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Then you phrased it badly, because everyone wants a Delorean.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:20
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sports and Bob Morales got what I meant. By Delorean, I was saying that the MBA is under-powered and more of a trophy than an actual contender. I was ignorantly joking and very wrong. The MBA with i5 is actually better than almost any standard i5 PC laptop. Apple stocked that silver jalopy with an i5-4250U. You loving read that right. The Macbook Air with a 1366x768 TN panel has an HD5000 equipped i5, which has a lower idle clock than the standard i5-4200U, but the same turbo speed. Less power use, just as much shove in times of duress. Better able to handle actual work. Also, let's say I do get one of those 128GB SD cards, what is the lifespan on one of those things? P.N.T.M. fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 00:37
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Lifetime warranty on at least the ones from Lexar.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:43
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DrDork posted:More to the point, while ThinkPads are not the cheapest options out there, once you take into consideration that they are almost constantly on sale, there's usually only a $100-$200 difference between them and whatever crap-box someone might otherwise pick up from BestBuy, which is well within the "pay a little bit more to get something that's actually quality" range for many people. Of course, there's always the person who'll be quite happy with a $400 KMart special, but we're talking general recommendations here. To add to this, if all you wanted was the cheapest possible laptop with little to no disregard for quality/features/durability, why even tread in here? Whatever the $400 laptop of the month that is sitting on the shelf at Best Buy will likely meet your needs Laptop performance has plateaued since 2011 with Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge has a better GPU and Haswell has better battery life but at the end of the day all three will output 1080p netflix to your HDTV, play LoL and browse facebook If you buy a laptop today for $400 it will do all of these things and probably last you two years, if you buy a quality laptop for $650 it will do all of these things for six years. The idea that your $650 laptop will somehow be outclassed at liking your girlfriend's fb status or writing a term paper in five years eludes me. heck, even the i5/HD4000 manages to outclass the programming/art capabilities of most indie game developers. Eventually you reach the "good enough" plateau and if we haven't arrived at it yet we're drat near it. The T410 came out in 2010 with an i5, it's 3.5 years old at this point and with an SSD is going to be a very versatile machine for another 2-3 years. You can pick one up refurbished from Newegg for $300
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Jan 3, 2014 00:59
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Are there any 13" laptops with an IPS screen and a 1440x900 resolution? I don't like the scaling on 1080p or other high dpi screens and 1440x900 is pretty much perfect at 13" ...
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Jan 3, 2014 01:39
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Vinlaen posted:Are there any 13" laptops with an IPS screen and a 1440x900 resolution? No. A Retina MBP with scaling would work great though.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:48
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Vinlaen posted:Are there any 13" laptops with an IPS screen and a 1440x900 resolution? 1600x900 is the Windows laptop equivalent but you won't find many IPS displays - the original Yoga 13 springs to mind but there are probably a few others
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Jan 3, 2014 01:54
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Vinlaen posted:Are there any 13" laptops with an IPS screen and a 1440x900 resolution? Only Apple is doing 16:10 and the Airs are TN not IPS, IIRC.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:55
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Vinlaen posted:Are there any 13" laptops with an IPS screen and a 1440x900 resolution? Samsungs nowadays use PLS which is their version of IPS. I have a Samsung s9 and it's 12.9, 1920x1080, barely 3lbs and has an absolutely gorgeous matte PLS screen. Edit: Oh, some Thinkpads do as well (the X) vty fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 02:39
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Wilford Cutlery posted:Seriously? You've never seen Back To The Future? That would be an absolute travesty, but looking at his response, it looks likely.
