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shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)
I would just like to post right now to say that gosh, netbooks have gotten really good these days.

Look at this ASUS 1015E-DS03: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00COQK8QY/

10.1" 1366x768
Ships with Ubuntu
Celeron 847
$220

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dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.
The problem with those Asus models is the keyboards are really bad even considering how cheap they are

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

Hadlock posted:

No, you're fine. I've been rocking mismatched ram for a year now in my Thinkpad. You will be fine. A 1% difference in "stupid fast" is still stupid fast. There's a picture of my mismatched ram in the OP if you need a feel good about it still.

8gb vs 4gb basically means you will never have to close a window or browser tag ever again. Really all you need is about 6 GB so 8gb is just icing on the cake.
Agreed. The slight performance hit to the RAM subsystem is not what is going to be holding your laptop back in virtually any actual use case, anyhow. 95% of the time your limiting factor is going to either be the drive you're using, or the internet connection you're plugged in to. Very rarely will 10 vs 10.6GB/s in RAM bandwidth make a difference.

sudo rm -rf
Aug 2, 2011


$ mv fullcommunism.sh
/america
$ cd /america
$ ./fullcommunism.sh


A buddy of mine just linked me this as a possible purchase for himself. How can I shame him out of it?

agarjogger
May 16, 2011

Erkenntnis posted:

A buddy of mine just linked me this as a possible purchase for himself. How can I shame him out of it?

I assume he has already seen the price? ($3,949.99 btw)
How does that price even work. Dude, I can't even. I wouldn't pay $600 for that if I had to use it.

Duck and Cover
Apr 6, 2007

Erkenntnis posted:

A buddy of mine just linked me this as a possible purchase for himself. How can I shame him out of it?

I like the dragon.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

For that price he could buy a desktop, gas generator, portable table & folding chair, and someone to walk around behind him with the whole setup on a cart

Dragon on the keyboard is pretty :black101:

Scrub-Niggurath
Nov 27, 2007

Erkenntnis posted:

A buddy of mine just linked me this as a possible purchase for himself. How can I shame him out of it?

Windows 8

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

agarjogger posted:

OSX takes about five minutes to learn for a longtime Windows user. It's really the same thing except more satisfying.
Also I probably shouldn't be aggressively recommending a $1000/1099 computer when you haven't mentioned your budget. But you haven't mentioned your budget.

Yeah, this isn't true. OSX is actually closer to Linux than Windows, and as a long-time user of both Windows and Linux I'm still not used to OSX after a year of use. The interface just feels really clunky compared to the other two, possibly because I'm still not used to the different keyboard.

What I'm saying is that it's not for everyone

On Terra Firma
Feb 12, 2008

GrizzlyCow posted:

Yes. Wait for Haswell. Alternatively . . .

Say what you features you need, what features you want, your preferences on certain features like (trans)portability and screen size, and other stuff. No one can give you a recommendation if you don't specify more than your budget.

I really should have included more info so my apologies. It was definitely too vague.

Right now I'm doing a lot of work with excel and google earth whenever I'm doing "work" on the computer. Current display is 11.5 and I wouldn't mind increasing that to a 14 just for the extra work space. Constantly scrolling around is a pain in the rear end. Viewing angles on it are total poo poo as well so I am assuming the HD+ upgrade on the thinkpads is what I'd want.

As for graphics I would like to play some casual games for killing time, so figure I would want something that could handle things on the level of Torchlight 2 where it's not too detailed, but not some misc flash game either. I sometimes play civilization 5 or something on par with that. I don't want to go all out on putting money into graphic improvements, but it's loving annoying not even being able to boot up games from 10 years ago AND not be able to stream HD on youtube or netflix. I saw the video that was in the OP for the HD4000 and if a step up makes a noticeable improvement (I know, I know diminishing returns) I wouldn't mind throwing a few bucks towards it. I do watch a lot of movies on my computer when I'm away in the downtime, and not being able to play anything but 480p on youtube or less is really aggrivating for me right now. I'm assuming anything above integrated graphics like the HD4000 will go a long way but I just haven't had time to do much research.

Portability isn't a massive issue as I don't really just throw it in my bag. I was looking at the X series just because something lighter couldn't hurt, but whether or not it's worth it to me in the long run isn't something I'm really factoring into this too much. I think my current netbook is 3 lbs for reference. Again, this isn't as much of a concern as just being able to actually run programs is.

