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My little brother recently joined the army and is finishing up his AIT in late June, after which he's headed to Korea for a year. He wants to buy a gaming laptop and has budgeted about $1500. I've already tried talking him out of it and explained that he could either build a beast of a desktop with that budget or get the same level of performance for half to two-thirds the price but he makes a good point that lugging even a mid-tower & monitor halfway around the world will be difficult and/or expensive. He's currently looking at an Asus G750JX for about $1600. I suggested he try to find something with an i5 instead of an i7 but it doesn't look like anyone makes a true gaming laptop that has anything short of top-end components. I know gaming laptops got pretty well dismissed in the OP, but does anyone have a recommendation for a game capable laptop (preferably something with mobile discreet graphics and not an Intel HD or AMD A-series) that comes in under $1000?
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May 4, 2014 21:39
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I'm looking for a laptop so every time I move ( I travel a decent amount ) I don't have to move my PC. However, I'm not looking for a desktop replacement per say, just something that can: Run TF2, Tropico 5 Photoshop / Lightroom Watch an occasional movie Would a T440 with the upgraded screen (1600x900) and 8GB ram accomplish this? Or is there somewhere else I should be looking?
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May 4, 2014 21:58
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Geoj posted:My little brother recently joined the army and is finishing up his AIT in late June, after which he's headed to Korea for a year. He wants to buy a gaming laptop and has budgeted about $1500. I've already tried talking him out of it and explained that he could either build a beast of a desktop with that budget or get the same level of performance for half to two-thirds the price but he makes a good point that lugging even a mid-tower & monitor halfway around the world will be difficult and/or expensive. Sager 8268-s is perfect. 8278-s is the same but 17" vs 15". Check out xoticpc you can get the price down even further. I just paid just north of $1,400 Search this thread for it I've talked about it a lot You can argue desktop vs laptop forever but if he's in the Military always moving around and stuck in barracks desktop isn't really an option
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May 4, 2014 22:07
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I tried putting boot camp on an old Macbook Pro. The touchpad is barely functional and it sucks using Apple's keyboard layout. I don't think I'll be going that route for a new laptop for Windows use.
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May 4, 2014 23:05
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Parallax Scroll posted:I tried putting boot camp on an old Macbook Pro. The touchpad is barely functional and it sucks using Apple's keyboard layout. I don't think I'll be going that route for a new laptop for Windows use. I just run it full screen with virtualization software under OS X. Works best that way
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May 4, 2014 23:26
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Parallels seriously kicks rear end, it's like native.
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May 4, 2014 23:26
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Geoj posted:does anyone have a recommendation for a game capable laptop (preferably something with mobile discreet graphics and not an Intel HD or AMD A-series) that comes in under $1000? You're not likely to find too many laptops pair a 860/870 with an i5 (even though there's no performance reason not to), so don't be dissuaded by the i7's most pack. Just make sure it includes at least a 128GB SSD (or you budget to add your own), and I highly recommend a 1080p IPS screen. Don't worry much if the laptop doesn't have 16GB of RAM, either--8GB is just fine for the most part (and it's easy and usually cheaper to add yourself later, anyhow).
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May 4, 2014 23:39
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Bob Morales posted:I just run it full screen with virtualization software under OS X. Works best that way Does the touchpad work better that way?
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May 5, 2014 00:47
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Parallax Scroll posted:Does the touchpad work better that way? To get my Magic Trackpad running well in native Windows, I had to poach a driver from one of Apple's bootcamp driver packages. And then it basically ran well. Is there nothing similar for the built-in Mac trackpad?
