this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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I wish decently powerful small laptops would make a return. I dearly love my 11" MacBook Air and I'm still astounded I can even somewhat use it today for various research and office work, but it could seriously do with an M1 chip and 16GB of memory.
I have a Dell XPS 13 9315, which is roughly the same size as the 11" air (actually slightly smaller), and I absolutely adore it. I didn't get the highest-end because I didn't need it, but it's available with some decent processors and up to 32Gb RAM. It just sucks that everything is soldered to the board and non-upgradeable, and it has only 2 USB C ports, but that's the price you pay for the size. The battery life is actually astounding, too, I am constantly amazed how long it lasts. The new XPS13 has the weird square flat keys and no border around the touchpad, I'm really glad I got the model I did because the new ones look like a pain to actually use.
Like I can actually do a little bit of light Solidworks on it if I'm not near my desktop, which blew me away. It plays the indie games I like, too, so it basically just does everything I need.
My winter project is to install Linux on it and get it all working the way I want.
I want Netbooks to come back for this reason. The only reason they failed the first wave was because nobody at the time thought to treat them as just smaller laptops that could be improved. They were just glorified pre-Chromebooks that were underpowered.
Technology has progressed since then so there's no excuse not to bring them back. I loved the idea of carrying something that small around and not have it hinder me as much as a full laptop could.
I'd like to see decently small powerful laptops that can actually be upgraded, ala old-school Thinkpad X-series from before Lenovo ruined the ThinkPad name.
Yes, while I have the MBA running macOS, I have my trusty X260 with Linux for everything I don't need macOS for. I absolutely love both the size and thickness of it - the keyboard is good, the nub is good, it's a comfortable, rugged laptop with a dual battery setup.