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HookShot
Dec 26, 2005

dissss posted:

No something is definitely up with it. Was it a display model or something?
No, brand new.

I think I am going to return it, the wifi not working as well as my mac or my old Dell is really getting frustrating as well. It's not even loading Youtube videos.

That makes me sad, it was a good Black Friday deal and I don't know if I can find another computer with these kind of specs (full HD resolution!) now in that price range. At least my old computer still works, I might just wait until Boxing Day and see if anything good comes up.

edit: Or should I just exchange it, in case this specific one is defective? It also seems to randomly go into sleep mode, even though I have the power settings set to do it if the computer hasn't been touched for three hours, and just now it wouldn't come out of it so I had to shut down manually. Sounds like I might just have a crap copy of the computer.

HookShot fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Dec 7, 2013

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The Dave
Sep 9, 2003

If it was such a great deal why not try an exchange for a new one and see if it was just defective? I got a new i7, 8gb ram, ssd tower and it takes about 15 seconds for a full boot up.

some kinda jackal
Feb 25, 2003

 
 

tijag posted:

1) In device manager there is a 'other devices' catagorey and it has 'unknown device' with a little yellow exclamation point. Any idea what I might have missed? I'm assuming its a driver for some custom bit Lenovo did. I think it might be the SD card reader thing, but I'm not sure.

I'm on a Mac right now and I don't remember the exact terms, but in device manager right click on the device in question, go to one of the tabs called Device Properties or something, and there should be a dropdown from which you can select a bunch of items. Look for Vendor IDs. There should be one string that is VEN_XXXX&DEV_YYYY where X and Y are numeric. If you google for VEN XXXX DEV YYYY it should tell you exactly what device you're looking at.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005

The Dave posted:

If it was such a great deal why not try an exchange for a new one and see if it was just defective? I got a new i7, 8gb ram, ssd tower and it takes about 15 seconds for a full boot up.
Yeah, I'm leaning towards that for sure. The only thing I'm worried about is that a few reviews complain about the wireless reception but have no other problems with it. Oh well, we'll see!

Cousin Todd
Jul 3, 2007
Grimey Drawer
So, I just bought the gf a Lenovo IdeaPad U510 from newegg and the screen flickers a bit at certain open positions. Is this a serious problem you think? Should we go ahead and return it? It's not a big deal now, but we are a bit concerned that it might become a bigger problem later on.

Cataffy
Aug 12, 2008
So I'm really close to pulling the trigger on the Yoga 2 Pro. I'm thinking of getting the 8gb/128gb in silver (kinda want the orange)because those are the only ones currently available in stores in Vancouver.

I understand the yellow issue is sorted out, but I have a hard time figuring out if these wifi issues people have been having are a concern? I was also wondering how big of a problem the lack of scaling in non-windows programs is? I would very much like to use Chrome with minimal problems, but if there are problems that look to be sorted in the near future it should work out. Thanks.

Fathis Munk
Feb 23, 2013

??? ?
I'm currently looking for a new laptop for my girlfriend. She's been using an Asus netbook for a couple of years now because she needed the mobility and cheaper price tag. She's now looking to get a "normal" laptop around the 13" to at most 15" display size and with a budget of approximately 500€ (680$)

I've been trying to have a look but it's been a while I didn't buy a laptop anymore and more generally didn't follow hardware evolution. So I am now kind of lost.

What are the good reliable sellers nowadays ? I looked at thinkpads since they were mentionned in the OP but the T, X and W series that were recommended specifically are kind of outside of the price range. The E range seems to be ok on the price side. Interestingly they don't sell the same models in the US and in Europe so have a French link Thinkpad E series
The terms should be pretty transparent, just know that French people hate English and use o (octet) instead of the b (byte). I was thinking about that E540 maybe ? (especially since the pages for the other models won't load)

I've been looking around on Dell's site too and found this possibility (Have another French link because this model is not on the English site anymore apparently)
Inspiron 14z - Silver
The SSD mainly caught my eye since they are supposed to be fantastic. But the reviews themselves are not that enthusiastic so I remain unconvinced.