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May 5, 2014 01:13
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So, I'm in the market for a new laptop after the display on my outdated laptop finally bit the dust. At this point, I want to get one merely as a stopgap option until I get a job and earn enough money to get parts for an actual build. Should I be worrying about a gap between integrated and dedicated graphics or something, if I want to play decent/AAA games (like, say, released in the last 5 years) at decent speeds without looking awful as a result by having to set graphics quality to low? The reason I ask this is merely because of one stupid stipulation: my dad is the one who's going to purchase it, and he insists on purchasing it at Costco because they extend the warranty an extra year for free. However, with my insistence on getting a laptop with dedicated graphics (because I had a terrible experience with this previous laptop), the lowest-priced option at Costco is beyond my price range (which is just ~$700-750 before tax/shipping). And yet, I could be getting a laptop on Newegg that fit that one criteria, and is under my price limit even after buying an extended warranty separately. Yes, I saw the gaming demo video linked in the second post, and despite the games seeming to run pretty well, the "low" quality settings requirement discouraged me a little. I'll look into the actual integrated graphics model options available to me, but for now, I just want to know if I should stick with trying to get a dedicated graphics laptop, or if I should ease up and just accept having to get a laptop with integrated graphics. For what it's worth, the laptops I'd then be considering would still have at least 8GB of system memory (and maybe 12 or 16), so maybe I'm just rambling on when I should be using common sense.
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May 5, 2014 02:26
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Your whole premise is pretty confused. If you can afford a $750 laptop as a "stopgap" to a desktop...why are you getting a laptop to being with? You can make a pretty solid desktop for under $1000. So I'd recommend you save the few extra bucks you'd need (or drop to a R280 or even a R270, which'll still be quite good for slightly older 1080p games) and just skip the laptop entirely.
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May 5, 2014 03:39
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So it seems my old Dell Vostro 1510 just kicked the bucket, or rather, its graphics card died (again)... This means I will probably have to go and buy something new. I'd like to have a laptop that is reasonably portable while being big enough for prolonged writing, so I'm probably looking at something between 12in and 14in, presumably 13.3in. I would like 8GB of RAM, and I wouldn't mind a cpu that runs at decent speeds, i.e. not the ultra-low voltage models (unless they are better than one would assume from a 1.7GHz processor). I know that there is the whole "lol gaming" thing going on, but I'd like it to be able to run Eve Online and maybe Civilization V or Skyrim at reasonable settings (it doesn't have to be maximum). Does this essentially count out the Intel HD 4400/5000? Is it possible at all to go with integrated, because I'm somewhat apprehensive about dedicated cards after having (the notoriously faulty) Nvidia 8400/8600 series die on me a grand total of 5 times since 2006? My current laptop has a rather recent SSD (256GB Crucial M4) that I have been very happy with and which I would be able to re-use in case the new laptop would come with either a smaller (regular) SSD or a normal hard disk. I run Linux (OpenSUSE 13.1) as my day-to-day OS and have used Windows 2008 R2 for gaming (because I am cheap and that is what I can get for free from Microsoft via DreamSpark). I would prefer not to buy a MacBook Pro or Air, but if that's the only decent option I probably won't be dogmatic. That said, I will not buy an ASUS laptop, because I've had bad experiences in the past, not going to throw money their way again. I'm a student in the UK so I will be buying the laptop here and can make use of educational discounts. Any recommendations? edit: Regarding the gaming, I'm coming from a 2.1 GHz Core 2 Duo and a 256MB Geforce 8400M here, so I doubt this could actually get worse. Please don't prove me wrong...  edit 2: So from what I can tell, my main choices seem to be either the MacBook Air (which got an update last week) or the Dell XPS 13, which cost pretty much the same.  Does anybody have more specific experience with either?edit 3: The Dell XPS Developer Edition 13 (running Ubuntu by default) might be the better choice if I can even order that as a student. Hollow Talk fucked around with this message at 05:44 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 04:14
