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Klaus Kinski posted:It does look like a fun toy for playing emulated games and stuff like that, if it was $650 or so cheaper. UMPCs cratered horribly and they were selling for peanuts at the end. I remember buying one back in maybe 2007 for $200 or so.
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Oct 11, 2013 17:41
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Bob Morales posted:You sit farther away from a 27" than you do a 13" screen. Not really, though, unless you're using it like a tablet. Mu Zeta posted:The ultra high resolution screens work the same as smartphones. You can get a Galaxy S4 or HTC One with 1080p on a 5" screen and it's easy to read. It gets upscaled and you don't see pixels. This is a bad analogy because smartphones don't run windows, where upscaling sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
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Oct 14, 2013 21:06
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Bob Morales posted:Sure you do - You have to in order to be able to see the drat thing. The distance still isn't really that much closer, though, assuming you're sitting at a desk and not crunched up in an airplane seat or something. I mean seriously, an 8" view distance for a laptop? That sounds really impractical and bad for ergonomics unless you're a literal hunchback. Sitting here watching people use laptops, mostly 13" macbook airs, it's hard to see a single one that's less than maybe 18 inches away from someone's face. DrDork posted:It's actually a pretty good analogy: a screen of that resolution allows for fantastically smooth looking images and such, but only when the software/program in question has been correctly written to take advantage of it. Think back a year or two to before every major website had mobile-optimized versions and how obnoxious it was to try to navigate a "standard" webpage on an iPhone or something. Same issue, really, and something that Win8.1 has suggested that it'll go a long way to fixing. Win 8.1 really doesn't fix the primary issues with software compatibility and ugliness, though. Unless you're one of those people that uses metro apps all the time, in which case high res screens are useful for covering up their awful font rendering, DPI scaling on desktop is still pretty hacky and awkward, and most application makers are dragging their feet. If you need all new software and to lose legacy support for a decent user experience, you might as well just buy a Mac instead.
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Oct 14, 2013 21:36
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Butt Soup Barnes posted:You don't lose any legacy support though. Everything works fine, it's just the resolution isn't as high on some aspects. Doesn't make it unusable though, and it's still better looking than lower-res screens. That depends heavily on the program you're using. Weird font rendering, stuff not scaling right, etc. is pretty common for older applications. It's rarely utterly unusable, but it's very often worse looking. I'd still say that it's highly debatable whether super-high-res screens are worth the money and reduction in battery life, etc., for the average person who doesn't shove their face into the screen considering that it doesn't even unambiguously make things look better. Even the take rate on retina screens for Macs isn't that high.
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Oct 14, 2013 21:49
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Ur Getting Fatter posted:Is this not something you can get around by disabling Secure Boot or is this an additional restriction Lenovo itself places on the bios? It's not just Lenovo, this is pretty common for all laptop makers because of FCC regs (or fear of them). Each combination of wireless card + antenna must have its own certificate from the FCC. In older thinkpads you could hack the card or the BIOS to make it work: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_unauthorized_MiniPCI_network_card Probably you still can. Not sure if this is technically illegal or not, though, re: FCC regs. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 18:46
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SMP posted:My mom's laptop finally broke and I need to help find her a new one. Problem is, its been so long since I've shopped for a laptop I don't really know whats good anymore. Could I get some recommendations? She has some odd stipulations that aren't really hardware spec related. Thinkpad T530 will hit most of those points.
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Oct 25, 2013 18:27
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Shadokin posted:I need some advice on what kind of laptop would be best in my situation. I'd say a Thinkpad (e.g. T430) or a used/cheap Panasonic Toughbook if you can find one are the best bets for you guys. Thinkpad probably has better customer service if you are going to get a warranty. If possible, get an SSD for it.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:04
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Uranium 235 posted:So is the T440 series going to be ideal for my wife who needs to use Revit, AutoCAD, Photoshop, and Illustrator? She'll be commuting in NYC so weight is an issue, and these look nice and lightweight. I think she also needs a 1920x1080 display. When does she need it by? I'd consider the T530 with upgraded screen too, since it's cheap, a known factor, and has decent colors. Or, if you're concerned about portability, something with a smaller screen and use a supplemental monitor for real work, since even a fairly cheap desktop display will blow most laptops out of the water and can last you for several upgrades.
