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Does paying for the expedited shipping from places like gearbest actually expedite shipping?
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Sep 28, 2017 10:11
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MrLamo2k1 posted:I haven't been following the latest with Intel CPU hierarchies. Is the new Pentium line kind of like the old Atom processors back in the netbook days? I remember those being frustrating to work with even while running XP, and would like to avoid that whole situation again. They still use the Atom brand for low-end SoCs, like the Cherry-Trail-based Atom x5/x7-Z8xxx. They're still not very performant, but they're more capable than what you'd expect if you have experience with earlier Atoms. Confusingly, they still use the Atom, Celeron, and Pentium brand names with different underlying microarchitectures, so you can buy Core-based (e.g. Haswell, Skylake) Pentium and Celeron CPUs (e.g. a Celeron 3955U is actually a dual-core Skylake!) but also Atom-based Pentium and Celeron CPUs (e.g. J4205 or N3450.) You can still buy Atom-based Windows systems, but generally they're going to be relegated to the same types of tasks you can do with a Chromebook, and you can often find the latter cheaper and faster, so what's the point? The 5200U is quite a capable Core-based ULV CPU, so any Atom is going to be a downgrade. Note that until the Kaby Lake-R and Coffee Lake CPUs, the -U models were all dual-core+hyperthreaded ULV chips, so i3/i5/i7-U largely differed in maximum performance (things like cache, turbo boost, etc.) rather than capabilities, so you don't need an i7-7500U over, say, an i3-7100U for the basic tasks you listed. I still think the $350 Acer E 15 is the best deal, even if it's larger than you're looking for and you should really add in the SSD & RAM upgrades after purchase. Statutory Ape posted:Does paying for the expedited shipping from places like gearbest actually expedite shipping? I haven't tried it myself, but one would assume there are faster methods of shipment from China other than the slow boat should one be willing to pay for them.
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Sep 29, 2017 08:07
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I have no idea if I understand what tech words mean, but I'm a grad student working at an archive and will be graduating in less than a year. I've had a T430s for over the 5 last years, and aside from needing to replace the keyboard once, it's been pretty durable and reliable. The only problem is that it's been getting slower and is getting a bit obsolete. I've started looking into getting a new laptop since I have no idea if I'll be end up working somewhere with a BYOD policy. If this ends up being the case, I'll need a laptop with good processing power to handle spreadsheets, data entry, and having 40+ tabs opened. It would also be a good idea to have strong graphics in terms of displaying photographs and video. So far in looking for matches with my needs, I'm consider the T470, X270, X1, and the Y520 (since it's on sale). Are there any other recommendations when it comes to laptops that would be relevant to what I'm looking for?
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Sep 30, 2017 00:32
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There haven't been any significant performance improvements since your T430s, at least not for that kind of usage. It's mostly been battery life and GPU improvements. What does your T430s have in terms of storage and memory? It's trivial to upgrade either and you'll get a system that'll work just fine. That said the T430s always had awful battery life and screens even when new so a replacement isn't necessarily a bad idea, just not one which is going to perform better.
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Sep 30, 2017 00:53
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Statutory Ape posted:Does paying for the expedited shipping from places like gearbest actually expedite shipping? In my experience yes. Expedited tends to take 1 to 2 weeks instead of 3 to 5.
