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AVeryLargeRadish posted:The Triton has better build quality, IIRC. Looking at Amazon, the Triton has similiar problems to the Helios when it comes to units bricking being pretty common. I'd avoid Acer entirely, really. E:Looks like it also has problems with the video card suddenly not being recognized. Gotta love that Acer quality control! Ugly In The Morning fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Dec 30, 2019 |
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Dec 30, 2019 16:43
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Yeah, they're not hitting the price points they are by hand testing each unit, that's for sure. Still, enough of them work fine that if you get it from somewhere like Amazon or a brick and mortar store with easy returns they're hard to beat for the price.
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Dec 30, 2019 17:17
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I got a new Asus 2 in 1, the Q546FDX (for some reason it is not just called a variant of the Zenbook Flip?). It works great, but sometimes the screen will flash black, usually whenever I adjust the angle it's at or bump it in some way (though not every time). Is this normal or does it indicate that something is wrong? If it's the latter, is it just something I'll have to deal with or should I consider replacing it before it turns into a bigger problem?
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Dec 30, 2019 18:30
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i vomit kittens posted:I got a new Asus 2 in 1, the Q546FDX (for some reason it is not just called a variant of the Zenbook Flip?). It works great, but sometimes the screen will flash black, usually whenever I adjust the angle it's at or bump it in some way (though not every time). Is this normal or does it indicate that something is wrong? If it's the latter, is it just something I'll have to deal with or should I consider replacing it before it turns into a bigger problem? I'm certainly no hardware expert, but that sounds like a loose cable.
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Dec 30, 2019 18:39
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Yep, that's a loose connector. You can probably fix it yourself but it would require you to take the laptop apart so I'd just RMA it if you can.
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Dec 30, 2019 18:59
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I really have to give HP props for how easy it is to open up the omen 15. This year I’ve bought a Dell G3, an Acer Helios 300 (since returned) and an Omen 15 and the HP is the only one that didn’t feel like I was going to break the case while I was opening it up. I like upgrading my computers so that’s a big plus for me. I may have found 2x16GB RAM sticks while I was cleaning my apartment yesterday and gone from 16GB of RAM to 32. Outside of replacing the 256GB NVMe internal drive with a 1TB I think I’m out of things to do to it until I replace the thermal paste on stuff in the summer, though suggestions are welcome.
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Dec 31, 2019 14:38
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Is the wifi module ax/wifi6 ? That's replaceable 😀
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Dec 31, 2019 16:05
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Statutory Ape posted:Is the wifi module ax/wifi6 ? That's replaceable 😀 I don't believe it is! I'll look into replacing that, since my connection drops sometimes so if I can replace it with something more reliable that'd be awesome.
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Dec 31, 2019 16:14
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CFox posted:Yep, that's a loose connector. You can probably fix it yourself but it would require you to take the laptop apart so I'd just RMA it if you can. Loose cable or pinched cable that is getting shorted when it's moved. Former can be fixed yourself, latter cannot. If it's still new I would just swap it.
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Dec 31, 2019 16:46
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My longtime MacBook Pro poo poo the bed last night and finally died. My parents bought me that in college and now that I'm a regular person I can't afford another Mac. I need a replacement ASAP and my budget is like $300-$400 - I just need something that I can stream putlockers/streaming services with and use for academic writing, so I was looking at various dell Inspirons but a lot of those have extraordinarily high volumes of negative reviews. I had good experience with Dell as a low-proficiency end user gaming machine, and currently have an alienware desktop, so I thought maybe they'd be a good route but now I'm unsure. Any particular recommendations? Generally with computers I take my time and do a lot of research but since I just want something that can run games from the early 2000s, stream, and word process I'm contemplating just doing the unthinkable and going to best buy and grabbing a laptop. Beyond just doing that, what's a good cheapo option for me that won't just crap out in a year?
