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I never had much respect for Xiaomi and their xerox-tactics in the past but Apple's dominance is becoming so apparent that I'm rooting for those chinese copies to become a big success on the western markets.
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Sep 18, 2016 13:08
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Nearly two years ago I bought a Medion 10" Windows 8 tablet for 200€. It has an Atom Z3735 cpu, 2GB ram, 64GB eMMC storage and a nice 1900x1200 screen. This completely suffices for what I use it for, but the microUSB charging-and-on-the-go port on it is starting to fail. I'm having trouble sourcing a replacement that isn't twice the price for identical specs or four times the price for a (sometimes slight) upgrade. Especially insisting on more than 2GB ram seems to be incredibly expensive business. The second hand market here has Surface RT tablets for 500€ and Surface 2 Pro tablets for 700€ and stuff like that, which seems beyond ridiculous, with a base model Surface 4 Pro costing 900€ new. People don't seem to be getting rid of their Surface 3s either as of yet. I'd be ok with a two in one and tossing the keyboard if that were a simple accessory, but often these things contain extra batteries, ports and a hard drive for some reason, which seems a waste. The "best" deal so far I'm seeing is a new Lenovo Ideapad Miix 300 for 289€ and it feels so wrong to buy into the same specs two years later and then pay extra for a keyboard I'm not interested in. edit: Oh, and tolerate a low res screen, apparently. These things should have gone down in price, not up and worthy successors in that price bracket are needed. A small bump up in ram was all that was technically needed. I'm mostly lamenting the state of things in that niche of the market, but if anyone has a suggestion of something I should look into, I'm open to that, as long as it is a Windows tablet of sorts Also, I guess I'm wondering if the Surface 4 Pro has matured? I'm reading about firmware issues affecting battery life. Just in case that's as good as it gets and I can convince myself to part with the money. Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Sep 18, 2016 |
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Sep 18, 2016 15:13
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eames posted:I never had much respect for Xiaomi and their xerox-tactics in the past but Apple's dominance is becoming so apparent that I'm rooting for those chinese copies to become a big success on the western markets. I mean I can appreciate this and feel like I should care, but I really, truly don't. At 850 bucks and these specs? I'd snap one up now if I could get a warranty with it [insert exploding xiaomi phone joke]. I wish there were more reviews. Throttling is obviously an issue but seems to happen quite long into a gaming session if that half-review is accurate, which is dubious considering their battery life test is "it dropped from 97 to 88 in 30 minutes so we are guessing 5.5 hours total under this workload." I can't wait to see what thin and laptops can do with a 1050. I'm guessing the XPS15 refresh gets that whenever quad core Kaby Lakes become available, but that machine is still way too big. Flipperwaldt posted:SP4 convertibles After everything I've gone through with the SP2, I'm going to stay away from the line for a good long while. With that said, the SP2 was a pretty capable little thing; I played and beat Mass Effects 1,2 and 3 on that thing. Are you looking for a convertible or strictly a tablet? Shrimp or Shrimps fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Sep 18, 2016 |
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Sep 18, 2016 15:24
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:Are you looking for a convertible or strictly a tablet?
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Sep 18, 2016 16:24
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Hello. Don't laugh at me but I'm skint and don't have a ton of money but need a new laptop - I just need it for working and occasionally playing The Sims 4/WoW on lowish settings (I know). Price range is ideally under or around £300, thank you for your help~
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Sep 18, 2016 18:53
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eames posted:I never had much respect for Xiaomi and their xerox-tactics in the past but Apple's dominance is becoming so apparent that I'm rooting for those chinese copies to become a big success on the western markets. I don't really mind their copy-paste design tactics, but they have a pretty hilariously terrible history of backdoors, gaping security holes, etc etc on their phones and other devices. And not in the Lenovo-esque "whoops we forgot about that let's fix that up" sort, either, but in the "yeah we explicitly designed that backdoor in because we're helping and have no intention of closing it" sort of way. I would absolutely not trust it for a system I intended to ever log into anything I actually cared about the security of.
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Sep 18, 2016 21:49
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drat IM HUNGRY posted:Hello. Don't laugh at me but I'm skint and don't have a ton of money but need a new laptop - I just need it for working and occasionally playing The Sims 4/WoW on lowish settings (I know). Price range is ideally under or around £300, thank you for your help~ The Sims 4 will run on an HD4000 GPU, runs better on an HD4400, so any i5 laptop should be fine built in 2013 or newer. I'd look at a refurbished Thinkpad at that price point, like the T440. I dunno how well WoW runs these days, the minimum spec keeps creeping up. Someone here will complain about the T440's screen quality; my main point here is that any laptop built new in the last three years will ruin these games, you don't need an expensive gaming laptop to do it.
