Laptop Megathread: Your laptop doesn't have Haswell? More like Hasbeen~

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Laptop Megathread: Your laptop doesn't have Haswell? More like Hasbeen~

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fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

I feel like the MacBook Air 13 won't be really upgraded in terms of screen until next summer. I really wish it had a really nice IPS screen, but that battery life more than makes up for it (for now). I'll sell this one and get next year's upgrade if the screen is at least IPS.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 08:28

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 21:42

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

What are the good ultrabooks at the 11-12" screen size other than the MacBook Air? It's for my girlfriend; she wants a whole lot of battery life and portability and wants to check some other options before going with the MacBook Air.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2013 08:02

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

Hadlock posted:

Yoga 11s is an interesting one, there's a bunch of Chromebooks if she is OS agnostic, also make sure you're looking at Haswell processors (i5-4xxx), as they have superior battery life over Ivy Bridge (i5-3xxx)

Of course, it'll be Haswell :P She needs it for PhD work so she'll need Microsoft Office, SASS, and Stata (Chromebooks are out of the picture).

# ¿ Oct 13, 2013 08:20

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

Yudo posted:

Keep in mind that Stata requires everything to be loaded into memory. For the most part this is not a big deal, but a large dataset and a complex procedure will gobble up ram in a hurry. Buy as much ram as you can afford.

SAS is bloat ware. It is less dependant on ram than say Stata or R but it has an install footprint of 8 gb. Don't buy something with a 64 gb SSD.

I once did some fairly complex work on an atom netbook. If the ram is there, it will get done.

Thanks; I had no idea about that. I'll make sure to get at least 8GB.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2013 19:38

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

QuarkJets posted:

Don't worry too much about the initial RAM configuration; these are the two things you want to be asking whenever you look at a laptop and are worried about RAM:

1) How many DIMM slots does it have? If it has 1 DIMM and 8GB, then it's going to be hard to upgrade because it only takes 1 stick of RAM. If it has 2 DIMMs, then you can buy two 8GB sticks and have a total of 16GB, much more than most laptops and great for working with medium-sized datasets.

2) Is the RAM soldered to the motherboard? If so, you can't upgrade it at all. Avoid these unless you're satisfied with the amount of RAM that's already in there.

RAM is cheap, and accessing the RAM is also a very easy process for most laptops. Of course, if you find a laptop with the amount of RAM that you want then you can safely ignore this advice

I'm aware

The reason I said that was because it looks like the MacBook Air looks like her best option and the memory's not upgradeable for that.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2013 21:17

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

hotsauce posted:

Oh my, I have a $300 BB gift card that's unusable to me basically because I never really shop at BB.

The Yoga Pro 2 is tempting, indeed. May even sell my rMBP and use it full time...I just don't know if I can lose the trackpad on the MBP.

Looks good from here and it's in stock all around me (both 128 & 256). Hmm, what's the catch?

Is the SSD partitioned to hell and back like the original Yoga?

That's the thing that really kills me; keyboards in general seem to have gotten better with Windows ultrabooks, but the Apple trackpad is straight from heaven and it seems like that's something Windows ultrabooks haven't caught up with yet. Am I wrong on that? I'd love to be wrong on that

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 05:33

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

shrughes posted:

There are a bunch of trackpads that I'd consider the equal of Apple trackpads but my standards are a little weird. I think the T42 trackpad and maybe other trackpads of those times on Thinkpads were better than the Apple trackpads today. Most Panasonic business-rugged touchbooks' trackpads are as good as Apple's, or at least every one I've tried. I think smaller trackpads that are precise and don't require much finger movement are preferable to Apple's humongous trackpad. Seeing my Mom try to use a trackpad, I can see why Apple disagrees with me.

I tried a trackpad on a Latitude recently and it was pretty much perfect as generic trackpads go. It was a boring trackpad, big enough for muggles, with physical buttons, that doesn't glitch out on you.

The one thing I really love with the Apple trackpad are the multitouch gestures, especially the three finger drag to select text and the four finger swipe left/right to switch quickly between desktops.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 07:33

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

Magic Underwear posted:

Apple comes closest, imo. Not that they do everything best but they do most things very well with no glaring issues. Every ultrabook has to prove that either it's worth the premium over an MBA or similar to but cheaper than an MBA. On the super high end its the same except with the retina MBP. Most can't really hack it but they compensate with things Apple just won't do like digitiser, touchscreen, convertible, etc.

The only stumbling block for the MBA now is that (relatively) awful TN screen.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2013 01:18

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

evol262 posted:

The SSD is replaceable. Soldered RAM is pretty common in the Ultrabook realm of Windows laptops as well.

The "uber-MBP" isn't really worth it for graphic designers, either. It may be worth it for graphic designers who are also running multiple VMs and doing video editing, or for editing 4k video streams in the future, but "needing" 16GB of RAM in 2013 unlikely. Or in 2014, unless you're in a very specific field, and you'd know it if you were.

Totally depends on budget. A Haswell i5 and whatever GPU is between $200 and $250 right now from AMD or nVidia (whichever you like more) is probably your best bet for price/performance.

Wait, the new PCIe SSD drives in the Haswell rMBP are replaceable?

# ¿ Oct 25, 2013 00:56

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

Tusen Takk posted:

I was told by the Geniuses that we at the Apple Store were unable to do it with the Retina models... I'm sure the internet has found some way of ~~voiding the warranty~~ doing it, though . I know with the non-Retinas, we're able to upgrade the RAM up to 8GB (the board itself can handle up to 16GB if you want to do it yourself) and the HDD can be swapped out with an SSD.

Yeah I'm pretty sure the latest rMBPs have everything soldered to the board.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2013 01:16

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

Malderi posted:

I am very seriously considering the top-end Inspiron 15 7000 and would like someone to talk me out of it. It's here: http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15-7537/pd. The one with the SSD.

Specs:
i7-4500U (15W dual-core, HD4400)
16GB DDR3 RAM (overkill, but can't argue...)
15" 1080p touchscreen
256GB SSD
GeForce 750m (2GB of GDDR5, which is rare, most use DD3)
$1,199

I like larger laptops (currently have a 16.4"), so I am specifically looking for a 15". Given that I want a dedicated graphics card to do light gaming without being a Blinged Out Gaming Laptop, this looks really good, and the price is reasonable. Only thing I'm somewhat concerned about is the weight; at 5.7lbs, it's lighter than my current laptop, which I've been mostly okay with, but it's heavier than average for its size. Looks really slick, though.

Someone talk me out of it? I should mention that I have a Surface Pro for the ultra-mobile stuff, which is why I'm not doing a smaller laptop.

What sort of games do you want to play?

# ¿ Oct 29, 2013 02:58

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

I really want a case that goes around your laptop, has handles, but also allows you to easily open the laptop while it's still in the case. Is there anything like that out there?

# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 22:26

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

Hadlock posted:

I think the search term you are looking for is "laptop folio case". They're more common for android tablets but they make them for laptops as well.

Something like this or like this should get you started

Sometimes, it's all about just knowing what to look for. Thanks so much!

# ¿ Nov 24, 2013 02:58

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

SlayVus posted:

To add to this, if you buy a Y510p with a GT 750m you can buy a second GT 750m from lenovo for $220 and get a SLI laptop for less than $1500.

Does the SLI config avoid getting throttled because of temps?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 11:13

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 21:42

fookolt: Mar 13, 2012; Where there is power
There is resistance

I don't think it makes Apple look bad (it's a free market after all), but I do think it's a very interesting story.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2013 04:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Laptop Megathread: Your laptop doesn't have Haswell? More like Hasbeen~

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