Telegrams for Guests - Major OEM Laptop Product Manager!

Can you give us a history of the laptop markets from a oem perspective ? And what do you see for the future ? laptops l used to be very exclusive but today most people only buy laptops (not desktops). Which products and technologies have change the market ? MacBook Air ? iPad Pro? and surface? Finally, what are the biggest changes you see for the laptop market?

Pablo Ulloa

Are 8GB of RAM enough for basic office work, for an Laptop in the next 5 years? And why are RAM-Moduels for Laptops so expensive :'D

UwUThatOneGuy

Hello Tom and guest, is there a manufacturing reason for the poor amount and quality of ports on laptops, or is it a matter of demand. I mean to ask why do laptops have so few usb ports, rarely have HDMI or DP, and seem allergic to ethernet.

Woolly

Hey there, I know this question isn't specifically about Laptops but I wanted to ask your guest, since hes working for a major OEM what his insights and thoughts are on "MSIgate". There has been a lot of bad and shady reportings about MSI in recent news. Regional managers going rogue trying to demise bad reviews, the CEO commiting suicide this summer and most recently a MSI owned company scalping their own cards on Ebay. Any comments on that?

Given that ARM chips are super efficient and getting better performance every year: how long until they can replace x86 CPUs in Laptops? What do you expect out of Apples attempts in making their own Laptop chips and how much does the iPad hurt the Laptop market?

Any news of OLED-screens being cheap enough and better at resisting burn-in? Are we getting closer or will OLED never be a standard in laptops?

GriffDeLaGriff

Question about statistics to your guest: while products like the Zephyrus G14 and Zenbook Pro Duo have gotten lots of attention in the tech enthusiast space, there is a much larger market of laptop buyers who ultimately aren't enthusiasts. My main question is what kinds of products most people are actually buying, both in the productivity/ultrabook space and the gaming notebook space. I think learning about this would help us better understand what the average laptop buyer wants and how OEMs design and create laptop designs to better fit this kind of demand. Also, thank you for having this talk about laptops, since I feel laptops aren't talked about too often by the tech enthusiast crowd.

How much extra effort does it take to optimize for AMD and Intel, rather than for only Intel. I've seen that optimizing for AMD is less common but one example had more cooling dedicated to the gpu rather than the cpu because the 4700h or u and 4800h or u generated less heat than Intel's cpus.

Brian Steiner

What do you think it'll take to make 2c/4t CPUs and APUs obsolete in the laptop market? It seems like laptop CPUs/APUs have stagnated in terms of price/core and haven't budged even after Zen made it to the market. I'm sure the pandemic plays a role in keeping laptop prices high right now, but even before it hit, there didn't seem to be much downward movement in price for higher core count laptops or culling of weaker CPU SKUs.

Cleansweep

Hi Tom and guest! Regarding the laptop market, is there a specific reason why there aren't more high-end AMD-based laptops on the market? To me, it seems like a mix of 1. AMD's supply chain not having scaled up enough yet, and 2. Intel doing some shady stuff with OEMs, preventing them from releasing more Ryzen 4000 laptops. More specifically, as a starting discussion point, isn't it a bit shady how the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7, which was a marvel of a laptop featuring AMD's zen 2 APUs, magically disappeared of the market, being replaced by Intel variants that are more expensive and that perform worse? On Lenovo's product page for it, you can clearly see how they nonchalantly suggest Intel-based alternatives, which makes me wonder if Intel are being Intel once more and are using shady business practices to keep AMD from ramping up market share.

Hi Tom and guest, Do you have any suggestions as to why laptop screens seemingly skipped 1440p on their way to 4k, despite how common 1440p monitors are? I feel 1440p is pretty much made for laptop sized screens, so I find it odd manufacturers haven't used it widely. Thanks!

Seamus

How well do you see an ampere card performing in future releases? With the 3080 pushing north of 300 watts (forcing many people to upgrade their power supply) do you think that laptops will include the 3080 just for the marketability rather than any actual performance gains?

