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Dr. Video Games 0150 posted:I got this Lenovo t420 off eBay for $280 shipped: I bought a similar machine except mine had a 160GB disk and didn't have the Nvidia Quadro (which I didn't want anyway because I'm not gaming on it and the Intel drivers are far superior for Linux compatibility). A Samsung 840 EVO and 16GB of RAM later, this thing crushes.
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Sep 2, 2014 22:49
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Turtlicious posted:Don't use XoticPC. They don't really warn you if their item's are out of stock, and then you're stuck waiting for weeks because instead of saying they don't know when it'll come they lead you by the nose saying "Oh it should be here next week." It took me 2 or 3 weeks to get them to fess up that our computer wasn't coming and they don't know when it would, and by then my girlfriend almost didn't have a laptop for school. It's lovely that this happened to you but it's also worth noting that several others here have bought a laptop from them and haven't had any problems. I talked to people in both sales and customer service and had good experiences with both. My friend knows a guy that worked for them in their e-sports division until they closed it down recently. Even after being let go he said it was a good place to buy from.
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Sep 2, 2014 23:41
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I have bought two laptops from Power Notebooks, and they impressed me both times with very good service.
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Sep 3, 2014 00:08
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Etrips posted:
I don't understand why you would say this. I have a last-gen Alienware m14x, and it is a very good laptop. All of the online reviews mirror this sentiment, for the new generation as well. The screen has excellent viewing angles with no light bleed. The touchpad is extremely precise. The body has a metal frame, with zero "flex". They look gaudy as hell, but so do most 'gaming' laptops.
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Sep 3, 2014 01:33
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I'm looking for a laptop for school and my requirements are pretty basic(in order of importance): $700ish, reliable, can do basic office tasks(Windows), not-terrible screen, and semi-portable. 14" screen would also be nice, but thats certainly flexible as well. So what are my best options?
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Sep 3, 2014 06:41
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Captain Pike posted:I don't understand why you would say this. I have a last-gen Alienware m14x, and it is a very good laptop. All of the online reviews mirror this sentiment, for the new generation as well. The screen has excellent viewing angles with no light bleed. The touchpad is extremely precise. The body has a metal frame, with zero "flex". Yeah, I don't recall ever hearing that Alienware was garbage, just overpriced. And that has come down a bit since Dell bought them.
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Sep 3, 2014 13:47
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Aphrodite posted:Yeah, I don't recall ever hearing that Alienware was garbage, just overpriced. And that has come down a bit since Dell bought them. I think Alienware's bad rep comes from: 1. Kids would make their parents buy them one for $3,000 2. A $900 desktop performs better 3. They look stupid 4. Battery lasts for about 45 minutes and they double as a space heater 5. LOL 17" 9lbs good luck carrying it around 6. Everyone regrets buying one for the above reasons
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Sep 3, 2014 13:54
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Bob Morales posted:I think Alienware's bad rep comes from: Well that is just poor planning.  i7 QM processors don't run all day on batteries. Alienwares are now even listed on Dell's "business" site along with Precisions. I can't find a better-reviewed 14" non-ULV laptop. They are great laptops (inside clown costumes).
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Sep 3, 2014 14:15
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Looks like we have a new chromebook contender Toshiba Chromebook 2. 4GB of ram, 1080 IPS screen and a Bay Trail processor for $330 sounds pretty nice ot me. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/toshibas-chromebook-2-will-give-you-a-13-1080p-ips-display-for-330/
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Sep 3, 2014 14:47
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Calidus posted:Looks like we have a new chromebook contender Toshiba Chromebook 2. 4GB of ram, 1080 IPS screen and a Bay Trail processor for $330 sounds pretty nice ot me. They call an Atom chip a Celeron now? WTF. The Haswell Celerons would be the minimum I would want. 13", 1600x900 or 1080p with a good keyboard/mouse would be killer. Basically a MBA that runs Linux perfectly.
