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sports
Sep 1, 2012
Yeah Haswell is insane and honestly it's going to take quite a while for programmers to write software bloated enough to hamper Haswell's performace increase. Intel could seriously stop releasing new consumer chips now and people would be extremely happy for 3 or 4 years.

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calusari
Apr 18, 2013

It's mechanical. Seems to come at regular intervals.

Bob Morales posted:

The Haswell Macbook Air reviews have shows huge improvements in medium and heavy use scenarios compared to Ivy/Sandy.

The new Air also has a bigger battery, although I'm not sure how much it it adds in terms of increased battery life.

2012 Air - 6,700 mAh, 7.3V
2013 Air - 7,150 mAh, 7.6V

Revol
Aug 1, 2003

EHCIARF EMERC...
EHCIARF EMERC...

Mega Comrade posted:

Most of my disappointments stem from the desktop processors, such as the frequency for the top model staying at 3.5GHz, which it was in sandy, 4 cores staying as standard etc etc. They claimed it would be the biggest generation leap they have ever done.

Thinking that performance is all tied into processor speed and number of cores is a huge mistake.

This reminds me of a customer I took a call on like a year ago. We were going to do a system exchange on her Dell Precision laptop. It was an older model, and it turned out she was going to be getting a newer model in exchange. (And I think it was more than just one model year upgrade, so I think she was skipping over an entire Intel generation.) That meant a newer processor. Problem was, the MHz was a lower number, and this worried her. I spent 30 minutes trying to explain that this was a mistake, and she was actually getting a really nice upgrade, but she just refused to listen to me. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I ever had at my job.

clonedrobojesus posted:

The new Air also has a bigger battery, although I'm not sure how much it it adds in terms of increased battery life.

2012 Air - 6,700 mAh, 7.3V
2013 Air - 7,150 mAh, 7.6V

That is incremental, really. The battery life increase is by far the result of Haswell.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

agarjogger posted:

What the hell, not only does the god-forsaken x230 trackpad sort of work after uninstalling the Ultranav driver, the titmouse even feels way smoother and sharper. I bet if I filed each and every one of these dimples down to nothing, the trackpad would be almost as good as that of some crappy HP. Now scrolling is dogshit though, so I'm torn.

Actually I have an update after attempting to click something with it: no it still sucks and is useless.
Here's the crosswalk that convinced a real-life Lenovo exec that what trackpads were missing was more friction. His finger couldn't stay on the laptop! It kept sliding off!


Can you walk me through how you did this? I've tried uninstalling the drivers but my trackpad just stops working.

Delta-Wye
Sep 29, 2005
Christ-Almighty Lenovo, why doesn't the X230t come with Windows 8? I mean, I hate Windows 8, but if you're going to have a fake laptop/tablet thing, you might as well have Metro too.

Outer Science
Dec 21, 2008

Daisangen
A friend of mine is in a minor emergency situation regarding purchasing a laptop. He needs one ASAP due to work obligations, and he'll be returning to college in the fall where he plans on using it more. The most demanding things he'll be doing with it are playing World of Warcraft and League of Legends, which he wants to be able to do at high framerates at high settings. He wants to spend around $1300 give or take.

I tentatively directed him at a Sager NP8230 from XoticPC. It's my understanding that waiting for Haswell i5's (as opposed to the i7's available on that model) would be better value, but he doesn't really have the luxury of time to wait and cost is, in his words, "not a critical concern". He only gave me the $1300 figure because I told him I couldn't really do anything without a budget :v:

So basically, he wants a highly game-capable laptop, now, and doesn't particularly care about its price/performance value as long as it's not Alienware levels of absurd. Is the NP8230 pretty close to the mark on that? I'm kind of worried about battery life, but his previous laptop didn't even have a battery and he didn't have any issues using the drat thing only where outlets were available.

sports
Sep 1, 2012

Relambrien posted:

A friend of mine is in a minor emergency situation regarding purchasing a laptop. He needs one ASAP due to work obligations, and he'll be returning to college in the fall where he plans on using it more. The most demanding things he'll be doing with it are playing World of Warcraft and League of Legends, which he wants to be able to do at high framerates at high settings. He wants to spend around $1300 give or take.

