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Wife and I are now looking at those Woot laptops, and all the hundreds of business laptops on eBay. Thanks guys.
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Oct 24, 2014 04:59
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I don't think any of the dual core i7s are worthwhile, especially not in a thin system that is just going to throttle anyway.
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Oct 24, 2014 05:36
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My wife is liking the specs on this: http://computers.woot.com/offers/15-6-intel-i5-touchscreen-laptop-1?ref=cnt_wp_7_4 For ram & HDD capacity, touchscreen. She's decided she can use my PC for burning disks so that's not an essential feature. My concern is the integrated Intel graphics card, and the CPU. Will this manage light CAD and photoshop use?
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Oct 24, 2014 05:40
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dissss posted:I don't think any of the dual core i7s are worthwhile, especially not in a thin system that is just going to throttle anyway. I'd read some reviews from people who had exchanged one with an i5 for an i7 and regretted it, so it seemed like maybe a waste of money. I've been watching video reviews all night and don't think I'm really all that excited about the core M either nor want to wait around til January for the better keyboard on the Helix 2 so I will probably get the TPY.
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Oct 24, 2014 06:14
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Leperflesh posted:My wife is liking the specs on this: As much as it pains me to say this, that Dell is a screaming deal. Modern integrated graphics can handle photoshop + CAD no problem, it is no longer 2003. A USB CD/DVD RW is only $30 on amazon. Samsung makes a great model. Mine gets used about twice a year for various hobby projects.
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Oct 24, 2014 06:21
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So Lenovo technical support is pretty great. I bought a y410p last year which has had a slew of problems technically, so I'm getting a product replacement. Fortunately, because it'd take a month for a y410p to arrive they're giving me a Y50 instead! They also offered a y40 as well but I don't like AMD graphics cards nearly as much and a 860m is a significant upgrade over a fairly lacklustre 750m keplar. Sooo yeah. Lenovo's pretty great. It only worked out like this because they've tried to fix the problems with my computer three times already to no avail but holy crap I'm basically getting a free upgrade to my laptop. Which is pretty fantastic.
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Oct 24, 2014 21:39
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Cat Army 
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I'm looking for a solid laptop at around $500-850. The most important things I'm looking for are build quality/hardware reliability and solid general performance. I haven't bought a laptop in about 6 years and so I'm out of the loop as far as what brands and models are good. I'll be using it as a primary work laptop so I'd like something that doesn't slouch on performance. I'd also like to be able to hook it up to my TV for some couch gaming (nothing too graphically intensive, probably mostly ROMs) and HD video streaming so a discrete graphics card would be a plus but not completely necessary. I'll probably be using it hooked up to an external monitor most of the time but it would be nice if it had a quality display, too. I'm looking to purchase it within the week so no waiting until black Friday. Any recommendations?
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Oct 24, 2014 21:51
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How do we feel about a refurbished E440 from the Lenovo Outlet for a excel/word/powerpoint/web usage for a graduate student? i5 4200m 4gb ram
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Oct 24, 2014 22:08
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Okay- this is a really simple question. My Girlfriend dropped her laptop, and in the process she might have damaged or dislodged the sound card. Plugging in speakers doesn't work, nor do headphones (unless 'she wiggles it around in the jack' she says). She says does not have the technical knowledge to open the laptop nor the money to go to a professional. If she were to buy a pair of bluetooth//wireless speakers//headphones, would that give her sound without necessitating a repair?
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Oct 25, 2014 09:48
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Freakbox posted:Okay- this is a really simple question. My Girlfriend dropped her laptop, and in the process she might have damaged or dislodged the sound card. Plugging in speakers doesn't work, nor do headphones (unless 'she wiggles it around in the jack' she says). She says does not have the technical knowledge to open the laptop nor the money to go to a professional. If she were to buy a pair of bluetooth//wireless speakers//headphones, would that give her sound without necessitating a repair? Most likely yes, it would. The internal sound card is on the mainboard, so the headphone jack is itself damaged and needs to be re-soldered or replaced. Bluetooth audio out (or a USB sound card) should replace the audio output from that jack and work normally unless there's something else going on. If she can wiggle it and get the jack working it's most likely just got broken solder joint or broken pin on the audio jack.