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Sep 3, 2014 14:49
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Bob Morales posted:They call an Atom chip a Celeron now? WTF. Atom chips are Pentium branded too now, you can get either Haswell or Atom Celerons and Pentiums. Always be sure to check exactly what you're getting. These modern Atoms are significantly quicker than the ancient last generation, though. I think a modern Atom would be plenty for a Chromebook, personally. The battery life benefits would make up for the small amount of performance you're giving up.
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Sep 3, 2014 15:07
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Lenovo also came out with a thing yesterday. 7.5lbs of 17 inch gaming notebook. quote:Under the hood, the Y70 combines a quad-core Haswell-series Core i7 processor and up to 16GB of RAM and NVIDIA GTX graphics, with a 4GB 860M GPU being the highest-end option. As for storage, you can opt for either a 256 SSD or a 1TB hybrid hard drive with 8GB of cache. Battery life, meanwhile, is rated at five hours -- not that you're likely to travel without a charger. Look for it in October, starting at $1,299.
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Sep 3, 2014 15:18
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Twerk from Home posted:These modern Atoms are significantly quicker than the ancient last generation, though. I think a modern Atom would be plenty for a Chromebook, personally. The battery life benefits would make up for the small amount of performance you're giving up. In terms of raw CPU power they aren't all that much faster than the AMD E-350 which was slow when it came out 3 or 4 years ago http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-intel-atom-z3770-tested/2 They do well in a few select benchmarks, though.
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Sep 3, 2014 15:34
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Bob Morales posted:In terms of raw CPU power they aren't all that much faster than the AMD E-350 which was slow when it came out 3 or 4 years ago I'll give you that it's not much faster than an E-350, but that thing itself was massively faster than old atoms. Anything beats the 1.6GHz old atoms that were in the first range of netbooks.
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Sep 3, 2014 15:42
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Calidus posted:Looks like we have a new chromebook contender Toshiba Chromebook 2. 4GB of ram, 1080 IPS screen and a Bay Trail processor for $330 sounds pretty nice ot me. Well that's interesting. The Samsung got low marks for coming with a pleather case, bad viewing angles and anemic horsepower. This at least fixes two of them, with the added benefit of running x86 code natively. And has VT-x support so you could in theory run VMWare's "windows apps on chrome" whenever that is released. Looks like that Son-of-Atom Celeron is roughly comparable to the AMD A6-4455M, and shares technology with the HD4000 GPU. I wouldn't write it off completely. That may be my next laptop purchase...
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Sep 3, 2014 15:47
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bull3964 posted:Lenovo also came out with a thing yesterday. Wow, it has exactly one monitor output.
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Sep 3, 2014 15:56
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Calidus posted:Looks like we have a new chromebook contender Toshiba Chromebook 2. 4GB of ram, 1080 IPS screen and a Bay Trail processor for $330 sounds pretty nice ot me. I am pretty interested in these.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:10
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Are docking stations still a thing? My dad wants a laptop he can occasionally carry around the house (so portability isn't much of an issue) but wants to be able to dock it in his office so that he can use a standalone keyboard, monitor, speakers, etc. He also likes being able to securely attach the docking station to his desktop so that he can lock his laptop in place. My younger brothers who still live with him have "borrowed" his laptop for days at a time before and he'd rather lock it than try to reason them.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:24
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internet inc posted:Are docking stations still a thing? My dad wants a laptop he can occasionally carry around the house (so portability isn't much of an issue) but wants to be able to dock it in his office so that he can use a standalone keyboard, monitor, speakers, etc. He also likes being able to securely attach the docking station to his desktop so that he can lock his laptop in place. My younger brothers who still live with him have "borrowed" his laptop for days at a time before and he'd rather lock it than try to reason them. For 'business' laptops they are still very much a thing.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:31
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internet inc posted:Are docking stations still a thing? My dad wants a laptop he can occasionally carry around the house (so portability isn't much of an issue) but wants to be able to dock it in his office so that he can use a standalone keyboard, monitor, speakers, etc. He also likes being able to securely attach the docking station to his desktop so that he can lock his laptop in place. My younger brothers who still live with him have "borrowed" his laptop for days at a time before and he'd rather lock it than try to reason them. You don't need a docking station to lock your laptop, and maybe not all docking stations have the ability to "lock" the laptop to the docking station. Most "business" laptops have docking stations. I think many can "lock" the laptop by means of some kensington lock slot and a switch with a lot of them, but I'm not sure. shrughes fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 16:34
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That's good to know! Any go-to brand recommendations for business laptops? I'll start my search from there.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:40
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internet inc posted:That's good to know! Thinkpad T series, just like the OP has been recommending for the last 5 years.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:51
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Yeah, I should have been clearer. Any good business laptop recommendation that can be used with a lockable docking station? It seems that Lenovo uses docking stations that don't lock. Same thing for Dell. This is going to be harder than I thought. Might have to settle for a simple docking station + Kensington lock.