Joshua Rogers

What are your expectations for Zen 3 mobile? Are the gains over renoir expected to be less than desktop Zen 3 vs Zen 2 because renoir already improved relative single core performance and latency with its monolithic architecture? Do you see AMD making a bold move and doing something crazy like going full 7nm EUV or 5nm for Zen 3 mobile where the increased energy efficiency of an advanced node makes a much larger impact.

Think there is a future in Linux brands like System76?

Edward Huff

How much of a better product/price does AMD need/needed in order to counter the impact of Intel's MDF (or whatever the name for it is)? How difficult will the lack of relationship and presumably a lack of such MDF funds impact the ability of ARM to win good laptop designs ? (once Windows works sufficiently well on ARM).

TSPCFS

We provide IT services for small businesses and many of them have been wanting laptops with docking stations over desktops. They can have the big screen and peripherals in the office, and still have all their files/apps on the go. Have you seen any similar trends and do you have any insight as to what we can expect from future docking station technology? Thanks!

Agreed, how much money can they possibly be saving on skimping out on good or even decent thermal paste.... especially on the higher end models

John DeLuca

It seemed like basically all laptop OEMs were sleeping on Renoir until it launched and subsequently went viral. Why was that and was what happened afterwards just jumping on the bandwagon or lack of public information about planned products?

dj5k

Why use crappy thermal paste when spending so much money and real estate on a cooling system when better paste will usually improve 5-10C? And yes I know durability issues but old laptop OEM paste is just stone, unlike old MX4...

When will a laptop finally come out with a battery larger than the TSA carry on limit? I feel that is holding back laptop battery capacity. I would take the trade off of not being able to carry on a larger battery than having a smaller one. What about an idea of having a removal battery so you can still use the laptop on the plane but ether directly plug in without the battery, have a lower TSA rated battery to place in the laptop or run off of an external battery. I can see hardcore business people playing the extra cash for a feature like that.

John DeLuca

One of the most common tradeoffs in laptops, even in the high-end market, is the inclusion of low or mediocre quality webcams (and software). With the current situation and most meetings taking place over video conferencing, is this trend likely to change?

Luis Correa

What technological advancements in battery technology should we be looking out for if any? Is the name of the power game more about increasing silicon efficiency or increasing battery performance?

How has the always plugged in nature of WFH laptops impacted the battery management for you? Has there been an increase of swollen batteries industry wide or just some OEMs? https://wccftech.com/windows-update-kb4583263-fixes-hps-accelerated-battery-swelling-issue/

Hi there, do you have any insights into the limited availability of SMT renoir U chips? There seem to be competing theories as to the low number of SKUs that offer them and are readily available. Did AMD have problems with Renoir and diverted all their SMT-capable to the H series? Did OEMs not expect the performance and demand for renoir laptops to be high so they targeted more mid-level designs and ordered the likely cheaper non-SMT chips? Or is it just sort of a teething issue because this is the first generation where AMD mobile chips are truly compelling and then this was compounded by the Horseman of Pestilence charging in to lance the world's supply chains.

Now that we aren't traveling as much, everyone really misses the USB ports on our work laptops versus thinness/lightness. Can we please get some back?

Do you think the trend of OEMS such as Dell and Lenovo shipping laptops with Linux will stick around? Is there a market niche created by Macbook moving to ARM for them?

Viglius

Impact on laptop design after airlines banned 100wh battery

How do OEMs plan to improve the stability and reliability of TB3 based docks?

How does the customer feedback loop work when it comes to revising existing or introducing new laptop lines? More specifically, say there is a minor issue with a laptop (unfulfilling power button as an example) how does a customer get that feedback to the OEM for improvement for the next product cycle? Appreciate your time and thanks

extramossy

What gamging laptop to buy Desktop replacment 17inc, 5k+ with 2 power suppless Or light Laptop with eGPU?

Eshel Dar Epshein

Have you had any issues with Ryzen 4000 supply from AMD specifically? Or is this just more COVID shortages in the whole supply chain?

Asshole

Do you see AMD becoming more prevalent in the Laptop market over the next year?

Aaron Jackson