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bpower posted:This new ThinkPad Helix has physical buttons on top of the trackpad for the pointer. Is that the new style people were hoping to see in January? But still no touchpad buttons! 
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Nov 18, 2014 09:18
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Who cares The keyboard is the real issue here, but hopefully it's just the Helix.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:45
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Dell Outlet is running a big rear end sale: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/22/campaigns/gdo_consumer_sale
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Nov 18, 2014 17:08
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I kind of wanted a 2 in 1 but lighter than an inspiron 13 series 7000, preferably a bit cheaper too. Do you guys know about something like this? These venue pro 11 seems more like what I want but I can't install linux on them. program666 fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 19:01
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:But why is that true for Windows-based laptops and not Chromebooks? Chromebooks are a bit different. Google is specifically trying to go after the market segment of folks who don't need a "full blown laptop" and aren't willing to pay for one either. And so they subsidize an entire engineering team dedicated to the task of making Chrome (and Chrome apps) run well specifically on that hardware profile. Chromebooks are more limited in capability, for sure, but if your needs match the capabilities it does provide it's just a better experience, largely because someone is actively making it so.
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Nov 18, 2014 21:11
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Is getting a graphics card such as the 840M going to make much difference vs integrated graphics? It seems like, benchmark wise, either a game runs acceptably on a lower resolution with low to medium settings, or isn't very playable either way. I'm not sure the jump from integrated to a lower end card makes much of a difference. Am I wrong? I've finally decided I need a laptop, and battery life and portability are the most important factors. However, if it could play something like WoW or Civ V, so I'm not bored out of my mind when visiting relatives or stuck on campus for longer periods of time, that would be nice.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:43
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Syle187 posted:Is getting a graphics card such as the 840M going to make much difference vs integrated graphics? It seems like, benchmark wise, either a game runs acceptably on a lower resolution with low to medium settings, or isn't very playable either way. I'm not sure the jump from integrated to a lower end card makes much of a difference. Am I wrong?
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Nov 19, 2014 03:19
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:I know the first page of this thread says not to buy a laptop under $640 because they're poo poo. But why is that true for Windows-based laptops and not Chromebooks? Well up until about 2 months ago, OEMs had to pay somewhere between $20-80 for the cost of windows licensing, tack on 20% and pass that cost on to the consumer. So they had to remove $20-80 worth of quality elsewhere to meet specific price points (like $500, $399, etc). Microsoft has Seen The Light and has drastically cut the price of their OS for low end laptops and they're actually giving it away for free on devices below (I think) 9.1" screens. So now you can buy an 11" 2GB RAM 32GB SSD Windows 8.1 laptop with a halfway (three quarters, even) decent screen, acceptable keyboard and acceptable build quality for only $179. Holy poo poo. What you can get for $200 now is pretty impressive compared to what you could get 18 months ago. I don't think the sub-$200 Windows 8.1 Brand New, not used Not Refurb market existed 90 days ago. Of course as you get larger than 13", the price of materials goes up and the lack of internal supports makes for a creaky machine, plus they have to skimp on screen quality (I hope you like screen doors with washed out images). The old price/value graph used to peak at about $780 (with a sharp uptick starting at $640), nowadays there's two peaks, one at the $250 price point for "lowest end decent laptops", a deep, steep trough through a zombie-filled swamp of cheap floppy washed out 14" and 15" laptops, and then another, taller peak around the $850 mark (with a sharp uptick starting at $640) filled with i5 laptops and IPS screens, full size keyboards removable batteries and upgradable RAM.
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Nov 19, 2014 03:22
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roomforthetuna posted:There's a wide range within "integrated". If you look at an Iris integrated GPU then you're looking at performance not even *much* worse than the high end laptop GPUs. (Okay, it's like half the speed, but in the grand scheme of things that's a pretty small difference.) So there are certainly integrated GPUs that it's not worth going beyond for your purposes, but there are also godawful integrated GPUs. I haven't seen much in the way of integrated offerings besides HD 4400, and HD 5000. Most everything I've seen with better than that already comes with a dedicated card. Which should I avoid?