I feel like this description is too vague but that's about all I can think of. I basically need a good mobile work station where I can just set up shop away from home, be able to play with data, and still enjoy a few games/HD videos here and there. I just spent 3 weeks away from home and the loving computer I have drove me nuts. There were times I had 3 windows of firefox open doing research and opened excel and it just about poo poo itself trying to cope with the workload. I threw 4 gigs of ram in just out of sheer frustration and while it helped, it wasn't a big enough difference to make me hold out for another 6 months or so. I'll be doing more looking around now that I have time to but god drat trying to get anything done was mentally taxing to say the least.

So, I have around 1k but like I said if spending an extra hundred or two will be worth it the difference doesn't matter to me considering I will be using it quite often traveling for work. If I'm better off spending less because after a certain point it won't make much of an impact, that's cool too. I hope this is more helpful.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Netbooks were unbearably slow in 2009 when they got popular, but people dealt with it because hey it's a laptop for under $350

A T430 or X230 is something like six to eight times more powerful than your atom powered netbook. HD4000 has no problem with torchlight 2, you're looking at 50fps @ 1080p with everything maxed out

If you're just doing streaming HD video, office apps and indie games the HD4000 is a great match for you. I would go with a 1600x900 screen or better if you can. 1080p laptop screens can be found in the $800-1100 range, but the laptop you're describing is about $700. $1000 these days will buy you a low end version of a flagship laptop. If you can wait ~3 weeks the T440s will be out with a 14" 1080p IPS screen and 8+ hrs of battery life for ~$850 which might become the new recommended laptop.

Hadlock fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Aug 23, 2013

butt dickus
Jul 7, 2007

top ten juiced up coaches
and the top ten juiced up players

Erkenntnis posted:

A buddy of mine just linked me this as a possible purchase for himself. How can I shame him out of it?
Holy poo poo that fucker is gargantuan. Compared to the T440s it's 2.4 times as heavy, 2.7 times as thick and probably around double the surface area. I'm kind of surprised they didn't just say "gently caress it, let's put a desktop video card in here." They even give you a backpack to haul the drat thing around in, probably because they figured if you're taking the laptop anywhere you're going to need to bring the power adapter if you want to use it for more than 12 minutes.

Cthulhuite
Mar 22, 2007

Shwmae!
So I've gone back about 20 pages and I can't find any real answers to this question. I'm looking for a small-ish laptop (14-15") that's nice and light with a good graphics card. The Razer seemed perfect, but apparently people are having issues with theirs? Has anyone got one that can give me an "Is it worth the price?" answer and if not if there something around the same form factor. I'll be lugging it around everywhere for work, and if i'm buying a new laptop I may as well replace my aging home computer, so two birds/one stone.

dpkg chopra
Jun 9, 2007

Fast Food Fight

Grimey Drawer

Cthulhuite posted:

So I've gone back about 20 pages and I can't find any real answers to this question. I'm looking for a small-ish laptop (14-15") that's nice and light with a good graphics card. The Razer seemed perfect, but apparently people are having issues with theirs? Has anyone got one that can give me an "Is it worth the price?" answer and if not if there something around the same form factor. I'll be lugging it around everywhere for work, and if i'm buying a new laptop I may as well replace my aging home computer, so two birds/one stone.

I was looking at the MSI GE40 last night. Fairly good reviews but it apparently runs pretty hot when gaming, which could be an issue down the line.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

Cthulhuite posted:

So I've gone back about 20 pages and I can't find any real answers to this question. I'm looking for a small-ish laptop (14-15") that's nice and light with a good graphics card. The Razer seemed perfect, but apparently people are having issues with theirs? Has anyone got one that can give me an "Is it worth the price?" answer and if not if there something around the same form factor. I'll be lugging it around everywhere for work, and if i'm buying a new laptop I may as well replace my aging home computer, so two birds/one stone.

Are you looking for a desktop replacement laptop, as in a gaming laptop, gaming laptop + gaming desktop, or laptop + gaming desktop? My experience with desktop replacement gaming laptops are they they are lovely when it comes to portability.

The X-man cometh
Nov 1, 2009

The X-man cometh posted:

My old laptop died in early July, and I've been holding out for Haswells since then. Is this Acer M a solid model, or should I wait the "three more weeks" for the Thinkpad?
http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model-datasheet/NX.MEFAA.001

I know HPs are hit-or-miss, is the Envy a solid line?
http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/D1L17AV?HP-ENVY-TouchSmart-14t-k000-Ultrabook

Posting again to see if anyone has an opinion on these. My real question is if the Acer M and HP Envy lines are worth looking into.

