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Christoff posted:So I'm considering a new gaming laptop. Before you say get a desktop it's not really an option because of my job. tl;too lazy Wait another month for everyone to drop GF-8xx into their poo poo. Then look at the Gigabyte P-series, ASUS G-series, some of the various Sager models depending on your preference, Alienwares if you swing that way, and the new Razer Blade if you have $2200+ to spend and want a MacBook. Hardware-wise, look for something with at least a 850 at the very minimum, 860+ preferred. You don't need a high-end i7, and in fact pretty much any i5 will be just fine for gaming. 8+GB RAM, or plan to add your own. SSDs are best added as after-market; you can get the Samsung 840 EVO as both a 2.5" and a mSATA drive (though there's very little in the NGFF/m.2 format available so far). If you opt for a resolution that's not at least 1080p, you're probably doing something wrong. There are enough IPS/VA screens out there that you should probably opt for one, given the chance. It will have terrible battery life and probably be loud at full-tilt, but you know this already. There are options as light as 4.5lbs with high-end GPUs, so don't think you have to be held to some 7lbs monstrosity.
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Mar 20, 2014 23:55
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mfny posted:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-Satellite-C55-A-1N0-15-6-inch-Notebook/dp/B00G4CBEI0/ Ah, weird, I couldn't find it on either amazon.com or Toshiba's website. As for build/fit and finish/portability, you're looking at 15.6" laptops that are under £500, as everyone has said it will be pretty uniformly terrible. If you're going to be disappointed by poor build quality and finish, you need to get a bigger budget!
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Mar 21, 2014 00:02
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RVProfootballer posted:Ah, weird, I couldn't find it on either amazon.com or Toshiba's website. As for build/fit and finish/portability, you're looking at 15.6" laptops that are under £500, as everyone has said it will be pretty uniformly terrible. If you're going to be disappointed by poor build quality and finish, you need to get a bigger budget! Id have to spend £200 or more to get to the next "tier" where it would not just be better specced versions of the budget systems ive been looking at thanks to lovely pricing here in the UK and I cant justify/do that. This system will be used for a secondary general purpose system, also for coding and id like it to be able to play something like Titanfall on low settings to as at the moment i am without a main gaming PC but for various reasons i cant deal with that at the moment so i am trying to have the laptop as a backup/stopgap as it where for gaming as well as its general use, this may be the cause of some of my issues finding something but if i dropped this aspect it would make things elsewhere alot more complicated.
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Mar 21, 2014 00:29
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justlikedunkirk posted:I'm in Canada looking for a cheap laptop. Primary purposes would be for a) writing when I'm out of town/commuting and b) using the HDMI connection to hook it up to my TV (mainly for streaming from a service that has no real options for watching their stuff on TV sadly). My initial impulse was to go with a Chromebook but that sadly won't work either. Why won't a Chromebook work? Is your streaming service Windows-only or something? Whatever the case, I'd say an Asus Transformer T100 or Lenovo X131E / X140E is your best bet.
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Mar 21, 2014 00:37
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mfny posted:Id have to spend £200 or more to get to the next "tier" where it would not just be better specced versions of the budget systems ive been looking at thanks to lovely pricing here in the UK and I cant justify/do that. If you wanna play titanfall even at low you're probably going to want something with a dedicated graphics card, and you're not likely to get that for under 500...
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Mar 21, 2014 00:38
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Cat Army 
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The Iron Rose posted:If you wanna play titanfall even at low you're probably going to want something with a dedicated graphics card, and you're not likely to get that for under 500... Titanfall seems fairly scaleable: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm4mBGRaKAo However what complicates things is the "best" low end video footage like the fairly impressive (imho) example above has been on AMD APUs which is a problem in that AMD has intel beat on the low/medium end in terms of iGPU but they are really lacking in CPU performance dual/single core usage wise which may affect my other uses of the notebook. In an ideal world Id want the dual/single core CPU performance from a mobile Haswell Pentium/i3 and the iGPU from something like the A6 5200, but priced like the A6. But thats not going to happen. Hopefully that above makes sense..
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Mar 21, 2014 01:05
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The W540 is still in the process of getting set up, I'm hoping to really push the virtualization options on an Ubuntu install. The power is pretty far beyond anything I've had to work on before, which is what I saved up for and why I pulled the trigger on this model. That said, holy poo poo the trackpad is terrible. I'll learn to live with it for the other perks, but I can see how most people wouldn't be interested in learning how to use it. You have to be deliberately ginger to successfully control the mouse.