I tentatively directed him at a Sager NP8230 from XoticPC. It's my understanding that waiting for Haswell i5's (as opposed to the i7's available on that model) would be better value, but he doesn't really have the luxury of time to wait and cost is, in his words, "not a critical concern". He only gave me the $1300 figure because I told him I couldn't really do anything without a budget :v:

So basically, he wants a highly game-capable laptop, now, and doesn't particularly care about its price/performance value as long as it's not Alienware levels of absurd. Is the NP8230 pretty close to the mark on that? I'm kind of worried about battery life, but his previous laptop didn't even have a battery and he didn't have any issues using the drat thing only where outlets were available.

If he needs a work obligations laptop just get a Samsung Chromebook for $200 or whatever and get a desktop for games.

Calidus
Oct 31, 2011

Stand back I'm going to try science!
If he needs one for work ASAP, Then shouldn't work be providing it? Mixing work laptops and personal laptops is a bad idea. Now ignoring that, If he is willing to spend $1300 might as well get a 13"
macbook air with 8gb of ram. Macbooks are most likely the only laptops that he can get within a week that aren't plastic junk.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Karnegal posted:

My wife just got her PhD and took a post doc. On the downside, she has to turn her current laptop in (Dell Latitude E6500). She's looking for a new one and I know poo poo all about laptops (I'm pretty committed to desktops). Anyway, we've looked through the Lenovo store, but we're still a little lost. I'd love some recommendations.

She is looking for the following:
- Light weight (4 pounds or less)
- Good battery life (8 hours would be great, but she'd go lower rather than adding a bigger battery - Dell Latitude E6500 has a 9 cell and weighs a poo poo ton)
- She uses MATlab a lot and other things that involve database management and statistical models (so I assume processing power would be important)
- She doesn't game or anything like that. It'll be primarily a work machine.
- She's willing to consider a Mac if it's absolutely the best thing, but she would like to avoid it if there is an equivalent option.

Price range is around $1200 (could be more), but if there's a great option for less that would be awesome as well.

How soon does she need it? Any Haswell i5 should be plenty of power and will get you a lot more battery life for the same weight. There aren't a whole lot of those right now, though (most of them have extra mGPUs attached, which she won't want), so waiting another few weeks for new models to come out might be a smart move

taco show
Oct 6, 2011

motherforker


I travel on average 2-3 days a week (with my work laptop- a Thinkpad T410), but I'd like to take a second personal machine with me on longer trips.

Since I'm already dragging my 5lb Thinkpad through airports, the new one has to be fairly light and with a thin profile (at least better than what I have now). The most taxing thing I would do is play casual games- EVE Online, Steam games- but it would be really perfect if I could run Guild Wars 2.

My budget is $1100, but I'm willing to go over if I can find something that has everything I want. Is this reasonable or should I be adjusting my budget and/or expectations?

sports
Sep 1, 2012

taco show posted:

I travel on average 2-3 days a week (with my work laptop- a Thinkpad T410), but I'd like to take a second personal machine with me on longer trips.

Since I'm already dragging my 5lb Thinkpad through airports, the new one has to be fairly light and with a thin profile (at least better than what I have now). The most taxing thing I would do is play casual games- EVE Online, Steam games- but it would be really perfect if I could run Guild Wars 2.

My budget is $1100, but I'm willing to go over if I can find something that has everything I want. Is this reasonable or should I be adjusting my budget and/or expectations?

Super reasonable! The 13" Macbook Air, with the RAM upgrade, is only $100 away if you want something thin and overpowered.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-guild-wars-2-for-mac-beta/ I didn't know this existed, as well.

sports
Sep 1, 2012
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-5000.91978.0.html Also, scroll down here to see the performance averages for HD 5000 (the integrated graphics in the Air) running Guild Wars 2.

Kreez
Oct 18, 2003

Karnegal posted:

My wife just got her PhD and took a post doc. On the downside, she has to turn her current laptop in (Dell Latitude E6500). She's looking for a new one and I know poo poo all about laptops (I'm pretty committed to desktops). Anyway, we've looked through the Lenovo store, but we're still a little lost. I'd love some recommendations.

She is looking for the following:
- Light weight (4 pounds or less)
- Good battery life (8 hours would be great, but she'd go lower rather than adding a bigger battery - Dell Latitude E6500 has a 9 cell and weighs a poo poo ton)
- She uses MATlab a lot and other things that involve database management and statistical models (so I assume processing power would be important)
- She doesn't game or anything like that. It'll be primarily a work machine.
- She's willing to consider a Mac if it's absolutely the best thing, but she would like to avoid it if there is an equivalent option.

