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sports
Sep 1, 2012
I'd have to recommend against Sony Vaio: their laptops are priced similarly to Apple product, but quality wise are far behind Apple standard.

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teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

sports posted:

I'd have to recommend against Sony Vaio: their laptops are priced similarly to Apple product, but quality wise are far behind Apple standard.

It's the thing where if it's Sony, people must think it's high end. Brand recognition and what not; that's what they're running at. Shame they can't back it up.

sports
Sep 1, 2012
If you must do Sony, you might like to consider a Vaio Fit.

Unfortunately, driver support for Sony is nonexistent and you'd probably end up stuck with Linux and universal drivers in a few years.

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

sports posted:

I'd have to recommend against Sony Vaio: their laptops are priced similarly to Apple product, but quality wise are far behind Apple standard.

What are you talking about? Their prices are much lower than Apple's. Quality-wise they are ahead or behind in different respects.

sports
Sep 1, 2012

shrughes posted:

What are you talking about? Their prices are much lower than Apple's.

They have laptops that attempt to compete with Apple, with base prices around ~$50 below Apple. Most people should know that an Apple refurb is 15% off.

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

sports posted:

They have laptops that attempt to compete with Apple, with base prices around ~$50 below Apple. Most people should know that an Apple refurb is 15% off.

The Vaio S outcompetes the non-retina MBPs pretty well at much lower prices. And the 13" Vaio S kind of competes with the 13" MBA (at a lower price), too. I have no idea how you come up with opinions like this but you should probably try considering reality.

Meltycat
May 20, 2006

Melty and adorable!

Regarding Sony, I have a ~three year old Sony Vaio Z which I got very cheaply (apparently it went for $2,000+), and it's a mess. Issues with heat (had to remount the heatsink and buy some pads from Sony for $40 to mount the GPU properly), the obvious issues with drivers, and it is falling apart with a big crack on the underside of the case. One of the hinges is broken, the power cable falls out half of the time, and it's generally in bad shape despite treating it well overall.

It's a "nice" machine when it works, but before I fixed the heat issues I had to lock it at half its rated speed and even then it'd overheat and shutdown. If the build quality were better and it didn't have the issues it has with driver support, it'd be a lot better of a machine, but I don't plan on buying another Sony machine after this one.

Meltycat fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jun 6, 2013

sports
Sep 1, 2012
I have an X220 which is a dream of a laptop. It does have heating issues, though. That's the only issue, really, aside from the fact that it's a bit fiddly with OSX installs.

Shofixti
Nov 23, 2005

Kyaieee!

Have there ever been durability issues with the hinges on convertible laptops? Do the hinges vary significantly from brand to brand? Some of them look really flimsy; even the solid looking ones still strike me as a disaster waiting to happen. If there were serious issues I'm sure they wouldn't be selling them, but I just can't shake the fear of the hinge breaking somehow.

sports
Sep 1, 2012

Shofixti posted:

Have there ever been durability issues with the hinges on convertible laptops? Do the hinges vary significantly from brand to brand? Some of them look really flimsy; even the solid looking ones still strike me as a disaster waiting to happen. If there were serious issues I'm sure they wouldn't be selling them, but I just can't shake the fear of the hinge breaking somehow.

All laptop hinges are pretty flimsy after a while- but breaking a hinge is quite hard. I'd recommend Lenovo's Thinkpad line and Apple if we were going for a review about hinges.

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

syntaxfunction posted:

So I'm looking for an ultrabook since my netbook(s) decided to die. I bought them for the weight mainly. I don't game much any more but being able to run, say, Civ 5 would be good. Even though I'm looking at ultrabooks price is still important to me. And time. I need it basically within a month or so. From what I'm reading the main ones I like the look of (The new Acer S7 and ASUS Zenbook Infinity) aren't being released any time soon.

