chrisl137

It's all in the power manager settings and how you're using it.

Your zbook can draw as little as 10 Watts and still function - I just checked a random 15" zbook mobile workstation and they come with a 75 or 83 Wh battery. The 200 W brick is just for charging while running everything maxed out. Number of cores doesn't always tell you much - I have a little automotive computer that's quad core but it's a high end Atom processor and it's got an SSD, so flat out it draws about 13W, and usually less since I run it headless most of the time, and it can record video with that little power (you just can't do anything else at the same time or it will drop frames)

I just googled up a Eurocomm 12 core laptop/server that's spec'd out with a 78 Wh battery (which is undersized- the high end Macbook Pros have a 99.5 Wh battery) for a CPU with a design power of 130 W (that's just the CPU and doesn't include GPU, three hard drives, display backlight, fans,USB ports, or network). So running flat out, that machine would probably not even get 30 minutes. It's more of a luggable with a built in battery backup than a laptop. It even has a mode where it requires *two* identical 330 W power adapters hooked up in parallel and says "don't run in this mode with the battery!".

It does appear to have power manager settings, though, so you can probably crank it way down, kill a lot of background activity (easier with linux than with Windows, but still possible) and turn down the backlight (which tends to suck a lot of power). Replacing the boot drive with an SSD and shutting down the other two drives would probably help, too.

CMK10

I've had about two dozen flights in domestic First this year and I haven't had a single flight I'd describe as "horrible". The biggest issues for me tend to be the same issues I have at restaurants: employees not interested in providing good customer service.

However, I think the advice of lowered expectations are a good one. This is what the market seems to want and there are fewer airlines than their used to be. No matter how "horrible" it is, it still beats coach.

cmd320

My feeling on this is, as the customer, paying money for the product, why should I need to lower my expectations?

Kagehitokiri

market standards, and what market accepts

but yeah, declining standards is a cycle involving supplier and consumer

CMK10

Because it's 2015 and you're flying in a country where most customers are not willing to pay for quality and there's been a period of industry consolidation.

Hell, you can't go to a TGI Friday's expecting French Laundry food just because you're a paying customer.

invisible

Example: I have a private cloud on my work for our partners to co-develop IP. Typical hosting server for this cloud is with 2 12core CPUs and 512GB of RAM. Each server runs 40-80 virtual machines.

So there is one expo coming in Shanghai where they wanted the equipment exhibited there (an assembly line which is 10m long) to be connected with their project VMs (about 6 of them) in our cloud. While it worked fine at stationary deployments, nobody knew what kind of problems if Great Chinese Firewall and expo conditions would impose when connecting from Shanghai to Zurich. We ended up shipping the server there with me going to setup and connect. My travel and shipping costs were above $12K.

If we would have such a box, things would be much easier. So I am also interested in this device. Please let me know the manufacturer/specs.

invisible

Do the double blind test and most people won't distinguish food from those two.

Kagehitokiri

french laundry would not be a very good example of your point re some foodies
unless youre talking about lack of (any) palate in US, which i would also question

ren0312

Your domestic first seat is pretty what Pan Am had in their international first class in the 70s, though seat pitch was better for Pan Am.

cmd320

Seat pitch wasn't just better, it was 3-4 times the amount, plus better recline, leg/foot rests, etc. And that isn't even to mention the much higher quality soft product.

injera

When planes can be filled with passengers willing to fork over $2000 to fly NYC->MIA, DCA->IAH, ORD->SLC etc..... you'll see service thats great in F.

As it stands now most seats in domestic F are given away to frequent fliers or are sold for peanuts (recently bought an upgrade on LGA->MSY for $129 r/t) and therefore the airlines will keep these seats only 'slightly better' than coach.

Same reason why domestic Y sucks.......people ask for cheap, people receive cheap.

Austin787

I usually fly in Y, so getting an occasional upgrade even to domestic F is a nice treat for me. However I agree domestic F has been cut back in recent years to where it is a bigger coach seat with better service.

Best US domestic F is on Virgin America. By far the most pitch, greater recline, footrests, and even reading lights. Now that's a domestic F seat worth paying a premium.