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Sep 30, 2017 01:52
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grimcreaper posted:In my experience yes. Expedited tends to take 1 to 2 weeks instead of 3 to 5. Cool, thats actually pretty significant. Their fast shipping option was something like 7 business days for $12 Thanks guys
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Sep 30, 2017 01:54
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Pompadour Diamond posted:I have no idea if I understand what tech words mean, but I'm a grad student working at an archive and will be graduating in less than a year. I've had a T430s for over the 5 last years, and aside from needing to replace the keyboard once, it's been pretty durable and reliable. The only problem is that it's been getting slower and is getting a bit obsolete. I've started looking into getting a new laptop since I have no idea if I'll be end up working somewhere with a BYOD policy. If this ends up being the case, I'll need a laptop with good processing power to handle spreadsheets, data entry, and having 40+ tabs opened. It would also be a good idea to have strong graphics in terms of displaying photographs and video. So far in looking for matches with my needs, I'm consider the T470, X270, X1, and the Y520 (since it's on sale). Sounds like you'd be happy with another, newer Thinkpad. Someone linked this X240 the other day, and while it's nicely equipped it's far from the only similar example. Just look for a FHD display, a boot SSD, and 8-16 GB of RAM; possibly you might need to do those upgrades yourself, which is generally pretty easy. Speaking of upgrades, like dissss mentioned your current Thinkpad might be salvageable with some easy upgrades. What's your CPU, RAM capacity, storage medium (HDD or SSD), and OS? Based on this datasheet it appears the CPU is an Ivy Bridge (which is still fine), and if you're using 40+ tabs in a browser then you ideally need 8-16 GB of RAM (so if you have less this could be a source of its sluggishness.) Is the boot drive an HDD? Doing a HDD->SSD upgrade is the single biggest upgrade you can make to overall system performance. Are you still using Win7? If so, in my experience Win10 is a bit faster than either of it's predecessors on the same hardware, so an OS upgrade could also be a slight performance boost. Similarly, when was the last time you reinstalled the OS? If it's been years, that too could be a source of performance degradation over time. Combining these last two items, you could create a Win10 USB boot medium and install that OS using your original Win7 key, which should automatically be accepted as a valid upgrade key.
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Sep 30, 2017 02:58
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Pompadour Diamond posted:I have no idea if I understand what tech words mean, but I'm a grad student working at an archive and will be graduating in less than a year. I've had a T430s for over the 5 last years, and aside from needing to replace the keyboard once, it's been pretty durable and reliable. The only problem is that it's been getting slower and is getting a bit obsolete. I've started looking into getting a new laptop since I have no idea if I'll be end up working somewhere with a BYOD policy. If this ends up being the case, I'll need a laptop with good processing power to handle spreadsheets, data entry, and having 40+ tabs opened. It would also be a good idea to have strong graphics in terms of displaying photographs and video. So far in looking for matches with my needs, I'm consider the T470, X270, X1, and the Y520 (since it's on sale). A new laptop isn't going to be appreciably faster. Like, less than 5%. For $100 you can swap in your probably dying rotational hard drive with a bigger, much faster SSD and maybe another 4GB of RAM and put windows 10 on it. There's been no appreciable improvements in computer processors since 2013 (which was extended battery life) and basically nothing since then. So your laptop isn't obsolete. If it's slow, the hard drive is probably fragmented and needs to be replaced due to 5 years of vibration wearing it out.
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Sep 30, 2017 07:06
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There have been massive improvements to onboard graphics, battery efficiency and processing power since 2013
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Sep 30, 2017 07:13
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TheGreasyStrangler posted:There have been massive improvements to onboard graphics, battery efficiency and processing power since 2013 The iGPU is going to be irrelevant for his purposes, and a recent ULV CPU isn't going to be a vital upgrade over his current ULV CPU. It's probably a low RAM situation, and an HDD instead of an SSD. Those two upgrades will provide the biggest improvement.
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Sep 30, 2017 07:29
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The T430s didn't have a ULV CPU though, it was a 35W dual core of some sort (mine is a 3320M). Battery life was never any good on mine but performance continues to be okay with the same Samsung 830 it came with (which is down to 90% drive life now)
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Sep 30, 2017 11:34
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My laptop is almost dead and I need help finding a new one. The OP looks a bit out of date and looking through the last few pages I don't have any clarity on what to do, so I was hoping to get some help here. This is what I can think of so far: 1) Relocates a few times a month but is only used plugged in and in secure places. Battery life is unimportant and likelihood of being dropped is minimal. 2) Games are nice but it's mostly indie stuff on Steam - I won't be running pvp fps at full specs or anything. Being able to run newer blockbuster games at low-mid specs is nice but not mandatory. 3) I don't want it to look or feel like poo poo, if possible. 4) Refurbished or similar is great but I'd rather go through the manufacturer or a well known name instead of some guy on ebay. 5) Anything under $700 is fantastic, but I'd be willing to go up to $800 or even $850 if necessary.