She doesn't use her computers for anything really performance intensive, no gaming, no graphics intensive software so far, mostly browsing, watching videos and working.

As she's not really into computers I'd prefer to stick with standard run of the mill Windows OS.

If you have any advice for models or sellers I'd be very thankful ! :sun:

Spatule
Mar 18, 2003

Spatule posted:

Asking for a friend who has specific needs:

A super tiny, super light Windows laptop with good battery life, to use on vacation (involves a lot of travel). Main use: some light work (Outlook / Word), check internet, look at hotel etc bookings while on the go...
He used to have a 10" netbook that did the trick, but the battery is shot and replacements are expensive.

I'm thinking Asus Transformer Book T100 to avoid drama in case of theft / loss, is there anything else he should look at ?

Anyone ?

Prince John
Jun 20, 2006

Oh, poppycock! Female bandits?

Lblitzer posted:

I'm going back to school next month and my ARM Chromebook is lent out to my girlfriend and the screen busted. I am liking the C720 a lot, would I do wrong by going with the 2gb over the 4gb, is the $50 difference for it? I don't have more than 4-5 tabs open, don't need linux yet, and watch videos sparingly.

I had to get the 2gb version as the 4gb one isn't released in the UK at present.

It's been able to cope fine with having a load of chrome tabs open plus general linux desktop use at the same time. I haven't tried a heavy desktop like Unity though, I've stuck with debian and i3 or xfce depending on what I'm doing.

I'd pay the extra if that option was available to me but haven't felt handicapped yet. High def videos play smoothly as well and the speakers are nicely loud. Having said that, I'm not a heavy multitasker.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005

Kharmakazy posted:

So, I just bought the gf a Lenovo IdeaPad U510 from newegg and the screen flickers a bit at certain open positions. Is this a serious problem you think? Should we go ahead and return it? It's not a big deal now, but we are a bit concerned that it might become a bigger problem later on.

YES YES YES.

A few years ago I had an HP laptop that started doing this. At first it was one quick flicker every week or so if I would move the screen to a certain spot, a year later it was constant flicking that made the screen completely unusable, luckily since I was barely ever using it as a laptop I just connected it to a monitor and keyboard and basically used it as a desktop, but definitely get it taken care of now.

Yoshimo
Oct 5, 2003

Fleet of foot, and all that!
Any British goons able to advise what the goto laptop du jour is for around the 400 quid point? It's for the perennial colleague who just wants it for Facebook and email and shopping online. (No, they don't want a netbook or tablet :-( )

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA
May 29, 2008

Spatule posted:

Anyone ?

The last generation of Surfaces start at $200, if that's all they need.

internet inc
Jun 13, 2005

brb
taking pictures
of ur house

Cataffy posted:

So I'm really close to pulling the trigger on the Yoga 2 Pro. I'm thinking of getting the 8gb/128gb in silver (kinda want the orange)because those are the only ones currently available in stores in Vancouver.

I understand the yellow issue is sorted out, but I have a hard time figuring out if these wifi issues people have been having are a concern? I was also wondering how big of a problem the lack of scaling in non-windows programs is? I would very much like to use Chrome with minimal problems, but if there are problems that look to be sorted in the near future it should work out. Thanks.

I got a Y2P myself and haven't had the wifi issues. I think it doesn't happen on all models or it has already been fixed or something. It happened to only one goon out of many in this thread, IIRC.

Chrome scales fine but not in tablet mode but gently caress tablet mode. Eventually all programs should scale properly but I use 1600x900 in the meantime since Foxit/Adobe haven't been updated to work at high resolutions.

Other than that, it's a pretty awesome laptop. Go for it.

sourdough
Apr 30, 2012

internet inc posted:

I got a Y2P myself and haven't had the wifi issues. I think it doesn't happen on all models or it has already been fixed or something. It happened to only one goon out of many in this thread, IIRC.