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Mar 21, 2014 01:22
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Has anyone worked with Puget Systems for a customized laptop order? I'm pursuing their site and their B460i is pretty much everything I want to be configured into a laptop. I'm slightly hesitant ordering through them since they don't have a lot of reviews online, but one of their reviewed desktop systems seem to be very well received for what they claim to do. Any input is greatly appreciated and of course, if I order through them, I'll let give you all a report.
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Mar 21, 2014 01:50
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What's your use case that you need a 14" laptop with a quad-core and Iris Pro?
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Mar 21, 2014 02:11
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Srebrenica Surprise posted:What's your use case that you need a 14" laptop with a quad-core and Iris Pro? A light travel and gaming laptop, mainly. The quad core will be overkill, but the integrated graphics should keep power consumption lower vs. having a discrete graphics card, while remaining pretty great for the games I play. Do you have a comparable suggestion that I should consider?
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Mar 21, 2014 02:39
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Discrete graphics is competitive if not better per watt than integrated graphics in gaming and Optimus makes the difference on the desktop moot - you're paying a substantial price premium for a less capable machine. You might save on weight a little but I don't see any figures on that site. Look into the V7, P34G, W230ST, or better yet wait until the 8xx series are in laptops.
Srebrenica Surprise fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 02:49
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DrDork posted:Look through the last page or two where I discuss exactly this. I have no problem waiting at all and am willing to pay for quality. I'll wait a bit longer if there's something even better coming out within 3 months or something. Not in a rush. Asus literally just released the JM, JS, and JZ. $1,400, 1,900, and $2,500. GTX 860M, GTX 870M, and GTX 880M. The 2nd model has an SSD and 16gb of RAM instead of 12 and the last one has a bigger SSD I believe and 24gb of RAM. Actually it says the 3rd one has a 128gb while the 2nd has 256gb SSD, weird. I don't care for the laptop resolution since I'll have it hooked up to 2 external monitors at the very least. All of these should have no problem supporting a 27" IPS monitor with 2650x1440 resolution, correct? I'm not very tech savy when it comes to computer hardware so I appreciate all input.
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Mar 21, 2014 05:17
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I'm cross-posting this from the win tablet thread as theres a lot more people here with Lenovo experience so maybe someone will know: so I'm trying to get my friends thinkpad tablet 2 to stop eating so much battery (2% per hour) in connected standby since upgrading to win 8.1, but one item is coming up In powercfg /sleepstudy as red, on 100% during connected standby. this item is [Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor Z2760 Security Engine (\_SB.CHAB)], but I can't find a single piece of information on the internet what the "security engine" is and its driving me mad. I can't disable it, and the drivers are up to date, does anyone know what this stupid security engine thing is??
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Mar 21, 2014 17:13
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Srebrenica Surprise posted:Discrete graphics is competitive if not better per watt than integrated graphics in gaming and Optimus makes the difference on the desktop moot - you're paying a substantial price premium for a less capable machine. You might save on weight a little but I don't see any figures on that site. Look into the V7, P34G, W230ST, or better yet wait until the 8xx series are in laptops. Laptops with discrete graphics cards already have integrated graphics cards as well. The power supply in the laptop is inherently more consuming because of the larger throughput requirements of running another component of the laptop. Discrete graphics cards in laptops are really niche- mostly for kids who want gaming/video editing prowess or businesses who need their SolidWorks guy to work remotely. If you need a laptop and have some insatiable need to game you should honestly pick one and wait the other option out. Tom Guycot posted:I'm cross-posting this from the win tablet thread as theres a lot more people here with Lenovo experience so maybe someone will know: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS033033 I guess, install the driver again. That seems really weird- Intel's usually good with things like this.
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Mar 21, 2014 17:32
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Yeah, I was planning to try reinstalling the drivers, what's just frustrating me is I can't find out what the "security engine" actually is. is it some trusted computing thing? some sort of encryption hardware, or vpro stuff or- I dont know, and all I can find are links to drivers with no explanation of *what* it is which is driving me nuts.