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Oct 25, 2014 10:01
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e- Sale ended.
soy fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Oct 26, 2014 |
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Oct 25, 2014 22:46
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My mom has a grant for a several month trip to South Africa and a couple of other places. Part of the grant will also buy her a laptop. She's a writer and Luddite, though I might manage to teach her to use skype or something to talk to her wife or me while she's gone. Her goal is to have something portable, durable, that does not scream steal me, and which she can get as many years as possible of use out of it after she returns. In terms of price the budget in the grant is pretty flexible and can be relatively large (At least 1000 probably up to 2+ if necessary, though then it might start eating into other things). She's equally comfortable/uncomfortable with both Macs and PCs -- she's never done much on either aside from write her books/syllabi and check her email. Are there any particular stand out laptops that would be worth getting that are likely to last a long time?
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Oct 25, 2014 22:58
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Looks like some reviews for the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro are coming out the new broadwell Core M chip. Apparently the design is nice and weight is lowered a bit from the Yoga 2 Pro. The performance leaves something to be desired and it the chip throttles during testing with new design and scores lower in benchmarks than the Yoga Pro 2. Battery life is also closer to 8 hours than 9. Was looking at getting one but probably not anymore with the prices started around $1300.
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Oct 25, 2014 23:20
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My current PC seems to be in its death throes, so I've been looking into the Lenovo Thinkpads as per the OP. The T540p and W540 are looking best to me since they can be made high-performance and they both include a numpad. However, a lot of advice seems to go against components I can't select out of in the T540p and W540 models. They have i7 processors, which are apparently problematic, and there seems to be no i5 alternative. The IPS display is a 2880 x 1620 resolution, with no 1920 x 1080 option. Should I just be looking at the T440 models or a different brand? I don't know a hell of a lot about PC's, my current-and-dying laptop is a component-maxed 2011 Macbook Pro 15" that I had the genius idea of partitioning to exclusively use Windows in Boot Camp, and that understandably led to 3 years of driver-related bugs and crashes. I realize that ideally I should be getting a gaming desktop and a cheaper, lightweight laptop, but I'm going to be living in multiple locations over the next year so a do-it-all laptop seems like my best option right now. Doctor Soup fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Oct 26, 2014 |
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Oct 26, 2014 00:17
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Yeah current status on the Yoga 3 is wait-and-see if they can correct the aggressive thermal throttling on the Yoga 3 Pro or if it's actually an issue in real world use. The hinge being made from 300+ moving parts also makes me extremely nervous, plus the fact that it extends to the outside corners of the laptop means it would easily bend and fail prematurely.
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Oct 26, 2014 00:24
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Doctor Soup posted:My current PC seems to be in its death throes, so I've been looking into the Lenovo Thinkpads as per the OP. The T540p and W540 are looking best to me since they can be made high-performance and they both include a numpad. However, a lot of advice seems to go against components I can't select out of in the T540p and W540 models. They have i7 processors, which are apparently problematic, and there seems to be no i5 alternative. While dual core i7s are generally not worth the extra cost over i5s there isn't actually any problem with them. If you want an quad core in a laptop it is i7 only (well aside from some really low end stuff) Doctor Soup posted:The IPS display is a 2880 x 1620 resolution, with no 1920 x 1080 option. Whether or not that is a problem depends on what apps you want to use - if they play nicely with Windows scaling then the hi-dpi screen will be fine. That said I'm surprised you can't see the normal 1080p option - its readily available on the T540 and the default for the W540 was far as I can tell Doctor Soup posted:I realize that ideally I should be getting a gaming desktop and a cheaper, lightweight laptop, but I'm going to be living in multiple locations over the next year so a do-it-all laptop seems like my best option right now. Trying to game on a ThinkPad is going to be problematic - even the fastest card available in the W540 (K2100M) is only equivalent to a 750M and much much more expensive. As an aside I've fairly recently bought an Asus R552 (local variant of the N550) with a 4700HQ and 850M. While I wouldn't want to cart it around like my T430s it is perfect for the couch gaming role I bought it for (and both a bit faster and a lot cheaper than a T or W)
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Oct 26, 2014 12:03
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Is this a good deal? http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-UX31LA...=p2054897.l4275
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Oct 26, 2014 18:27
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So with a budget of just under $3000, what would you say I should buy for a gaming laptop that won't fall apart on me?
