Why are laptops so poorly designed?

By Rigby
in General Discussion

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OOOOOOOO

Posted
Posted

I already said what I had to, that air holes keep a laptop running cool and since they're generally on the bottom they don't really spoil the look of anything. You made it personal, not me ;)

Also, I'm not the one gloating here about Apple (or Dell for that matter). You somehow took my post as some sort of personal insult just because I said Apple has made some terrible design decisions in the past (and so has every other company for that matter) and non-Apple laptops run cooler than Apple one's :rolleyes:

The new XPSs aren't like that. You have to open the entire laptop to get to fan and heatsinks =( But the small filters do help with keeping dust out and like I said they're easily cleaned so it's a tradeoff.

To be honest, none of that is true whatsoever ... how can I possibly get insulted when I use a machine that does exactly what I want it to do? That's my personal triumph. You clearly enjoy your Dell. Fair enough. I've been the Dell route. Miraculously more than once ... and I had an XPS. And it was some of the worst experience of my time. But I'm sure it works for you.

There's nothing personal here. It's the internet. And take a look around ... isn't this forum pretty much at least half attacks and arguments? I'm pretty sure that's what forum means ... :D There's nothing in our posts to each other that should or could ever offend or upset. It's pointless ... in fact, it's even more pointless knowing that everything we're typing on this screen doesn't really exist ... it's just light being shown to us behind glass (or plastic) ... kinda odd huh ... :) lol

Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
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Then there is the terrible job they do applying thermal paste to the CPU and GPU chips. The last one I cleaned it was all squished out around the chip and there was none at all on the chip itself. Funny how they had used enough to do a dozen chips and still manged to completely botch it. The flimsy power connectors that break off inside the case are annoying too. It seems like they design these things to last six months and then be thrown away and replaced by a new one.

One of those CPUs where the CPU itself sticks out on the top of the CPU "board", if so its beste if there's no thermal paste on top of the chip, metal to metal is better for heat transfer.

As for dust, don't use it on bed or carpets and compressed air ftw.

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
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You should get yourself a MacBook Pro if you're frustrated with intake fans getting blocked. The MacBook Pro draws in air from the keyboard and exhausts it in-front of the display hinge. I've never seen it get blocked. I even took my notebook apart recently to fit some more memory and upgrade the hard disk and the fans looked very clean and this has been used heavily since 2009 when I bought it.

It is windows notebooks that suffer from this poor design problem in my opinion. I can't count the amount of times I've flipped a windows notebook over to find a fan intake on the bottom of the notebook. Just crappy.

Enthusiast

shadodemon

Posted
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Apple has a big flaw with materials though aluminum is not very durable there flaw was sacrifising duralbility and stability for looks on there notebooks. If they really wanted there notebooks built to last they would have considered at least using something like magnisium alloy like Thinkpads use for there inner roll cages. Or they would have coated there aluminum with that durable alloy for extra strength.

Grand Master

Arceles

Posted
Posted
You should get yourself a MacBook Pro if you're frustrated with intake fans getting blocked. The MacBook Pro draws in air from the keyboard and exhausts it in-front of the display hinge. I've never seen it get blocked. I even took my notebook apart recently to fit some more memory and upgrade the hard disk and the fans looked very clean and this has been used heavily since 2009 when I bought it. It is windows notebooks that suffer from this poor design problem in my opinion. I can't count the amount of times I've flipped a windows notebook over to find a fan intake on the bottom of the notebook. Just crappy.

Ha... no. My laptop also gets the air from the keyboard and from small holes below of the laptop, plus a few mods that I have done. Macbooks have that kind of air exhaust because they are designed to not to be stressed too much, otherwise it heats a lot.

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

Ha... no. My laptop also gets the air from the keyboard and from small holes below of the laptop, plus a few mods that I have done. Macbooks have that kind of air exhaust because they are designed to not to be stressed too much, otherwise it heats a lot.

What do you mean by "Ha... no." You didn't refute a single thing I said.

Your notebook even has fan intake holes on the bottom just like I said in my post.

Grand Master

Arceles

Posted
Posted
What do you mean by "Ha... no." You didn't refute a single thing I said. Your notebook even has fan intake holes on the bottom just like I said in my post.
What do you mean by "Ha... no." You didn't refute a single thing I said. Your notebook even has fan intake holes on the bottom just like I said in my post.

With that small unibody, comparing the actual components that the macbook has (CPU and GPU), I can calculate more or less the max heat that is able to generate, and it's quite a lot. Mackbooks however are rarely pushed to their limits, much less overclocked in both gpu and cpu, that's why they remain cool for some people even taking air from just the keyboard.