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Nov 19, 2014 03:33
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Syle187 posted:I haven't seen much in the way of integrated offerings besides HD 4400, and HD 5000. Most everything I've seen with better than that already comes with a dedicated card. Which should I avoid? eg. taking the G3D marks from videocardbenchmark.net, some things you might be considering have these scores: GTX860M at the medium-high end of dedicated GPUs: 1887 Intel Iris 5200 Pro, at the high end of integrated GPUs: 1230 the 840M that you mentioned: 871 HD5000: 604 HD4400: 534 And my old GPU from a gaming laptop of 3 years ago, that still does okay (the old processor is more of a bottleneck), GT 335M: 492. (This is adequate to play Grand Theft Auto 4 on medium-low settings at 1376x768. The CPU I have couldn't keep up with the physics though.) For things getting towards the poo poo end that you can still get today, a Radeon R2 on an AMD processor scores 298. A Radeon R5 scores 391. An Intel HD 3000 scores 308. Is the jump from 604 points to 871 points worth the price and heat difference? I don't know.
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Nov 19, 2014 04:22
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I'm looking at the alienware M13((http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-13/pd?ref=PD_OC)), and while I like the idea of using their custom external GPU dock, I'm a little worried about the processor. Intel® Core™ i5-4210U Processor (Dual-Core, 3MB Cache, up to 2.7GHz w/ Intel® Turbo Boost.) Isn't a Dual Core processor basically worthless?
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Nov 19, 2014 07:15
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Turtlicious posted:I'm looking at the alienware M13((http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-13/pd?ref=PD_OC)), and while I like the idea of using their custom external GPU dock, I'm a little worried about the processor. Intel® Core™ i5-4210U Processor (Dual-Core, 3MB Cache, up to 2.7GHz w/ Intel® Turbo Boost.) Isn't a Dual Core processor basically worthless? You should be more worried about that 'U' at the end of the model number. It's a low voltage version, not a performance version.
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Nov 19, 2014 07:17
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What's the verdict on the HP Stream 14? My wife has an aging latitude d630 and all she does is run chrome with 50 tabs all day and keeps it under the couch.
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Nov 19, 2014 07:35
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Kruzen posted:What's the verdict on the HP Stream 14? Really nice laptop with a garbage screen. They had those at the Microsoft Store I visited last week.
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Nov 19, 2014 08:33
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Hadlock posted:Really nice laptop with a garbage screen. They had those at the Microsoft Store I visited last week. Garbage as in washed out and awful colors or just a bad resolution combo?
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Nov 19, 2014 09:31
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Other half wants a basic laptop for sitting at home, watching Youtube, Outlook and fairly heavy Excel use. No games other than maybe The Sims. No media editing. HDMI-out is good in case we add a bigger monitor at a later stage This seems cheap and cheerful and an i3 is probably powerful enough. I haven't missed anything obvious? Should be reliable and not get too hot in use. Acer Aspire E5-771 Core i3 17 Inch 4GB 1TB http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2574637.htm Intel Core i3 i3-4030u dual core processor. 1.8GHz processor speed. 4GB RAM. 1000GB SATA-II hard drive. Microsoft Windows 8. 17 inch screen. Resolution 1366 x 768 pixels. DVD+RW/DVD-RW (read/write). Intel HD Graphics 4400. Shared graphics card. 2 USB 2.0 ports. 1 USB 3.0 port. 1 Ethernet port. 1 HDMI port. Bluetooth. Wi-Fi enabled. Up to 7 hours battery life. Size H27.9, W42.33, D2.8cm. Weight 3kg.
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Nov 19, 2014 14:55
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17 inch screen. Resolution 1366 x 768 pixels
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Nov 19, 2014 15:20
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spog posted:fairly heavy Excel use.