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Oct 30, 2013 17:12
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WAMPA_STOMPA posted:What is the difference between the T430 and T430u? I don't really understand what an "ultrabook" is, but they seem to have pretty much the same specs? T430 is the regular mainline laptop with optical drive (Ivy Bridge aka 3rd generation). The T430s is a thinner version with no CD drive. The T430u is a T430s with an internal battery and soldered ram that is slightly thinner to meet Intel's arbitrary definition of "ultrabook," a term which Intel wanted to mean "Macbook Air copy" but which now just means "slightly thinner computer." The T431s is a crappier and more expensive T430u that has been redesigned to look more like a Mac. The Haswell generation all have 4 as the middle digit (4th generation Intel), so there's the T440, etc. Basically, there was a large corporate reorg and now the people who used to run regular Lenovo are in charge of the Think division and charged with turning it into an Apple competitor. Their approach seems to consist of introducing ever more confusing product lines and telling their designers to copy Apple more. mastershakeman posted:Still no word on the T540 right? My mom wants a 15" thinkpad and I'm feeling like waiting on the 540 is fruitless. Their website has it listed as "Coming Soon," so who knows, but it is eventually coming.
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Oct 30, 2013 19:44
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Bob Morales posted:The T430s has a DVD drive Ah crap even I got confused. The T430u and T431s have no optical drive, but the T430s does.
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Oct 30, 2013 20:20
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Business posted:Ah ok that makes more sense. He just said that get a lot of Lenovo laptops with dead motherboards Well also Lenovo, HP, and Dell are the top selling laptop makers in the US and most other countries. So you'd expect them to see lots of Lenovos, HPs, and Dells since that's what people buy the most of.
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Oct 30, 2013 23:36
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Break Fast posted:Yeah, that's not happening. :/ You should actually tell us where you live then instead of being vague.
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Oct 31, 2013 15:41
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LifeSizePotato posted:Yeah, for all the doom-saying about gorilla arm, it's really not that bad having the option. I don't use the touch screen all the time for all interactions, and it's not usually like my arm is hovering above the keyboard for extended amounts of time. But it is pretty easy to shoot your hand up and tap what you want to click, rather than moving from the keyboard to the touchpad and then moving the cursor and clicking. When I go back to regular laptops, I have to fight the urge to tap stuff. (That's something I hear from a lot of other people, also.) I'd rather take the extra cash, battery life, and weight. Even if it's just like $50 I'd rather take the $50 instead of a dumb feature.
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Oct 31, 2013 21:17
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LifeSizePotato posted:Good for you, I guess? RVProfootballer posted:We know, you'd rather put that money into a nice super high res screen instead! What's with the snippy comments? People have different opinions and needs, and it's important for people who come here for advice to get a relatively balanced viewpoint on issues where there isn't any real consensus on what is best. Pretty much everyone agrees that leftover plastic Sandy Bridge laptops with 5400 rpm hard drives suck, but the desirability of things like touchscreens and super-high DPI screens is quite debatable and falls squarely in the "try before you buy because not everyone likes them" category. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 01:41
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Esposito posted:This isn't a relatively balanced viewpoint. Why? The non-monetary costs of adding in the feature make it undesirable if you're not going to use it. Not paying more for unnecessary features is pretty reasonable, especially considering that capacitive touch requires constant power to operate and the protective layers required for screen touching can negatively affect display quality. $50 would be 5-10% of the price of a typical laptop, and is a fairly reasonable guess at the best-case scenario for adding touch. Maybe a year ago, the price premium was more like $120-150 for adding touch functionality, but probably a decent chunk of that premium was because of the novelty and the actual costs would come down with greater volumes, both for parts and for production.
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Nov 1, 2013 04:13
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Esposito posted:Because what you originally expressed wasn't a balanced consideration of the monetary and non-monetary cost of a touch screen, rather you dismissed it as "a dumb feature". In the face of people actually expressing how a touch screen is practical for them, calling it a dumb feature seems a bit more snippy than either of the comments you've subsequently objected to. But it is a dumb feature? Is it really necessary to preface every simple statement with "In my humble opinion which is totally personal and may be different for you"? I've used them for many years, and I think it's a dumb feature (outside of tablets). I already mentioned cost, battery life, and weight, and this isn't exactly a new topic. I assumed that if someone hadn't heard the whole argument already, they'd ask.