If my requirements are weight, nice enough screen and faster than a netbook while having not-horrific battery life, is it a terrible idea to get a Zenbook Prime (UX31A probably)? It seems to fit all my needs including battery life (I'm living with about 3 hours right now). It was basically between the UX31A (Non touch), Acer S7 and Macbook Air 13". I can't seem to easily get any others for a reasonable price or ease here in Australia. The 1920x1080 IPS panel is more than nice for me. Any reasons apart from "wait for Haswell"? I don't really want to wait too long as I need it more now than shiny and new. Hell, when I bought my netbooks they were a fair bit behind but they did the job well.

This is from way back but I got an Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A non-touch because it's so light, very durable, has a great screen with great viewing angles, great battery life, doesn't get hot, and it runs everything I need it to run very very very well. I put a 128gb SSD in it too because, as a student, I'm gonna throw all my docs and poo poo onto cloud storage so I don't need much storage. Seriously, the case and the keyboard, and the trackpad are all very very well done and it is a Very Very Great Laptop as long as you don't do video games. Note: I reinstalled windows on it because it comes with a 20gb recovery partition on a loving 128gb SSD, you might want to do the same if you get a lil' baby SSD on it. When I first unboxed it, I had 70gb of usable space.

Under normal usage (I wrote a big ol' essay on Word with like 70% screen brightness on the whole time) I got 4.5 hours until it hit 10%.

Honestly, the only reasons I can find to wait for Haswell is if you intend to play video games on it or something which is dumb to do on an ultrabook. I haven't run a single video game on it, so I don't know how that will work.

Also that loving Zenbook Infinity has gorilla glass on the back which is just gonna make it look awful after lugging it around all day and I've broken the poo poo out of the backs of iphones from dropping it, a bigger piece of gorilla glass attached to a 3 pound computer doesn't seem that appealing.

jokes fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Jun 6, 2013

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

Shofixti posted:

Have there ever been durability issues with the hinges on convertible laptops? Do the hinges vary significantly from brand to brand? Some of them look really flimsy; even the solid looking ones still strike me as a disaster waiting to happen. If there were serious issues I'm sure they wouldn't be selling them, but I just can't shake the fear of the hinge breaking somehow.

They've been around for a long time, so you should only run into trouble if you choose one made by a company that makes insane and capricious design choices, like Sony, which, upon deciding to make a convertible tablet, decided to design a completely brand new hinge mechanism with externally exposed springs.

Edit: In other news, the Lenovo Y410p comes with a 1600x900 screen option.

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

Design choices for laptops and touchscreen convertibles make no sense to me. What is this: what the gently caress is this!?!?!

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:

Some TVs are better than others. The problem isn't the size of the text.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1381724/official-4-4-4-chroma-subsampling-thread

You don't have to worry about that poo poo with a monitor or laptop screen. In any case, I'd rather use a high-resolution display instead of a lovely TV with a terrible aspect ratio.

Speaking of high-resolution displays, I've been checking daily for news about a Haswell refresh of the Chromebook Pixel. Apparently Haswell has been referenced in Chrome OS code, but that doesn't mean much since Chrome OS can be run on other devices. The current one is tempting, but it only has 5 hours of battery life, which Haswell ought to improve. I shouldn't be this excited about a $1500 internet appliance. But it's the nicest internet appliance. And it can run Linux.

That is the spergiest thing that I've read all year. My previous TV didn't have this feature, and it really was not a big deal despite being a Westinghouse piece of poo poo. Reading a paragraph didn't make me want to "gouge my eyes out" because you're not really losing significant details and the "blurriness" mentioned in the thread is actually pretty negligible

Here's one of their examples:



Yes, if you put your face inches from the screen then you can just barely notice a tiny bit of blurring, maybe. Or not really blurring, really, just a barely perceptible color change. Well, you kind of have to squint and they have to tell you what to look for, but yeah, image degradation ahoy if you don't have a very high-quality TV for your PC, I guess

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Jun 6, 2013

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

TV's are insanely bright and reading a lot of text will burn your eyes out of your skull. They are not the ideal monitor for many reasons. I know people who have a 32" or 37" ON THEIR DESK and use it regular. :psyduck:

BrokenLinux
Mar 9, 2003
/device/null
What does everyone think of Lenovos new y510p. I'm looking to get rid of my desktop cause I'm losing my office to a nursery. I do casual gaming (rift/wow/D3/lol). Seems pretty well priced and includes the new haswell tech.