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Sep 18, 2016 22:32
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DrDork posted:I don't really mind their copy-paste design tactics, but they have a pretty hilariously terrible history of backdoors, gaping security holes, etc etc on their phones and other devices. And not in the Lenovo-esque "whoops we forgot about that let's fix that up" sort, either, but in the "yeah we explicitly designed that backdoor in because we're helping and have no intention of closing it" sort of way. I would absolutely not trust it for a system I intended to ever log into anything I actually cared about the security of. I thought I had heard something about this recently (concerns their phones): http://thehackernews.com/2016/09/xiaomi-android-backdoor.html?m=1
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Sep 18, 2016 23:28
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Hadlock posted:The Sims 4 will run on an HD4000 GPU, runs better on an HD4400, so any i5 laptop should be fine built in 2013 or newer. I'd look at a refurbished Thinkpad at that price point, like the T440. Thank you very much! I'll take a look.
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Sep 18, 2016 23:38
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DrDork posted:I don't really mind their copy-paste design tactics, but they have a pretty hilariously terrible history of backdoors, gaping security holes, etc etc on their phones and other devices. And not in the Lenovo-esque "whoops we forgot about that let's fix that up" sort, either, but in the "yeah we explicitly designed that backdoor in because we're helping and have no intention of closing it" sort of way. I would absolutely not trust it for a system I intended to ever log into anything I actually cared about the security of. It's an easy fix on windows, but yeah I would not trust their phones.
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Sep 18, 2016 23:45
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Not sure if this question goes here but I bought an XPS 15 several months ago with the discrete GPU. I'm currently just using the most current Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia website. Should I be using the (very out of date) drivers from the Dell site instead?
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Sep 19, 2016 03:41
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:It's an easy fix on windows, but yeah I would not trust their phones. But since CPUs are mostly made in China anyway, not all that much more likely on a Xiaomi than on any other PC.
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Sep 19, 2016 04:03
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DonkeyHotay posted:Not sure if this question goes here but I bought an XPS 15 several months ago with the discrete GPU. I'm currently just using the most current Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia website. Should I be using the (very out of date) drivers from the Dell site instead? absolutely not. use geforce experience to keep up to date
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Sep 19, 2016 04:21
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Cat Army 
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roomforthetuna posted:Not necessarily an easy fix on Windows, either. Hardware backdoors are a thing that's possible (though most feasible in the CPU.) While legit hardware backdoors can exist, most of the known ones are firmware level, which absolutely is something the manufacturers control. See: Lenovo's gaff from earlier and Superfish.
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Sep 19, 2016 10:30
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:Xiaomi mobile phone maker tries to combat the air, ends up accidentally making an XPS 13 competitor? Xiaomi makes literal garbage. Have you ever seen the videos of their phone build quality? No thanks.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:04
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Two small questions: What's the difference between an i7 6700HQ 2.6GHz and an i7 6700HQ "up to" 3.5Ghz? Anyone know what M.2 SSDs Lenovo uses? It just lists size.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:37
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sugar free jazz posted:Two small questions:
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Sep 19, 2016 22:50
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Auron posted:Xiaomi makes literal garbage. Have you ever seen the videos of their phone build quality? No thanks. Yeah, hence the warranty concerns =\ Between exploding phones and dust under screens etc. I just wouldn't risk it on a computer. But the specs and form factor are just delicious for 850-ish dollars. I mean, if everything did run smoothly, and if the screen was good quality, the only thing the XPS13 has on it is an insignificantly smaller footprint, while losing out in versatility. Of course, there are no reviews. Lenovo released a similar thing (13 inches, 940mx, 6200u) which I read about yesterday but I can't find the link now. It's also a China-only or China-mostly release. The 940MX is going to be in the new Dell Inspiron Kaby Lake refreshes, too, but that only goes down to 14 inches iirc and not 13.
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Sep 20, 2016 00:01
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The 940mx isn't a bad chip considering its 28nm Maxwell and lowish TDP but holy hell if it isn't totally castrated by that teeeeeeny leeeetle 64 bit memory bus, compression or no.
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Sep 20, 2016 00:22
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SinineSiil posted:There's no difference, one of them just tells you base clock while another tells max turbo clock. Aight appreciate it. When looking at stuff on the Lenovo site I saw them listed like that but on Intel's site I couldn't find anything about it so I got suspicious.
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Sep 20, 2016 00:42
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Not sure how it is in 6/7th gen chips, but my 3rd gen chip had no issues getting to and staying at its rated turbo clock. I think it's more of a factor in super slim Ultrabooks where cooling is sacrificed for marketing/curb appeal
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Sep 20, 2016 01:54
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Seamonster posted:The 940mx isn't a bad chip considering its 28nm Maxwell and lowish TDP but holy hell if it isn't totally castrated by that teeeeeeny leeeetle 64 bit memory bus, compression or no. I was surprised by how well it ran a game like Bioshock Infinite at 768p. I mean, basically most UE2.5/UE3 engine games is going to run fine on it at 720 / 768p and for an ultrabook, that's pretty decent gaming. Really wishing some news on GTX1050 laptops would come out soon. That's 7970HD / 280x / GTX 960 level performance and if they can stuff it into a thin and light 13 incher, then that would be amazing.