Chrome scales fine but not in tablet mode but gently caress tablet mode. Eventually all programs should scale properly but I use 1600x900 in the meantime since Foxit/Adobe haven't been updated to work at high resolutions.

Other than that, it's a pretty awesome laptop. Go for it.

Adobe Reader scales and text looks fantastic in it, if all you're doing is reading.

internet inc
Jun 13, 2005

brb
taking pictures
of ur house
Does it? Last time I used it the menus were tiny and pretty much unusable to take notes/highlights. Or maybe that's what you meant by "if all you're doing is reading"?

sourdough
Apr 30, 2012

internet inc posted:

Does it? Last time I used it the menus were tiny and pretty much unusable to take notes/highlights. Or maybe that's what you meant by "if all you're doing is reading"?

Oh yeah, I really meant just for reading. But that's better than Acrobat/Pro whatever, where the text is really really poor.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

tijag posted:

2) This laptop came configured with one of those little SSD caching drives. I bought a 500gb SSD to put in the ultrabay. Is it just pointless now? Or is there still some benefit to be had from it? And if so, how do I configure it?

The 24GB cache doesn't need to be configured or anything; the hard drive has an algorithm that figures out which files you use most often and puts them in the cache space, so accessing those files becomes faster. It's completely hands off. It's a small quality of life improvement for getting faster access times with your most commonly accessed files on that drive. These hybrid drives are a nice compromise in that you can have a hard drive with the same amount of space as a normal platter drive but with faster average access speeds for not much more money.

In a laptop with an SSD, adding a hybrid drive confers no real advantages because you probably aren't using the files on the hybrid drive often enough for them to be cached, and you probably don't care much about access speed on that drive anyway (because your OS and all of your software and commonly-accessed files should be on your SSD!). So the cache space on your hybrid drive is useless because you have a much faster and better SSD to use instead, but the cache space won't hurt anything by being there.

internet inc
Jun 13, 2005

brb
taking pictures
of ur house
Anyone else having trouble with 2-finger touchpad scroll in Chrome? It'll work for a few scrolls then I get a weird rectangle locator-like icon. Google isn't too helpful. :S

tijag
Aug 6, 2002

QuarkJets posted:

The 24GB cache doesn't need to be configured or anything; the hard drive has an algorithm that figures out which files you use most often and puts them in the cache space, so accessing those files becomes faster. It's completely hands off. It's a small quality of life improvement for getting faster access times with your most commonly accessed files on that drive. These hybrid drives are a nice compromise in that you can have a hard drive with the same amount of space as a normal platter drive but with faster average access speeds for not much more money.

In a laptop with an SSD, adding a hybrid drive confers no real advantages because you probably aren't using the files on the hybrid drive often enough for them to be cached, and you probably don't care much about access speed on that drive anyway (because your OS and all of your software and commonly-accessed files should be on your SSD!). So the cache space on your hybrid drive is useless because you have a much faster and better SSD to use instead, but the cache space won't hurt anything by being there.

This makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the explanation.

Lastly, Chrome on Win 8.1 is weird. I want to set scaling to 150% but that causes Chrome to be all blurry. Am I don't something wrong?

sourdough
Apr 30, 2012

tijag posted:

This makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the explanation.

Lastly, Chrome on Win 8.1 is weird. I want to set scaling to 150% but that causes Chrome to be all blurry. Am I don't something wrong?

Not sure if it'll help you too, but 200% scaling on my Yoga 2 Pro needed the hi-dpi flag in chrome://flags to be enabled, maybe a few others too.

Cousin Todd
Jul 3, 2007
Grimey Drawer

HookShot posted:

YES YES YES.

A few years ago I had an HP laptop that started doing this. At first it was one quick flicker every week or so if I would move the screen to a certain spot, a year later it was constant flicking that made the screen completely unusable, luckily since I was barely ever using it as a laptop I just connected it to a monitor and keyboard and basically used it as a desktop, but definitely get it taken care of now.