Price range is around $1200 (could be more), but if there's a great option for less that would be awesome as well.

These are basically my exact laptop requirements as well. I have an x230 with the 6 cell battery, it's perfect for everything in that list, except that the 1366x768 resolution makes it pretty cramped when you've got matlab or some IDE open in one window, documentation open in another, and a spreadsheet/whatever open in another. A 1920x1080 screen for the x230 would make it my perfect laptop. Probably little chance of that happening, but maybe a slightly better chance the updated x1 carbon may come with something like that...

sports
Sep 1, 2012

Kreez posted:

These are basically my exact laptop requirements as well. I have an x230 with the 6 cell battery, it's perfect for everything in that list, except that the 1366x768 resolution makes it pretty cramped when you've got matlab or some IDE open in one window, documentation open in another, and a spreadsheet/whatever open in another. A 1920x1080 screen for the x230 would make it my perfect laptop. Probably little chance of that happening, but maybe a slightly better chance the updated x1 carbon may come with something like that...

Have you tried using multiple desktops?

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!

sports posted:

Have you tried using multiple desktops?
Doesn't solve the problem of only having 768 pixels.

Outer Science
Dec 21, 2008

Daisangen

sports posted:

If he needs a work obligations laptop just get a Samsung Chromebook for $200 or whatever and get a desktop for games.

I recommended this to him (it's what I did actually with a different netbook), but he wants to be able to play games back at college and home, and shipping a desktop halfway across the world (between the west coast for work, east coast for school, and Hong Kong for home) isn't feasible. Buying multiple desktops would just be significantly more expensive.

edit: To elaborate, he's at a summer internship in California, goes to school in Pennsylvania, and lives in Hong Kong when not at work or school.

Calidus posted:

If he needs one for work ASAP, Then shouldn't work be providing it? Mixing work laptops and personal laptops is a bad idea. Now ignoring that, If he is willing to spend $1300 might as well get a 13"
macbook air with 8gb of ram. Macbooks are most likely the only laptops that he can get within a week that aren't plastic junk.

Yeah I don't know why they're not providing something for him. I think he mentioned something about the company being small so maybe they're a startupy thing.

Outer Science fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Jul 2, 2013

knox_harrington
Feb 18, 2011

Running no point.

My girlfriend is heading off to medical school and is being provided with a free laptop as part of a grant. The one they’ve chosen is a bit crap, it’s an i3 Fujitsu Lifebook AH512, which as far as I can tell is a Sandy Bridge machine, but you can apparently choose to pay and upgrade it. She doesn’t have a lot of money, say an extra £200 above the cost of the fujitsu at the max, and this would probably be paying list price so no discounts really available. I think 15” is a good size for doing university work – that would be its main use, and also watching movies. I don’t think she’ll be taking the computer to lectures so it doesn’t need to be ultraportable.

So with that in mind what’s the best choice for a ~£450 15” laptop? Am I right in thinking the Fujitsu isn’t likely to be a good machine, and that we need to be finding at least an Ivy Bridge processor? Are budget Haswells out yet? I’d like an i3, and for it to be reasonably sturdy as it’s going to be travelling round a bit.

How about a Thinkpad Edge 531? Listed on the lenovo website as £409.99

ThinkPad E531 
Processor: Intel Core i3-3120M Processor (3M Cache, 2.50 GHz) 
Operating System: Windows 8 64 
Display: 15.6W HD Antiglare, Midnight Black - No WWAN 
Graphics: Intel HM77 - Intel HD 4000 Integrated Graphics (WWAN or mSATA capable) 
Memory: 4GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600MHz SODIMM 
Hard Drive: 500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm 
Optical Device: DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer w/ SW Royalty for Windows 8

Also I can only see that computer on the lenovo website. In case they can't get hold of it what would be good alternatives?

I think we should probably order it fairly soon as the wheels of this organisation seem to turn fairly slowly.

agarjogger
May 16, 2011

Hadlock posted:

Can you walk me through how you did this? I've tried uninstalling the drivers but my trackpad just stops working.

