Not sure there's a strong use case for one of these $6K laptops yet, considering you can get a mini PC running AMD Ryzen 495 or 395 with 96, 128 and 192 GB of memory for similar amount of money and connect remotely from a cheaper/smaller/more battery-efficient laptop. Microsoft also has this same chip in non-laptop form factor: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-rtx-....
Coding while flying is often the use case people bring up, but the power brick these laptops come with sometimes trip the plane's power plug in coach and you can't run local AI on battery for long. Also, over time planes will get better connectivity (Starlink etc.) and that particular full-offline scenario will go away.
For gaming, there are better options with dedicated GPUs like the Asus Zephyrus and similar.
What am I missing?
SimianSci 2 minutes ago [-]
The AMD hardware is x86_64, which means lower battery life on average for normal users, and as an architecture, it is very well supported across the Windows ecosystem.
The RTX Spark is ARM64, which means more efficient power management at the cost of a small hit to sustained performance loads. But comes at the cost of being less supported when it comes to available software packages.
Aside from this, I’m led to believe that the AMD stack when it comes to local models has more overhead related to its need to translate more NVIDIA native instructions and therefore can be less performant than Nvidia.
Not sure how true this is anymore, but ive yet to hear otherwise.
5vg 1 minutes ago [-]
i don’t think they’re flying coach after spending 6k on a laptop…
hypfer 8 minutes ago [-]
Hm, what's the learning here?
What challenge has been overcome?
I can see that hardware was bought, and that's cool hardware and all, but consumption is rather uninspiring.
I suppose it's the arm64 part?
Or the review of some new hardware other people might be interested in?
petercooper 4 minutes ago [-]
As someone who was intrigued by these new machines but also has no interest in running Windows, I'm quite happy to learn it works. Though admittedly I was expecting to see DGX OS first.
bitmasher9 20 minutes ago [-]
Is a Microsoft account required to use Windows on these RTX spark laptops?
Am I being too stubborn for not wanting a cloud account tied to my desktop operating system?
tomwheeler 15 minutes ago [-]
No, the vendor is being too presumptuous. This is clearly a case of them putting their needs above yours.
colechristensen 11 minutes ago [-]
It is getting progressively more difficult to set up a new Windows laptop without a cloud account. Currently it's a pretty esotaric command line prompt if you know the keybinding to get a terminal open.
mahboi 7 minutes ago [-]
For Win10, I had to keep it disconnected from the network throughout the install process. Once you're connected, you have to do it all over again.
SimianSci 8 minutes ago [-]
getting a local account is simple.
Windows Pro > Work or School Account > Join a Domain instead > Set password & recovery questions
The one component here that is not present on most machines straight from the manufacturer is the presence of the Pro version.
The home version of windows requires the account with increasingly limited alternatives.
I don't want a cloud login telemetry of when I am using my computer, an account that can be disabled by a provider, and constant ads to backup to onedrive. I also moved to linux because of this. (was already a linux guy, but Windows is completely in my rear-view now.)
herbst 4 minutes ago [-]
But who would want that?
Rendered at 21:44:23 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Coding while flying is often the use case people bring up, but the power brick these laptops come with sometimes trip the plane's power plug in coach and you can't run local AI on battery for long. Also, over time planes will get better connectivity (Starlink etc.) and that particular full-offline scenario will go away.
For gaming, there are better options with dedicated GPUs like the Asus Zephyrus and similar.
What am I missing?
Aside from this, I’m led to believe that the AMD stack when it comes to local models has more overhead related to its need to translate more NVIDIA native instructions and therefore can be less performant than Nvidia. Not sure how true this is anymore, but ive yet to hear otherwise.
What challenge has been overcome?
I can see that hardware was bought, and that's cool hardware and all, but consumption is rather uninspiring.
I suppose it's the arm64 part? Or the review of some new hardware other people might be interested in?
Am I being too stubborn for not wanting a cloud account tied to my desktop operating system?
Windows Pro > Work or School Account > Join a Domain instead > Set password & recovery questions
The one component here that is not present on most machines straight from the manufacturer is the presence of the Pro version. The home version of windows requires the account with increasingly limited alternatives.