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"You are old, Acer Laptop" this blog-writer wrote,
"And your battery has become rather shite;
And yet you incessantly compile all this code –
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Acer Laptop replied to the man,
"I feared it might injure my core;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none
Why, I do it much more then before."

"You are old," said the man, "As I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly hot;
Yet you render in Blender in HD or more –
Pray, don't you think that's rather a lot?"

"In my youth," said the Acer, as he wiggled his lid,
"I kept all my ports very supple
By the use of this app—installed for a quid—
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the man, "And your threading's too weak
For anything tougher than BASIC;
Yet you ran Java 5 with its memory leak –
Pray, how do you manage to face it?"

"In my youth," said the laptop, "I took a huge risk,
And argued emacs over vim;
And the muscular strength which it gave my hard disk,
Has lasted through thick and through thin."

"You are old," said the man, "one can only surmise
That your circuits are falling apart;
Yet you balanced a bintree of astonishing size—
What made you so awfully smart?"

"I have answered three questions, now leave me alone,"
Said the Acer; "It's true I'm not brand new!
Do you think I'm like Siri on a new-fangled phone?
Be off, or I'll have to unfriend you!"

My current laptop is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth. It's an Acer Aspire S7 which Joanna and I bought cheap a couple of years ago as an ex-display machine. It's a thin, light ultrabook that's worked really well with Linux and still feels powerful enough to use as my main development machine. Amongst it's excellent qualities, the only two negatives have been a rather loud fan, and a less-than-perfect keyboard.

Still, it's getting a bit worn-out now and I've used it so much some of the keys have worn through to the backlight. I've also noticed some very appealing ultrabook releases recently, including the new Acer Swift 7 and the Asus Zenbook 3. Both of these hit important milestones, with the Swift being less than 1cm think, and the Zenbook coming in at under 1kg in weight. Impressive stuff.



With these two releases having piqued my interest, and with my current machine due for renewal, it seemed like a good time to reassess the ultrabook landscape and figure out whether I can justify getting a new machine.

Most manufacturers now offer some impressive ultrabook designs. HP has its Elitebook and Spectre  ranges, Apple's MacBook Pro now falls firmly within the category, Dell has the XPS devices and Razer is a newcomer to the ultrabook party with its new Blade Stealth laptop. They all seem to have received decent reviews and there's clearly been some design-love spent on them all.

However, they are also all expensive machines (around the £1000 mark). I'm going to use this as my main work machine for the next couple of years, during which time it'll get daily use, so I have no qualms about spending a lot on a good laptop. On the other hand, if I make a bad decision it'll be an expensive mistake. Given this, it's only sensible I should spend some time considering the various options and try to make a decision not just based on instinct, but on the hard specs for each machine.

There are plenty of reviews online which there's no need for me to duplicate; however I have some particular requirements and preferences, so this analysis is based firmly on these.

My requirements are for a thin, light laptop that's got a really good screen (the larger and higher the resolution the better). When I say thin, I mean ideally 1cm or thinner. By light, I mean as close to 1kg as possible. By good screen, it should be at least a 13in screen with better-than-FHD resolution (given FHD is what my current laptop supports). Any new machine must be better than my current laptop by a significant margin. My current laptop is still perfectly usable, and I'm happy with the size, weight, processing speed and resolution; but it doesn't make sense to get a new machine if it's not going to be a noticeable upgrade.

I've been single-booting Linux for many years now, and plan to do the same with whichever laptop I get next. That means the Windows/macOS distinction is irrelevant for me: they'll get wiped off as the first thing I do with the machine either way.

Before starting this task I was certain I'd end up getting the Acer Swift 7. Based on the copy I'd read, it's the thinnest 13.3in laptop you can buy and looks quite attractive to me (apart from the horrible 'rose gold' colour; ugh). If this didn't work out, I thought the numbers would point in the direction of an Apple device, given almost everyone I know in the Computer Lab uses an Apple laptop (there must be something in that, right?). After carefully working through the specs, I've been really surprised by the results.

The MacBook Pro appears to be decent in most areas, but in fact is worse than the best of its competitors in almost all respects. Since I don't want to run macOS, the only thing in its favour is the attractive design. The MacBook Air is really showing its age now, and is even beaten by the MacBook Pro on everything except price.