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Geoj posted:My little brother recently joined the army and is finishing up his AIT in late June, after which he's headed to Korea for a year. He wants to buy a gaming laptop and has budgeted about $1500. I've already tried talking him out of it and explained that he could either build a beast of a desktop with that budget or get the same level of performance for half to two-thirds the price but he makes a good point that lugging even a mid-tower & monitor halfway around the world will be difficult and/or expensive. A gaming laptop is quite reasonable for somebody in the military that's spending a year in places. You don't need to worry about it being too big and heavy, and even if it's of cheap construction, you don't need to worry about the machine "falling apart" if it's going to sit in one place all the time. Geoj posted:He's currently looking at an Asus G750JX for about $1600. I suggested he try to find something with an i5 instead of an i7 but it doesn't look like anyone makes a true gaming laptop that has anything short of top-end components. I know gaming laptops got pretty well dismissed in the OP, but does anyone have a recommendation for a game capable laptop (preferably something with mobile discreet graphics and not an Intel HD or AMD A-series) that comes in under $1000? I suggest looking at XoticPC at least for browsing. They have them nicely laid out by increasing price / increasing power. I'd avoid stuff by Sager (Clevo) and stick with ASUS or MSI. I'd get a 15.6" laptop instead of 17.3" based on my instincts (I think it's 1920x1080 either way, so unless the 17" model is necessary for cooling reasons), but my instincts could be wrong. Also instinctively I like the MSI stuff better than ASUS, but I don't know why. (Maybe Lenovo is fine, but you can get better performance with single-GPU options with the others.)
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May 5, 2014 04:47
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I love Asus but the equivalent Sager is $300-400 less. Plus sager has a 15" option
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May 5, 2014 04:52
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For work I'm basically in a different state every two months, with multiple back and forth flights in between. Living in hotel suites and airport lounges. I need something light, preferably convertible, heavy duty and with excellent battery life. My budget is anything $2,000 and under. Any tips? I'd prefer to not buy another laptop for at least 2-3 years. Not a fan for Apple. I can possibly wait a month if anything worth waiting for is being released.
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May 5, 2014 05:47
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DrDork posted:Your whole premise is pretty confused. If you can afford a $750 laptop as a "stopgap" to a desktop...why are you getting a laptop to being with? You can make a pretty solid desktop for under $1000. So I'd recommend you save the few extra bucks you'd need (or drop to a R280 or even a R270, which'll still be quite good for slightly older 1080p games) and just skip the laptop entirely.
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May 5, 2014 11:50
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On my new Yoga 2 Pro, I have a problem with Chrome often zooming instead of scrolling. I just disabled the pinch-to-zoom gesture in the trackpad settings, but it's still happening. What else could be causing this?
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May 5, 2014 12:50
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I'm headed to school in the fall. My plan is to rebuild an old desktop as my main source of work and use the laptop for class note taking, web browsing, Office 365 access, etc. A 14" screen is preferable and the less it weighs the better. Do I need a Thinkpad for that or should I get something less robust? I don't want a chromebook or cloud-based laptop and don't want a Mac either. I'd like something that can dual boot Windows as well as Linux. Some flavor of the Yoga, perhaps?
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May 5, 2014 13:39
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Hollow Talk posted:So it seems my old Dell Vostro 1510 just kicked the bucket, or rather, its graphics card died (again)... As far as how much you can push integrated graphics and ulv cpu, when I was overseas recently for work, all I had was my surface pro 2, and I hooked that up to the TV in my hotel and played fallout NV, civ 5, guildwars 2, warframe on some down time. The only game I had problems with was payday 2, and the everquest next beta. I've played skyrim on my surface before as well though while new vegas ran beautifully on mid-high graphics, skyrim had to have them turned to low to have smooth frame rates. Point is, thats on a 4200u with 4gb of ram. Integrated graphics have come a loooooong way. Obviously if you're really wanting to game, and not just as a casual side thing like it is for me, you're going to want dedicated graphics, but those ulv cpu's really aren't a dog.
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May 5, 2014 14:02
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Christoff posted:I love Asus but the equivalent Sager is $300-400 less. Plus sager has a 15" option There's quite a few of us here with XoticPC built Sager laptops. They're just as good(or as bad) as Asus/MSI. Don't worry about it.