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Sep 3, 2014 17:20
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internet inc posted:Yeah, I should have been clearer. Any good business laptop recommendation that can be used with a lockable docking station? I don't know about Lenovo's newest docks, but I think Dell's do: https://i.imgur.com/y12BKtb.jpg I think the lock/unlock slider (in the bottom right picture) won't be movable to the "unlock" position if you have a Kensington lock in that hole above it. Edit: Likewise, you can see a similar-looking thing with Toshiba's, and you can see an actual lock on some pictures of HP's, but on others... there's just a plastic cover? I don't know what that's about. shrughes fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 17:44
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Got a Dell XPS 15 and it's awesome.... except it makes a barely audible high pitched noise every time I do something system intensive, I think it's a fan going haywire. Hope it's fixable without an RMA. If you are buying a high resolution laptop for Adobe products - DON'T DO IT. Their programs are completely unusable over 1920 x 1080 resolution due to broken/non-existent UI scaling. I'm surprised that a company that caters to visual designers hasn't updated their software to work with modern hi-def screens yet.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:58
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Unicorn Vomit posted:Got a Dell XPS 15 and it's awesome.... except it makes a barely audible high pitched noise every time I do something system intensive, I think it's a fan going haywire. Hope it's fixable without an RMA. That's not a fan it's power circuitry.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:07
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DNova posted:That's not a fan it's power circuitry. Great. Is this an unintended feature? It's the kind of noise that will slowly drive a person insane.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:26
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internet inc posted:Yeah, I should have been clearer. Any good business laptop recommendation that can be used with a lockable docking station? Thinkpad Docking stations can lock onto the laptop with a key and the dock can also accept a laptop lock. So you would connect the lock to the dock then connect the dock to the laptop. I have a ThinkPad Ultra Dock for work which is connected to two external monitors and it works great with my T440p.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:39
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Unicorn Vomit posted:Great. Is this an unintended feature? It's the kind of noise that will slowly drive a person insane. It's very common. I have had quiet a few machines do it.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:52
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Unicorn Vomit posted:Great. Is this an unintended feature? It's the kind of noise that will slowly drive a person insane. I've heard it on many machines over the years, most notable on laptops with quiet fans as you can really tune in to it.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:13
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Calidus posted:Thinkpad Docking stations can lock onto the laptop with a key and the dock can also accept a laptop lock. So you would connect the lock to the dock then connect the dock to the laptop. I have a ThinkPad Ultra Dock for work which is connected to two external monitors and it works great with my T440p. Okay, the ultra dock looks like it still has the key-based lock. The Basic dock doesn't seem to have it though, based on pictures. So... pick the right one.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:14
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The docks that came with our new HP 820 G1s don't lock, but they do have a slot a lock can fit into (extra cost option) You need to think about what you are trying to achieve though - those docks often lock via some fairly flimsy tabs so if someone isn't worried about damaging the laptop (or the dock) then it can be removed with brute force. If it is security you want it is probably better to get a lock that goes directly into the slot on the laptop (these are usually fairly sturdy)
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Sep 3, 2014 20:29
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Unicorn Vomit posted:Got a Dell XPS 15 and it's awesome.... except it makes a barely audible high pitched noise every time I do something system intensive, I think it's a fan going haywire. Hope it's fixable without an RMA. It's an electrical issue (usually referred to as coil whine) that to my understanding occurs because of a stray vibrational resonance between the mechanical oscillation frequency of some piece of the computer and one of the harmonics generated by a high frequency electrical signal. The resonance condition explains why you hear it when the system is in some power states and not in others-- I had a Dell Inspiron a few years ago with a Core 2 Duo that would whine in exactly the way you described whenever the CPU was idling and throttled down to its minimum speed, but not under load, leaving me with the ugly choice of dealing with the noise or turning off speedstep and having the battery life go to poo poo. I usually listen to music while I work anyway, so it wasn't too big of a deal, and it was quiet enough that I wouldn't hear it over any sound coming from the speakers. My understanding is that it's probably not fixable without an RMA. It's a problem that can happen to any laptop and ensuring that it doesn't requires a lot of careful and tedious refinement when the computer is being designed; some manufacturers are just more careful than others, I guess.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:57
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There's an interesting picture of the upcoming new Thinkpad Helix here: http://liliputing.com/2014/08/lenovo-thinkpad-helix-2-ideatab-s8-leaked-ahead-ifa.html There are also people saying on internet forums that the word is that physical trackpoint buttons will make a comeback in Broadwell.