On Terra Firma
Feb 12, 2008

Hadlock posted:

Netbooks were unbearably slow in 2009 when they got popular, but people dealt with it because hey it's a laptop for under $350

A T430 or X230 is something like six to eight times more powerful than your atom powered netbook. HD4000 has no problem with torchlight 2, you're looking at 50fps @ 1080p with everything maxed out

If you're just doing streaming HD video, office apps and indie games the HD4000 is a great match for you. I would go with a 1600x900 screen or better if you can. 1080p laptop screens can be found in the $800-1100 range, but the laptop you're describing is about $700. $1000 these days will buy you a low end version of a flagship laptop. If you can wait ~3 weeks the T440s will be out with a 14" 1080p IPS screen and 8+ hrs of battery life for ~$850 which might become the new recommended laptop.

Jesus I had no idea the gap had gotten so large. Laptops have never been something I've been interested, but now that my business is taking off I'm away more and more and it's important to have something with some juice. I really want to buy now because I have some jobs coming up next month, but if it's worth the wait and there are release dates set I'd be happy to wait.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness
The T440 does very much look like it'll be worth the wait, but there are no hard release dates set yet (Lenovo basically never bothers with those). However, in that it's popped up on the official site now, it can't be too long before they're looking to take orders on it. But whether that'll be next week or next month, no one's sure.

Seamonster
Apr 30, 2007

IMMER SIEGREICH
So the most anticipated product of the Laptop Megathread is...dGPU only?

Gunshow Poophole
Sep 14, 2008

OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069




Clapping Larry

Seamonster posted:

So the most anticipated product of the Laptop Megathread is...dGPU only?

I mean, the inclusion of the GPU across all the models (and the ones we've seen are on the HK website) might be strange from a form-factor and cost perspective, but Optimus will just have it turned off until it's needed, so if they keep the price right, I don't see that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Also hello! I just posted about you in the camera gear thread haha.

AnonymousGuest
Jul 24, 2007
Long story short, friend's little brother foolishly downloaded something and somehow a hacker took over control and changed password and such. Hacker threatened to make the laptop inoperable unless he received $300 by 7-11 moneygram(?) within 48hours.

I assumed it was a bullshit virus or something that changed homepage setting in browser or similar inconvenience so I offer to help. That was 3 days ago, I received the laptop last night and it was refusing to turn itself on. All the solution offered by google search didn't help at all. She said it worked fine until yesterday so I can only assume that hacker actually carried on with his threat(How is this even possible?). I can't really know what happened because the laptop can't be turned on. Help? :newlol:

[Fake Edit] It's a Dell Latitude D630 running on Vista

Deviant
Sep 26, 2003

i've forgotten all of your names.


AnonymousGuest posted:

Long story short, friend's little brother foolishly downloaded something and somehow a hacker took over control and changed password and such. Hacker threatened to make the laptop inoperable unless he received $300 by 7-11 moneygram(?) within 48hours.

I assumed it was a bullshit virus or something that changed homepage setting in browser or similar inconvenience so I offer to help. That was 3 days ago, I received the laptop last night and it was refusing to turn itself on. All the solution offered by google search didn't help at all. She said it worked fine until yesterday so I can only assume that hacker actually carried on with his threat(How is this even possible?). I can't really know what happened because the laptop can't be turned on. Help? :newlol:

[Fake Edit] It's a Dell Latitude D630 running on Vista

You're gonna need to clarify on "refuses to turn itself on".

AnonymousGuest
Jul 24, 2007

Deviant posted:

You're gonna need to clarify on "refuses to turn itself on".

Press the ON button, laptop hums 1sec and turn itself OFF.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


I would start by cracking it open and removing the CMOS battery for 60 seconds to clear the bios.

zzMisc
Jun 26, 2002

AnonymousGuest posted:

Hacker threatened to make the laptop inoperable unless he received $300

It's a Dell Latitude D630

Well that's pretty ballsy, a D630 isn't even worth anywhere near $300.

Yeah, you can try clearing the cmos, but there's a good chance they actually reflashed the bios with garbage. You might have luck with these instructions to reflash it:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/archive/index.php/t-13605.html

Unfortunately it's quite likely the data is totally corrupt, but you could try pulling the drive out and putting it in something else to recover it in case the idiot didn't wipe it. Obviously you'll want to wipe it and reinstall Windows after getting what you can off it anyhow.

zzMisc fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Aug 23, 2013

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Cthulhuite posted:

So I've gone back about 20 pages and I can't find any real answers to this question. I'm looking for a small-ish laptop (14-15") that's nice and light with a good graphics card. The Razer seemed perfect, but apparently people are having issues with theirs? Has anyone got one that can give me an "Is it worth the price?" answer and if not if there something around the same form factor. I'll be lugging it around everywhere for work, and if i'm buying a new laptop I may as well replace my aging home computer, so two birds/one stone.