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May 5, 2014 15:00
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Can someone who owns a t440s w/ touch go to the lenovo site, price up your model and tell me if its much more expensive than it used to be?
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May 5, 2014 16:40
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Wife needs a laptop for an online course required for her job. I was about to pull the trigger on a Chromebook which seemed perfect (cheap, portable, good battery life) but Java is a system requirement so Chromebooks are out. Any alternatives to a Chromebook that will run Java?
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May 5, 2014 17:52
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Tom Guycot posted:As far as how much you can push integrated graphics and ulv cpu, when I was overseas recently for work, all I had was my surface pro 2, and I hooked that up to the TV in my hotel and played fallout NV, civ 5, guildwars 2, warframe on some down time. The only game I had problems with was payday 2, and the everquest next beta. I've played skyrim on my surface before as well though while new vegas ran beautifully on mid-high graphics, skyrim had to have them turned to low to have smooth frame rates. Thank you, that sounds really encouraging! I will probably go for the 13in MacBook Air (which I originally said I'd like to avoid, go figure) with the i7-4650U and 8GB of RAM, since it really looks like a good package with a very decent student discount. Since I've had a laptop for so long that was never great at anything during its lifetime, I'm pretty used to the idea of not being able to experience most games at their most beautiful. Gaming is a casual thing, and as long as these thing run at all, I'll be happy.
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May 6, 2014 00:54
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Hadlock posted:Samsung pushed back their 13" 1080p "Chromebook 2" to end of may, second 3+ week delay in the rollout. Now it's June? I'm seriously thinking of getting this as a replacement for my dinky HP DM1. The stats look great for $400: Samsung Exynos 5 Octa 5800 2.0 GHz Processor (2 MB Cache) 4 GB DDR3L SDRAM 16 GB Solid-State Drive 13.3-Inch Screen, 1920 x 1080 LED Full HD Resolution
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May 6, 2014 06:25
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inkblottime posted:Now it's June? I'm seriously thinking of getting this as a replacement for my dinky HP DM1. The stats look great for $400: HP has their Android-powered 14" 1080p "slatebook" around the corner (?!!?!?). I am suspecting several other "full hd" (1080p) Chromebooks/google powered "laptops" before September  Looks like Intel has a major low-power announcement lined up for mid-late May, in particular the Braswell chipset/SoC for Chromebooks, which is causing Samsung to stall their (ARM-powered, non-x86-Braswell) rollout indefinitely, to be part of the "new wave" of chromebooks. Ought to be interesting. Looking forward to 1080p chromebooks I can run remote desktop on. Plausible major announcements coming in May from Intel Bay Trail updates (Atom sytem-on-a-chip) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(system_on_chip) for cell phones Braswell announcements (PC system-on-a-chip) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braswell_(SOC)#Roadmap Cherry Trail annountements (tablet system-on-a-chip) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvermont Unrelated: Apple just dropped the price of their laptops by $100. Also "unrelated": Intel started beating their marketing War Drums for their Ivy Bridge starting in late April 2012, Haswell in mid-May 2013 /the scent of fresh silicon in the air Hadlock fucked around with this message at 07:03 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 06:53
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How do the T440p and T540p compare to the T430 as a "successor" to the main 14-15" ThinkPad line? Any ThinkPads released after the keyboard redesign seem to get middling user reviews but I'm not sure if that's because they're bad products, or because ThinkPads have some hardcore fans. More context: I'm talking about business/enterprise (no work requiring a graphics card) type use cases. Though I'd love to drop it from 20 feet and have it live, because hey, ThinkPads. I'd also murder for a 2880 x 1620 display when compared to the 1600 x 900 of the T430.