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Nov 1, 2013 04:34
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Esposito posted:I'm not arguing about whether it's a dumb feature or not (it is [disclaimer: in my opinion]). I'm focusing on your objection to the 'snippy comments', which are really no more or less snippy than saying 'that feature you like is a dumb feature'. Really all they're expressing is an opposing point of view. No, I objected to them because they focused on me personally instead of the issue. Which I think is silly considering that I was pretty clearly stating my own personal opinion and didn't even directly address anyone else. I just don't get why they would get mad because someone has a different opinion on computers.
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Nov 1, 2013 04:56
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QueerPope posted:I think there's some minor misunderstandings. I don't want it to weight more than 4 pounds, so 5 pounds is too heavy but 4 is fine. I'm also fine with 4GB, but I'd prefer 6GB and I'm willing to pay for 8GB if 6 isn't an option. "good battery life" to me means "not having to always always have it plugged in" like my old laptop was. 3-4 hours, if that's actually what it gets, is good enough for me. If you're a student and are going to run linux, I would get a cheap Ivy Bridge Thinkpad, like a T530 with 1080p screen. Look on the lenovo outlet or for deals on used machines as well as the B&N link. They have good warranties, strong linux support, and even fully loaded will be under $1000 now that the haswell stuff is coming out. Financing anything short of a house or car is really a terrible idea. Also you should buy ram and SSDs on newegg to install yourself to save money.
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Nov 3, 2013 05:25
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redeyes posted:Hey fellas, I need some real help here. I have a situation with a woman that has a brain tumor and it is effecting her vision quite a bit. The woman has not too much money, and of course her Dell 1520 laptop just died from a lightning strike. Thinkpad T530 is cheap right now ($630 or so) and you can add the 1080 screen upgrade which has 95% color gamut assuming the higher resolution isn't an issue for her eyesight.
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Nov 21, 2013 23:36
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redeyes posted:That might be over the top in terms of resolution but I would enable scaling in windows. She basically surfs the web does email and wordprocessing. Oh and some Netflix. Any idea what that upgrade runs? The base model t530 has a 1366x768 screen which i think works for old people with poor vision. Refurbs are also very available on the Lenovo Outlet.
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Nov 22, 2013 00:05
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internet inc posted:Also, what's the difference between a capacitive stylus and an active-digitizer stylus or whatever they're called? I ask this because now I'm looking at Thinkpad Yogas and I'm back into the hesitation spiral! I would love to be able to take handwritten notes or draw directly on PowerPoints/PDFs when I'm in class. Will the Y2P be able to handle it or do I need to go to the Thinkpad Yoga? I haven't seen this covered but another big difference for active digitizers is that it will track even without touching the screen, which makes it far more analogous to a mouse since you can move and hover just by holding the point near the screen.
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Nov 27, 2013 20:54
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HarveyxCosmonaut posted:I'm trying to make a decision between Lenovo's T series and Y series. I work as a field biologist and need durability, good battery, and the ability to run ArcGIS. I also like to play games such as Rome 2, XCOM, and a couple years of future games. I'm in the $800-$1000 price range. So are the T's build quality worth more then the Y's hardware while still being able to handle some games? Also should prices drop in a few months to be lower than the sales this week? If you are going to be traveling the T is absolutely worth it.
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Nov 29, 2013 05:45
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plushpuffin posted:That's great to hear! I just got a little nervous while picking it out and I wanted some reassurance. I think I was reading too much into the posts that were discussing the t540p (I thought there was some implied criticism of its build quality). It didn't help that it was new enough not to have many reviews out for it yet. The build quality on it is still slightly uncertain. Thinkpads have a good reputation overall but the latest redesign is significant and reviews seem to say it's not quite as solid as the older ones due to the design changes. You're probably still fine but I'd also definitely recommend she go and try out a computer with a numpad like that first because it's annoying as hell to a lot of people. Personally I would rather carry a separate 10-key than deal with the super off-center layout, especially if yo'ure right handed.
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Nov 30, 2013 06:42
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Lenovo is an average computer company with a bad website who make mostly average computers. Thinkpad computers are very good and have excellent US service because their design teams are separate and their service is run by IBM, though now there's been a significant reorg and more Lenovo suits are going into Thinkpad (and it shows).