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Mar 21, 2014 19:23
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sports posted:Laptops with discrete graphics cards already have integrated graphics cards as well. The power supply in the laptop is inherently more consuming because of the larger throughput requirements of running another component of the laptop. Discrete graphics cards in laptops are really niche- mostly for kids who want gaming/video editing prowess or businesses who need their SolidWorks guy to work remotely.
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Mar 21, 2014 21:15
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It looks like Sager will release W230SS laptops with the GTX 860M in about a week through third parties such as XoticPC. Should I be looking at any particular storefront, or are they all more or less the same? I guess more importantly, should I wait for more "mainstream" computer companies to release a similar product for an overall better experience, or are companies like Sager pretty reliable?
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Mar 21, 2014 21:28
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I ordered from XoticPC before and they were great. They even did some loophole so that I didn't have to pay California taxes for a Sager.
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Mar 21, 2014 21:49
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So I realize that there is the $640 price point or whatever in the OP, but my grandma needs a new laptop. She will use it for AOL (gross, I know), Quicken, Microsoft Office, and downloading weird Zuma/Bejeweled/crap games. She has had windows all her life and isn't interested in switching to something else so the android tablet thing in the op is off the table too. Would my best bet be getting an older ultrabook so that it's cheaper? Or are there some new options that aren't total crap at lower price point for these purposes. Honestly, I'd look at it as a semi-disposable point of view, since I think her current laptop would be OK if she would let me wipe it and do a fresh OS install, but of course she doesn't want to lose "Her files and programs," but she OK with starting on a fresh device for some reason.
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Mar 21, 2014 22:21
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I just picked up a second hand Samsung Series 9, 15 inch version. I thought I'd drop in here and post a quick impression for anybody interested because I don't see much talk about this laptop in this thread. When you look at it on paper, you aren't getting a terrific value. (I picked up a np900x4d for 600 bucks though, so I'm not crying about cost.) The specs are lower than comparably priced laptops, or you could say the cost is higher for comparably spec'ed laptops. My requirements were basic web browsing, amateur photo editing, video watching, etc. Could have gotten away with a chromebook but for the fact that I'm not ready to be so cloud dependent. I'll be doing some distance learning courses in the fall so I wanted a big screen, but I'm fairly transient so portability was important to me. More than anything I wanted a really nice build quality and a good screen. For silly personal philosophical reasons I wanted to stay with windows. For everything listed above this is a wonderful laptop. The user experience is super smooth, build is as solid as reported online and the trackpad is the nicest I've seen on anything but a mac. With some registry editing I was able to access some additional features than what is available in the official driver release, like three finger middle click. I also set the right mouse click to send left click so I wouldn't right click by mistake, and now I do all my right clicking exclusively with two fingers. Why they neutered the gui is a mystery to me, you can enable a lot of functionality from the registry. The keyboard is good, but you do make a bit of a compromise for the slimness of the device. I understand why phones should be slim - we keep them in our pockets - but I don't think laptops have to be so slim. You can take a 1 inch laptop everywhere you can take a .6 inch laptop. The weight is much more important to me, which is why I picked this thing up instead of your typical 5 pound 15". The screen is fairly nice. There are reports of some washing out compared to the 13 inch version and I would agree with this, but I would also say that it's not as bad as people say. It's wonderful having a matte finish, something not available for the moment in newer touch screens, and picture quality compares nicely with my girlfriend's 2010 macbook pro. In short, you make some compromises for sexy and get sexy. I'm drooling over the 2014 edition that is coming out with haswell and a 1080p touch screen, but I'll take the 50%+ price cut. The battery is lasting me around 7 hours, more than enough for me. I'd recommend it to anybody who values the user experience and build quality over computational performance. But I do have to say that this thing is plenty fast. It's way more important to me that programs load quickly and the scroll is smooth than how quickly it crunches numbers. I'm not disappointed. edit to mention a quirk I haven't been able to solve. The first time I open chrome after a fresh install I get two instances of the program. It's annoying. Anybody have any ideas? Also a windows 8 question. I actually like the idea of special gestures like swiping in from the sides of the trackpad, but I wish they had some functionality in desktop mode. I would love if I could swipe in from the left to switch between my desktop programs. Is there any way I can configure this? deadfish fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 22:28
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ETB posted:It looks like Sager will release W230SS laptops with the GTX 860M in about a week through third parties such as XoticPC. Should I be looking at any particular storefront, or are they all more or less the same? ETB posted:I guess more importantly, should I wait for more "mainstream" computer companies to release a similar product for an overall better experience, or are companies like Sager pretty reliable?