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Sep 30, 2017 15:33
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There are too many cheap Chromebooks to decide what's good. I know Acer/Asus are consistently good values. Is the Acer Chromebook R11 a good choice in October 2017? I don't necessarily need a convertible with a touchscreen. Just looking for cheap, lightweight, and solid. Thanks.
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Sep 30, 2017 15:38
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:My laptop is almost dead and I need help finding a new one. The OP looks a bit out of date and looking through the last few pages I don't have any clarity on what to do, so I was hoping to get some help here. This is what I can think of so far: The last few pages where this has been answered aren't out of date https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B074...GuYL&ref=plSrch
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Sep 30, 2017 16:35
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dissss posted:The T430s didn't have a ULV CPU though, it was a 35W dual core of some sort (mine is a 3320M). Battery life was never any good on mine but performance continues to be okay with the same Samsung 830 it came with (which is down to 90% drive life now) Ok, so it's an older version of an Intel "mobile" CPU; sure newer ULV CPUs are going to have better efficiency but they're still comparable in performance. Like I said, the difference between his CPU and a newer one isn't going to be significant for his purposes (spreadsheets and browsing); it's not like he's transcoding video or something. Again, an SSD upgrade (if he ever replies to us confirming the hardware he actually has) would improve usability the most. Also, he never mentioned battery life as being an issue. A GIANT PARSNIP posted:My laptop is almost dead and I need help finding a new one. The OP looks a bit out of date You're not the first recent new poster to state something like that, but the very first line of the OP states: Hadlock posted:Updated: September 11th, 2017 I'm not sure on what planet less than 3 weeks ago from this very moment counts as out-of-date but, uh, I guess we'll help you because that's the point of this thread? I mean there aren't a lot of links to specific models in the OP but those do go in and out of stock, refurb deals come and go, and often models get refreshed or slightly updated so playing whack-a-mole with product links isn't the best use of our time. I do think Hadlock should specifically mention the Acer E 15 models that I like to recommend, though. So getting back to your post: A GIANT PARSNIP posted:1) Relocates a few times a month but is only used plugged in and in secure places. Battery life is unimportant and likelihood of being dropped is minimal. 1) This tells me size doesn't matter; you're not looking for an ultraportable or whatever. That's good, it opens your options. 2) When we give you hardware recommendations you should check benchmarks based on the most demanding titles you intend to run. That Acer Swift that Ape mentioned is a nice, new, portable option, although as in 1) above you don't specifically need a device like this and could get better performance for the same money in a larger device. That being said, you'd go to Youtube or Google and look for "MX150 GTAV" or "...Overwatch," "...Witcher 3," or whatever you play to see results on that specific GPU, which will give you an idea what kind of performance it will provide in the games you play. 3) So, uh, this is subjective, I don't know what your definition of a lovely-looking or -feeling laptop is.  That Swift looks nice though!4) You can often find Amazon Open Box Deals or Acer Recertified stuff on eBay. Other refurbishers aren't necessarily bad; if there's a favorable return policy you could certainly give them a try. 5) This is fine; you can get gaming-capable entry level devices around this price range. Note that you didn't give us your primary use-case for this laptop so we'll assume that it's the basics (browsing, multimedia, etc.) that every device does well, with some light gaming as the most demanding task. Again, an MX150 device should be fine, although I also recommend this Acer E 15, which has a previous 940MX GPU for light gaming along with a 2C4T CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and an SSD, all of which are fine for the price; a FHD 15" display and full, backlit keyboard round out the package for $550. It's a basic, black plastic laptop, not what I'd consider ugly but your opinion may differ. Again, check 940MX benchmarks against what you play to make sure it's satisfactory. So that Acer E 15 is $550 with decent overall performance and light gaming capability, and the Swift is $730 with slightly better overall performance in a nicer package. For around the price of the latter, however, you could peruse the refurbs on eBay and find things like this, which would give you far better performance (quad-core CPU, 1050 Ti 4 GB GPU) for the same money in an "uglier" package. That will run almost anything at reasonable settings, though, so it's up to you if you want something really cheap like the Acer E 15 or if you need more performance. FistEnergy posted:There are too many cheap Chromebooks to decide what's good. I know Acer/Asus are consistently good values. Is the Acer Chromebook R11 a good choice in October 2017? I don't necessarily need a convertible with a touchscreen. Just looking for cheap, lightweight, and solid. Thanks. The R11 is still fine if you need "cheap" and "portable." If you want something more usable (i.e. with a bigger display) there are refurbished R13s on eBay under $300. How cheap do you desire, and do you need a large display, or more portability, etc? There's the Acer 15 which has the largest display on a CB (note that it's being refreshed within the next month or so), the HP 13 which is frequently available refurbished on Woot in the $300 range for the base model, and the Acer 14 is also available between $200-300 used/refurbished, but on the Acers (in particular the 15 and 14) make sure you're getting a model with the FHD display and 4 GB of RAM, because Acer releases dozens of variants of each model.
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Sep 30, 2017 19:02
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Great advice, thanks!
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Sep 30, 2017 19:25
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Atomizer posted:You're not the first recent new poster to state something like that, but the very first line of the OP states: Thank you
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Sep 30, 2017 21:25
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Atomizer posted:3) So, uh, this is subjective, I don't know what your definition of a lovely-looking or -feeling laptop is. Sorry, I should have been more specific - I just want to make sure the screen looks okay and I'd like a keyboard that doesn't feel cheap. I agree though, that Swift does look nice! I'm leaning towards that right now - thank you for the suggestion! quote:You're not the first recent new poster to state something like that, but the very first line of the OP states: Hadlock posted:Thank you I was confused by the "Above this line: Updated 2015" sparklee. I couldn't figure out where "Updated September 11th, 2017" ends and where "Above this line: Updated 2015" begins, so I just assumed only the first paragraph was the update. I do really appreciate the op and thread and the time and effort that goes into it - thank you!
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Sep 30, 2017 22:47
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What does this thread think about the new razer 17" 1080p laptop? I've handled the smaller 14" and it felt pretty solid to me. I'm thinking about replacing a 4 year MSI laptop with a new one sometime this winter. Ideally it would replace both my laptop and desktop (2500k and gtx670). Basically it travels once a week and then sits on a desk plugged in. The C$2900 is a little steep, but doable.
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Sep 30, 2017 23:30
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:Sorry, I should have been more specific - I just want to make sure the screen looks okay and I'd like a keyboard that doesn't feel cheap. I agree though, that Swift does look nice! I'm leaning towards that right now - thank you for the suggestion! Ok, no problem. As far as keyboards go, most are "fine," and only occasionally does a laptop have an outright bad one. Something like mechanical keyswitches are still pretty exotic in laptops at this point. The only other differentiators are things like non-standard layouts, backlighting, and numpad presence/absence. Some of those things are subjective, but generally smaller laptops can have worse keyboards, due to space/weight/expense; a larger laptop is more likely to have a full, standard keyboard, often with backlighting. Just something to keep in mind. As far as the display goes, the most important things to look for are resolution (a LOT of new laptops are still sold with HD-class displays, unfortunately,) display type (generally IPS is preferred for viewing angles, although TN panels usually refresh faster if gaming is a goal), and color accuracy (which you can usually learn about from professional reviews.) It's quite common to have poor displays in cheap laptops; occasionally you'll see something like that Acer E 15, which comes with a 15.6" FHD IPS panel, although it's not the most colorful, or the HP 14-an013nr, which came with a fantastic FHD display for such a low-end device. The Swift indeed is pretty nice all-around, but check for reviews first; I've never seen one in person so can't tell you anything about the keyboard/display quality. Hadlock, maybe tweak the OP (and subsequent update posts) to remove older "updated" references to prevent confusion?