Hmm. Yeah, another guy on the Lenovo forums had the same result. I've been going back and forth between the Synaptic driver and the Windows driver on a few different renditions of Windows 8 and it's never failed to revert to a generic driver once I hit uninstall to the UltraNav driver in Programs and Features. Then I just restart and sometimes have to re-enable the trackpad in BIOS on the way back, but the driver has already reverted before I restart and the mouse action changes immediately. I have Device Installation Settings set to Never install driver software from Windows update, though it will keep trying through automatic updates. I should say though that while using the Windows driver makes the cursor a bit less schizoid, it's still not very good, and it also kills the ability for the pad to tell when your palm is grazing it, so your mouse will be jumping all over the place for a new reason. I get the impression that Windows' drivers either feel like loading or they don't.

Maybe uninstalling in Programs&Features isn't a full removal, something remains of the touchpad driver, and the change in smoothness is in my head? I think that's often the case when people report a magic bullet to make the x230 trackpad alright.

Here's what it's got running for the PS/2 mouse under "Mice and other":
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\i8042prt.sys
C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\mouclass.sys

sports
Sep 1, 2012
The UltraNav frontend for Windows uses a ton of RAM. Not nearly as bad as Chrome but if you uninstall it and just use the generic PS/2 pointing device driver with the eraser mouse (TrackPoint) you'll enjoy better mousing overall.

In Linux, if you have a Thinkpad, you should probably use xinput. It's really simple to enable/disable/bind macros on mice, both internal and external.
My Debian install detects the UltraNav as a Synaptics PS/2 TouchPad and a separate IBM PS/2 TrackPoint.
code:
$xinput list
//xinput lists all input devices, duh
$xinput set-prop XX "Device Enabled" 0
// where "XX" is whatever number xinput addressed the device with
easily turns on/off either TrackPoint or touchpad.
In Linux I was expecting mice to be horrible (and some are) but the TrackPoint is really really smooth and honestly better than when it had the Windows drivers and frontend bundled along with it.
And the x220 at least has that weird bevel at the bottom of the trackpad that tends to pick up creases in my pants and what have you when I have the laptop on my lap. So turning off the trackpad really helps in that case.
Also, the x220's trackpad tends to pick up my palm when I rest my hands on the keyboard. Again, another reason to turn it off.

Of course, the unfortunate part about the TrackPoint is that it's not very friendly to you hands and you can get carpal tunnel syndrome really quickly if you don't switch pointing hands and fingers often. The trackpad, on the other hand, is complete poo poo on an x220 and is really an afterthought, and in my year and a half of ownership has only seen use when I loan my laptop to a friend for 5 minutes.

TL;DR: I've owned an x220 for >1.5 years. The trackpad sucks and prolonged use of the TrackPoint sucks as well. If you need a laptop for general mousing around on the web, look at MacBooks. Those trackpads are divine.

Spaz Medicine
Feb 22, 2008

A friend of mine is looking for a new laptop. He's going to use a lot of AutoCAD on it, so he wants a discrete video card to run it as well as possible. I'm telling him to wait for the ThinkPad Haswell refreshes, but I don't know enough about AutoCAD to make a good recommendation. Can anyone here who uses it give me some advice? Does he need a discrete video card, or does he just think he does? His budget is around $1600, but he wouldn't mind spending less (of course).

modig
Aug 20, 2002

Spaz Medicine posted:

A friend of mine is looking for a new laptop. He's going to use a lot of AutoCAD on it, so he wants a discrete video card to run it as well as possible. I'm telling him to wait for the ThinkPad Haswell refreshes, but I don't know enough about AutoCAD to make a good recommendation. Can anyone here who uses it give me some advice? Does he need a discrete video card, or does he just think he does? His budget is around $1600, but he wouldn't mind spending less (of course).

AutoCAD releases lists of certified video cards. It is probably worth making sure the card is on that list for the best performance. The Intel HD P4600/P4700 are on the list, so it's possible some of the Hawell graphics will be too.
https://www.autodesk.com/graphics-hardware‎

Karnegal
Dec 24, 2005

Is it... safe?

QuarkJets posted:

How soon does she need it? Any Haswell i5 should be plenty of power and will get you a lot more battery life for the same weight. There aren't a whole lot of those right now, though (most of them have extra mGPUs attached, which she won't want), so waiting another few weeks for new models to come out might be a smart move

We could put it off a few weeks. She starts in August. Is there something specific coming out that we should be looking for or just something with a Haswell i5?