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Oct 26, 2014 18:33
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Doctor Soup posted:So with a budget of just under $3000, what would you say I should buy for a gaming laptop that won't fall apart on me? Spend a thousand on a Lenovo Y50 and the remainder on a gaming PC.
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Oct 26, 2014 19:04
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Despite the fact that having a desktop PC is going to be super inconvenient for me for about a year, I'm starting to consider it. I didn't read about the Y50, is it the new standard recommendation for Lenovo PC's? e: Looks like it's supposed to be more gaming-centric than the Thinkpads. Does it have a decent frame like the Thinkpads, or is it more likely to fall apart with cheap hinges etc like a lot of modern laptops? Doctor Soup fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Oct 26, 2014 |
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Oct 26, 2014 19:26
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Doctor Soup posted:Despite the fact that having a desktop PC is going to be super inconvenient for me for about a year, I'm starting to consider it. I didn't read about the Y50, is it the new standard recommendation for Lenovo PC's? It's not nearly as durable as the thinkpad T series, so keep that in mind. But it does have a lot of horsepower for not a lot of price, and an 860m is a decent amount of GPU that'll still let you have a functioning laptop. There are other gaming laptops that might be better though, around the $1500 dollar range. I'm not as familiar with them. It's worth noting though that you can get really portable desktop PCs these days. If you're willing to accept dealing with a mini-ITX desktop you can put a 970 or even a 980 in there and have roughly double the gaming power of a $3000 dollar gaming laptop for a third of the price.
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Oct 26, 2014 19:32
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Doctor Soup posted:So with a budget of just under $3000, what would you say I should buy for a gaming laptop that won't fall apart on me? Dell Precision M6800 with 5100M GPU. That might be over 3k actually. Ok, an Asus ROG or Alienware but treat it kindly. Basically, not a Clevo.
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Oct 26, 2014 19:44
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Thanks, I guess I'll head over to the PC builder thread then. When you say less durable, just how much do you mean? Despite the problems I've had with it, my macbook pro has done a stellar job of holding together. A lot of people I know have had their screen frames come loose, their hinges break, their optical drives pop out, all over the course of a year or two with little stress. Am I looking at that kind of situation? If so, I'd rather go with a low-powered Thinkpad that held together and limit most gaming to a desktop.
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Oct 26, 2014 19:48
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The Iron Rose posted:It's not nearly as durable as the thinkpad T series, so keep that in mind. But it does have a lot of horsepower for not a lot of price, and an 860m is a decent amount of GPU that'll still let you have a functioning laptop. How good are all-in-one PCs for gaming these days?
