this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
83 points (94.6% liked)
Technology
76071 readers
2687 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't know that this is as true as it used to be. For my standard office-centric use case it's fine. I just need Dropbox and the office suite. But a lot of windows software has ARM versions now. The only thing holding me back is the lack of an ARM Surface Go.
I wish decently powerful small laptops would make a return. I dearly love my 11" MacBook Air and I'm still astounded I can even somewhat use it today for various research and office work, but it could seriously do with an M1 chip and 16GB of memory.
I have a Dell XPS 13 9315, which is roughly the same size as the 11" air (actually slightly smaller), and I absolutely adore it. I didn't get the highest-end because I didn't need it, but it's available with some decent processors and up to 32Gb RAM. It just sucks that everything is soldered to the board and non-upgradeable, and it has only 2 USB C ports, but that's the price you pay for the size. The battery life is actually astounding, too, I am constantly amazed how long it lasts. The new XPS13 has the weird square flat keys and no border around the touchpad, I'm really glad I got the model I did because the new ones look like a pain to actually use.
Like I can actually do a little bit of light Solidworks on it if I'm not near my desktop, which blew me away. It plays the indie games I like, too, so it basically just does everything I need.
My winter project is to install Linux on it and get it all working the way I want.
I'd like to see decently small powerful laptops that can actually be upgraded, ala old-school Thinkpad X-series from before Lenovo ruined the ThinkPad name.
Yes, while I have the MBA running macOS, I have my trusty X260 with Linux for everything I don't need macOS for. I absolutely love both the size and thickness of it - the keyboard is good, the nub is good, it's a comfortable, rugged laptop with a dual battery setup.