I'd like to see a good overclock in them while playing DiRT3 or Battlefield 3 as I have done in my laptop, in my case, my processor heats up to 82? at 2.8 GHz (4 cores plus the iGPU) and my dGPU up to 62? (770core 970mem) but all the other components are around 40?, which is quite cool (even with my metallic palmrest feels nice but that's doing some mods) I barely feel the heat in it even in extreme conditions and this is hardly the case for macbook pros.

Before of the mod I couldn't overclock my processor beyond 2.2 Ghz because with those settings I had exactly the same temps of 82? and 62? in both CPU and dGPU, but the problem here is that the whole case heated a lot due only having an air intake mainly coming from the keyboard and small holes beneath the laptop (please note holes, not even air intakes).

Veteran

Wakers

Posted
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They make them cheapo, so they will sell more.

And if they break, the makers figure you will buy another one. :shifty:

Maybe Dyson should design laptops.

Dyson? Great, then we'd have a laptop that would only display an image on the screen when the lid is closed..

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

With that small unibody, comparing the actual components that the macbook has (CPU and GPU), I can calculate more or less the max heat that is able to generate, and it's quite a lot. Mackbooks however are rarely pushed to their limits, much less overclocked in both gpu and cpu, that's why they remain cool for some people even taking air from just the keyboard.

I'd like to see a good overclock in them while playing DiRT3 or Battlefield 3 as I have done in my laptop, in my case, my processor heats up to 82? at 2.8 GHz (4 cores plus the iGPU) and my dGPU up to 62? (770core 970mem) but all the other components are around 40?, which is quite cool (even with my metallic palmrest feels nice but that's doing some mods) I barely feel the heat in it even in extreme conditions and this is hardly the case for macbook pros.

Before of the mod I couldn't overclock my processor beyond 2.2 Ghz because with those settings I had exactly the same temps of 82? and 62? in both CPU and dGPU, but the problem here is that the whole case heated a lot due only having an air intake mainly coming from the keyboard and small holes beneath the laptop (please note holes, not even air intakes).

You shouldn't be overclocking a laptop, period. It is designed within very specific heat and power tolerances by the manufacturer and you shouldn't be pushing it beyond what they set. But regardless what does you overclocking your laptop have to do with notebook build quality?

The fact remains that the MacBook Pros are designed very well and many windows notebooks are not. If you want MacBook Pro quality in a windows notebook you need to pay MacBook Pro prices. If you want the same specifications as a MacBook Pro (HDD, CPU, GPU, RAM etc) in a lower price then to provide that the quality of the notebooks casing (which dictates the overall quality of the unit) goes down.

Personally I hate poorly designed noisy notebooks that are plastic with holes all over the place for ventilation. I hate PC trackpads I've rarely found any that are good - Just the other day I used a top of the line Asus 17" notebook with a quad core Core i7, 6GB RAM, 750GB Hard Disk, GT550 graphics with 2GB of Graphics Memory. It had some special speaker system from some company (Bang and Olfson or something) but the trackpad sucked, it had holes all over the place for fan exhaust and intake. The speaker grill below the display looked cheap and stuck on with glue. It was not a unibody it was all plastic. Just blegh. but hey it cost ?750 that's a lot less than a MacBook Pro (Over ?1,100 less). And if people only care about the underlying specs of the components and not the product as a whole then so be it, but I care about more than just the specs.

Grand Master

123456789A

Posted
Posted

I don't think Macbooks suffer from those problems ?

Also, even for desktops, they are not built to be maintained by "normal" users.

I dont have dust problems with mine, but it does get extremely hot.

With that small unibody, comparing the actual components that the macbook has (CPU and GPU), I can calculate more or less the max heat that is able to generate, and it's quite a lot. Mackbooks however are rarely pushed to their limits, much less overclocked in both gpu and cpu, that's why they remain cool for some people even taking air from just the keyboard.

Macbook and cool should never be used in the same sentence.

Grand Master

Nashy

Posted
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Why? Because people don't seem to want to pay money for laptops anymore. The fact that I can go to a store and buy a reasonable laptop for under $800AU proves that. You can't pay nothing and get everything.

Veteran

abecedarian paradoxious

Posted
Posted

Automobiles have been around for a long time now and we all know what happens to them. The engine pulls in dust and lint and soon it's completely blocked, just like the lint filter in your dryer. Engine coolant doesn't last very long either: we have to change the coolant every two years or so, and maybe even replace the water pump. Now there is a latch on the air filter to get it out. How hard would it be to put a door to access the intake so I can clean it? At least put a removable air filter over the intake. It just baffles me that these companies won't do something about this.

...>snip< ...

Applying your rant to automobiles.

Common sense and maintenance is your friend.