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Nov 19, 2014 15:23
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Mu Zeta posted:17 inch screen. Flipperwaldt posted:I personally would not recommend this. Really. Unless you're planning to buy the monitor pretty soon. That's why I love you guys, you stop me from being a retard. Much appreciated. Thinking about it: 15 inches is probably enough (fnarr, fnarr): 1600 x 900 is enough, or would you insist on 1920 x 1080?
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Nov 19, 2014 15:38
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Does anyone have impressions of laptops with the new 970m or 980m video cards? Looking to maybe pick one up this holiday season to replace my old Lenovo. I should also say that I prefer 15.6 at the largest.
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Nov 19, 2014 15:46
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Mu Zeta posted:17 inch screen. How is this acceptable in any way? My current laptop is going on 5 years old. It cost about $750 (in $  ) and has a 1600x900 17" screen 
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Nov 19, 2014 15:47
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Grandparents need laptops too sometimes
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Nov 19, 2014 15:52
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Hadlock posted:So now you can buy an 11" 2GB RAM 32GB SSD Windows 8.1 laptop with a halfway (three quarters, even) decent screen, acceptable keyboard and acceptable build quality for only $179. Holy poo poo.
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Nov 19, 2014 17:19
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ExcessBLarg! posted:How much space does Windows 8.1 take up when installed on a 32 GB SSD? Approx 2.1 GB, although real world is about 18GB free on a 32GB SSD. They're compressing the windows install on to it's own partition via magic to compete with Android and other mobile OS drive footprints. Edit: 32gb drive - 2.5GB (for formatting = 8%) = 29.5 usable space - 2.4gb base windows = 27.1 GB. I'm not sure where the other 10GB goes  probably cache (2GB), OS updates (4GB), installed crapware (1GB) = 7GB = 20.1; not sure where the other 3 GB goes, internet cache, uh... anyways I was at the store and all the 32GB devices had betwen 17 and 19GB free. I wouldn't try installing your entire steam library on this device but it does have an SD slot and 128GB SSD-class SD cards exist for about $100 if you need that functionality later, but that's not really what this laptop is designed for.Hadlock posted:The way they shrink Win 8.1, they compress the whole OS in to a special partition kind of like a recovery partition that only takes up ~2.4GB, but there's a performance hit on decompressing out of that partition. It still ends up being faster than a rotational drive though. This technology is called WIMboot and microsoft has a tutorial on how to do it (which means you could retrofit a chromebook with Windows 8.1, in theory) but generally you want to leave it to the manufacturer as it seems like kind of an involved task. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 17:23
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Pankratos posted:Does anyone have impressions of laptops with the new 970m or 980m video cards? Looking to maybe pick one up this holiday season to replace my old Lenovo. I should also say that I prefer 15.6 at the largest. I'd also like to know this. I am really close to pulling the trigger on http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8651-clevo-p650se-eta-nov7-p-7690.html barring any known issues. code:I would toss in a solid state and more ram at a later date. I'd be using it for coding and running simulations (Gazebo and V-REP). And games when I have time, but this would primarily be used for work.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:35
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Note that some computers don't have this either. For example, the Asus t100 has a full install of windows 8.1 (at least the older ones do), leaving it with ~8 GB left.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:35
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henn and potion posted:I am really close to pulling the trigger on http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8651-clevo-p650se-eta-nov7-p-7690.html barring any known issues. Sagers are very popular with the euro crowd in general, but I don't know anything about that specific model.
