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Pyroxene Stigma posted:If you use anything Intel I've found it to be crazy simple. Use xfce or something instead of Unity. I can confirm that it's not hard to get Linux working on an Acer C720. Best netbook I've ever used.
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Sep 30, 2014 01:43
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Now that Ballmer is out at Microsoft you can buy Intel-powered Chromebooks with Windows 8 preloaded. Here's an 11.6" Acer laptop ("chromebook") with Windows 8 for $210 shipped from Amazon. Kind of a junky setup, slow hard drive and tiny screen but hey, $200, new with warranty from a reputable brand. Even as a Thinkpad owner that's a pretty screaming deal for a disposable laptop you might get 18 good months out of (that breaks down to about $11.50/mo).
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Sep 30, 2014 01:47
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Hadlock posted:Now that Ballmer is out at Microsoft you can buy Intel-powered Chromebooks with Windows 8 preloaded. Here's an 11.6" Acer laptop ("chromebook") with Windows 8 for $210 shipped from Amazon.
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Sep 30, 2014 02:08
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Hadlock posted:Now that Ballmer is out at Microsoft you can buy Intel-powered Chromebooks with Windows 8 preloaded. Here's an 11.6" Acer laptop ("chromebook") with Windows 8 for $210 shipped from Amazon. Windows 8 runs great with a Celeron, 2 gigs of RAM, and no SSD I bet.  ChromeOS exists because it's lightweight enough to run on that hardware. You want more for Windows or you'll hate yourself.
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Sep 30, 2014 02:26
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C720 runs regular Ubuntu like a champ
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Sep 30, 2014 02:34
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Hadlock posted:Now that Ballmer is out at Microsoft you can buy Intel-powered Chromebooks with Windows 8 preloaded. Here's an 11.6" Acer laptop ("chromebook") with Windows 8 for $210 shipped from Amazon. See, the thing is a Chromebook for that price is not a junky setup, nor is it even remotely slow. That's why they (and Chrome OS) exist.
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Sep 30, 2014 04:37
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I don't recommend the Acer T100, the keyboard is great for a 10.1" screen netbook keyboard, but it's not as good as the 11.6" screen keyboards out there.Pyroxene Stigma posted:Windows 8 runs great with a Celeron, 2 gigs of RAM, and no SSD I bet. Yeah, it does.
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Sep 30, 2014 06:07
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I just ordered one of the ASUS 15.6" laptops, 250 bucks from amazon. It's bigger than I'd like, but it looks powerful enough to run most any of the document/software things I might want. Thanks for all the suggestions.
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Sep 30, 2014 14:54
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Windows 8 runs great with a Celeron, 2 gigs of RAM, and no SSD I bet. It really does. Have you ever handled those cheapo 8" Window tablets? It works fine with 2GB of ULV single channel RAM. Windows 8 is the lightest thing most efficient thing since XP by significant amounts.
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Sep 30, 2014 15:12
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Many tablets run the 32-bit version of Windows 8. Not saying 8 doesn't work on low end system, but most people have 64-bit in mind.
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Sep 30, 2014 16:47
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Flipperwaldt posted:That... doesn't look too bad either at the price. I bought that same model from Best Buy for $179 and even at that price I'd almost just say go with the Acer Chromebook. The hard drive was unbelievably slow (that was actually the first time I had a mechanical boot disk since 2011 and for good reason) and battery life wasn't that great. It was nice having the extra hard drive space but boot up took a while, programs took a while to boot up and even browsing was hard to stomach at times. I'm glad I returned it and went back to the C720.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:49
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Hey goons, I need to get a laptop to use as a mobile workstation for 3d modeling and other creative work. Portability, battery life, and durability aren't huge issues, but it needs to have a 1080p or bigger screen and dedicated graphics (the better, the better) while coming in under $1300 CAD, and I'd like an i7 for multitasking and rendering and an IPS screen. I know that's a pretty hefty feature list for that price range and I understand that this puts actual mobile workstation GPUs out of my reach, but I was wondering what you would suggest; Right now one of Eurocom's Electra or M- series laptops looks best~ Other things that looked good in the price range that I'd appreciate someone weighing in on:
In particular, I can't find good information on display quality for the above. Thoughts? Does anyone have experience with Eurocom? e: I move around a lot and want to be able to work from my bed/the couch/school/friend's house, hence fixation on laptop for doing rather un-laptoppy things with. Vayra fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 19:09
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Twerk from Home posted:It really does. Have you ever handled those cheapo 8" Window tablets? It works fine with 2GB of ULV single channel RAM. The key is that those generally use some sort of (admittedly slow) flash storage. Add a 5400rpm hard disk and the equation changes. Also while those little tablets may work okay for tablety stuff it all falls apart if you try and use one like the normal laptop.
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Sep 30, 2014 19:31
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dissss posted:The key is that those generally use some sort of (admittedly slow) flash storage. Add a 5400rpm hard disk and the equation changes. You're not buying a netbook for "normal laptop" stuff; you buy one to do all the stuff you would otherwise do on a tablet but in a more comfortable form-factor. Anyway, a Windows 8.1 on a 5400RPM laptop drive may not be as snappy as ChromeOS on flash memory, but it should be fine for most people. Y'know, as long as you don't use 50 million addons in your FireFox browser and have the sonouvabitch consuming 1.5GB. Perfectly good.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:32
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You can replace an HDD with SSDs pretty easily and cheaply these days...