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Mar 21, 2014 22:52
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I just started looking at getting a laptop for my wife's birthday coming up shortly, and decided on getting the 64mb Asus t100ta. From what I'm seeing on various forums, the price seems to have jumped up in just the past few days. Amazon has them at $424, and many major retailers are all out of stock. Did I just pick a bad time to start looking? Has anyone else been watching these lately?
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Mar 21, 2014 23:24
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DrDork posted:I'd still vote waiting a few weeks to see what the other players (Gigabyte, ASUS, etc) drop, though. Waiting may be prudent, but I'd argue that very few 13" laptops offer 'good' graphics cards, especially now. (Many companies are currently obsessed with ULV processors and making the laptops ridiculously "thin".) It seems very unlikely that another 13" competitive laptop will be released. The GTX 860M is far better than what most 14" laptops offer. p.s. - I may buy the sweet Sager laptop too. 
Captain Pike fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Mar 22, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 02:15
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Captain Pike posted:p.s. - I may buy the sweet Sager laptop too. Want to be reckless laptop buying buddies? I'll do it if you do it.
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Mar 22, 2014 05:14
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Captain Pike posted:The GTX 860M is far better than what most 14" laptops offer.
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Mar 22, 2014 10:27
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Thought I'd report back on my purchase of the Dell Latitude 3540 (refurb). Core I5, 15.6" 1920x1080 matte display, 4GB ram, Radeon 8850M graphics, Win 8. Came to $560 after taxes and shipping. Screen is nice and I like the fact that it's matte. Keyboard has a little more flex than my HP elitebook, but I could definitely type for a while on the dell with no problems. Laptop takes a bit (~20 sec total maybe including signing in) to boot up and opening apps takes a little, I'm not sure if the hard drive is the culprit or it's the 4GB of RAM. I'll probably buy another stick of ram and put it in and see if that fixes it. Fired up a game of Civ 5 with high everything and 1080P (no AA), game ran great. Laptop didn't get warm either and it was comfortable to use on my lap for 2 hours. Pros: Cheap, Matte HD display. DVD drive. Good graphics processor. Touchpad with separate buttons (gently caress clickpads forever). You can apparently swap out the DVD drive for another hard drive if you want to. Cons: Only 4gb ram. Reviews state that sometimes the GPU and CPU will clock down if doing stress tests. Not touchscreen. poo poo : No HDMI.
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Mar 22, 2014 17:35
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http://www.ebuyer.com/615243-hp-probook-450-g1-laptop-f1n78es-abu Haswell M, decent dedicated graphics with 2GB VRAM, and seemingly judging from notebookcheck above average build quality for a budget notebook and as a bonus a touchscreen. For under 500, whats the catch I wonder ?
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Mar 22, 2014 18:14
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mfny posted:http://www.ebuyer.com/615243-hp-probook-450-g1-laptop-f1n78es-abu The screen will be terrible like all the others you're been looking at, but it sounds like the keyboard and touchpad are not bad. Might be your best bet.
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Mar 22, 2014 18:52
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mfny posted:http://www.ebuyer.com/615243-hp-probook-450-g1-laptop-f1n78es-abu On second though doing a search on the part number of that system shows that the listing on ebuyer may be wrong. Anyone know if HP part numbers are shared between configurations ? as it shows up on other UK etailers as 4GB RAM No discrete and no touchscreen. And on a related subject I realy wish HP and Acer in particular would be more consistent in what they offer across regions and retailers to in terms of configurations. mfny fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Mar 22, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 21:45
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It also has a i3-4000M, which manages to be both slow (by today's standards) and 37W--fine for email and movies and such, but not too much more than that.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:51
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Mu Zeta posted:I ordered from XoticPC before and they were great. They even did some loophole so that I didn't have to pay California taxes for a Sager. Tell me more about this no CA taxes? I've ordered from xotic in the past and had a good experience. They're solid. Looking at getting one of the new gaming laptops Asus just released from them. (JM, JS, JZ. Probably get the base model JM with GTX 860M). Considering looking at the Sagers though?
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Mar 22, 2014 23:30
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Friend bought a Yoga Pro 2 w/ Windows 8, now 8.1, for way-cheap, but it doesn't have a Windows license. (Well, it does, but let's assume the original purchaser is very slow to answer their emails). What's an optional cheap/free OS to use until Windows finally releases 8.2 for free?