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Nov 19, 2014 21:49
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I'm on year 2+ of my Sager and continue to recommend it in this thread
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Nov 19, 2014 21:54
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Old laptop died, it was a "hi, I want to buy the cheapest laptop you have" kind of buy at Best Buy. This laptop was a few years old and was good enough for my needs and I'd still use it if it didn't die. I know the OP says "spend 640$ you idiot", but I seriously don't need a powerful machine and would be quite happy to get the two years ago model if those were still up for sale. Also I'm canadian so 640$ in the US tends to be 750$ here because Canada so cheaper options are extra good. Also, that Barnes and Noble thing probably doesn't work in Canada. I won't pay 750-800 after tax and will gladly settle for a tupperware if that's my only option. Budget : ~600$ tops. Ideally less because it's on sale. Keep in mind I'm Canadian so might be closer to 500 to 550 US -Computer will be used mostly for : - Web browsing - Playing outdated games like a PS1 emulator and stupid indie games/hearthstone, etc. - Watching movies and TV shows (plugged into my TV) (VGA or HDMI both are ok) - Creating awesome PPT presentations Stuff that I do not care about in a laptop: -Battery life is 100000000% meaningless to me. I use my laptop plugged in 99.999% of the time. My last laptop battery has been dead for over a year and I didn't mind at all. -Physical construction isn't all that important either unless the thing is going to actually stop working because it breaks. I always bought cheap laptops and none exploded and some plastic noise doesn't bother me at all if the thing isn't going to die on me. I don't throw my laptop on the ground and only rarely take it out of the house so it doesn't need to be a rugged metal machine of destruction. -I don't care too much about screen quality as long as I can watch a tv show alone on the computer and it doesn't look like complete trash. Most of the time I'll plug the CPU in a big flat screen when I want to watch a TV show or movie or play a game anyway. I haven't seen a screen I thought was unacceptable in something like 10 years so I'm not picky. Are Thinkpads L440 any good? Or should I just stay away from the L line completely? it's around 600$ before tax which is already stretching the budget a little bit... What about Lenovo G40 // G50? Something like that seems good to me but am I missing anything? http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...-34317597-L010D KingColliwog fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 23:41
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ExcessBLarg! posted:A cheap Windows laptop is about running an OS on hardware that's woefully inadequate for it. There's also the issue where nobody cares about the experience of a cheap Windows laptop, so they're full of crapware and stuff like that. Could anyone recommend a specific Chromebook model? It seems like even though there's a wide selection, every model has its cons. Which I guess makes sense since we're dealing with budget products. The Toshiba CB2 looks like a great option, especially with the nice HD screen, but I'm reading about a lot of performance issues. Acer seems to have solved that with an i3 CPU in their higher end C720 models, but there's a lot of complaints about the lovely screen. Can't win, it seems. Is there a good compromise?
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Nov 20, 2014 08:23
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Could anyone recommend a specific Chromebook model? It seems like even though there's a wide selection, every model has its cons. Which I guess makes sense since we're dealing with budget products. The Toshiba CB2 looks like a great option, especially with the nice HD screen, but I'm reading about a lot of performance issues. Acer seems to have solved that with an i3 CPU in their higher end C720 models, but there's a lot of complaints about the lovely screen. Can't win, it seems. Is there a good compromise? Acer Chromebook 13, maybe? Updates to Chrome OS has supposedly made the Tegra K1 processor a performance option on par with the i3. A 1080p screen is available, the downside is that it's TN, not IPS. Build quality is supposed to be really good, very nice keyboard and trackpad. Also 10+ hours of battery life and fanless.
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Nov 20, 2014 09:57
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KingColliwog posted:Old laptop died, it was a "hi, I want to buy the cheapest laptop you have" kind of buy at Best Buy. This laptop was a few years old and was good enough for my needs and I'd still use it if it didn't die. I've had an L530 i3 for just over a year and I've been very happy with it. I sprung for an SSD shortly after getting it and the boot speed is amazing. Build quality is pretty good compared to other 'consumer' laptops that I have had previously, although (apparently) not up to the specs of the T-series.
