I understand pixel density is nice, but for the vast majority of workflows you do not need anything better than 1080p on a 15" display.

http://penguindreams.org/blog/msi-ws60-running-linux/

My current Dell XPS15 does as well; both ran/run Linux. I do a lot of photo editing (Lightroom in VM, although I'd started to use Darktable) and I probably wouldn't buy a primary laptop without a UHD display today.

Obviously, nothing. High resolution for most people is still just a 'nice to have.' But even 1080p@15" will produce relatively crisp text. I'd argue East Asian languages are the only ones to significantly improve in legibility, as sub-pixel rendering pretty much does what it needs to do for English nowadays.

That being said, I absolutely will always go for high DPI and everything, I just don't think it's sane to argue it's an absolute must for what amounts to typing and reading text.

<FourYorkshiremen> Eeee, you were lucky. My first personal computer maxed out at 320x256, or 160x256 if you wanted more than 4 colours. </FourYorkshiremen>

LUXURY. We had 32x24 b&w characters and we were glad of them.

(ZX81, nominally 256x192 pixels but only accessible as 8x8 character cells.)

In the manual, there were some programs you could type in, including "Mars Lander". The calculator shows a landing speed (e.g. "8.2") and then you need to type the thrust adjustment (e.g. -1.0 or +3.0) and then the new landing speed is shown. If you do it right, you land safely and it shows "00000" or something. But nah, that did not happen, you just crash ("11111")

Following that, when I got ZX-81 with 32X24 screen, and like, 1Kb of memory, I was in heaven :)

edit: seems like HN doesn't support these characters but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements

I made a 'zooming through a tunnel' program in assembler once, using them

Although in the context of developing on small screens, they're not very helpful.

(And if you redefined the character set on the fly, you could make things like Forty-Niner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTTWMIQVznM )

But it's not a requirement for 'most developers' - in fact the ones I know with high resolution laptops don't want them, they're just annoyed by lingering issues with UI scaling and tiny text. I can't think of a sane reason for having font sizes so small that you need 4k to display text properly. Text is plenty crisp at 1080.

Also this is a laptop. More pixels means shorter battery life.

Maybe what you really need is a desktop.

It looks so much better at 2000. Of course you can get by with 1080 - hell, there've been times when I got by with 600 - but when you can see more code and read it more easily, it's easier to get on with development.

Reading those on a large (9") tablet is doable, in 1-up portrait mode. Reading on a large retina desktop display works -- 2-up mode with excellent resolution.

Reading them on a laptop suck balls. At a 9:16 aspect ratio with 1080 px height, both font and resolution are too low to read clearly. And unless you've got a hybrid laptop (I've been looking at options online, but they strike me as overly fussy and asking for trouble), no-go.

At a higher dot-pitch, this might work, but it's pretty iffy.

Surprisingly, other than the OS and applications, a tablet makes a suprisingly good mobile device. Samsung's announcement that they'll be supporting Linux installs is promising. The other side of this that needs addressing badly is standardising keyboard and case form-factors.

A tablet (display + brains), self-supporting folio case, and bluetooth keyboard isn't quite perfect, but it's quite good. In reality, keys are falling off and/or getting disabled on the keyboard, the tablet itself cannot run a real OS, I'm fighting Android, and virtually the entire App ecosystem is worse than useless.

Apart from the fact that a lot of systems still have mediocre high-dpi support at best, there's also battery life, cost and the fact that 1080p on a 15" is more than adequate for most people.

As far as I can tell, the only desktop OS with good high-DPI support is macOS.

The high DPI suppport on gnome equates to 'SCALE ALL THE THINGS 2x DERPA DERPA DERP'

And the scaling is integer-based. So, I can choose 1x, 2x, or any other whole number. Useless as hell for me, who wishes it was probably 1.25x.

It sucks bad enough that I actually WISH I was on a 1080p screen, because with the 2x scaling i effectively have a 1324x768 pos screen.

Agree. Is entering numbers with a numpad so common use case that it justifies the inclusion of mini-numpad at the cost of off-centering the main keyboard?

At least for me - definitely yes. I won't even look at the laptop that doesn't have dedicated numpad. I guess it's a matter of taste and use case.

http://www.ipv6buddy.com/

I am in no way affiliated, I just searched "USB hex numberpad"

> Is this a joke?

> No, this is in fact a real IPv6 keypad that will actually be delivered to your door if you buy one!

Thanks for posting that, I had no idea that such a USB numpad existed, though I have no "real" use for it, it seems to me like a really nice idea.

Yes, it's expensive but it'll be the nicest numpad you've ever used. Topre switches are the best.