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Jan 3, 2014 10:23
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So the Lenovo Y410p i7/8GB RAM is $769 right now. If I were to tear out the HDD and put in an SSD (probably would), that's about $150 more. It's got an NVIDIA GeForce GT755M GDDR5 2GB GPU and a 1600x1900 "HD+" display. It weights 5.5 lbs, which is actually a pound *more* than my now-gone Dell Latitude e6420, whose weight was just fine I guess. By contrast, the Gigabyte p34g is $1,389, about 450 bucks more. What it's got over the y410p: -760M instead of a 755M -128 GB SSD already built in, plus a 1TB traditional hard drive for more storage. -Weight of 3.57 lbs, about 2/3s of the y410p. -1920x1080 AHVA FHD display -A significantly better trackpad, judging by reviews., While I've got the disposable income, half a grand is pretty steep for a couple of pounds of weight and slightly better display and video card! Am I missing anything? The y410 seems to be making up for its flaws by just being drat cheap for the contents. fake edit: Actually, I just realized that the 410p isn't a touchscreen, which acounts for... 200?.. of that. seems a shame with Win8.1. BTW, are hybrid drives (like in the version of the y410 that has a Wireless-N 7260 instead of an apparently problematic 2230) any harder to replace with full-on SSDs? LogicNinja fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 13:10
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Nope, hybrid drives are just HDDs with SSDs built in.
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Jan 3, 2014 13:20
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After putting off buying a new laptop for ages I think I'm going to go with a T440s as a primary use machine. I'm going to be commuting with it by bike every day so I figure it's worth paying the Thinkpad durability premium. I figure I should go for the upgraded screen and wireless and buy more RAM and an SSD to stick in there myself, but I'm not sure how to spec out which processor to get out of what they have available. I'm a grad student and do a fair amount of machine learning stuff and involved simulations, but I don't know enough about computer hardware to know if splurging for the i7 processor makes sense for me. My gut feeling is to just stick with the upgraded i5 they have available since the i7 is a pretty big step up in cost. Are there any sort of guidelines to figure this stuff out? e: Should clarify that I'll have access to a cluster for really big stuff, but I'd like to be able to work with toy data sets on the laptop. Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 17:33
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P.N.T.M. posted:Also, let's say I do get one of those 128GB SD cards, what is the lifespan on one of those things? Shear Modulus posted:My gut feeling is to just stick with the upgraded i5 they have available since the i7 is a pretty big step up in cost. Are there any sort of guidelines to figure this stuff out?
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Jan 3, 2014 17:59
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New year's company gift is an Asus T100 and I have to say that given what it retails for, it's a nice piece of kit. Reminds me of my old eeePc , just more modern. Of I had to get something for a kid this would be perfect. Anyone knows if there is some good stylus for it ?
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Jan 3, 2014 18:10
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DrDork posted:The question isn't really life-span, but performance. Most of the very large SD cards that are around $100 can't top more than 30-40MB/s sequential, and sub-1MB/s random  quote:Unless you already have some specific common-use scenario where heavily multi-threaded performance would be important already thought out, stay with the i5. Doubly so if you can just off-load the heavy lifting to the school cluster. The i7 is up to a 27% boost. Decide for yourself if it's worth it. $150 (about 10% of the purchase price if you get an 8GB/256GB model for 20-27% more CPU performance? Sounds like a bargain to me.    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7113/2013-macbook-air-core-i5-4250u-vs-core-i7-4650u/2 Bob Morales fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 18:12
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LogicNinja posted:While I've got the disposable income, half a grand is pretty steep for a couple of pounds of weight and slightly better display and video card! Am I missing anything? The y410 seems to be making up for its flaws by just being drat cheap for the contents. The P34G does not have a touch-screen, either (thank god). It does, however, have an absolutely beautiful 1920x1080p IPS screen, which is far and away better than the Y410p's. So yeah, that's $200-$300 of the price difference right there. The 760M is a pretty decent step up over the 755M, despite the closeness in numbers. Won't really matter, though, since now you're driving 1080p instead of 900p. The P34G also has a better CPU but no one should care. It also looks sexy as hell. The Y410p has a DVD drive, though. Really, the P34G is an awesome little laptop, but it's something of a luxury item: you can probably get by just fine with the Y410p, especially if the $500 difference would be a big deal to your budget, and you don't plan on carrying the laptop around all the time. Gigabyte needs to get off their rear end and release the P34G-CF2 version in the US--it swaps the i7 for an i5 and drops ~$200 as a result, which would make it a lot easier to recommend to people.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:12