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Sep 20, 2016 02:41
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:I was surprised by how well it ran a game like Bioshock Infinite at 768p. I mean, basically most UE2.5/UE3 engine games is going to run fine on it at 720 / 768p and for an ultrabook, that's pretty decent gaming. Looking forward to that. I was always pretty skeptical about laptop gaming but if you can get that kind of performance in a laptop, with half the thermal profile, I think we've finally achieved real mobile gaming with acceptable real world compromises. The proof is in the pudding though, and like you said, we haven't seen any yet.
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Sep 20, 2016 03:30
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What's the best laptop under $500? Must run Windows, smaller/more durable is better (travel laptop), non-Braswell CPU preferred, 4GB RAM minimum.
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Sep 20, 2016 05:47
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Evil Robot posted:What's the best laptop under $500? Must run Windows, smaller/more durable is better (travel laptop), non-Braswell CPU preferred, 4GB RAM minimum. Used Thinkpad X230 on ebay. For that price you can get one with 8GB of RAM and a SSD and the CPU, despite being Ivy Bridge, is way more powerful than a Braswell chip. EDIT: alternately if you don't mind going a tad over, there's this refurb X250 on Newegg for about $525 with 8GB of RAM but no SSD, with a Broadwell CPU. a retard fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Sep 20, 2016 |
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Sep 20, 2016 18:50
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Hadlock posted:Not sure how it is in 6/7th gen chips, but my 3rd gen chip had no issues getting to and staying at its rated turbo clock. I think it's more of a factor in super slim Ultrabooks where cooling is sacrificed for marketing/curb appeal This varies really dramatically on specific SKUs and how many cache misses, i/o bottlenecking and other details are going on under the hood, in my opinion. I've got a big fat Latitude with an i7-4810MQ and that guy's clock under load moves all over the place. It certainly can't hold the 3.8GHz turbo.
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Sep 20, 2016 19:04
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Evil Robot posted:What's the best laptop under $500? Must run Windows, smaller/more durable is better (travel laptop), non-Braswell CPU preferred, 4GB RAM minimum. I have an older model XPS 13 that I'll sell for $280 if you're okay with going refurb. Durable, 8gb RAM, i7 ivy bridge, 256 gig SSD. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3788514
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Sep 20, 2016 19:30
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So these Dell Outlet coupons come and go frequently? Trying to make a last minute decision here. Wondering if I can just wait. Was looking at a Latitude 3470, Core i7, 16GB RAM, 256 GB SSD,1920x1080, NVIDIA GT920M. $692 after coupon. Anyone have opinions on the Latitude 3470? Trying to choose between that and the E7270 Ultrabook that's been mentioned here. Core i5 and 128GB SSD. Intel HD Graphics. About the same price, $685. Just looking for general use I guess. Was hoping maybe I could play Overwatch a little bit it looks like the GT920M might not cut it.
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Sep 21, 2016 04:30
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Bananasaurus Rex posted:So these Dell Outlet coupons come and go frequently? Trying to make a last minute decision here. Wondering if I can just wait. They're up more often than they're not, so you can almost certainly save some cash by waiting a week or two. Bananasaurus Rex posted:Just looking for general use I guess. Was hoping maybe I could play Overwatch a little bit it looks like the GT920M might not cut it. A 920m should be able to do medium-ish settings at 30ish FPS. I mean, a better card would be nice, but you can run Overwatch on a Dorito more or less.
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Sep 21, 2016 04:53
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I ordered a e7370 last week and there were two coupon codes that came and went every few days. One was 30 percent off and the other was $350 off computers over $900. There should always be some kind of live coupon. You can follow their twitter or just keep checking the outlet coupon page to track what's available.
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Sep 21, 2016 16:08
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Twerk from Home posted:This feels pretty bad. I know that for most people, being able to install a non-Windows OS is mostly a theoretical benefit, but further locking down OEM systems feels pretty bad. PCs are becoming appliances rather than general purpose devices. I can see it going both ways. If they're doing it to protect consumers from companies like Lenovo then it's not all bad, but if it's just a 'because we can' sort of thing then it's going to leave a bad taste in some people's mouths. Lenovo of course pulled out all of the stops when it came to embarrassing themselves, but that's another issue. In reality if you're looking to install Linux only you don't have a lot of non-warranty/return benefit from buying a signature version. I'd be willing to bet that the number of people dual booting Linux/Windows is in the fractional percentages. It will be interesting to see if anyone gets their laptop bricked when they update their bios though. Edit: Apparently I didn't some phone posting edit!=quote magic. ItBurns fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Sep 21, 2016 |
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Sep 21, 2016 16:47
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ItBurns posted:I don't know if this has been brought up or not. This feels pretty bad. I know that for most people, being able to install a non-Windows OS is mostly a theoretical benefit, but further locking down OEM systems feels pretty bad. PCs are becoming appliances rather than general purpose devices.