Yeah. Thanks for the advice. Going to look into sending it back to newegg. It's not so much a "flicker" really... it's hard to describe. When the screen is in the wrong position the colors get all weird.


This:

Looks like this when the screen is opened to the wrong angle...

antiga
Jan 16, 2013

I ordered a scratch and dent, Haswell "Y530" from Lenovo today on an impulse looking at the specs. On second thought, I've never heard of a Y530 and I can't find reference of it existing anywhere. Think this is a return from somewhere outside of the US? It did say Win8 - English.

Specs: http://imgur.com/8ZtbtJx

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Kharmakazy posted:

Looks like this when the screen is opened to the wrong angle...



Did you take that through a pair of polarized sunglasses?

Cousin Todd
Jul 3, 2007
Grimey Drawer

Hadlock posted:

Did you take that through a pair of polarized sunglasses?

Nexus 7 actually. But that's how it looks to my human eyes. Not all the time. Just when it is in a position it doesn't like...

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

tijag posted:

This makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the explanation.

Lastly, Chrome on Win 8.1 is weird. I want to set scaling to 150% but that causes Chrome to be all blurry. Am I don't something wrong?

I don't have this issue using Chrome on Win 8.1, so maybe?

some kinda jackal
Feb 25, 2003

 
 
Holy mother of christ, I played with a Yoga2Pro at BestBuy today and set it to its native resolution without DPI font scaling.







Kind of tiny

internet inc
Jun 13, 2005

brb
taking pictures
of ur house

internet inc posted:

Anyone else having trouble with 2-finger touchpad scroll in Chrome? It'll work for a few scrolls then I get a weird rectangle locator-like icon. Google isn't too helpful. :S

Bumping this. I've tried enabling/disabling every chrome://flags/ that involve scrolling but it still won't work. It just started doing this, too. It worked just fine before. I can't think of anything that I could have changed in-between.

It'll scroll fine a few times. Then the cursor disappears and a black square outline replaces it (kind of like the "push control to locate the cursor" circle thing, but it's a square instead) but it still scrolls. A few scrolls later it'll just stop working, no more square.

What the poo poo? I don't even know how to Google this. I've updated my mouse drivers and reinstalled Chrome. I'm on Win 8.1 with the latest updates, on a i5 Yoga 2 Pro.

EDIT: gently caress it. Here's a video.

internet inc fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Dec 8, 2013

snoozeallday
Sep 9, 2010

tell him all your problems . . . he's fucking awesome with listening
Why won't anyone but Clevo make a w740su? I want that with a better keyboard and trackpad.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
So in case anyone cares I drove to Futureshop today, but I didn't want to have to deal with exchanging for a laptop they didn't have in stock, and I found a Lenovo U530 with pretty much the same specs as the other Dell but with an 8GB SSD (interestingly, the computer has a normal 500gb hard drive but the other one is 25gb).


Both computers have the same wireless card and this one sucks too, but I just set it to 802.11 b instead of b/g and now it works well enough. And this computer doesn't have all the other problems the first one had, so I'm happy.

Here's a hint to anyone on a budget: don't even play with a full HD screen laptop or you will never buy anything without it again.

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!

HookShot posted:

Both computers have the same wireless card and this one sucks too, but I just set it to 802.11 b instead of b/g and now it works well enough. And this computer doesn't have all the other problems the first one had, so I'm happy.

well enough = 11mb/s ?

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005

Bob Morales posted:

well enough = 11mb/s ?
Yeah exactly, I think theoretically I get up to 50mb/s with my ISP but in practice I don't think I've ever clocked it over 7 or 8.

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin
The T540p I ordered a week ago is expected to be delivered Wednesday, and I need to order the SSD/4gb ram upgrade for it. Based on this thread, these are the two items I want, correct?
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...-2&keywords=ssd Samsung 840 EVO 120gb
and
http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=8B356269A5CA7304 4gb, ddr3 1.35v

TITTIEKISSER69
Mar 19, 2005

SAVE THE BEES
PLANT MORE TREES
CLEAN THE SEAS
KISS TITTIESS




If you can afford a 240GB SSD, go for that instead. Bigger SSD means more memory channels in use, which is supposed to be a good thing.