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Bob Morales posted:The i7 is up to a 27% boost. Decide for yourself if it's worth it. $150 (about 10% of the purchase price if you get an 8GB/256GB model for 20-27% more CPU performance? Sounds like a bargain to me.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:20
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Just going by the benchmarks posted above (which is probably dumb) am I correct to infer a 2011 macbook pro would still be a really nice and quick machine? Just considering all available options and I'm open to used obviously.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:44
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DrDork posted:Yeah, but it's only faster for--as I said--applications that take heavy advantage of being able to run 8+ concurrent threads. The i7-4650U is a dual-core processor just like all the other low voltage -U Haswell processors. You only get a 4(8) processor when you move to the -Q and -X suffix processors.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:50
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Yeah, i5 vs. i7 is usually a different situation in a laptop. Most people still probably don't need i7, but it's not for the same reasons.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:56
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DrDork posted:Here's the thing: you buy the y410p because you want to game on a budget and are gonna leave it plugged it on your dorm-room desk 95% of the time. You buy the P34G because you can, and because you're going to move around a lot (and still play games plugged in because lol battery life). I didn't realize the Gigabye had no touchscreen! Seems like kind of a big lack if I'm gonna be running Windows 8. That makes me look at something like the Aspire v7 as a compromise more seriously. All I really want is: -Decent GPU -Decent touchscreen -SSD -8GB RAM -reasonably light (4 lbs or less) -Doesn't look like an XTREME GAMEZ MACHINE with glowing colored lights and dragons on the case or whatever Too bad there's no magic bullet. I'll settle on something eventually.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:19
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e: mispost 
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Jan 3, 2014 19:50
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DrDork posted:Yeah, but it's only faster for--as I said--applications that take heavy advantage of being able to run 8+ concurrent threads. Those content-creation benchmarks you cited are some of the most multi-thread-friendly applications there are.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:57
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tesilential posted:Just going by the benchmarks posted above (which is probably dumb) am I correct to infer a 2011 macbook pro would still be a really nice and quick machine? Just considering all available options and I'm open to used obviously. The 2011+ 15" Pros all have an i7 of some sort and are still pretty beastly. The only real bad thing about the 2011's is they don't have USB 3.0 if you plan on using external storage.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:59
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GrizzlyCow posted:The i7-4650U is a dual-core processor just like all the other low voltage -U Haswell processors. You only get a 4(8) processor when you move to the -Q and -X suffix processors.
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Jan 3, 2014 22:41
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LogicNinja posted:Well, $500 won't really affect my budget, but I feel bad paying it if I don't feel like I'm getting $500 of value, y'know? In terms of moving around a lot, I go between my place and my significant other's place a lot, take it to a coffee shop, and visit my family every couple of weeks or so; I don't plan to game on the battery but I do travel with it... moderately, I guess? I'm not a consultant who's on the road mon-fri, but neither is it going to sit on my desk 95% of the time. If you're moving it around a lot, you may appreciate the lighter weight of the P34G. But be aware that the battery is pretty freaking terrible by current standards: with some minor mods to improve efficiency, you can eek out 4 hours as long as you're not doing anything stressful, like having the screen on 100% brightness. The y410p is as bad or worse, though, so either way you're not doing much away from a plug for very long. Depending on what types of games you plan on playing, you may be able to get by with less of a GPU than you might think, especially if you're ok with 1600x900. With your list of requirements, there aren't a lot that fit. There aren't many sub-4lbs laptops that bother to stock anything even close to a "decent GPU" if your term for decent means 750M or up. Also consider that those few who do (like the P34g) tend to have thermal problems and/or are quite noisy when fully taxed. The ASUS N550 probably gets closest to your list of requirements, but it's a 15.6" ~6lbs laptop. Not sure what your thoughts are on that part.
