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Comment by bronz | Hacker News Reader

the gamer bling thing is so funny. why does nobody in the laptop business understand that people are buying those laptops despite the bling, not because of it? every ad that i see for a gaming laptop emphasizes the competitive advantages that these laptops offer, letting "gamers" "dominate" and so on. how could they be so disconnected that they don't realize that what everyone wants is to enjoy their crispy, high definition graphics on a sleek master race machine? what the world needs is a merging of gaming laptops with xps-like pro machines. utilitarian, powerful, well made and visually inconspicuous.

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Yep, when work asked what laptop I wanted a while back, I was embarrassed to send them a list of these "gamer" laptops, because they were the most powerful and adequate for what I need. Hate the bling and gamer tag.

And it's not just on laptops/desktops. I use a gamer keyboard (because of the 22 macro keys it has) and a gamer mouse (I like the ergonomics and tracking) for work. And of course, they have the obligatory fugly LED lighting and garish stylings.

If macros and ergonomics is your thing, and you don't mind a high cost, I recommend the kinesis advantage. No bling, all function and hardware-programmable, which is very nice to remap keys independent of the OS.

I use a SteelSeries Apex keyboard. It's pretty fantastic, but it has dome keys instead of mechanical switches.

I grew up on mechanical keyboards but after testing a bunch in a computer store, I realized I no longer care what kind of keys I use. It could be that I just got used to the Apple chiclet keyboards, but who knows.

My keyboard has four switchable profiles and 22 programmable keys, which means I can have 88 combinations. I mostly use the keys for launching apps and Sublime Text shortcuts though.

Not bad for around $100.

In fairness, I think ASUS gets it - they make non gamer versions of their thin gamer machines. My main problem with ASUS - they make nice machines - is that for a work machine, I want to buy a decent extended warranty where I know I'll get OK service, so that narrows it down to the bigger vendors like Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc.

AFAIK Asus doesn't yet have the Kaby Lake - Pascal combo out but they are coming https://www.nextpowerup.com/news/32428/list-of-asus-laptops-... in droves and soon. Some Belgian retailer already has some of them listed http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS694149 http://www.2compute.org/Product_Detail.aspx?prod=ASUS695109 etc

Razer figured it out.

Razer makes nice stuff, but I'd be concerned about support for a machine used for work when comparing to Dell, HP and Lenovo.

Razers new 17" is incredible. I'd never buy a 17" laptop but what they crammed into it is genius.

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