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Nov 20, 2014 12:56
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Gruffalo Soldier posted:I've had an L530 i3 for just over a year and I've been very happy with it. I sprung for an SSD shortly after getting it and the boot speed is amazing. Build quality is pretty good compared to other 'consumer' laptops that I have had previously, although (apparently) not up to the specs of the T-series. That's good to hear, I'mm keep the L series in mind. I found this and it seems to be pretty much perfect/more than I hoped to get for the price I'm willing to pay. Is this just bad for some reason? http://canada.lenovo.com/fr/sdshop/ca/en/laptops/lenovo/g-series/g40/?sb=:000001CA:000056F1: Lenovo G40 59427084 Processor : Intel Core i5-4210U Processor (1.70GHz 1600MHz 3MB) Graphics : Intel® HD Graphics 4400 Screen : 14.0" HD Glossy with integrated camera (1366x768) Memory : 6.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM 1600 MHz HDD : Hybrid 500GB 5400 RPM+8GB SSHD KingColliwog fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 16:11
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KingColliwog posted:http://canada.lenovo.com/fr/sdshop/ca/en/laptops/lenovo/g-series/g40/?sb=:000001CA:000056F1: Other than the low resolution, that sounds pretty decent. The CPU is a low-voltage version, but since you're not looking to do any really compute-heavy tasks, it'll be fine (and save some battery+heat).
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Nov 20, 2014 16:58
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I'm looking for a portable (preferably cheap but I'm aware that you get what you pay for) laptop that can comfortably run excel, access, sas, some vm work, and maybe some light gaming. I was originally leaning towards the macbook pro retina line planning to run windows most of the time but I've started to consider a tablet hybrid like the surface pro line or the thinkpad yoga 14 since I burn through tons of paper with handwritten notes. I tried an iPad for notes once but none of the styluses (styli?) I tried felt very good. How do people feel about the tablet hybrids? I'll try to stop by a microsoft store at some point to play around with the surface but I don't think I can stress test them there with huge data sets. Happy to hear other recommendations too. Virtue fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 22:50
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Is there a gaming laptop specific topic here? If not, can someone make some recommendations on the best gaming specific for approx. $1500?
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Nov 20, 2014 23:41
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knee contusion posted:Is there a gaming laptop specific topic here? If not, can someone make some recommendations on the best gaming specific for approx. $1500? If you feel comfortable installing migrating to and installing a solid state drive on your own you can save quite a bit over having a manufacturer install one. For your interest, check out Clevo/Sager at xoticpc.com
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Nov 21, 2014 00:31
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Virtue posted:How do people feel about the tablet hybrids? I'll try to stop by a microsoft store at some point to play around with the surface but I don't think I can stress test them there with huge data sets. Surface Pro 3 is great from what I've read. Not the best typing experience on the type cover, but otherwise mostly everything you could want from a tablet pc: good battery life, thin, light, fantastic screen, decent digitizer with pen. I want my S.O. to get one for Black Friday, since they are discounting $100 off the i5/128GB SSD version to bring it down to $849. $150 off the i7 versions. Another one to consider is Thinkpad Helix and Helix 2 (smaller 11.6" 16:9 screen compared to 12" 3:2 screen on SP3). Good deals on Helix 1 right now at Lenovo's Outlet and ebay. You can find new and refurbished with 1 year warranty. Don't be afraid of refurbished; usually it is really good.
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Nov 21, 2014 01:02
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So, I have a Lenovo W540 and I want to bring the ram from 8 gigs up to 32, do I just buy 3 sticks of ram or should they all the the same? What ram is recommended for laptops these days? And, why in god's name is ram so expensive? Holy god drat I'm considering buying PC ram and soldering it into my computer by hand.
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Nov 21, 2014 01:27
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Surface 3 Pro is pretty loving fantastic, if you're in the market for a full power tablet PC. Someone at Microsoft finall got the memo that they need to be at or near Apple-level of quality and I think they got pretty close to meeting that goal. There's a variety of compatible "keyboard covers" depending on if you want a cover with occasional keyboard use, a felt-covered trackpad ( ) or more tactile feedback.
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Nov 21, 2014 02:24
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