I would probably want the sli model but it looks like the card it comes with is a 720m? Maybe that's a typo?

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe
A friend is looking to buy a dad's day gift of a laptop in the 6-700 dollar range. He says it'll be used for photoshop, but there's no real chance of getting a decent screen at that price is there?

AgentHaiTo
Feb 7, 2003

Well, isn't this a coincidence? So, um, how you doing? You're busy, I know and I don't want to distract you, please, don't let me interrupt you.
I'm going a Dell special event on campus today, most likely to announce their new Haswell lineup.

distortion park
Apr 25, 2011


Has anyone with a T430s tried cleaning dust out of their fan? I can't work out how to get to it properly which is annoying since everything else is easy to access.

Other than that would strongly recommend the T4**s line to anyone. Would be almost perfect if the bezel was a bit smaller.

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

pointsofdata posted:

Other than that would strongly recommend the T4**s line to anyone. Would be almost perfect if the bezel was a bit smaller.

It might be smaller next generation. If the T431s and X230s are anything to base this opinion by. They both have less bezel.

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

BrokenLinux posted:

What does everyone think of Lenovos new y510p. I'm looking to get rid of my desktop cause I'm losing my office to a nursery. I do casual gaming (rift/wow/D3/lol). Seems pretty well priced and includes the new haswell tech.

I would probably want the sli model but it looks like the card it comes with is a 720m? Maybe that's a typo?

Definitely a typo.

Note that there are still reports of bad trackpads, and also reports of weird screen colors, on recently shipped Y500 models. Also note that the Y410p now has a 1600x900 option, which makes it pretty worthwhile.

OXBALLS DOT COM
Sep 11, 2005

by FactsAreUseless
Young Orc

shrughes posted:

It might be smaller next generation. If the T431s and X230s are anything to base this opinion by. They both have less bezel.

Of course they way they got less bezel is by switching to sunken hinges and sacrificing rigidity, not making screens taller.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

pointsofdata posted:

Has anyone with a T430s tried cleaning dust out of their fan? I can't work out how to get to it properly which is annoying since everything else is easy to access.

Other than that would strongly recommend the T4**s line to anyone. Would be almost perfect if the bezel was a bit smaller.

Do you have an extremely frustrating whine from the 5V regulator on yours? I'm on my second T420 and it's really pissing me off at this point.

Also great thread title Hadlock.

Macichne Leainig
Jul 26, 2012

by VG

WHAT A GOOD DOG posted:

Design choices for laptops and touchscreen convertibles make no sense to me. What is this: what the gently caress is this!?!?!

They want you to start using touch input by never, ever using the trackpad. What the hell do you rest your palms on? The keyboard? What the hell good can come of this?

mewse
May 2, 2006

Protocol7 posted:

They want you to start using touch input by never, ever using the trackpad. What the hell do you rest your palms on? The keyboard? What the hell good can come of this?

In the review I read, the acer rep basically said "err, umm, most people use external mice."

Macichne Leainig
Jul 26, 2012

by VG

mewse posted:

In the review I read, the acer rep basically said "err, umm, most people use external mice."

You'd certainly be forced to.

InstantInfidel
Jan 9, 2010

BEST :10bux: I EVER SPENT

Protocol7 posted:

They want you to start using touch input by never, ever using the trackpad. What the hell do you rest your palms on? The keyboard? What the hell good can come of this?


Protocol7 posted:

You'd certainly be forced to.

This is what happens when you go full retard. Never go full retard.

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)
Acer just doesn't want people to notice how bad their trackpads are.

distortion park
Apr 25, 2011


movax posted:

Do you have an extremely frustrating whine from the 5V regulator on yours? I'm on my second T420 and it's really pissing me off at this point.

Also great thread title Hadlock.