TenementFunster
Feb 20, 2003

The Cooler King
I'm about to order an Alienware 14 with the i7-4700MQ, 1080p display and GTX765M. Am I about to do a dumb thing? Should I get Win8? Is it still cheaper to buy the SSD I plan to put in and more RAM separately?

edit: yes I need a "gaming laptop" and I need it by the end of the month, so any other recommendations would need to be available within a few weeks.

does Dell normally do a 4th of July sale or something? am I dumb of I buy today?

TenementFunster fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jul 2, 2013

WHERE MY HAT IS AT
Jan 7, 2011

TenementFunster posted:

I'm about to order an Alienware 14 with the i7-4700MQ, 1080p display and GTX765M. Am I about to do a dumb thing? Should I get Win8? Is it still cheaper to buy the SSD I plan to put in and more RAM separately?

You very probably are. What are you using it for? Do you absolutely need the quad core and GPU? You should get Win 8. Adding RAM and an SSD later depends on your warranty and how easily you can get at them.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

sports posted:



TL;DR: I've owned an x220 for >1.5 years. The trackpad sucks and prolonged use of the TrackPoint sucks as well. If you need a laptop for general mousing around on the web, look at MacBooks. Those trackpads are divine.

The ultranav drivers don't use a standard implementation of the middle mouse button, so it doesn't work with cross platform apps in windows like the steam client and kerbal space program. That's my main motivation to get rid of it.

TenementFunster posted:

edit: yes I need a "gaming laptop" and I need it by the end of the month, so any other recommendations would need to be available within a few weeks.

I guess I'll be seeing you at quakecon?

TenementFunster
Feb 20, 2003

The Cooler King

WHERE MY HAT IS AT posted:

You very probably are. What are you using it for? Do you absolutely need the quad core and GPU?
QUAKECON and "Yes."

Hadlock posted:

I guess I'll be seeing you at quakecon?
gently caress yes. No more 4loko, sadly.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

TenementFunster posted:

I'm about to order an Alienware 14 with the i7-4700MQ, 1080p display and GTX765M. Am I about to do a dumb thing? Should I get Win8? Is it still cheaper to buy the SSD I plan to put in and more RAM separately?
If you absolutely need a "gaming laptop," that's probably one of the more decent ones, though I'd caution you against picking the 14" model. Consider this part of one of the reviews on it:

quote:

To say that the Alienware 14 gets a little hot under the collar during extended gaming sessions is a massive understatement. After we played roughly 20 minutes of "Tomb Raider," the 14's keyboard had reached an uncomfortable 101 degrees Fahrenheit between the G and H keys. The middle of the underside of the system topped out at a disturbing 120 degrees, while the rear vent got as high as 154 degrees on the thermometer. The sole cool spot was the touchpad, which registered at just 88 degrees.

As for the SSD and RAM, yes, buy aftermarket and save a bunch of cash. Just keep the originals in a box somewhere, because if you ever have to get warranty support, they're only obligated to support the original configuration.

e; if you haven't already, take a look at the Razer Blade. It's in the same class as the Alienware 14, and is probably worth a look to see if you prefer one over the other.

DrDork fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jul 2, 2013

TenementFunster
Feb 20, 2003

The Cooler King

DrDork posted:

If you absolutely need a "gaming laptop," that's probably one of the more decent ones, though I'd caution you against picking the 14" model.
I've had an Alienware m11x for a few years and enjoy the smaller size immensely for most of the time when I'm not gaming on it, which is basically all the time.

How is the 14" Razer Blade?

edit: apparently the blade has a not so hot screen at lower resolution, but it has actual battery life and look crazy much thinner than the Alienware. welp.

TenementFunster fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Jul 2, 2013

InstantInfidel
Jan 9, 2010

BEST :10bux: I EVER SPENT

TenementFunster posted:

I've had an Alienware m11x for a few years and enjoy the smaller size immensely for most of the time when I'm not gaming on it, which is basically all the time.

How is the 14" Razer Blade?

Probably the best 14" performance laptop you can buy, and a lot less gaudy than Alienware to boot.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD
I'm highly skeptical of 'gaming' laptops that lack any real cooling ability

a cat
Aug 8, 2003

meow.
I'm a programmer who was using linux on the desktop for a few years. I bought a 15in macbook pro retina just after haswell Pros weren't announced at WWDC. I was looking for basically a desktop replacement, something that could run IDE + JVM(s) + a million chrome tabs without slowing down.

