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You can't do better than a really good piece of slate, a quality chisel, and a nice mahogany mallet.
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Looks like a patentable idea if not already solved.
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There are the Panasonic Toughbook series but...
Price is so incredibly high that, unless you need them in an area where safety of life and limb is at stake, it doesn't make much sense to use them (IMHO). Some of my customers with money to spare bought them just to discover that they become obsolete in 3 to 5 years like any other laptop and you've spent north of 5000$ for a piece of obsolete junk.
Mircea
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A thing I can't quite understand is the 'your no longer tied to a desk'. The stuff that's plugged into mine... It's a Lenovo it's seems Okay (USB can be a little picky...). The only real use I think is for 'Hot Desking' which if you are doing anything not based around standard office paper work doesn't work (for me at least!) & during Covid it was quick to work from home (at the start I had to remote into my desktop).
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Roger Wright wrote: They all have lousy performance
What the heck are you doing with them? 
I know very few people who don't use a laptop for work these days and no one complains about performance.
I have two friends who use a desktop for heavy AutoCAD work, but that's about it.
For gaming it's a different matter, of course.
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My company issued laptop is what I use primarily for all my work including development.
They typically last for a few years and then I put in a requisition for a new one.
Our laptops are good, but not as good as I would like them to be. Definitely not as performant as my home/personal PC, but that is because my company does not want to pay the extra money for really good laptops (I get it, saving money and all).
I do prefer PC towers over laptops, but they do make excellent, powerful laptops now ($$).
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I get that companies standardize on hardware, but I figured that a happy employee is a good employee.
So I simply asked my employee if he had any specific wishes for a laptop, especially since he's allowed to use it privately as well, gave him a budget for a good laptop (which is about €1700) and told him he could order a more expensive one as well, but if it got too expensive we'd have to talk money.
The only condition was that it had to be Windows because his job would be to write Windows applications (more and more multi-platform, but, unfortunately, still some .NET Framework and even WinForms as well).
He ordered some HP flipbook he wanted toghether with a mechinal keyboard that's got me frustrated every time I have to help him with some code.
All in all that cost me about €200 extra, but let's say he wanted some gaming laptop and it cost me €1200 extra.
That's €1200 for a happy employee, an absolute bargain!
I think happy employees are worth a lot more than standardized hardware.
He's not only happy because he has the laptop he wanted, but also because I took his wishes into consideration.
I know from my time as an employee that's pretty rare, yet it goes a looooong way in employee happiness!
The same applies to a company car, work hours, work from home, study courses, etc.
Of course there's a limit, especially when the employee already makes a lot of money, but don't be too greedy when it comes to employees.
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You would be a great guy to work for, Sander, and I agree on all points.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Thanks, doing my best! 
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My real problem with them is keyboards - they are so small, so cramped - and the travel is so short they have no "feel".
And don't get me started on "touchpads"!
I have a Surface, and it works pretty well - but if you crank up the brightness to see well in sunshine, the battery life drops significantly.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: My real problem with them is keyboards - they are so small, so cramped
That's where docking stations come into play.
My laptop sits on a docking station and I have (2) 27" monitors plugged into the docking station, including standard wired keyboard and wired mouse. I usually set the left monitor to be my default.
I work from home.
If I have to travel, just un-dock the laptop, put into travel bag, and on my way.
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OriginalGriff wrote: My real problem with them is keyboards - they are so small, so cramped - and the travel is so short they have no "feel".
And don't get me started on "touchpads"!
If only there was a convenient way to plug a mouse and a keyboard into a laptop... 
OriginalGriff wrote: but if you crank up the brightness to see well in sunshine, the battery life drops significantly.
Don't phones have the same problem?
It's pretty simple, you can't win a brightness battle with the sun. Just don't try to do work on a laptop out in the sun.
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Yes, touchpads... utterly useless waste of space, but what other option is there? I'm out in a yard full of solar panels, sitting on crushed rock in the bright sun, and can't seem to find a flat spot for the mouse. Is there no display technology that is useful in daylight?
Will Rogers never met me.
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Why don'T you buy one of these[^]?
It would give you shadow for the screen  
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Quote: Protection Headwear Fishing Umbrella Cap
The premise must be that the fish have their mouths open due to the riotous laughter after getting a look at that thing, and you merely drop your lure in there and hook them. Genius!
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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you ask for 2 conflicting requirements.
performance and portability; you can't have both. (well, maybe the MacBook Pro m2 max)
and display all suck in daylight (heck, even regular monitors suck in daylight).
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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If you have any sort of connectivity out in the field, remote into your real work system that does all the heavy lifting. That'll address the lousy performance. Which frankly I could debate, I know people with gaming laptops that could run circles around the fastest machine I own.
But my main point is, you don't need a lot of horsepower locally if all you're doing is running RDP. Then carry around whatever extra hardware you're willing to bring with you.
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You haven't said anything about how you're using them. Maybe you should be voice dictating / commanding instead of typing. Or using augmented reality to "see" differently.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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I'm sitting on crushed rock in bright sun - no shade except that under the solar panels - trying to make the equipment out there communicate with the remote generators. The rocks scope out at 147° and the shade is 100° and the brightness level is so high that the screen is unreadable. Your AR suggestion is worth exploring - thanks!
Will Rogers never met me.
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There used to be monitors as glasses. Some of those and a very large-brimmed hat. (?)(Sombrero)
You might also be able to find a slatted cover that can fight over your display (it would have to be removable in order to close the laptop)
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Or one of these[^]
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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That would work great until the wind came up!
Will Rogers never met me.
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Didn’t you notice the chin strap?
Might need a waiver from your chiropractor!
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