Chakron fucked around with this message at 07:17 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 07:06
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Chakron posted:How do the T440p and T540p compare to the T430 as a "successor" to the main 14-15" ThinkPad line? Any ThinkPads released after the keyboard redesign seem to get middling user reviews but I'm not sure if that's because they're bad products, or because ThinkPads have some hardcore fans. More context: I'm talking about business/enterprise (no work requiring a graphics card) type use cases. Though I'd love to drop it from 20 feet and have it live, because hey, ThinkPads. I'd also murder for a 2880 x 1620 display when compared to the 1600 x 900 of the T430. Well I think the T440p meets the main wishlist of the T430 power-user: give it an IPS 1080p screen and a good quad-core processor option. The main caveat is that some of the panels (some of the LG ones) are/were pretty bad. The T540p just has a nicer display. And it's a bit lighter? Just going by the notebookcheck reviews I think Lenovo's cut corners in some harmless ways. Last year I thought the new trackpad (on a Helix) was bad unless you configured palm check to the minimal level. This year after some driver updates I think the trackpad is good in the default config. So there's that.
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May 6, 2014 08:21
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I don't think the trackpad problems are even close to being solved (heaps of complaints over at the Lenovo forums) and the new setup is universally disliked by trackpoint users. I'm actually considering going HP next time around - the 840 G1 looks pretty good and I'm just waiting for work to buy some so I can try one out properly.
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May 6, 2014 09:40
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dissss posted:I don't think the trackpad problems are even close to being solved (heaps of complaints over at the Lenovo forums) and the new setup is universally disliked by trackpoint users. I'd actually call trackpoint an improvement. Left and right clicking is perfectly fine. Middle clicking as an option in the UI is gone (and a registry hack is possible but it's glitchy). The improvement comes from the actual nipple being better than the older ones. Two-finger scrolling is slow in Firefox for some reason. But not in IE or Chrome! And not in other programs. I don't know what's going on there. The trackpad is essentially perfect right now.
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May 6, 2014 12:09
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I only find $299 T60's that originally was bought by my company for $2899 it was top of the line!!11!, but I usually check out CL for laptop deals. This is a great one. 
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May 6, 2014 13:20
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Still looking for a decent laptop for VFX stuff. Not sure how well a laptop runs Maya and Houdini without a quadro but I'm going to be doing a lot of simulations so I guess it's the CPU and RAM that counts? Only reason I'm not going for a desktop is because I'm overseas for a year and won't be able to ship a desktop back with me.
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May 6, 2014 16:05
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I'm posting this as a kind of record of note. I bought an Ideapad y510p at the beginning of the year. It ran games great, but started having stuttering problems the last month or two. I had tried everything, updated everything, tried disabling various components and got to the point of considering throwing more money at the laptop to upgrade parts, but finally in desperation, tried taking the battery out of the laptop. Bam, the stutter stopped and games started running smoothly. I have no idea why this is so, but I'll assume it's something to do with the power supply or the battery charging scheme or whatever. So anyways, if you've got a y510p and are having the same problems, give this a try. Judging by google results, I'm far from the only person that has had this problem, but no one has posted this solution yet. I pretty much use this as a semi-portable desktop computer anyway, so running without a battery while gaming isn't a big issue for me. Overall, I've been happy with the y510p. I bought it to replace an aging desktop computer and it has done well for me.
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May 6, 2014 17:37
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HPL posted:I'm posting this as a kind of record of note. I bought an Ideapad y510p at the beginning of the year. It ran games great, but started having stuttering problems the last month or two. tried taking the battery out of the laptop. Bam, the stutter stopped and games started running smoothly. I have no idea why this is so, Run the battery check utility that came with the laptop and monitor your CPU/GPU temps. Sounds like thermal throttling. Also see if you can monitor your battery temp while gaming Second, get some compressed air and blow out your heat sinks to dislodge any pet/girlfriend hair
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May 6, 2014 18:45
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I'm considering a Lenovo Thinkpad w540 for VFX work. Looking at about $1400. A bit steeper than what I was hoping for but I guess that's the price to pay to have a quadro.