After a month of use I've decided I hate OSX and that this nice rear end hardware isn't worth the premium price. So I'm looking for a new laptop. Here are my priorities.

-I will use this mostly as a desktop, it will be plugged in 90% of the time, with external keyboard, mouse and extra monitor (or two if possible). I really don't care much about battery life, I would never use this for 2 hours without plugging it in. So I don't really care about haswell if it means waiting six months and if current prices aren't gonna fall off a cliff any time soon.

- I don't care much about weight or appearance. Having this really nice MBPr really just proved to me that I really do just care about function over form.

- I want the thing to be beefy performance-wise. 16gb ram, high end processor, SSD for the OS at least. Basically I want something with as close as possible to identical specs as the high end MBPr that doesn't fight me when i try to put linux on it. Price isn't really a concert because selling this macbook should cover anything else I would get.

- replaceable battery and parts are ideal. I want something that can last me ~5 years and stay current. (upgrades during that time are fine)

- Anyone have any experience with pre-packaged linux laptops? I think dell's linux laptop would be perfect (http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd) Except that it seems like it's overdue for either a refresh or a price drop. What about system76 laptops (https://www.system76.com/home)?

I'm looking at thinkpads but kind of am overwhelmed by the options on their site. I can easily replace all these disks with nicer SSDs for cheaper than the upgrade costs right?

Spaz Medicine
Feb 22, 2008

jjttjj posted:

After a month of use I've decided I hate OSX and that this nice rear end hardware isn't worth the premium price. So I'm looking for a new laptop.

Out of curiosity, what didn't you like about OSX? I'm still trying to decide what laptop to buy and I'm leaning heavily toward a Macbook. Was it just difficulty installing Linux?

I was also looking at the System76 Galago Ultrapro, but I read that the battery life is around 4 hours, and that's a dealbreaker for me.

fookolt
Mar 13, 2012

Where there is power
There is resistance

TenementFunster posted:

I've had an Alienware m11x for a few years and enjoy the smaller size immensely for most of the time when I'm not gaming on it, which is basically all the time.

How is the 14" Razer Blade?

edit: apparently the blade has a not so hot screen at lower resolution, but it has actual battery life and look crazy much thinner than the Alienware. welp.

Reviews for the Razer Blade 14" are out today:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7119/razer-blade-14inch-gaming-notebook-review
http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/2/4486190/razer-blade-review-14-inch
http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/07/rader-blade-14/

It's basically perfect for what I want except for the screen. I'll be waiting for next year's refresh.

fookolt fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jul 2, 2013

CHEF!!!
Feb 22, 2001

My apologies if this is vague to the point that I might as well be consulting a Magic 8 Ball, but does anyone have any idea when any of the high-res ultrabooks are going to be actually available? I'm spoiled by my monitors at work and home, my current laptop is getting increasingly finicky, and laptops like the Samsung ATIV book 9 plus and the HP Envy TouchSmart 14 have me salivating.

doomtuba
Jul 1, 2009

CHEF!!! posted:

My apologies if this is vague to the point that I might as well be consulting a Magic 8 Ball, but does anyone have any idea when any of the high-res ultrabooks are going to be actually available? I'm spoiled by my monitors at work and home, my current laptop is getting increasingly finicky, and laptops like the Samsung ATIV book 9 plus and the HP Envy TouchSmart 14 have me salivating.

I just got a Sony Vaio Pro 13 today and the thing is amazing. I obviously haven't had it long enough to test the battery life extensively, but for my light tasks (Internet, Word and music) I've used it for a couple of hours nonstop setting it up and it's still only down to 77%. On the reviews it gets around 7-8 hours under normal usage apparently which is more than good enough for me! The 12 hour MBA is insane, but I consider battery life a hygiene factor. It needs to hit a minimum, and anything after that is gravy. The screen is sharp and looks awesome, the keyboard has been great and the trackpad is really good (as far as Windows machines go) after updating the drivers. I am very pleased with my choice so far. I got the base model with the i5 processor and 4 GB of RAM.

a cat
Aug 8, 2003

meow.

Spaz Medicine posted:

Out of curiosity, what didn't you like about OSX? I'm still trying to decide what laptop to buy and I'm leaning heavily toward a Macbook. Was it just difficulty installing Linux?