Not at all, it's incredibly quiet. It worked well but I've been using it in dusty environments quite a lot and it now gets pretty warm quite quickly when playing media (somehow itunes takes it to like 80 degrees C after a bit) etc.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Bob Morales posted:

TV's are insanely bright and reading a lot of text will burn your eyes out of your skull. They are not the ideal monitor for many reasons. I know people who have a 32" or 37" ON THEIR DESK and use it regular. :psyduck:

Putting a huge TV on your desk and treating it like a normal monitor is pretty dumb, yes. However, TVs at a normal couch distance are not particularly "too bright" (alternatively, if you have one that is too bright then you can just adjust the settings until it looks good) and won't "burn your eyes out of your skull" if you're in a well-lit room like a normal person :psyduck:

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jun 6, 2013

unpronounceable
Apr 4, 2010

You mean we still have another game to go through?!
Fallen Rib

QuarkJets posted:

Putting a huge TV on your desk and treating it like a normal monitor is pretty dumb, yes. However, TVs at a normal couch distance are not particularly "too bright" (alternatively, if you have one that is too bright then you can just adjust the settings until it looks good) and won't "burn your eyes out of your skull" if you're in a well-lit room like a normal person :psyduck:

I can attest to text being absolutely terrible on a TV. It wasn't because that the TV is too bright or that I was sitting too close to it. It's just that TVs are that bad at displaying text. The edges of each letter were horrible to look at.

That said, my roommate had absolutely no problems with it. I don't get it, but there are people, like yourself, who don't notice, or don't care about the way text looks on them.

Meow Tse-tung
Oct 11, 2004

No one cat should have all that power
I used my TV for a week or so when my monitor died. Reading text on it was terrible and I don't recommend it to anyone.

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

With laptops, aren't you supposed to use the battery until it goes all the way down to 10% then fully charge it to keep the battery healthy?

Twerk from Home
Jan 17, 2009

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.

WHAT A GOOD DOG posted:

With laptops, aren't you supposed to use the battery until it goes all the way down to 10% then fully charge it to keep the battery healthy?

I'm pretty sure we don't have to do that anymore with modern Li-ion batteries. I thought that the worst thing you could do was never ever use the battery, keep it plugged in 24/7 with the battery in.

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

Okay cool, and how long do modern Li-ion batteries last? Some people say 2-4 years others say 1000 charges, or something?

V for Vegas
Sep 1, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Man that new zenbook is one sexy machine

WHERE MY HAT IS AT
Jan 7, 2011

WHAT A GOOD DOG posted:

Okay cool, and how long do modern Li-ion batteries last? Some people say 2-4 years others say 1000 charges, or something?

I think the usual standard is 1000-2000 charge/drain cycles

fookolt
Mar 13, 2012

Where there is power
There is resistance

V for Vegas posted:

Man that new zenbook is one sexy machine

quote:

Internally, the Zenbook Infinity is also pretty cool. Unlike all other Haswell Ultrabooks we've seen, the ZBI is home to a 28W Haswell ULT: the Core i7-4558U. The dual-core part features Intel's Iris 5100 graphics (GT3 without Crystalwell) as well as a higher base CPU clock frequency. The result should be a very interesting combination of power efficiency and GPU performance on tap. ASUS seems to always pick the right parts to integrate into its mobile devices, and the i7-4558U is definitely an interesting one.

Oh yeah! That is pretty neat. I can't wait to see how it performs.

unpronounceable
Apr 4, 2010

You mean we still have another game to go through?!
Fallen Rib

V for Vegas posted:

Man that new zenbook is one sexy machine

The top of that looks so pretty with the blue finish and the Gorilla Glass. :swoon:

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Sulla Faex
May 14, 2010

No man ever did me so much good, or enemy so much harm, but I repaid him with ENDLESS SHITPOSTING
I won't be in the market for one for a number of months, but what's the best bet for a low-power, high-battery typing device at absolute bargain value? So, a laptop or a bluetooth-keyboard tablet that will see many thousands of words typed onto it (and not used for anything else, barely even email) for bare minimum price. Is the Samsung chromebook the best bet still, or a Nexus 7 with a full-sized bluetooth keyboard..?

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