The Swift 7 is thin, but turns out to be a really poor choice. That just goes to show how unreliable my gut instinct is and I'm glad I didn't buy it without looking at the alternatives. It's running an M-class processor with no touchscreen or keyboard backlight. The port selection is average and in practice its only strengths are the thin chassis and fanless design. Both are nice features, but the result of the package is hardly an upgrade over my existing machine.

The Razer Blade Stealth was originally down as my alternative choice. It has a gloriously high-resolution (3840 * 2160) screen, and personally I love the multi-coloured keyboard lighting. Some might say it's a just gimmick, and I could never justify a purchase because of it (especially bearing in mind it almost certainly won't work properly on Linux), but I still think it's glorious. Unfortunately the Stealth turns out to have a small screen size and suffers problems running Linux. Both are show-stoppers for me.

The Zenbook also looks really appealing, with its incredibly lightness. Unfortunately, like the Stealth it suffers from a smaller screen size and Linux problems. Too bad.

I kept the Spectre in for comparison, but I could never have gone for it given it's horrific aesthetics. I admit, I'm shallow. Nevertheless, it turns out it doesn't offer enough of an upgrade over my existing system anyway (same resolution, worse dimensions and weight).

The unequivocal standout winner is the Dell XPS. In some ways I'm sad about this, as in my mind I associate Dell with being the height of box-shifting PC dullness. Dell's aggressive product placement really puts me off. The machine itself doesn't have a particularly spectacular design. Yet there's no denying the numbers, and the screen really does appear to be way-ahead of the competition, with its unusually thin bezel, high-resolution and decent size. I was tempted by the 15 in version, given its discreet graphics, but the size and weight just nudge outside the area I feel is acceptable for me.

That leaves only the XPS 13 standing. To top everything else off, Dell is the only company to officially support Linux (Ubuntu) on its machines, which it deserves credit for. I'm not sure whether I'll end up getting a new laptop at all, but if I do I'd want it to be this.

Scroll past the pictures to see my full 'analysis' of the different laptops.

Acer Aspire S7	Acer Swift 7	HP Spectre 13t
Razer Blade Stealth	MacBook Pro	MacBook Air
Asus Zenbook 3 UX390UA	Dell XPS 13	Dell XPS 15

Colour coding:

Best

Better

The same as my current Acer Aspire S7

Worse

Show-stopper

 