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Sep 3, 2014 22:48
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I think someone here bought a Helix when it first came out That doesn't look like a bad machine but at the same time the market seems to have rejected the "Tablet with detachable keyboard+extrabattery" product segment. Maybe I'm mistaken but nobody's mentioned buying one of those types of machines in months in this thread The Yoga/Yoga 2 Pro seem to have proven that there's a better "compromise model" out there. Pretty excited to hear about physical buttons coming back. I'm starting to eyeball replacements for my x230 and based on the trackpad was looking elsewhere, like a Macbook Air or Chromebook, but I'd buy another Thinkpad if it had a proper mousepad+buttons... Hadlock fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 23:24
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Hadlock posted:I think someone here bought a Helix when it first came out That was me. I think the interesting part of that link is the rendering, with discrete buttons.
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Sep 3, 2014 23:28
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Hadlock posted:That doesn't look like a bad machine but at the same time the market seems to have rejected the "Tablet with detachable keyboard+extrabattery" product segment. Maybe I'm mistaken but nobody's mentioned buying one of those types of machines in months in this thread Detachables like the Asus T100 or the Surface Pro do get recommendations in the Win8 Tablets thread. I think it's just that anyone looking for a detachable would hit the tablets thread first, and anyone looking for a laptop generally has a usage scenario where a tablet isn't ideal anyways (e.g. full gaming, or lower price points).
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Sep 4, 2014 01:37
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Well I just got my new Thinkpad T440s and I'm quite happy with it so far. I guess I lucked out and didn't get the crappy screen. I was pretty much planning on replacing the screen myself if that happened. In case anyone didn't know, the T440s originally shipped with an AUO brand screen for the IPS choice which lots of people liked but then later on started shipping an LG brand screen that a lot of people thought was a lot worse. Weirdly my screen is actually listed as Lenovo even though it has the same model number as the AUO brand. The screen is good though. Not sure if this means they have phased out the crappy screens finally but just wanted to share my experience.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:53
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I'm thinking about picking up a new laptop for the last couple semesters of my CS degree; normally I've been doing coding/other coursework at home or in the labs on campus but increasingly I'd like to do it on the go so I'm not stuck for hours in the same two places. Reading the OP has convinced me to go with a Thinkpad but since that post was made over a year ago, is there anything pertinent to picking up one of those Thinkpad models I should know about? Any new clear favorites? The Yoga 13 seems to be somewhat hard to find locally (in BC, Canada, NCIX doesn't seem to carry it or else I'm just missing it). I'd appreciate some advice.
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Sep 4, 2014 17:05
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What would be the best, most reliable, place to get a replacement charger for my T420? The wire near the plug into the laptop fails. I've gone through two of this style OEM Lenovo chargers and I'd rather not spend $55 on a new one. Most of the options on eBay and Amazon look shady.
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Sep 4, 2014 17:13
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