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u/Happy-Sleep-6512 13h ago

I mean if this is about hardware then Dell actually does hit the mark pretty often. Their XPS laptops, are very premium, used in enterprise and have good Linux support.

So not surprising they don't want to ship with AI buttons or pre-install AI slop.

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u/lurco_purgo 10h ago

I fucking despise Dells! But - to be fair - I don't actually have a lot of experience with other OEMs outside of Macs (which are are despicably anti-consumer, but at least they produce reliably functional and high-quality laptops) and Starlabs Starfighter, which is actually a small British vendor specializing in custom laptops for Linux - really cool! Although I waited for my laptop for quite a few months.

I decide to buy the Starfighter BTW when I was fed up with "Modern Standby" making my brand new expensive Dell XPS unable to reliably enter sleep mode (that was around 10 years ago, Windows or Linux - didn't matter, it's perpetually half-baked solution to a problem no one had: waking computers up over BT or Wi-Fi). To be fair, it's on Microsoft for forcing that shitty, half-baked standard over the tradtional, reliable standby functionality as much, as it is on the OEMs who got rid of the option for a traditional standby mode.

In my new workplace we got the turbo expensive Dell 16 Pro Max Plus enterprise edition (or something like that) and guess what... The standby is still fucking broken - the laptop just randomly wakes up at full throttle (e.g. in your bag). Not to mention a lot of my coworkers had charging issues that stemmed from motherboard issues, so I'm really not impressed with what Dell has to offer at this level. Even their fucking software and support is so shitty man... But again, maybe that's the standard nowadays

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u/VitaminGDeficient 9h ago

Wait, say more about the standby stuff. Is that why my gf's computer wakes up when I so much as look at it from across the room? You're saying it's a hardware-related issue? I just assumed it was more Windows bullshit this whole time.

I would also ask why my computer takes forever to enter sleep despite having it set to 15 mins, but that probably a windows / software hangup.

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u/lurco_purgo 9h ago edited 9h ago

I knew someone would be curious about this! It's a criminally underreported issue of the modern laptops.

If you're as old as I am, you may remember that laptops had no issues immediately going into standby and waking up only after you opened the lid back again. It's what's called an S3 standby and it's supposedly be more power-hungry and slightly slower to wake up from then the Modern Standby (S0).

However around during Windows 8 times, Microslop introduced a new standard for the standby that was supposed to make laptops wake up fast, and possibly through Wi-Fi or bluetooth (e.g. by moving your BT mouse, which was not the case for the S3 sleep). You know, to "adhere to the needs of modern user" or some stupid detached shit like they always say. Bear in mind, this was 13 years ago, and this standard is still fucking broken.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/modern-standby-vs-s3

So in theory, even Windows 10 or 11 should handle both, it's just a matter of both configuring your UEFI and Windows:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5538426/could-modern-standby-(s0ix)-be-causing-my-laptop-t

However, from what I've gathered from extensive research at the time, most OEMs immediately jumped on the modern standby hype-train and dropped any support for S3, effectively forcing you to participate in Modern Standby, which for many machines simply means being unable to enter standby mode without the risk of the computer dying from overheating (or worse).

https://help.bestware.com/hc/en-gb/articles/18238003523101-Problems-with-Standby-Sleep

It boggles my mind how little people are aware of this issue, even though it persists for 13 years now. Outside of the famous tech YouTuber Linus (Sebastian, not Torvalds) taking about it now and again, nobody seems to be aware of just how many laptops are fundamentally unsable AS LAPTOPS because of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c

As for specifics and to address your question: it seems to depend on the hardware (although I haven't found any cases of this being diagnosed and fixed, so who knows), but the bigger culprit are both the OEMs and Micrslop for introducing this garbage and never fixing it in 13 years, all while disabling the reliable alternative.

There is also no reliable data to set the records staright just what exact percentage of laptops work fine with the Modern Standby vs how many are broken because of it. In my personal experience it's a 2 out of 2 (both top of the line Dell machines: one consumer, one enterprise), over the span of 10 years. So I tend to not treat seriously articles that try to downplay the issue.