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Sep 30, 2014 20:49
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dissss posted:Also while those little tablets may work okay for tablety stuff it all falls apart if you try and use one like the normal laptop. Tablets are generally regarded for content consumption, while laptops for content creation. However "content creation" is a very wide category. Cheap laptops can run Word just fine, but I wouldn't want one for video editing or something.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:01
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ExcessBLarg! posted:This is a fairly meaningless statement on it's own. What's "tablety stuff" and what's "normal laptop" stuff? I'd characterise the difference like this - on a tablet you generally only have a few browser tabs open at a time (indeed my iPad will only really let me load two or three before it starts kicking stuff out of memory) while on a laptop (even a netbook) you can open a bunch more with correspondingly decreased performance. Also on an iPad or even Android tablet you have a lot more app options whereas on a Windows netbook or convertible you will be spending almost all of your time in the browser which can be pretty hard on a slow machine.
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Oct 1, 2014 01:13
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The Lenovo UHD Y50 is terrible with being unable to render yellow properly. I thought that the calibration guides online would help, but it's awful. Considering the 15% restocking fee when I return it, I will never buy from them again. I just really want a decent computer with a UHD screen, so that I can edit photos. I wish I went with the Toshiba Satellite P50t.
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Oct 1, 2014 01:21
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Did you not look at the return policy before ordering a laptop sight unseen with a known issue that might make it unusable for your needs?
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Oct 1, 2014 01:34
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Yip Yips posted:Did you not look at the return policy before ordering a laptop sight unseen with a known issue that might make it unusable for your needs? Yeah, I was dumb, but I'm not one to nitpick and couldn't imagine that the issue would be that bad and unfixable.
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Oct 1, 2014 02:21
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Looking for a lightweight business laptop. Basically, needs to be able to run Office, especially Outlook. Macs are not an option because business laptop. LaptopMag pointed me in the direction of the Thinkpad Yoga and the Thinkpad X240, which seem like decent picks along the lines of what I was looking for, but can you get anything lighter and thinner without it being awful in the performance, battery life, or keyboard/trackpad department? Something along the lines of an 11-inch Macbook air, perhaps? EDIT: For reference, the Thinkpad X240 and Thinkpad Yoga are 3.2 pounds and 3.52 pounds respectively, so I'm looking for lighter than that. Unboxing Day fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 02:32
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Two new options to consider. 12" Latitude 5000, 3.44lbs. - http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-e5250-laptop/pd 12" Latitude 7000, 2.99lbs. - http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-e7240-ultrabook/pd
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Oct 1, 2014 02:41
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Unboxing Day posted:Looking for a lightweight business laptop. Basically, needs to be able to run Office, especially Outlook. Macs are not an option because business laptop. We're using HP 820 G1s and screen aside (we didn't spring for the IPS panel) they are pretty good. Note they do have a lousy short travel Macbook Air style keyboard, but on lighter weight models that is unavoidable. 3.35lbs I believe which is fairly similar to a 13" Air.
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Oct 1, 2014 04:13
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Thanks for the suggestions so far. I added the weights of the laptops I'm looking at already for a weight reference.
Unboxing Day fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 04:37
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In general 'business laptop' implies you can easily switch out components like the hard battery, disk and memory, and are usually equipped with Ethernet and VGA ports which means these systems are always going to be a bit heavier than something like an Air. Another (more expensive option) is the X1C which is a little lighter and 14" - this ditches the legacy ports for additional thinness.
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Oct 1, 2014 04:54
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So I run linux on my laptop, and I'm in general a fan of my current Thinkpad T430. The one problem with it that I have is that it uses nVidia Optimus, which linux kinda supports. Namely, the mini-HDMI out port is connected to the nVidia card instead of the integrated intel graphics, so it's a pain in the rear end to get the machine to output HDMI video to a second monitor. Can anyone recommend a laptop with a reasonably powerful graphics card that either doesn't use Optimus but still has decent linux support for the card, or an Optimus laptop that wires the HDMI out through the intel card rather than the nVidia card?
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Oct 1, 2014 08:20
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That'll be driver dependent rather than anything in hardware - the mini-DisplayPort will definitely output from the HD4000 in Windows. You could try disabling the Nvidia card entirely in the BIOS and seeing if that helps.
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Oct 1, 2014 08:46
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dissss posted:That'll be driver dependent rather than anything in hardware - the mini-DisplayPort will definitely output from the HD4000 in Windows. https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Multi-monitor-setup suggests that it's a hardware thing which card the mini-HDMI out is wired to.
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Oct 1, 2014 09:30
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Hyper-Urho-Kekkonen posted:https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Multi-monitor-setup suggests that it's a hardware thing which card the mini-HDMI out is wired to. On some further reading it seems if you disable the Nvidia card it will disable the DisplayPort entirely. It's definitely a driver issue though as it just works in Windows and I don't see how having the other setup would help - that would mean you could never use the dGPU on external displays at all.
