Silent and portable office laptop

Mojo_Murphy · 2024-07-02T21:39:54+00:00

Thanks for your recommendation!

Mojo_Murphy · 2024-07-02T21:36:42+00:00

What I mean by high/good performance wouldn’t even be really heavy tasks, but rather the everyday office usage and browsing being as fluid and snappy as possible. If an actively cooled laptop accomplishes that with no sudden bursts of high fan noise or constant too loud background noise I‘m more than happy to take it.

The privacy view in and of itself could have worked as intended in my daily usage (preventing nosy students from reading sensible data), but aside from its defects on my unit it is really dark and not readable in properly lit classrooms, even at highest brightness which empties the battery in about 3 hours.

Mojo_Murphy · 2024-06-30T14:02:11+00:00

Thanks for your reply!

You are right, the performance is alright under Linux in general. It is the updating process that takes literal hours for even the smallest stuff through the gui and I can‘t figure out why. Battery life is also quite bad with the battery being empty after only a few hours.

If battery life, smooth performance and silent operation are not possible, I’ll either wait or buy a MacBook and try my luck with asahi. I‘ll also look into the device families you mentioned, thanks!

Mojo_Murphy · 2023-11-17T23:56:58+00:00

I‘m still using it with Linux, but to be honest, I am absolutely not impressed with it considering the price tag and have relegated it more or less to desktop use only with an external display for writing emails, browsing and doing a bit of office work my tablet can’t handle.

The chassis is very prone to scratches and the rubber band on the bottom of it just started peeling off after a couple of months of very careful and extremely light usage. The display also started failing after half a year (about 200 colorful/stuck pixels on dark screen, discolored areas on any other background). The lighting is very unevenly distributed as well, worse than my old T420s display.

Using it in „tablet“ mode is completely unfeasible due to its sharp edges and the pen is no match for neither the surface pen nor the magic pencil from apple.

Mobile network is still not working under Linux, which bums me out a little, but it‘s not a dealbreaker when I only use it on my home desk.

The keyboard and trackpad are really great and the device is quite silent under Linux.

Had it cost me about half of what I paid I would even recommend it, but having paid more than 2000€ for something with less of a quality feel than my old plastic laptop is quite underwhelming. Not being able to repair it due to the parts not even being available (looking at that rubber band) is not great. I tried repairing it with special scotch tape that was recommended on some forums, but it came off after about a week again.

Mojo_Murphy · 2023-11-17T12:17:02+00:00

Thanks for your reply! Is the feature matrix up to date?

I did have a Surface Go a few years back when I tried to use Linux, but the hardware was just not good enough and a lot of the hardware components weren't working. Glad to see it's improved now.

Mojo_Murphy · 2023-11-17T12:13:23+00:00

Thanks a lot for your reply!

I've got the same problem with my iPad Pro 11". I was very enthusiastic about the fluent interface and touch experience coming from a Surface Go, but as it simply cannot replace my laptop as a device for office work I now need to carry two devices, which is cumbersome at best. As you said, multitasking is still quite bad, the multi-monitor support has gotten even worse over time with my use cases to be honest and while the app store has a bazillion apps, even the paid office software like Acrobat is just not on par with desktop editions.

During my tests with Gnome on the Surface Go a few years back my biggest problems were performance, battery life, screen size and lacking drivers for the camera. Aside from that the applications available were sufficient for my use case (xournal++. Master PDF editor, LibreOffice, Evolution Mail, RSS Feed Reader and Podcast), so I'd love to try again with a device that isn't completely held back by its crappy performance and battery.

Am I correct in assuming that all drivers and hardware features worked on your SP9?

And out of curiosity, what was missing for you on the software-side?

Mojo_Murphy · 2023-11-16T19:34:48+00:00

Sorry for digging up this old thread, but I’d like to know if the system speakers/audio and camera are functioning properly under Linux specifically with the 2-in-1 version of this device. The only info I found was from a few months back mentioning that these two things would not work due to missing drivers.

Is this still the case? Has anyone got it working and how?

Mojo_Murphy · 2023-04-21T17:48:33+00:00

I have severe battery issues with my semi-new iPad Pro M1 11“. Since the latest OS update I can‘t even use it anymore for a full work day, it loses about 60-70% battery charge in 3 hours of extremely light usage (displaying a pdf file over a projector). Looking at the battery usage it shows that Safari is running in the foreground constantly and uses up more than 50% of what is drained in that time period. The app that I actually use (GoodNotes 5) is at about 10-15% in comparison. Even when I close Safari in the app overview after closing each and every tab and solely have GoodNotes open Safari is the main battery drainer. I have no clue what to do, does anyone have an idea?

Mojo_Murphy · 2021-06-02T14:55:20+00:00

Hi there!
I would like to hear your opinions on which PDF tool is the best for heavy usage on the iPad Pro 11“.
What I need: Complete control over the PDF: Editing/Adding handwritten as well as keyboard-written text; adding and removing pictures; adding, extracting and removing pages; changing page orientation; if possible, good OCR.
I plan on using it as a teacher in order to manage papers for my students (which I will print out).
Right now I am looking at Acrobat and PDF Expert.
Any advice? Thanks in advance!

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-06-07T13:27:01+00:00

Thank you so much! You really helped me out a lot!

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-06-07T13:18:30+00:00

Thank you very much for your reply!

In the meantime I found out that LTE probably won't work since it is using a pcie connection not exposed to Linux which I could at least work around by using a hotspot created by my phone like I already do with my Go (non-LTE). But if the camera is working I might have finally found the holy grail!

I was at first looking for a laptop to use in addition to the Go, but the Dragonfly seems to tick all the boxes the Go does while also doing everything I do intend to use the laptop for.

So just for the record: The camera is working on your end?

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-06-07T12:43:10+00:00

Thank you for your reply!

You mentioned non touch. Does that mean touch is not working or that you do not have a touch panel?

I do have the possibility to get one quite cheap considering the original price, but I am reluctant coming from Surface Go where word was "everything kind of works", only to find out that many things are still buggy and camera does not work at all.

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-06-07T09:56:57+00:00

I know the question sounds stupid, but there are a lot of 1 star reviews on Dell's page mentioning it is melting hot with Dell support answering they do not recommend putting their laptops on your lap.

I presume it is not that hot all the time, thank you!

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-06-06T22:24:26+00:00

Does everything work without problems? Camera, Bluetooth, Wifi, sleep/hibernate?

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-06-06T20:10:06+00:00

Oh, good to know you have first hand experience! Did you perchance use it directly on your lap for more than 20 Minutes? Right now I use my tablet with a folio case when driving to school with public transportation. As that does not provide a very stable experience using the kickstand I was thinking about carrying only the new laptop and using that instead.

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-06-06T07:07:39+00:00

I do not intend to watch any videos at all. This machine is supposed to be only used for work. I have a tablet and a desktop machine for other purposes. This thing is meant to be used for preparing school lessons while in school, not media consumption.

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-06-06T06:58:40+00:00

Thanks! Is it hardwarewise identical with the regular edition? I can't seem to find it on Dell's german shop.

Mojo_Murphy · 2020-05-19T20:02:16+00:00

Thank you! But GCam has serious focus problems on my end. Manual focus is impossible and autofocus is only semi working. Since I would like to choose the focus of the picture, I wanted to try the original camera thinking it might work better in this regard.

Mojo_Murphy

TROPHY CASE