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Jan 1, 2020 20:19
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Frog Act posted:no more mac It sounds like you're looking for a used thinkpad. Probably a T470 or T570. Check Ebay and buy from a well rated seller.
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Jan 1, 2020 20:48
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Frog Act posted:Beyond just doing that, what's a good cheapo option for me that won't just crap out in a year? Definitely don't go to Best Buy for a $3-400 computer. You're going to end up with a worthless Celeron or ARM chip. Used is the only way to go at that price range. As the person before me stated, look on eBay. Your best bet is "surplus" sellers that offload old office supplies, because they usually offer some kind of warranty/exchange, and don't gently caress you around with pricing because they have a mountain of stuff to sell.
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Jan 1, 2020 21:29
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Frog Act posted:My longtime MacBook Pro poo poo the bed last night and finally died. My parents bought me that in college and now that I'm a regular person I can't afford another Mac. I need a replacement ASAP and my budget is like $300-$400 - I just need something that I can stream putlockers/streaming services with and use for academic writing, so I was looking at various dell Inspirons but a lot of those have extraordinarily high volumes of negative reviews. I had good experience with Dell as a low-proficiency end user gaming machine, and currently have an alienware desktop, so I thought maybe they'd be a good route but now I'm unsure. Check out the part in the OP about buying a refurbished thinkpad for $300-400 that won't crap out in a year
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Jan 2, 2020 00:38
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Thanks folks. There are a good number of T470s from $350-$450, and it seems like I could probably get an i5/256gb SSD/8gb RAM/Intel HD 620 which appears to meet my basic needs and also be able to play simple and/or old games and grand strategy and stuff. I’ve never really used ebay for a significant purchase but some of them seem to be pretty established resellers with tons of reviews, so they might be a safe bet If anyone knows of like a specific eBay seller or something, please post it, I know I saw like Lenovo Outlet or something in a post or the OP but I couldn’t find it again
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Jan 2, 2020 01:16
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I would just buy from any laptop reseller that has more than 1000 reviews and 99.99% positive feedback. I have been giving this advice for (checks OP date) seven years now and nobody has complained that they got a bad egg yet. Maybe you will be the first but I doubt it. My 2012 era x230 thinkpad will load Battlefield 3 and play it at 15fps so your four-year-newer laptop will probably play games much better, especially since the laptop after mine got a 50% intel gpu upgrade, and has probably improved more since then. Indie games etc run just fine. The stock in the lenovo outlet store varies from day to day so it's a roll of the dice if ebay is better today or not.
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Jan 2, 2020 01:25
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Frog Act posted:Thanks folks. There are a good number of T470s from $350-$450, and it seems like I could probably get an i5/256gb SSD/8gb RAM/Intel HD 620 which appears to meet my basic needs and also be able to play simple and/or old games and grand strategy and stuff. I’ve never really used ebay for a significant purchase but some of them seem to be pretty established resellers with tons of reviews, so they might be a safe bet Just make sure you don't get a 1366x768 screen
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Jan 2, 2020 01:39
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I really appreciate all the advice - browsing around, it seems like there are some ostensibly more powerful (better graphics card, more memory, RAM) Lenovo Thinkpads that have AMD Ryzen processors instead of the i5. I assume they seem to be priced better because those are actually worse in some meaningful way? Better to stick to intel processors?
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Jan 2, 2020 01:41
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They generally have worse battery life, that's the main trade-off.
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Jan 2, 2020 01:43
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Lenovo started offering AMD powered Thinkpads because Intel's senior management all left and they have been having major trouble meeting production quotas. AMD powered Thinkpads allow Lenovo to offer modern CPUs in new laptops in volume to their customers without worrying about how lovely Intel's delivery pipeline has gotten for manufacturers in recent years. Intel generally have better battery life too.