The IdeaPad Y410p is pretty good/cheap, a lot of people seem to like them. It's still portable but definitely strong enough to replace your old desktop. ~ $850 for the nicer screen (1600x900 instead of 1368x768), and if you want an SSD then for about $10 you can move the slow 5400RPM 1TB drive into your DVD slot (although you'll no longer have an optical drive; this isn't a problem for most users).

The Razer supposedly has poo poo build quality, and even if they had good build quality they're still too fuckin' expensive for what you get.

OXBALLS DOT COM
Sep 11, 2005

by FactsAreUseless
Young Orc

Seamonster posted:

So the most anticipated product of the Laptop Megathread is...dGPU only?

The T440 is probably different from the T440s, though even the existence of a T440 hasn't actually been confirmed yet.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

AnonymousGuest posted:

Press the ON button, laptop hums 1sec and turn itself OFF.

Does the battery charge at all? There have been many reported cases of ruined laptop batteries from one vrius or another.

What kind of laptop is it?

Deviant
Sep 26, 2003

i've forgotten all of your names.


Smello posted:

Well that's pretty ballsy, a D630 isn't even worth anywhere near $300.

Yeah, you can try clearing the cmos, but there's a good chance they actually reflashed the bios with garbage. You might have luck with these instructions to reflash it:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/archive/index.php/t-13605.html

Unfortunately it's quite likely the data is totally corrupt, but you could try pulling the drive out and putting in something else to recover it in case the idiot didn't wipe it. Obviously you'll want to wipe it and reinstall Windows after getting what you can off it anyhow.

Maybe I've been under a rock, but can you reflash the bios within windows like that?

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Seamonster posted:

So the most anticipated product of the Laptop Megathread is...dGPU only?

You can turn off the dGPU, the added cost is effectively $free, the HD4600 (or whatever) is more than sufficent for day to day use and most gaming.

14" 1080p IPS screen with 8 hrs battery though, hard to complain. We're almost up to 2003 era standards again! :unsmith:

mewse
May 2, 2006

Deviant posted:

Maybe I've been under a rock, but can you reflash the bios within windows like that?

Yep, I do it on HP machines all the time at work

Koth
Jul 1, 2005
I'm looking to buy a laptop soon. I will be using it for web browsing, editing photos in Lightroom/Photoshop, some light personal music production, and some games (no FPSes, maybe WoW :duck: or Steam games).

I saw the Lenovo G500s at Costco today, and it seems to have everything I want.

Core i5-3230m
8GB DDR3
1TB SATA, 5400 RPM
NVIDIA GT720M 2GB
15.6 inch screen
$700

It also has a touchscreen, which I really don't care about on my computers.

I haven't been able to find any reviews on it though, as it seems to be a fairly new laptop. Can anyone give me their thoughts on it or recommend another laptop that would be of better suit to me?

zzMisc
Jun 26, 2002

Deviant posted:

Maybe I've been under a rock, but can you reflash the bios within windows like that?

I just realized that a single missing "it" made it look like I was advising booting off a different drive, which wouldn't be possible in this case. Those instructions should hopefully be do-able even if it won't post.

But yeah, you can do bios updates within windows on many systems, although most of the ones I've seen (Dells mostly) actually reboot the machine and flash the bios during the next boot process.

Naffer
Oct 26, 2004

Not a good chemist
Is anyone in this thread close friends with a Dell representative? I'm trying to figure out whether the 1080p panel on the Latitude 7440 is an IPS display or not. The reported view angles (+80/-80 degrees vertical +80/-80 degrees horizontal) don't exactly sound right for one.

sourdough
Apr 30, 2012

Hadlock posted:

14" 1080p IPS screen with 8 hrs battery though, hard to complain. We're almost up to 2003 era standards again! :unsmith:

Were there lots of laptops with 14" 1080p IPS screen, 8+ hour battery life, ~4 lbs, and cost <$900 in 2003? Because the first laptop I got, in 2005, was (IIRC) this beautiful thing. 15.4", 1280x800. I remember shopping around and being impressed with the 2 ghz cpu and discrete gpu, ha.

sourdough fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Aug 23, 2013

GrizzlyCow
May 30, 2011

Erkenntnis posted:

A buddy of mine just linked me this as a possible purchase for himself. How can I shame him out of it?