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Oct 26, 2014 20:32
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There are kind of several aspects of durability in a laptop. One is its ability to survive being dropped, thrown against a wall, driven over by a truck, having water spilled on it, and persisting in a dusty or humid environment. Another is its ability to avoid gradually falling apart and getting disgusting as time passes. For example, Macbooks are good at the second kind, while being pretty bad at the first kind. Thinkpads are good at the first kind, and until recently weren't that good at the second kind, but still better than "cheap plastic" laptops. There are some people that are just horrible at treating their laptops. It's like they don't know how the laws of physics work and how to treat things in a way that doesn't damage them. For example, instead of removing their power cable by pulling it out perpendicularly, they'll yank it out and that's what makes the power jack hole get more wiggly and eventually break, internally. See this post for an example of somebody that thinks he didn't abuse the machine, when it has big obvious scuff marks. That person would fare better with a Macbook because it doesn't have plastic parts that "mysteriously" detach when you abuse the machine. He'd probably still have some keys pop off, and then accuse the keys of popping themselves off. Then his hardware would crap out and he'd feel righteous anger when Apple doesn't believe his lies about not having spilled mountain dew over the thing. The Y50 is less durable than Thinkpads in the first way, much like Macbooks are. It's also worse than a Macbook or Thinkpad in the second way. It's made of "cheap plastic" in places, instead of better materials. For example, with an MBP, the screen and screen-side bezel is glass, and there's approximately one way for it to fail: catastrophically. I know somebody with a Y510p and it has worked great for him. The Y50 has similar durability to that machine. I would take more care about opening the lid by applying forces perpendicular to the plane of the lid, so as to minimize stress on the hinge though. It's probably about as good as a Macbook hinge.
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Oct 26, 2014 20:37
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tuyop posted:How good are all-in-one PCs for gaming these days? You mean prebuilts? They're a bad value for your money. I'm not really a PC expert though, I just follow the PC building thread  Doctor Soup posted:Thanks, I guess I'll head over to the PC builder thread then. I mean less durable in that unlike thinkpads they won't literally work in outer space. Lenovo's Y series are perfectly fine laptops, they're just not the sort of thing you can toss around an apartment willy nilly, and so require a little bit extra care and handling. I've had a y410p for a year and while it has had a fair amount of technical support problems that's because I got a lemon. But I've used that laptop for a year, day in day out with very heavy use, usually over 8+ hours a day since I do work on it. There's no broken hinges, no loose screen frames, no hosed up optical drives, and I don't expect there to be a year or two from now. E: sarehu posted:There are kind of several aspects of durability in a laptop. One is its ability to survive being dropped, thrown against a wall, driven over by a truck, having water spilled on it, and persisting in a dusty or humid environment. Another is its ability to avoid gradually falling apart and getting disgusting as time passes. For example, Macbooks are good at the second kind, while being pretty bad at the first kind. Thinkpads are good at the first kind, and until recently weren't that good at the second kind, but still better than "cheap plastic" laptops. This is a much better answer than mine. Keep in mind though that it's still a lot of horsepower for its size, and while it is less durable and made of plastic, it's not going to break on you unless you mistreat it. I'm very rough on my laptops and i've never physically broken my ideapad. The Iron Rose fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Oct 26, 2014 |
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Oct 26, 2014 20:39
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That's a relief to hear. I don't know all that much about computers on the whole, so I was just wary from all the horror stories I'd gotten from my friends about their laptops falling apart. So at this point, since I'll be attempting to build a desktop PC, I guess I'm mostly looking for a laptop that will beat my dying 2011 macbook pro in specs, even marginally, and have a full (or full-ish) keyboard with numpad etc. My Macbook Pro has an Intel i7-2860-QM processor @2.50GHz, 8GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD and an AMD Radeon HD 6700M graphics card. In light of that, what's my best bet?