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Jan 2, 2020 03:20
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Frog Act posted:My longtime MacBook Pro poo poo the bed last night and finally died. My parents bought me that in college and now that I'm a regular person I can't afford another Mac. I need a replacement ASAP and my budget is like $300-$400 - I just need something that I can stream putlockers/streaming services with and use for academic writing, so I was looking at various dell Inspirons but a lot of those have extraordinarily high volumes of negative reviews. I had good experience with Dell as a low-proficiency end user gaming machine, and currently have an alienware desktop, so I thought maybe they'd be a good route but now I'm unsure. This is my new cheap laptop recommendation. It was available as a refurb for a while for like $270, but those aren't in stock at the moment and $325 is still a good price for what you get. Add another 8 GB of RAM for like $40 (4 + 8 - 2 GB allocated for VRAM gives you 10 GB usable system RAM,) and you're all set and still under budget. I wrote a review of it in this thread a couple months ago if you want to check my post history. As has been mentioned, Intel mobile CPUs are still better particularly in terms of power efficiency, whereas AMD is destroying Intel in desktop CPUs. For the price, again, this is fine. You could also get a Chromebook in that price range (which is what I use daily, including right now.)
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Jan 2, 2020 09:31
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Atomizer posted:This is my new cheap laptop recommendation. It was available as a refurb for a while for like $270, but those aren't in stock at the moment and $325 is still a good price for what you get. Add another 8 GB of RAM for like $40 (4 + 8 - 2 GB allocated for VRAM gives you 10 GB usable system RAM,) and you're all set and still under budget. Thanks for the recommendation! It’s down to that or a Thinkpad for me now. As usual when shopping for tech, I’ve kinda lost track of my original budget because I went to Best Buy and the $250-$300 laptops were truly heinous and I just can’t buy something like that even out of convenience, so now I’ve been browsing the Lenovo outlet and it seems like $500 is a price point where I could get a decently powerful and reliable Thinkpad for daily browsing and office gaming for the next five years or so. There are L480s but I’m looking specifically at an E585, new, for $530. It seems to be a bit better than the others and reliable, but one thing I can’t quite tell is like, when the actual laptop I order will have been manufactured. Is it likely to be an older unit or will it be a relatively new surplus? My dad keeps telling me it isn’t worth ordering a laptop surplus because it will probably be old and that I should go with something new straight from a first party or I’m dumb, but he’s an apple user who can afford to buy new things and has a limited understanding of PCs $530 is a lot but if an E585 is as solid and has the potential longevity of the other models I might just snap it up, any thoughts from the thread? This is the one I’m looking at so please let me know if you think it has some huge flaw I’m missing due to technical illiteracy: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-e-series/ThinkPad-E585/p/20KVCTO1WW-PF1HPM19 Again, thanks for the help dudes/dudettes, having a useable laptop is important as heck for me so the feedback is majorly helpful in a big decision like this Ed: dang I just noticed the one I linked has an HDD, not an SSD like I thought. Hopefully I can find a version with the 256gb solid state if I keep my eyes on the outlet website Frog Act fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Jan 2, 2020 |
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Jan 2, 2020 15:41
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The normal XPS 13 is getting updated with a 16:10 screen and an IR camera for windows hello (along with a few other keyboard and construction tweaks.) https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/dell-updates-xps-13-laptop-with-1610-aspect-ratio-screen-ir-camera/ Internals appear to remain the same though. The construction updates seem more about durability than cooling, so I would expect performance to remain the same as the outgoing model. I'm glad to see 16:10 screens start to make a comeback. Edit: Correction, it does get Ice Lake updated internals so it will have Iris Pro graphics which brings it on par with the 2:1 https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/02/dell-xps-13-2020-model/ bull3964 fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Jan 2, 2020 |
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Jan 2, 2020 15:54
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Every time I look around it seems like incremental upward creeps in budget feel more plausible, like, after spending the past two days reading and trawling ebay and the dell website and going to best buy and stuff, the extra $100 on something like a straight up new ThinkPad straight from Lenovo is beginning to look pretty tempting. A lot of the cheaper ones are from weird Taiwanese resellers and I've had mixed eBay experiences, so a straight shipment from prime to my office on Monday with a year warranty from the manufacturer might be best. I'm looking at this : https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Flags...XRS2JPYE4JMJBMT There's a similar ThinkPad with basically the same specs for $100 less but with 4gb RAM and a 500gb HDD - one of my big problems with my MacBook Pro (and what ultimately killed it) were the hard drive connectors / hard drive getting jostled and dying, so I'm thinking an SSD is worth the upgrade in future repair costs, since I know any laptop I use regularly will get bounced around a lot. Sorry for all the posts, I appreciate the help ed: I think this is the one I'm gonna go with - I feel like the extra $$ will save me repairs/a new laptop a few years down the line. That being said I'm a dumb person who routinely makes poorly informed, rube decisions, is there a good reason not to order that particular machine? Frog Act fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jan 2, 2020 |
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Jan 2, 2020 16:01
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Frog Act posted:if an E585 is as solid and has the potential longevity of the other models I might just snap it up, any thoughts from the thread?