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Jan 3, 2014 23:02
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I was just gifted a fairly crappy wannabe-computer: A Dell Inspiron Duo. But hey, it's free. Here are the specs: http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/KCS/kcsarticles/articleview?docid=387004 So, since I own both Win7 and Win8, and would be willing to install Lunix problem solved, or even try out the Chrome OS thing, what would you suggest I do for an OS? The thing can actually do a 2-point touchscreen, and of course, all I can use it for is as a half-assed tablet/web browser anyway. It has 2 gigs of PC-1333 (woot) by the way. The ONLY thing I might consider is getting a Chromecast if I could even stream media from it considering how craptacular it is. So, what OS should I throw on this thing?
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Jan 3, 2014 23:46
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I've been reading that Windows can be put on to a Macbook. Assuming this is true, are there any downsides to doing this? I like the Macbook hardware, battery life and monitor. The only thing keeping me from getting one is my familiarity with Windows. Is this a stupid idea I should stop pursuing or am I a genius? (please say genius)
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Jan 4, 2014 01:28
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A lot of people do it. Just know you'll lose a bit of battery life.
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Jan 4, 2014 02:42
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Is the T430 no longer sold by Lenovo? Cause suddenly I can't find it on their website.
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Jan 4, 2014 03:11
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Thanks for the info, guys. The most "parallelizable" simulations I've been using are Sequental Monte Carlo-ish methods where the feedback calculations involve all the ensemble members and tend to be much more expensive than the ensemble of forward simulations, so I figure I won't benefit a whole lot from multithreading (I could be wrong, I don't have much of a background in computer architecture). I'll probably think about what I really need for another couple of days but the advice posted above and those benchmarking charts to put a number on what I'd be paying for help a lot.
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Jan 4, 2014 03:32
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Hey thread, I'm looking to replace my (long in the tooth), i3 Hp Pavilion D5, with an integrated graphics card (God this is an old machine), and I want a gaming laptop (yes I read the OP, but I'm in the military, so a basic tower isn't something I want to have/have the room for), and I'm trying to find out what the best 15-17 inch machines for 1000-2000USD are.
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Jan 4, 2014 03:50
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e: actually nm feller fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Jan 4, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 04:18
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I'm guessing the T430 is still available but the Lenovo site is broken. Not a surprise since their site is always broken in some way.
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Jan 4, 2014 04:20
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huh posted:I've been reading that Windows can be put on to a Macbook. You're not a genius, but it's fine to do that. There are some quirks, but they're all fixable or easy to get used to. That said, you're paying more than what a comparably-spec'd Windows laptop would cost, so only do it if you really really like Mac hardware, specifically
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Jan 4, 2014 05:28
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huh posted:I've been reading that Windows can be put on to a Macbook. If you have a retina Macbook, be aware that scaling in Windows is not great. You can crank it to 200% and hope for the best, but many apps are fuzzy on the screen due to janky scaling. Also, the buttery smooth trackpad on Macbooks sucks big time in Windows. I haven't found a good solution outside of "just use an external mouse." Bonus downside: battery life is not great in Windows vs. OSX.
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Jan 4, 2014 06:55
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I just realized - are external GPUs a thing? Or would they be so expensive that you might as well build a desktop? e: Looking around and found this guy - what do folks think of the Lenovo U530 Touch? It's 15.6 and 5 lbs; that size is kind of unwieldy, the weight increase is acceptable, and it's got a touchscreen, a GPU, and so on. son of e: I'm also looking at the Gigabyte U24T - what the hell is the catch? It basically looks like the P34G only with a touchscreen instead of a higher-definition screen. bridge of the son of e: It kind of seems like touchscreens and GPUs are allergic to each other; even high-end things like the Razor Blade 14 don't have one. LogicNinja fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Jan 4, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 11:06
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huh posted:(please say genius) opposite.
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Jan 4, 2014 13:58
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LogicNinja posted:son of e: I'm also looking at the Gigabyte U24T - what the hell is the catch? It basically looks like the P34G only with a touchscreen instead of a higher-definition screen. I think the vast majority on here would see 1366x768 over 1920x1080 as a "catch".
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Jan 4, 2014 14:08
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