8

Dear notebook manufacturers,

do you ever fucking think of how users actually use your notebooks in a company? Almost every company makes use of docking stations. Sooo... Instead of killing my battery over time by being constantly connected to power via the docking station. What do you think of doing some kind of scheduled/more intelligent charging or a charging range? I mean I dont stare 4 hours a day onto my 14 inch notebook display and then think "Oh I need to charge, better use my docking station" and go charging it for 90 minutes whilst staring at two 4k monitors and then unplug everything. My notebook now lives for 20 minutes without a power source... I cant even do proper presentations without using power cable... Please... Do something...

Yeah they will never see this. Just asking myself how you can develop a product do far away from the actual customer

Comments
  • 1
    Asus has a battery saver app that I use on my personal lappy. It only charges if it falls below some level. I think I have mine set at 60%. So, some manufacturers are trying to fix this. Of course the app is Windows only, which is kinda shitty.
  • 2
    @Demolishun I guess its too customer friendly and would actually make the notebooks more durable to enable the charging electronic to do so...
  • 1
    @hypervtechnics I just checked for my Dell machine at work. No apps available for Linux for Dell. TLP is a thing, but that feature is only available for ThinkPad on Linux. So right now my battery is slowly dying...
  • 0
    Why should a company think about that?
    It's financially more rewarding to sell replacement batteries - and technician appointments for the "internal", not for the customer to replace ones - than to provide software to fix that problem.
  • 0
    @sbiewald I have 3 years on site replacement/repair service. I had issues getting Windows 10 to activate. They literally sent a guy to our place and he handed me a piece of paper with a new Windows 10 key on it. He drove like 200 miles to hand me this. I cannot imagine that it would be cost effective on their part for that. I dunno though, I have not seen the business model.
  • 2
    @Demolishun I have that too, but that explicitly excludes the battery, as it is an "expendable part" with a half year warranty only.

    Those batteries are fairly cheap, too (around 40€) - and its replaceable by me - , but nonetheless, there is no gain for a companies selling batteries, to increase the battery lifetime.
  • 1
    MSI don't charge the battery while it's above 90%, I only use it plugged in so haven't seen it actually recharge itself yet.
  • 2
    @Irene: My company is the "best" of both worlds!

    We only get laptops, but cheap business laptops instead of actual development laptops. :D

    As for the actual topic, there should be a law or something FORCING the company to think about that stuff. I'm not "green" by any stretch of imagination, but in this case, why consume precious resources and strain the environment when there could be a software solution?

    But, heh, this would first require politicians who are not completely clueless. I guess our sun will go supernova before we get those...
  • 3
    @irene most jobs I've had have used laptops, but on the understanding that I might have to travel for work, which would require a laptop anyway.

    Makes no sense buying two machines and then having to keep them synced up imo.
  • 1
    @irene true, but I live in bumblefuck, Nebraska, where high speed internet isn't always a thing everywhere i might be.
  • 1
    @irene The ability to make home office is great. It is usually not allowed to put work on private devices so laptops are required - and companies do not want to pay extra for people working from home.
  • 1
    @sbiewald Thats the Main reason for us having Notebooks. We also get the equipment for working at home by the company.
  • 1
    @irene That's what I would call cheapass.
  • 0
    @irene You can be much more flexible and also the Notebooks my company uses are very powerful. Idk How other companies handle it tho
  • 0
    @irene Probably too. But flexible also means working at the client, in house or in house in another room without rearranging all cables/monitors. We have no fixed seats for the most desks.
  • 0
    Yeah, homeoffice is one of the main reasons for laptops in our company, too. Though we did have them before homeoffice was regularly allowed.

    That said, the cheapass business laptops with their tiny displays are a downside especially in homeoffice...

    I hope HO will become more and more accepted. I get less work done at work, am more tired (after the commute) and less flexible (have the commute still ahead of me) and we have mostly the modern school of "I have headphones on all day, don't dare disturb me" devs anyway, so it's not like we miss out on much communication.
  • 0
    @irene But why RDP + VPN, additionally to the laptop?
  • 1
    @irene erm... high end i7, 32GB ram , 1TB SSD dell laptop for work.

    Not all "laptop companies" cheap out.

    Mind you, prior to this beast I was on a Lenovo thinkpad x220...
  • 2
    @irene it would, but I'm forever moving between floors for meetings and presentations and what not, having a laptop doesn't bind me to my desk plus i still get the compute power I need to do my job(s)

    when I need to work from home I can just take it with me and vpn back in seeing as everything is behind LDAP anyway.
  • 2
    @irene yea it's a pain but when you fall behind... you got to make up for it somehow.

    Thankfully that doesn't happen often, I generally only need to take it out of the office when I'm on annual leave in the event I need to jump back in and fix a prod issue... remember the bus?🙃

    But yea, the portability is a must for me, even if the laptop doesn't leave the office.
  • 2
    How about: don't use battery power while on ac power? Doesn't even touch the battery that way.
  • 1
    @Root That would be even more intelligent
  • 1
    I naively think that laptop manufacturer actually do such hardware protections, without that batteries they would melt much faster like in old times. But however we cannot be certain, so it's likely that this parameter is not of the most crucial importance for them.

    Actually 5 years with my Acer laptop almost always charged and its 8hours battery is almost as healthy as when I bought. (and I have installed win and some linux on it, so it's probably hardware) So some of them actually care.
Add Comment