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Jan 2, 2020 17:02
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Flipperwaldt posted:E-series aren't real Thinkpads. They have the decent keyboard, but have a plastic frame. drat, I assume this is true for the e590 as well? ed: oh I see you said e series. shucks. I might pick it up anyway, but that's really good to know, thanks. ed2: Bob Morales posted:Just make sure you don't get a 1366x768 screen lol the one I was looking at is also this resolution. Looks like I'm going to have to keep searching, I assume 1366x768 is a pain in the rear end to deal with? Frog Act fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Jan 2, 2020 |
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Jan 2, 2020 17:09
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Just buy the used ThinkPad. They're significantly better than every laptop you picked out and significantly cheaper to boot.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:15
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Cat Army 
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The Iron Rose posted:Just buy the used ThinkPad. They're significantly better than every laptop you picked out and significantly cheaper to boot. Yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards. T470s are plentiful and good - basically a used version of this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XQJ4Z3S/ref=psdc_13896615011_t3_B06XT6VFZR?th=1 but for significantly less. Thanks guys!
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Jan 2, 2020 17:19
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Frog Act posted:lol the one I was looking at is also this resolution. Looks like I'm going to have to keep searching, I assume 1366x768 is a pain in the rear end to deal with? 1366x768 is pretty low resolution, even for 14". More importantly, though, the 1366x768 are all the cheapest monitors they could find: universally terrible color, bad response times, etc. It might cost $20 or whatever to find a 1080p one (even 1600x900 is better), but it's well worth the extra cost.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:20
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DrDork posted:1366x768 is pretty low resolution, even for 14". More importantly, though, the 1366x768 are all the cheapest monitors they could find: universally terrible color, bad response times, etc. It might cost $20 or whatever to find a 1080p one (even 1600x900 is better), but it's well worth the extra cost. thanks! I honestly had no idea about all of this stuff. I think of resolution as just being a thing independent from hardware quality, and can see myself haplessly buying something and then being irritated when I couldn't do basic stuff I could on my MacBook. I know I've just been dropping links and posts in here like a rube but ya'll's eBay advice combined with looking on amazon has led me to what seems to be a T470 with slightly better insides than the one I saw on Amazon for literally half the price. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thi...ZdeVPn#viTabs_0 Gonna snap that up today I think. I could order it on Amazon like my dad suggests and pay a lot more for the sense of security from a first party seller or whatever but this ebay person appears to be a reputable business and $300 is a lot of dosh.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:24
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That actually looks like a real solid deal. 1080p, usable SSD and RAM sizes, etc. The Lenovo warranty included should make your life easier if it comes busted up: ThinkPad support is excellent. And for what it's worth, eBay will almost always side with the buyer on any dispute, so your biggest risk would be whatever return shipping costs, and even that can usually be refunded. Glad we could help you find something!