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May 6, 2014 19:11
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shrughes posted:I'd actually call trackpoint an improvement. Left and right clicking is perfectly fine. Middle clicking as an option in the UI is gone (and a registry hack is possible but it's glitchy). The improvement comes from the actual nipple being better than the older ones. Well that's certainly not the common opinion amount people who have gone from earlier Thinkpads to the new setup. Personally I now consider the trackpoint unusable as I find it impossible to get the new 'buttons' to consistently register clicks (and the stick itself doesn't seem any different). Hence why I'm considering switching to HP who thankfully still use proper buttons (unfortunately only two of them)
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May 6, 2014 20:52
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agarjogger posted:To get my Magic Trackpad running well in native Windows, I had to poach a driver from one of Apple's bootcamp driver packages. And then it basically ran well. Is there nothing similar for the built-in Mac trackpad? By default all the trackpad has in boot camp is tap to click, two finger swipe to scroll, and two finger tap for right-click. There's no support for anything involving more than two fingers. It has a "double tap then drag" feature for dragging, but I kept activating this accidentally so I turned it off. When using Windows on a Macbook, plugging in a mouse is preferable in my experience.
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May 6, 2014 23:13
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Parallax Scroll posted:By default all the trackpad has in boot camp is tap to click, two finger swipe to scroll, and two finger tap for right-click. There's no support for anything involving more than two fingers. It has a "double tap then drag" feature for dragging, but I kept activating this accidentally so I turned it off. When using Windows on a Macbook, plugging in a mouse is preferable in my experience. Here's an exe which opens up a little control panel for the Mac trackpad. I definitely used it to disable tap then drag, which is unusable. Sorry if this is only for the bluetooth Magic Trackpad, and not the built-in trackpad. They're the same thing, but I've really no idea. http://www.trackpadmagic.com/magic-trackpad/home
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May 6, 2014 23:17
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agarjogger posted:Here's an exe which opens up a little control panel for the Mac trackpad. I definitely used it to disable tap then drag, which is unusable. Sorry if this is only for the bluetooth Magic Trackpad, and not the built-in trackpad. They're the same thing, but I've really no idea. Thanks but it looks like that only has the same functionality that Apple's boot camp control panel already provides. Edit: Unless that exe enables momentum scrolling, but I'm guessing it doesn't.
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May 6, 2014 23:27
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Hadlock posted:Run the battery check utility that came with the laptop and monitor your CPU/GPU temps. Sounds like thermal throttling. Also see if you can monitor your battery temp while gaming It wasn't steady stuttering, more like everything was running fine and then there would be a second or two of stutter and then it would be fine again and then a minute or so later, it would stutter again. I just played CoD: Black Ops all the way through without the battery with most of the graphics options cranked and it ran perfectly fine, whereas yesterday I couldn't get it to run smoothly for the life of me. I'll give cleaning it a try, though there seems to be decent airflow happening.
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May 6, 2014 23:30
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HPL posted:It wasn't steady stuttering, more like everything was running fine and then there would be a second or two of stutter and then it would be fine again and then a minute or so later, it would stutter again. That sort of sounds like my laptop when trying to decompress and play a 13GB video to an external 1080p screen. Not taxing on the CPU, but the onboard HD4000 GPU would self-throttle down to 350mhz from 1200mhz for a few seconds and then we'd run in to a big stutter again. If you don't measure your thermals you can't really fix the problem. The battery acts as a big insulator for the case on one side, and by removing it, you've removed about 1" of insulation to that side which could drop your internal temps enough that the GPU stops throttling as much. Most Lenovos have software to control the fan settings, too. I'd check and see if you have the most aggressive settings turned on (most are set to "quiet" or normal which favor throttling over excessive fan noise) Running a second display while gaming won't tax your GPU at all, I would recommend running CPU-Z which will give you the temp readouts of the GPU, CPU and also the clock rate of the CPU and GPU, it should tell you immediately if that's the problem, and you can test to see if the battery is having an insulation effect or not.
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May 7, 2014 01:39
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