I was also looking at the System76 Galago Ultrapro, but I read that the battery life is around 4 hours, and that's a dealbreaker for me.

I had never used OSX before this. My main complaints with it are probably just overly anal, but at the price I paid they're a deal breaker. I didn't even try to install linux since it just seemed like a pain in the rear end for not-great hardware support (seems like there's always suspend issues, etc)

Here's just a big list of minor things that annoy me. :siren::spergin::spergin::spergin::siren:

-keyboard shortcuts. ctrl/alt windows/linux shortcuts are extremely ingrained in my muscle memory. The mac keyboard layout can kind of be customized to work like this but there's still at least 20% of things that will be unavoidably different

-I usually use a mouse, and I've got extremely used to a OS-wide gestures program like strokeIt and Easy Stroke. xGestures is the closest thing on osx and it's inferior to either of those IMO (doesn't seem to support diagonal/custom shaped strokes, just up/down/left/right combinations?). There's a mac way of doing things here I'm sure with magic mouse/touch pad stuff I'm sure, but I don't like them.

-I prefer a taskbar to a dock. Just a personal preference I guess

-I'm probably just spoiled from linux and a selfish rear end in a top hat, but it's annoying to me that every little utility program is just a trial version and eventually costs money.

-Finder seems to have way less features than any other file manager. There seem to be decent alternatives but I just haven't got around to trying them yet (again, they're all ~$20).

-multi monitor support sucks. This will be fixed in Maverick I guess.

There's probably more but this should give you enough of an idea if you're enough like me to be annoyed by this stuff. In general I was kind of going into it expecting everything to be super user friendly with really intuitive interfaces but I was just very disappointed as a "power user".

Spaz Medicine
Feb 22, 2008

jjttjj posted:

Here's just a big list of minor things that annoy me. :siren::spergin::spergin::spergin::siren:

Thanks for the writeup. Most of that won't bother me, but utility apps costing money will probably drive me up a wall if I ever want to use them. I've been using Linux Mint on my desktop for a month or two now, and I'm starting to prefer it to Windows for pretty much everything but gaming. I might just wait for Lenovo to finally put out some 13-inch Thinkpads with Haswell, then get one of those and install Mint on it.

Naffer
Oct 26, 2004

Not a good chemist

doomtuba posted:

I just got a Sony Vaio Pro 13 today and the thing is amazing. I obviously haven't had it long enough to test the battery life extensively, but for my light tasks (Internet, Word and music) I've used it for a couple of hours nonstop setting it up and it's still only down to 77%.

Do you have any issues with the body flex that some of the reviews have complained about? I'm looking at this notebook too, especially since it's so light.

sports
Sep 1, 2012

fookolt posted:

Reviews for the Razer Blade 14" are out today:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7119/razer-blade-14inch-gaming-notebook-review
http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/2/4486190/razer-blade-review-14-inch
http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/07/rader-blade-14/

It's basically perfect for what I want except for the screen. I'll be waiting for next year's refresh.

Have you heard of a Retina MacBook Pro?

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VorpalFish
Mar 22, 2007
reasonably awesometm

doomtuba posted:

I just got a Sony Vaio Pro 13 today and the thing is amazing. I obviously haven't had it long enough to test the battery life extensively, but for my light tasks (Internet, Word and music) I've used it for a couple of hours nonstop setting it up and it's still only down to 77%. On the reviews it gets around 7-8 hours under normal usage apparently which is more than good enough for me! The 12 hour MBA is insane, but I consider battery life a hygiene factor. It needs to hit a minimum, and anything after that is gravy. The screen is sharp and looks awesome, the keyboard has been great and the trackpad is really good (as far as Windows machines go) after updating the drivers. I am very pleased with my choice so far. I got the base model with the i5 processor and 4 GB of RAM.

I just looked at the 11 inch model of that, and it's almost perfect, except they don't offer a processor option with the GT3 GPU configuration. Anyone know if the laptop I'm looking for exists yet? (probably not I'm really picky)

-Small; 11.6" is ideal, up to 14" acceptable
-under 3 pounds
-IPS panel with a minimum resolution of 1080p
-haswell with GT3 GPU configuration

I've seen a few things that are almost there, but nothing perfect. Am I out of luck? I don't care what it costs.

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