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Jan 2, 2020 17:41
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I find selling on eBay to be somewhat stressful , as a buyer you should find this reassuring imo I'll also nth that eBay is the best place to buy laptops, on average, if you need an average laptop to do average things.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:50
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Yeah, I think I'm just slowly getting over my father's intense aversion to third party sellers, he really spent years pounding into my head that only a dummy would buy hardware any way but directly from the company. I just can't justify spending $300 more on a computer with worse specs because it's new and might get delivered two days earlier. Plus, like ya'll said, worse case scenario, I can dispute it and get my money back or get it fixed via ThinkPad support, but given the high volume of positive reviews that person's Laptop Barn has accumulated I think that won't happen. Maybe one day when I have a better job I can adopt a more gung ho attitude about buying new but until then I'm glad ya'll helped me be thrifty today.
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Jan 2, 2020 17:54
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I can pretty certifiably say that income level has zero to do with refurbs being a good deal or not, contextually. I buy refurbs direct from the MFG. They come with a new box and same warranty as factory. There's good refurbs and bad refurbs, idk what data your dad has backing up any of his whims but they aren't seemingly grounded in transactional reality.
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Jan 2, 2020 18:34
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To be fair to the dad, back in the day eBay could be pretty bad about scams and sellers trying to pull dumb poo poo. But that's long since changed--now it's the buyers pulling scams. Alibaba and other random Chinese 3rd party sites are a solid way to dump money down the drain on "100% totally legit not fake at all!" stuff, though, so he's not entirely wrong even today.
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Jan 2, 2020 18:44
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Statutory Ape posted:I can pretty certifiably say that income level has zero to do with refurbs being a good deal or not, contextually. Mostly that you can afford to ignore the extra affordability with more money Anyway I pulled the trigger and spent $350 with tax and shipping for a T470 i5-7300/226SSD/8gb RAM/HD 620 which appears to be ever so slightly better than the ones I was looking at for $600 on amazon, the one I linked, so here’s hoping!
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Jan 2, 2020 20:56
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Man, the new XPS13 looks way more appealing now that it's 16:10 and has a bigger track pad. I might have to order one too and try to decide whether I prefer it or the carbon...
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Jan 2, 2020 23:10
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I'm hopeful that the next gen mobile CPU Intel comes up with is just ever so slightly improved. Current one will play this year's call of duty at 720/30 on low which is amazing to me. I just want to play it at 720 but slightly more steady on the fps. That new XPS 13 looks real sexy yeah. They announced new latitude and 2 and 1 as well that I need to check out. The magazine called the new latitudes "premium" which I automatically assume means harder to service. E: also I do some decent gaming on hd 620 graphics , to the Thinkpad guy. I didn't catch if you planned to or not but if you're cool with dropping settings and resolution it's been kinda capable 
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Jan 2, 2020 23:52
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Statutory Ape posted:I'm hopeful that the next gen mobile CPU Intel comes up with is just ever so slightly improved. Current one will play this year's call of duty at 720/30 on low which is amazing to me. I just want to play it at 720 but slightly more steady on the fps. Awesome! I was hoping to do basic stuff, 4x, indie games, etc and from some googling it seems to run even mainstream games at low settings, which is cool for traveling/work. My desktop has a halfway decent card, a 1070, and I have a PS4 pro, so I can do most things with that but I also have a tremendous number of low-requirement PC games I want to beat I couldn’t play on my MacBook so it’s nice to have some external validation that the 620 was worth getting for desk job downtime gaming
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Jan 3, 2020 00:28
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The new XPS looks great with the 16:10 screen. Hopefully Lenvo gets their head out of their rear end and updates the X1 with the screen and Ice Lake goodness. It's incredible that the enormous bottom bezels are still a norm even on premium laptops.
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Jan 3, 2020 16:12
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I'm p sure Lenovo already announced ice lake x1 didn't they ? Mid cycle refresh I thought I'm p excited for tiger lake unless somebody here is gonna dash my hopes
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Jan 3, 2020 16:19
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