I'm using a 2017 MacBook Pro in work right now and I ended up investing in a separate keyboard and mouse, partly due to lacking the numpad but also because the keyboard on this thing just feels horrible to use.

Especially Adobe products are terrible with keyboard shortcuts, where in some cases you can not edit (AE) or can not map properly in non US layouts.

I disagree completely. Having a numpad on a laptop is the only way of getting cursors and function keys (from Home to Insert to Delete) in a sane place. On my current laptop, were it not for a numpad, I'd have to press a Fn key every time I wanted to use Home/End. I'd also need to hunt for Delete somewhere above the Backspace, and PageUp/PageDown being on both sides of Up arrow (and close to it!) is simply infuriating. And it's a Dell Latitude[1], much better in this regard than tons of normal laptops.

I'm not against remapping some keys, but you need the physical keys to be there in the first place to remap to them! Without the numpad, disabling the irritatingly placed PageDown/PageUp keys would leave me without the keys completely.

There are downsides - mainly the fact that it's harder to work with a laptop actually on my lap, ie. it's harder to balance the device when most of the applied weight is on the left side, but I can deal with this with a $20 laptop tray. For additional $10 I can even get a tray with a place for an external mouse, although as I use trackballs exclusively I have little need for it.

[1] https://www.computershopper.com/var/ezwebin_site/storage/ima...

I've found the layout used on the VAIO Z to be very practical, with Home/End as FN + Left/Right, and PageUp/PageDown as FN + Up/Down:

https://www.replacementlaptopkeys.com/product_images/images/...

It appears to be close to the Dell Latitude, but removing the dedicated PageUp/PageDown keys, and instead having larger arrow keys likely works better.

This works very nicely for me.

Joking aside, a keyboard is a very personal thing and picking the right one depends on many factors, from the shape and size of your hands and fingers to your chair and desk setup, to your OS and programs you use. For most people, it probably doesn't matter that much, but for people who use keyboards for work, it's IMHO worth it to take your time and choose a keyboard that is precisely right.

As an example, I was perfectly happy with a standard desktop keyboard when I used Vim, even though Esc is rather far from home row (but it's easy to find by touch). Once I switched to Emacs, with its famous dependence on pressing and holding (as opposed to just hitting Esc in Vim) Ctrl and Alt, I almost immediately started getting RSI in my left hand. I quickly noticed that it happens only on the full-sized keyboard, not on (most) laptop keyboard. I considered switching away from Emacs, but, as with many cults, you can only leave in a body bag, so I had to find another way of dealing with it.

After a lot of research, I found that Logitech K340[1] is the keyboard for me. As you can see, the Ctrl key is where it should be (in the bottom left corner - sometimes there's a Fn key there), is bigger than usual and much closer to the home row than in full-sized keyboards. This eliminated pain in my hand almost entirely. Full-size Enter key and Backspace (their shrunk versions are evil), quite workable placement of function keys above the numpad, the Fn key placed where it doesn't bother me, and arrow keys which are easily found by touch are all essential features, which match my workflow very well. The only key which is not as accessible as I'd like is Insert (the top one), but I don't use it very often.

I'm sure there are tons of people who would find that keyboard unworkable for their workflows, though. I guess what I want to say is that if something works for you, then you should just use that. Still, you should make sure it actually works, because a wrist pain a year down the road is not a pleasant thing.

[1] https://purplezest.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/121.jpg

Anyway, CapsLock is got to be the least useful key on a keyboard. It occupies a place on the home row, suggesting it should be as often used as Enter is... while it's decidedly not. I have no idea why it persists, it was useful on a typewriter, where you needed to apply significant force to press a key and doing so to two keys at once (Shift+letter) could have been hard, but today?

If you're already always using the laptop on a desk or table with a stand because it's too awkward to use, you know, on your lap... then just get a real keyboard to go with it.

I use an external keyboard on my desks at work and at home, but at least I can put my laptop on my lap and still use it on-the-go, too (which I do on a daily basis).

Terrible idea for you, great idea for me. As I've mentioned in my other comment, numpad is a must for me, even on laptop, so you shouldn't generalize like that.

No. Laptop are a disaster for RSI and posture in general. The off center keyboard has a tiny effect. Use external keyboards and monitors!

What are absolute dealbreakers are the missing keyboard options for my country.

The resolution is good enough when you cannot anymore see any pixelization effect from typical viewing distances. 1920x1080 on 15" screen is not quite enough, 2560x1440 or 2880x1800 are better options.

I'm not sure what's the status of high-DPI support in FOSS graphics stacks today. The 1920x1080 may be practical choice, because it makes UI elements to look "normal size" on 15" screen without additional scaling. Without high-dpi mode, e.g. websites look way too tiny past 1080P (1 virtual pixel == 1 real pixel).