	Acer Aspire S7	Acer Swift 7	HP Spectre 13t (or 13-v151nr)	Razer Blade Stealth	MacBook Pro
CPU	1.9GHz Intel Core i5-3517U	1.2GHz Intel Core i5-7Y54	2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U	2.7GHz Intel Core i7-7500U	3.3GHz Intel Core i7
RAM (max)	4GB, 1600MHz DDR3	8GB, LPDDR3	8GB, LPDDR3	16GB, 1866MHz LPDDR3	16GB, 2133MHz LPDDR3
NVM (max)	256GB SSD	256GB SSD	512GB SSD	1TB SSD	1TB SSD
GPU	Intel HD4000	Intel HD615	Intel HD620	Intel HD620	Intel HD550
Resolution	1920x1080	1920x1080	1920x1080	2560x1440 or 3840x2160	2560x1600
Screen size (in)	13.3	13.3	13.3	12.5	13.3
Battery (hours)	6	9	9.75	9	10
Height (mm)	11.9	9.98	10.4	13.1	14.9
Width (mm)	323	324.6	325	321	304.1
Depth (mm)	223	229.6	229.4	206	212.4
Weight (kg)	1.3	1.13	1.16	1.29	1.37
Touchscreen	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Fan	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Backlit keyboard	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ports	USB2*2, 3.5mm, HDMI, SD, AC	USB3*2, 3.5mm	USB3*3, 3.5mm	USB3*2, 3.5mm, HDMI, AC	USB3*2, 3.5mm
Aesthetics
Linux compat	Good	Reportedly works OK	Unknown	Works with glitches (e.g. WiFi)	Currently flaky (will improve)
Price (£)		1000	1035	1250	1450
Price spec		8GB, 256GB	8GB, 256GB	16GB, 256GB	8GB, 256GB
Notes	Has been perfect, apart from the poor keyboard	Underpowered, and not big enough upgrade to be worthwhile	Ugly, ugly, ugly	Really tempting, good value, but small screen size is a problem	Quite big and heavy. Decent, but the Dell XPS 13 is better in every respect
	Acer Aspire S7	MacBook Air	Asus Zenbook 3 UX390UA	Dell XPS 13	Dell XPS 15
CPU	1.9GHz Intel Core i5-3517U	2.2GHz Intel Core i7	Intel Core i7-7500U	3.1GHz Intel Core i5-7200U	3.5GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ
RAM (max)	4GB, 1600MHz DDR3	8GB, 1600MHz LPDDR3	16GB, 2133MHz LPDDR3	8GB, 1866MHz LPDDR3	32GB, 2133MHz DDR4
NVM (max)	256GB SSD	512GB SSD	512GB SSD	256GB SSD	512GB SSD
GPU	Intel HD4000	Intel HD6000	Intel HD620	Intel HD620	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
Resolution	1920x1080	1440x900	1920x1080	3200x1800	3840x2160
Screen size (in)	13.3	13.3	12.5	13.3	15.6
Battery (hours)	6	12	9	18	17
Height (mm)	11.9	17	11.9	15	17
Width (mm)	323	325	296	304	357
Depth (mm)	223	227	191	200	235
Weight (kg)	1.3	1.35	0.91	1.29	1.78
Touchscreen	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Fan	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes?
Backlit keyboard	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ports	USB2*2, 3.5mm, HDMI, SD, AC	USB3*2, 3.5mm, TB, SD, AC	USB3, 3.5mm	USB3*3, 3.5mm, SD, AC	USB3*3, 3.5mm, SD, HDMI, AC
Aesthetics
Linux compat	Good	Works	Works but volume, FP, HDMI issues	Officially supported	Reported to work well
Price (£)		1100	1500	1250	1749
Price spec		8GB, 256GB	16GB, 521GB	8GB, 256GB	16GB, 512GB
Notes	Has been perfect, apart from the poor keyboard	The low resolution being worse than my current laptop, as well as being thick, rules this out	Thin and really light, makes it really appealing, but the small screen size is a problem	Relatively thick and heavy, but the screen is really great	Just a bit too big and heavy to be viable

 

On Wednesday Graham Rymer and I presented our work on cracking PwdHash at the Passwords 2016 conference. It's the first time I've done a joint presentation, which made for a new experience. It was also a very enjoyable one, especially having the chance to work with such a knowledgeable co-author.

The work we did allowed us to search for the original master passwords that people use with PwdHash. Passwords which are used to generate the more complex site-specific passwords given to websites, and which may then have been exposed by recent password leaks in hashed form. We were surprised, both by the number of master passwords we were able to find, and the speed with which hashcat was able to eat its way through the leaked hashes.

Running on an Amazon EC2 instance, we were able to work through the SHA1-hashed LinkedIn.com leak by generating 40 million hashes per second. In total we were able to recover 75 master passwords from the leak, as well as further master passwords from the Stratfor.com and Rootkit.com leaks.

Feel free to download the paper and presentation slides, or watch the video captured during the conference (unfortunately there's only audio with no video for the first segment).

Here are a few of the master passwords Graham was able to recover from the password leaks.
 

Domain	Leaked hash	Password
Stratfor	e9c0873319ec03157f3fbc81566ddaa5	frogdog
Rootkit	2261bac1dfe3edeac939552c0ca88f35	zugang
Rootkit	43679e624737a28e9093e33934c7440d	ub2357
Rootkit	dd70307400e1c910c714c66cda138434	erpland
LinkedIn	508c2195f51a6e70ce33c2919531909736426c6a	5tgb6yhn
LinkedIn	ed92efc65521fe5074d65897da554d0a629f9dc7	Superman1938
LinkedIn	5a9e7cc189fa6cf1dac2489c5b81c28a3eca8b72	Fru1tc4k3
LinkedIn	ba1c6d86860c1b0fa552cdb9602fdc9440d912d4	meideprac01
LinkedIn	fd08064094c29979ce0e1c751b090adaab1f7c34	jose0849
LinkedIn	5264d95e1dd41fcc1b60841dd3d9a37689e217f7	linkedin

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide whether these are sensible master passwords or not.