Veteran

Stetson

Posted
Posted

The same Apple engineers that designed a laptop fully out of metal before realizing that it would destroy the WiFi signal? The same Apple that designed an uncoated phone antenna on the outside that could be shorted by one finger, destroying the signal?

I have a first gen unibody Macbook (2008). The WiFi antenna is in the black plastic hinge, not inside any of the metal casing. Either it's brilliant luck or they did, actually, realize it.

Community Regular

Salutary7

Posted
Posted

Apple has a big flaw with materials though aluminum is not very durable there flaw was sacrifising duralbility and stability for looks on there notebooks. If they really wanted there notebooks built to last they would have considered at least using something like magnisium alloy like Thinkpads use for there inner roll cages. Or they would have coated there aluminum with that durable alloy for extra strength.

Actually they did consider strength which is why they developed a unibody aluminum chassis.

Grand Master

tsupersonic

Posted
Posted

2) My Macbook Pro is cool enough to to work with it on my lap. I don't care how cool your laptop gets. 3) My fan comments were about the efficiency of it. Your fans on the bottom are in a terrible place because on a soft surface that blocks them. Sorry, you may love your laptop, but you've tried to argue with me so badly that you actually started arguing about how cool your laptop is compared to mine ... when I didn't even make comparison! Fool.

Spoken like a true Apple fanboy. I have never used a Macbook Pro (or Macbooks for that matter) that wasn't cool to touch. I don't know how people work with these laptops on their laps, especially guys. Call me crazy, but I love my fan/vents to prolong the life of my laptop. IMO Apple designs are terrible, I don't care if vents/fans ruin the design. It's not about design, it's about being functional. I personally am not a fan of working with any laptops on my lap. I have a Toshiba netbook, and while the base is cool, I never put it on my lap. Same goes for my work laptop.
Grand Master

Arceles

Posted
Posted

You shouldn't be overclocking a laptop, period. It is designed within very specific heat and power tolerances by the manufacturer and you shouldn't be pushing it beyond what they set. But regardless what does you overclocking your laptop have to do with notebook build quality?

The fact remains that the MacBook Pros are designed very well and many windows notebooks are not. If you want MacBook Pro quality in a windows notebook you need to pay MacBook Pro prices. If you want the same specifications as a MacBook Pro (HDD, CPU, GPU, RAM etc) in a lower price then to provide that the quality of the notebooks casing (which dictates the overall quality of the unit) goes down.

Personally I hate poorly designed noisy notebooks that are plastic with holes all over the place for ventilation. I hate PC trackpads I've rarely found any that are good - Just the other day I used a top of the line Asus 17" notebook with a quad core Core i7, 6GB RAM, 750GB Hard Disk, GT550 graphics with 2GB of Graphics Memory. It had some special speaker system from some company (Bang and Olfson or something) but the trackpad sucked, it had holes all over the place for fan exhaust and intake. The speaker grill below the display looked cheap and stuck on with glue. It was not a unibody it was all plastic. Just blegh. but hey it cost ?750 that's a lot less than a MacBook Pro (Over ?1,100 less). And if people only care about the underlying specs of the components and not the product as a whole then so be it, but I care about more than just the specs.

Sorry but, some of us actually DO know how things work and do whatever we want with our laptops to get the most performance of it (WAY more powerful that those macbooks at stock settings), your comment only shows the already stated and so generalized behavior of the apple fanboys.

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

Sorry but, some of us actually DO know how things work and do whatever we want with our laptops to get the most performance of it (WAY more powerful that those macbooks at stock settings), your comment only shows the already stated and so generalized behavior of the apple fanboys.

No offence but I probably know a lot more about computers than you do and I'm hardly an Apple fanboy.

The facts remain that overclocking a laptop is a bad idea for a multitude of reasons including increased power use, increased heat and increased fan noise. Not to mention the possibility of permanently damaging the components or reducing their life span. Stick to overclocking desktops that arent designed to such tight power and temperature envelopes.

But again none of this has anything todo with the notebook build quality.

Grand Master

HawkMan

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If I drop something on my plastic to toshiba, it bounces of without a mark, on the apple, it leave a big dent.

My old toshiba also does not get warm in the slightest despite heavy gaming.

Also aluminum body does not by definition mean it looks better. It also doesn't blow hot air on the screen causing discoloration.

Experienced

RiverCampher

Posted
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Heh opinions sure get heated in a manufacturer by manufacturer battle.

Apple and Dell both have good points about their design and have made failures in the past. Honestly the only way you can review them properly is having them both to work with for a day to work out which one is more suitiable.

Current models may vary widely from past experience. We've all had that hard drive that's failed or laptop that's broken (I had one of the fabled Dell XPS1300 with the nvidia board overheating but it still doesn't stop me having a look at them or recommending them - Advised friend to get a Dell XPS 1702X the other week).

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