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Oct 26, 2014 21:15
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Quite a few of us here have Sager laptops from xoticpc.com. I've had mine for 2 years and 2 months with no problems and it goes literally everywhere I go. If I had to buy another today I would get a Sager NP8268
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Oct 26, 2014 22:46
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Doctor Soup posted:So at this point, since I'll be attempting to build a desktop PC, I guess I'm mostly looking for a laptop that will beat my dying 2011 macbook pro in specs, even marginally, and have a full (or full-ish) keyboard with numpad etc. That is still a very fast CPU but graphics and disk performance have moved on since then. Anyway I'm fairly happy with my Asus R552JK - seems plenty quick for and the build quality is superficially okay. Weak points: - The keyboard is mushy and has a numberpad (the second point may actually be a plus for you) - Screen has the 'spotlight effect' - colours look fine off axis but brightness drops off noticeably - Short battery life - Comes with a hard disk so you'll need to budget some extra for an SSD (I'm using a Samsung 840 Evo)
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Oct 26, 2014 23:46
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Has anyone used a Vidock (http://www.villageinstruments.com/tiki-index.php?page=ViDock) On a computer with no graphics card but a good processor. Was it cheaper? More expensive? Was there a power hit? I can't find much info on it, and I'm wondering if it might be a smart buy.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:03
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Turtlicious posted:Has anyone used a Vidock (http://www.villageinstruments.com/tiki-index.php?page=ViDock) On a computer with no graphics card but a good processor. Was it cheaper? More expensive? Was there a power hit? I can't find much info on it, and I'm wondering if it might be a smart buy. it's a cool parlor trick, but more expensive than it's worth. It works okay with some games, but I would recommend just get a cheap desktop and put a gpu in it over vidock.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:32
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Doctor Soup posted:So at this point, since I'll be attempting to build a desktop PC, I guess I'm mostly looking for a laptop that will beat my dying 2011 macbook pro in specs, even marginally, and have a full (or full-ish) keyboard with numpad etc. If you are building a gaming PC, why not toss a SSD in the Mac and continue to use it? That has more than enough horsepower for any sort of non-gaming application and your bottleneck is the slow HD right now. I mean obviously if you want to move to windows and have to have a numpad on the laptop instead of externally, then go for that instead. But I think you do nearly any non-gaming task with that laptop and a SSD for a few more years to come.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:34
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The problem is that the graphics card is severely broken. It's causing crashes and distorting the hell out of my screen, and I've had to try restarting six or seven times after some of the crashes. I've had to disable it to force the computer to use the integrated card instead, which doesn't have any driver support windows-side so there are a shitton of applications I can't use now, even solitaire.
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Oct 27, 2014 04:14
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Doctor Soup posted:The problem is that the graphics card is severely broken. It's causing crashes and distorting the hell out of my screen, and I've had to try restarting six or seven times after some of the crashes. I've had to disable it to force the computer to use the integrated card instead, which doesn't have any driver support windows-side so there are a shitton of applications I can't use now, even solitaire. Oh yeah, if that's the case then make the jump. Was just trying to save you a few dollars if your old laptop was still good. I've been Mac-centric for a few years now though, so I'm not much use in recommending a windows based laptop. I'll let the rest of the thread chime in on that.
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Oct 27, 2014 04:48
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I'm looking to buy a cheap windows laptop to learn Python and SQL that I can take to coffee shops and stuff since I prefer to study there. I'm not sure how much processing horsepower is needed for that sort of thing, but I'm hoping to spend as little as possible for something with at least a 1600x900 display. Is it still worth it to spend a little extra cash for a Thinkpad, or has Lenovo cheapened the build quality to the point where someone who is very price conscious might be just as well off with an Acer or something along those lines?
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Oct 27, 2014 07:58
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If you're going to be writing code you're going to want a minimum of a 1080p screen Thinkpad build quality is still higher than average You ought to be able to get by with an i3 or probably even a Celeron. I do "python development" using Cloud9 on my BeagleBone Black, the computing requirements for software dev are pretty low. You could probably setup a software dev environment in Virtualbox or Hyper-V and bounce the VM between desktop and laptop as needed. If you are doing SQL I would recommend 8GB Ram and something with an SSD or upgrading to an SSD.
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Oct 27, 2014 08:07
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Hadlock posted:If you're going to be writing code you're going to want a minimum of a 1080p screen No, 1600x900 is perfectly fine, equivalently useful.
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Oct 27, 2014 08:09
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sarehu posted:No, 1600x900 is perfectly fine, equivalently useful. Agreed. I write code all day on a 14" 1600x900. Before that I did it on a 12" at a lower resolution.
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Oct 27, 2014 08:25
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tuyop posted:How good are all-in-one PCs for gaming these days? Straker fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 08:54
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Going from 768 to 900 is the same bump as going from 900 to 1080; approx 8.5% more vertical space
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Oct 27, 2014 09:10
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