkPad Retro is coming next year. Until then I am keeping to the T420.

------
flurpitude
It's nice to see PC laptops taking advantage of lower power chips to improve
their external design. But from online reviews of previous Spectre 360 models,
it seems many users complained of overheating and poor wifi reliability. I
wonder if HP have done anything to address those in the new thinner version?
Aside from that it looks like an attractive machine (golden swirls and jewels
notwithstanding).

~~~
TenOhms
In my experience HP laptops have the poorest cooling solutions possible. I
made the mistake of buying two and I wouldn't use another one as my daily
driver if it were free.

~~~
rjsw
I bought a Pavilion x2 a couple of weeks ago, it didn't get too hot but didn't
survive the first Windows 10 update and now won't boot.

I will be getting a refund next week.

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melling
This laptop supports Thunderbolt over USB-C. Can it drive a 4K monitor?

~~~
sz4kerto
Yes.

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d0lph
Could we change the title to "thin as a AAA", as in "thin as a Triple-A".

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karmakaze
Most significant thing I noticed was that it sports two small fans. Thin,
light yes. Quiet no.

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joshmn
Wow, the bedazzled laptop.

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BasDirks
Title is a lie.