No one needs a 17" on a laptop unless they're legally blind. A 15.6" is more than enough for any gaming laptop. Also, the screen resolution is only Full HD. 1080p was good last year. In 2013, it's either 1440p or go the gently caress home. More over, the SSD is in RAID 0 and only has 384GB. I'm sorry. This is 20-loving-13. For the money he's (or she's) planning on dropping on this motherfucker, he could get a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB. Hell, if he actually got a laptop worth the money, he could have two Samsung 840 EVO 1TB in RAID 0 for a maximum 2TB of SSD goodness. Seriously, a HDD on a laptop over $800? Get the gently caress out of here. Not only that, the WiFi is only 2x2 N. I'm sorry. Get the gently caress out of here with that cheap poo poo. 3x3 or WiFi AC. The graphics card is real cute, too. I thought we were gaming for real, but this thing is loving around with something equivalent to a GTX 770 on a good day. $4k is Titan or SLI/CFX territory. To add insult to injury, the laptop has USB 2.0 on it. Top of the line laptop in late 2013 with some USB 2.0 ports on it. MSI obviously don't think very highly of you. And to put the nail in this coffin, the battery is only 9-cell lithium ion. That thing will stay on for half a minute before throttling your expensive processor down. Seriously, MSI could have atleast went with a good 12-cell battery. My last gaming laptop from 2004 had a 12-cell battery, and it only cost me $1k in total.

The only good thing it has going for it is that it bundled a great mouse with it. I'm not going to touch the headphones because wow. For $4k you only get this.

That is what you say to him or her first.

Then you tell him that he could build a desktop that can match his laptop for half the price, and for the price that thing costs, he could build a capable gaming desktop that has a superior display (1440p @ 95hz), actual HiFi headphones, and one of those super comfortable $800 chairs to go with it.

And tell him that with the money he will have left from his new desktop, headphones, and chair, he could buy a decent laptop that'll play most AAA games at medium or lower settings.


Seriously, why is he (or she) looking at a laptop like this? Don't she (or he) have a gaming desktop?

Brut
Aug 21, 2007

Erkenntnis posted:

A buddy of mine just linked me this as a possible purchase for himself. How can I shame him out of it?

Even if you did want to buy that latop, I'm almost positive you can build the exact same setup from Sager/Clevo for something like $2400, and have the option of a better network adapter and more usb 3.0 and such, as pointed out above.

Basically if you want to make a generous yet non-deductible donation to MSI, buy that laptop.

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

Brut posted:

Even if you did want to buy that latop, I'm almost positive you can build the exact same setup from Sager/Clevo for something like $2400, and have the option of a better network adapter and more usb 3.0 and such, as pointed out above.

More like $3400 or so, but you won't get 3x RAID 0, just 2x, it seems.

But you can get that MSI at what looks like the same config for cheaper than what NewEgg has: http://www.xoticpc.com/msi-gt70-2od039us-dragon-edition-p-5771.html

At least when I change the CPU to the 4930MX it's still below $3700.

Srebrenica Surprise
Aug 23, 2008

"L-O-V-E's just another word I never learned to pronounce."
For those wondering, the T440s on the Japanese site's base model (crappy 1600x900 screen) seems to be around the equivalent of $100 more than the T430s when relative prices are compared (not a currency conversion as that's way more inaccurate), and the upgrades are all pretty reasonable ($100 for the 1920x1080 IPS screen). The GPU option apparently is coming on the website but hasn't shown up yet, so assumedly you can customize it without the 730m. I imagine with the B&N discount one would be able to get a pretty decked out machine with a 6-cell + 3-cell internal battery, the top-end screen, and a dGPU for around $900 at the very most, but we'll see.

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Krakkles
May 5, 2003

Are there any relatively small laptops (15" would be absolute max, and even then, I'd rather not...) that have decent screen resolution?

I currently use an MBP (pre-Retina) for work, and I've been debating going back to windows, but my must-haves are small size (I travel for work, so I'm literally carrying this every day), decent screen resolution (I'd like 1920x1080 at a minimum, Retina-ish would be nice too), a full-size keyboard (I have big hands), and decent performance.

On that last, I'm comfortable with upgrades, so if I need to throw memory and an SSD in it, that's no problem.

I'm looking at upgrading in the next ... maybe 6 months or so? I'm kind of trying to put it off as long as possible ... I've had this MBP since 2011, and it's still largely adequate, I just find myself wishing for more screen size.

Budget isn't much of an issue ... I'd spend 2k for the right laptop.

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