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Oct 1, 2014 09:59
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Hyper-Urho-Kekkonen posted:So I run linux on my laptop, and I'm in general a fan of my current Thinkpad T430. The one problem with it that I have is that it uses nVidia Optimus, which linux kinda supports. Namely, the mini-HDMI out port is connected to the nVidia card instead of the integrated intel graphics, so it's a pain in the rear end to get the machine to output HDMI video to a second monitor. Can anyone recommend a laptop with a reasonably powerful graphics card that either doesn't use Optimus but still has decent linux support for the card, or an Optimus laptop that wires the HDMI out through the intel card rather than the nVidia card? Get another one with only integrated graphics? I thought you could configure the T430 or T430s without NVIDIA graphics?
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Oct 1, 2014 14:07
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My Thinkpad X201 battery lasts about 75 minutes now. Are replacements off Ebay any good, like this thing? http://www.ebay.com/itm/360896897520
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Oct 1, 2014 15:01
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Alright, I finally can't stand it anymore. I need to max out the ram on my Lenovo W540. I have 8GB now, anyone familiar with where to get more ram and how to install it?
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Oct 1, 2014 15:19
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Cheekio posted:Alright, I finally can't stand it anymore. I need to max out the ram on my Lenovo W540. I have 8GB now, anyone familiar with where to get more ram and how to install it? Installing is very easy (I am useless and have done it several times) and the user manual for your W540 should have instructions. As for buying RAM, you could get it off the Lenovo website, but you could probably get it cheaper by buying elsewhere. Just make sure it's compatible with your machine.
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Oct 1, 2014 17:26
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Cheekio posted:Alright, I finally can't stand it anymore. I need to max out the ram on my Lenovo W540. I have 8GB now, anyone familiar with where to get more ram and how to install it? Any DDR3 RAM (make sure you get SODIMMs, 204-pin, the laptop size) should work. There's a forum post or two floating around about 1866 or faster not working properly with certain BIOS versions, so if you want to be absolutely safe get 1600. Installation: http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd029708 I don't know how many DIMMs of RAM it comes with, maybe open it up and see if you have free slots so you know what you need to buy. To repost my earlier question: Does anyone have any experience with EUROCOM laptops? They look like the best value for me right now, but I'd never heard of the brand before and would love to get a second opinion.
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Oct 1, 2014 17:34
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The Good Professor posted:Any DDR3 RAM (make sure you get SODIMMs, 204-pin, the laptop size) should work. There's a forum post or two floating around about 1866 or faster not working properly with certain BIOS versions, so if you want to be absolutely safe get 1600. I do know that Eurocom has a bad rep on the notebookreview.com forums for shady practices and bad customer services but dunno much about alternatives.
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Oct 1, 2014 18:03
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Josh Lyman posted:My Thinkpad X201 battery lasts about 75 minutes now. Are replacements off Ebay any good, like this thing? http://www.ebay.com/itm/360896897520 Third party battery and power supplies seem to very hit and miss in my experience. I would see if you can get a free one via the recall: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?DocID=HF004122
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Oct 1, 2014 18:18
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The W540 has four RAM sockets and can take up to 32GB.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:50
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Calidus posted:Third party battery and power supplies seem to very hit and miss in my experience. I would see if you can get a free one via the recall: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?DocID=HF004122 
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Oct 2, 2014 01:00
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Well my Lenovo Yoga 2 13 arrived yesterday, and was sent back today. It had a defective space bar that would only register if you hit it dead in the centre. Whilst it was OK apart from that issue, I'm kind of glad it's gone. It seemed a bit plasticy and came with a lot of bloatware that made the whole thing feel very cheap. For £600 $1000, I was hoping for something with a more quality feel. I think I'm going to shift my attention away from notebooks to the 15.6 incher's.
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Oct 2, 2014 17:26
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My wife wants to get a laptop. Right now she's using a Macbook Pro that was the first generation to have Thunderbolt. The keyboard's surface is wearing away and the Function key's fallen off. She also seems to have a problem with its size and the fact that it can't run a lot of things she's like to run, specifically games (there's a Boot Camp partition on there, but she seems to forget that). We're looking at maybe getting her a laptop for her birthday, but we're limited to what we could get from Best Buy so we can use a Best Buy card to rebuild our credit after not using any for several years. One thing she runs a lot is Second Life. Yes, I know, it's kind of sad, but watching our kid while I'm at work, it's really one of her only significant social outlets. I know that whatever laptop we get needs to be able to run a bloated, poorly-coded graphics hog like SL in addition to anything actually written properly. Right now I've turned up this search of Lenovos as I understand they're kind of a price vs. performance sweet spot. That said, she did say once she'd be satisfied with keeping the Macbook Pro if we got its keyboard fixed, which she might do now that we've gotten a different model of cable modem and she's not telling me about any wireless connectivity problems like she was with our last two. What are we likely best off doing? I'm sure I could replace the keyboard myself with one off eBay if I can find the tools and a service manual, but at the same time I don't want to go to the expense if there's something out there that'll perform better for her.
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Oct 2, 2014 21:00
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