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Sep 21, 2016 16:51
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ItBurns posted:I can see it going both ways. If they're doing it to protect consumers from companies like Lenovo then it's not all bad, but if it's just a 'because we can' sort of thing then it's going to leave a bad taste in some people's mouths. Lenovo of course pulled out all of the stops when it came to embarrassing themselves, but that's another issue. It's "per an agreement between Lenovo and Microsoft." Ain't no one being "protected" there. I mean, the problem with Lenovo and BIOS/bootloaders was that they were putting stupid poo poo into them themselves, not that some 3rd party hacker or dumb user was. If anything, this makes fixing Lenovo's fuckups all that much harder.
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Sep 21, 2016 18:41
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DrDork posted:It's "per an agreement between Lenovo and Microsoft." Ain't no one being "protected" there. I mean, the problem with Lenovo and BIOS/bootloaders was that they were putting stupid poo poo into them themselves, not that some 3rd party hacker or dumb user was. If anything, this makes fixing Lenovo's fuckups all that much harder. Believe me, I'll be the first to throw Lenovo under the bus, but it's not really clear what either party has to gain from this. And I seriously doubt they're doing this so they can install spyware more easily.
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Sep 21, 2016 19:10
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Secure Boot has been around for a while. If Lenovo and Microsoft really have an agreement to lock down the machine, they would do it through signature enforcement, not through software RAID. Dropping BIOS AHCI support is dubious, perhaps this was Lenovo's "fix" for some data corruption bug in AHCI mode.
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Sep 21, 2016 19:57
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ItBurns posted:Believe me, I'll be the first to throw Lenovo under the bus, but it's not really clear what either party has to gain from this. And I seriously doubt they're doing this so they can install spyware more easily. I don't disagree. I'm just saying that whatever their rationale, "protecting users" is not it.
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Sep 21, 2016 22:02
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Are Lenovo's still the go-to for solid built, powerful laptops? I have a T510 from about 6-7 years ago and I was really impressed with the build quality, but unfortunately it just died (fan error). Here's my main priorities, if anyone can suggest something I'd really appreciate it: Solid build quality Powerful CPU and lots of RAM for programming Nice keyboard (my Lenovo T510 from ~2009 keyboard is great, the new T series keyboards don't look quite as good but still better than most modern laptops - not sure if I'm missing any important brands in my search) Replaceable battery (apparently non-replaceable exists now..?) Integrated graphics (not a dealbreaker but I'm not really looking for a gaming laptop and in my experience discrete graphics laptops tend to overheat more easily) 14-15'' screen By the way, I took my T510 in for repairs for the fan error and the repair guy removed the fan, cleaned and lubricated it, but the error persists. He said it spins OK and doesn't look like its broken but guesses that MAYBE replacing it with a new fan would fix the issue. Otherwise it's probably a sensor on the motherboard and isn't worth replacing. Anyone have suggestions? I'm not sure if it's worth the gamble or not.
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Sep 21, 2016 22:45
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So I'm back to really needing to replace my wife's computer, the Q200E with a i3-3217U. It looks like the CPUs in 11.6" computers aren't as powerful as that CPU is, so I'm just trying to figure out what the landscape looks like for these ultra low power chips. She's not doing anything too intense so she was probably never really taxing her i3, so what's the deal with these M3 chips? Would they be usable for light browsing and document editing? She's basically just going to be writing her PhD thesis on it so as long as it runs word serviceably she'll be fine. So few vendors seem to be even making stuff in the 11.6 size, is everybody using tablets or something at that size? All of these 2-in-1s and computers with detachable screens seem like gimmicks to me. Then again the touch screen on the Q200e seemed like a gimmick at the time and my wife uses it all the time now so who knows.
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Sep 21, 2016 23:05
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Ornithology posted:Are Lenovo's still the go-to for solid built, powerful laptops? I have a T510 from about 6-7 years ago and I was really impressed with the build quality, but unfortunately it just died (fan error). Here's my main priorities, if anyone can suggest something I'd really appreciate it: You could get a current T550 or T560 or T460 if you want a 14"
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Sep 21, 2016 23:44
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Ornithology posted:Are Lenovo's still the go-to for solid built, powerful laptops? No.
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Sep 22, 2016 01:17
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