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Dec 5, 2013 04:15
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Hadlock posted:Apple quite literally bought the first six months' worth of Haswell mobile chip production, in cash, in advance to get a head start on the 2013/2014 laptop market. Biggest tech story of the year and nobody's said a goddamn word about it. Presumably nobody wants to risk losing access to review Apple products by saying something that might make them look bad.
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Dec 6, 2013 04:06
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Not everyone will see it that way and I think you underestimate just how risk-averse and specific PR managers can be.
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Dec 6, 2013 05:05
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Honestly red makes a lot of functinal sense for something you're going to be using in low light. Though personally I think backlit keyboards are silly. The thinklight is ok though and is actually useful for reading papers too.
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Dec 13, 2013 02:33
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vty posted:I don't know how you could possibly think a backlit keyboard is silly. At least it's a feature you can disable if it really offends you. I've used them for 3-4 years now after coming from Thinkpad X's w/the hilarious Thinklight (that barely showed half of the keyboard while annoying everyone next to you in public) and I would never, ever go back to not having one. Sure, maybe you don't use it often as you're always in bright light, sitting straight up at a desk, or have your monitor turned up on "blast my eyes out" mode- but it's a damned useful feature and a not having it is a major deterrent for some people when buying laptops. Or just learn to touch type. The trackpoint is right on the home row, so there's no real excuse for being unable to find it. On the edgiest of edge cases where you want to peck out some weird symbol and don't remember/can't find it by touch, how bad are your eyes that you can't just use the light from the screen and thinklight to find the key? And where are you that the tiny thinklight adds so much light compared to the screen so as to annoy people in public (unless you're using your laptop in a movie theater or something)? It's a better solution for cases like in airplanes where the overhead lighting is easiliy occluded by the laptop if you want to also reference some printed material while you work. In principle, too, backlights make it harder to see the keys without a backlight even in relatively normal light so it's overall bad for battery life plus adds cost and complexity - i'd rather have another row of keys or separate volume buttons than a backlight. And it's also why they switched to the island style keyboards. So it's not really a feature that you can opt out of. Go ahead and use it if you like, this isn't some sort of polemic, but having used both I just haven't been convinced of its utility.
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Dec 14, 2013 22:56
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Uranium 235 posted:My dad keeps breaking his laptops, probably because he's a conductor on freight trains and he carries his laptop in a backpack, and it's not so easy to be gentle with his stuff. He really just uses his laptop to browse the web while he's in his hotel room. He also doesn't want to spend more than $500-600. Should I just point him to Best Buy to get another flimsy laptop? I don't know what else he can buy with that kind of money--I don't think that price point buys durability. Used thinkpad plus buy him a cheap padded case or hardcase since it sounds like he might be crushing them vs. dropping them.
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Feb 24, 2014 16:44
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Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:Is there a way to turn off the red LED on the back of my X240? But then how will people know you're using a thinkpad?
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Feb 24, 2014 16:54
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Calidus posted:edit: thinkpad x131e have both VGA and HDMI but I wouldn't want to use it for anything other than powerpoint presentations and reading email. They and the current x140e are also cheap ($300-400) and pretty durable (not fully ruggedized but somewhat since they were designed for schools). They are netbooks with crappy screens but still might be a good solution due to the unusual requirements (since it's cheap enough you can just use it for presentations and nothing else) OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 00:32
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blowfish posted:It looks like you can use the T450 trackpad to replace the T440 ones. Oh poo poo I hope this is true
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Feb 7, 2015 22:08
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The Ferret King posted:For a laptop that won't get moved much, I'm starting to think a lower build quality model would be a perfect fit for my wife, since the savings are significant. Lenovo tech support is bad, IBM support is good
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Feb 25, 2015 16:40
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Hadlock posted:8.1 is generally a better OS - it uses the exact same kernel as WS2012 R2, only with the 'Desktop User' role enabled. I highly reccomend 8.1 + Classic Start for personal use. Other than having to install Classic Start, Microsoft did a really great job on 8.1, they managed to scrub all the Steven Sinofsky out of the OS and it's actually quite good now. I waited a year before jumping from 7 to 8 and I thnk that's a reasonable amount of time; there's no reason to be creaking along on 7 2.5 years after the release date. It's still much uglier though
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Feb 28, 2015 06:17
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