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin

Wilford Cutlery posted:

If you can afford a 240GB SSD, go for that instead. Bigger SSD means more memory channels in use, which is supposed to be a good thing.

Can't and its a machine for my mom. I have a 120 on my pc and don't come close to filling it so I highly doubt she can. That's the right brand/model though right?

Gwaihir
Dec 8, 2009
Hair Elf
Yea, the 840 Evo is a great choice atm.

TITTIEKISSER69
Mar 19, 2005

SAVE THE BEES
PLANT MORE TREES
CLEAN THE SEAS
KISS TITTIESS




The SSD Megathread highly favors the Samsung 840 EVO, so good choice there. I bought two over the Black Friday weekend but I haven't gotten around to installing them yet.

P.N.T.M.
Jan 14, 2006

tiny dinosaurs
Fun Shoe
Confirming that the RAM is right too.


Edit1:

antiga posted:

I ordered a scratch and dent, Haswell "Y530" from Lenovo today on an impulse looking at the specs. On second thought, I've never heard of a Y530 and I can't find reference of it existing anywhere. Think this is a return from somewhere outside of the US? It did say Win8 - English.

Specs: http://imgur.com/8ZtbtJx


Looking it up, back in 2008, the Y530 was a sub-$1000 multimedia laptop. Lenovo's website says they no longer sell it, but it is still being sold by re-sellers/retailers.

You are either dealing with a non-US model or a niche consumer model that Lenovo doesn't directly sell. Hopefully your keyboard is in English.



Edit2:

Fathis Munk posted:

If you have any advice for models or sellers I'd be very thankful ! :sun:


I suggest looking at the E335 (€449.99). It has a worse CPU (AMD E2-2000), but is smaller (13")(1366x768). The decision is up to you and her. Your price-point is rock bottom, but good luck finding something.

P.N.T.M. fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Dec 10, 2013

Leal
Oct 2, 2009
I'm looking into grabbing a laptop just for work, doesn't have to be anything fancy, just be able to open open .pdf files and let me edit said files. Long battery life is a strong point for me, I travel all over the area so I can't stop often to plug it in. I've been having to print an extortionate amount of paper for work, I'm estimating I'll blow probably 60 bucks this month just on black ink alone, and I'll get maybe 10% of that reimbursed back to me. And this is after I commandeered a laptop from my company to keep instructions on so I'm only printing half the stuff I need to, but they didn't like that and want the laptop back.

The laptop in question is a Lenovo ThinkPad Twist S230U, but I don't got that kind of money laying around. I don't need all of those fancy features though, just something with a long battery life, can handle being carried around everywhere and lets me open .pdf files. If it also has built in wireless that'd be great too. Would it be possible getting something like this for under $250?

Fathis Munk
Feb 23, 2013

??? ?

P.N.T.M. posted:

I suggest looking at the E335 (€449.99). It has a worse CPU (AMD E2-2000), but is smaller (13")(1366x768). The decision is up to you and her. Your price-point is rock bottom, but good luck finding something.

I realize that but we're both students and have a limited budget and she's not that big on computers except browsing, watching videos and Microsoft Office, so I guess that should be doable on a 500€ machine ?

The OP mentions 600$ as breaking point from which one up you can get a decent quality laptop and we are technically above that limit. Then again maybe they are pricier in euros ?

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Klaus Kinski
Nov 26, 2007
Der Klaus

Fathis Munk posted:

I realize that but we're both students and have a limited budget and she's not that big on computers except browsing, watching videos and Microsoft Office, so I guess that should be doable on a 500€ machine ?

The OP mentions 600$ as breaking point from which one up you can get a decent quality laptop and we are technically above that limit. Then again maybe they are pricier in euros ?

Yes, poo poo is more expensive in EU land compared to the US. Look into chromebooks, you should be able to grab a good one for way below 500€.

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