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Mar 23, 2014 00:02
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What are the details of the computer not having a windows licence? Windows 8 machines are sold with a licence key embedded into the BIOS, and I was under the impression that it's not possible to transfer or lose that licence. You could try contacting lenovo for the official oem restore software. Is there a recovery partition on the laptop? If it is still there you could just run that. If your friend were able to find a legal, non cracked ISO for the version of Windows 8 that came with his computer (checking the hash code of the ISO he downloads against the official one provided by microsoft here) he could install the OS from a USB stick. The installer will find the key registered to the BIOS and activate it automatically. Finding a legal, untouched ISO might be tricky because the illegal cracked versions get in the way. I think if you are a microsoft TECHNET subscriber you can download it from them, though I'm not sure how that works and there is a notice on that page saying they are discontinuing the technet service. You could try googling the hash code provided by microsoft on that page I linked.
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Mar 23, 2014 01:18
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DrDork posted:It also has a i3-4000M, which manages to be both slow (by today's standards) and 37W--fine for email and movies and such, but not too much more than that. i3 4000M is Haswell so not sure what you mean by todays standards and its not a ULV cpu ether so not sure about the 37W comment. From benchmarks it seems like it would be fine for more then just basic office use to unless I am missing something ?
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Mar 23, 2014 01:30
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mfny posted:i3 4000M is Haswell so not sure what you mean by todays standards and its not a ULV cpu ether so not sure about the 37W comment. From benchmarks it seems like it would be fine for more then just basic office use to unless I am missing something ? Exactly - at 37W it won't be as battery efficient as one of the 15W Haswell U suffix chips
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Mar 23, 2014 01:36
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The i3-4000 has the HD4600 graphics, which are a notable step up from the HD4400 which is barely better than the HD4000 (all of these are good chipsets, I'm just saying the HD4600 is one of the best integrated options) Also, 37W is max, my last-gen Ivy Bridge chip consumes about 10w at idle i3 is a solid chip, I doubt most users would notice the difference between it and the i5 unless you're playing Kerbal Space Program or some other physics sandbox where you can really stretch the CPU's legs. Intel Chromebooks run the celeron which is sort of like the equivilent of an i1 processor (if that existed) and nobody complains about those.
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Mar 23, 2014 02:05
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Hadlock posted:Intel Chromebooks run the celeron which is sort of like the equivilent of an i1 processor (if that existed) and nobody complains about those. When you come into it talking about wanting to play Titanfall and use it for other gaming purposes, an i3 is going to leave you disappointed. That it has a HD4600 is irrelevant, since the laptop in question also has a 8750M. Now, that said, with a very low budget you're simply not going to be able to get good performance in all aspects of the laptop, so poor CPU performance may be worth the better GPU in this case. Still, a 15.6" 1366x768 at any price makes me sad.
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Mar 23, 2014 02:36
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DrDork posted:While true, I think a lot of that has to do with people properly gauging their expectations: no one buys a Chromebook expecting to be able to do much more than Word and VLC or whatnot on it, and as such the limited processing power isn't really an issue. As I said i my latter post i have a feeling that listing on ebuyer may be incorrect on that Probook spec wise. ill have to check on Monday with HP prehaps. And the situation with screen resolution makes me sad to. And its worse in the UK then the US becuse of pricing/market issues i feel as well.
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Mar 23, 2014 03:09
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mfny posted:And the situation with screen resolution makes me sad to. And its worse in the UK then the US becuse of pricing/market issues i feel as well. As for the HD4600, if indeed that's all that laptop packs, be aware that at 1366x768, an i5-4200M w/HD4600 runs Titanfall at ~20FPS. Expect even less out of that i3. Might be able to keep it around 30FPS at 1024x768, though. There also appear to be some graphical glitches with the game, but those could potentially be ironed out in patches/driver updates.
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Mar 23, 2014 03:33
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DrDork posted:Gigabyte just announced an updated 14" P34G "v2" with a 860M, incidentally--this time around it apparently lets you pick between a mSATA+2.5"HDD or a mSATA+bigger battery, which is nice. Woah, depending on price and battery life, that may be exactly what I was looking for. How long do things like this usually take to hit amazon or whatever after being announced? And how are Gigabyte laptops generally regarded?
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Mar 23, 2014 04:23
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