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Sep 30, 2017 23:35
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Gorau posted:What does this thread think about the new razer 17" 1080p laptop? I've handled the smaller 14" and it felt pretty solid to me. I'm thinking about replacing a 4 year MSI laptop with a new one sometime this winter. Ideally it would replace both my laptop and desktop (2500k and gtx670). Basically it travels once a week and then sits on a desk plugged in. The C$2900 is a little steep, but doable. It's a budget laptop with a premium price. It's dumb enough that I genuinely don't understand what they were thinking. If they put a 1080 in it, it might make a lick of sense, but not with a 1060. It's an expensive machine with a 120hz panel that won't be able to play next year's games at that framerate. There are much better options at less than half the price from MSI or Gigabyte. I own and love the 14" model but gently caress that thing.
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Sep 30, 2017 23:52
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Lon just reviewed a new Acer Swift 1 budget model which I found on Amazon refurbished for about $310. I think this is the better option over the similar Asus VivoBook which is bigger but more expensive, although there's a 64 vs 128 GB eMMC difference. The latter would be nice, but at least the Acer has more than the bare minimum lovely 32 GB eMMC. Again, these are cheap options for those who need Windows for some reason but are OK with basically Chromebook-like performance. The Acer Aspire 1 is an even cheaper, lower-end option if you can't spend much more than $200. Hadlock, maybe put these in the OP, along with a couple of those Acer Aspire E 15 models I always recommend? We're going to continue to get requests for cheap Windows laptops and these might as well be in the OP as opposed to me having to re-type them over and over again.
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Oct 1, 2017 00:33
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:There are much better options at less than half the price from MSI or Gigabyte. I don't think anyone's mentioned it but there's a 1070 MaxQ version of the Aero 15 now if anyone's into that
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Oct 1, 2017 00:48
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So I Was taking a gander at mx150 equipped laptops to see if anything new cane out and saw an hp envy 360 15t convertible. I have no interest in buying nor recommending it but i noticed it said the mx150 was 4gb dedicated. I thought that was a 2gb card? Or is this some sort of 2+2 thing? Having trouble grabbing a link for it, on my phone on a bicycle atm and it wont paste properly
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Oct 1, 2017 14:57
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baka kaba posted:I don't think anyone's mentioned it but there's a 1070 MaxQ version of the Aero 15 now if anyone's into that Thanks for this. I'll look into it!
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Oct 1, 2017 21:53
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Statutory Ape posted:So I Was taking a gander at mx150 equipped laptops to see if anything new cane out and saw an hp envy 360 15t convertible. I have no interest in buying nor recommending it but i noticed it said the mx150 was 4gb dedicated. I thought that was a 2gb card? Or is this some sort of 2+2 thing? You are indeed correct, and this is another  decision by the ODMs. Why the gently caress would you need 4 GB VRAM on a low-end GPU?! And those initial MX150 laptops were configurable with, what, the i5-HQ if not the i7-HQ? Because you would totally buy a high-end mobile quad-core CPU and pair it with one of the lowest-end dGPUs currently available.  And that means you could theoretically buy a 1030/MX150 or 1050 with 4 GB VRAM, a 1050 Ti with only 2 GB, and a 1060 with 3 GB. Because yes, nVidia, we totally need less VRAM to go with faster GPUs....  (And don't get me started on the RX 480 with 8 GB....  )
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Oct 2, 2017 00:25
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Hardly a new thing - my quad core Haswell i7 laptop came with an 850M with 4GB of DDR3
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Oct 2, 2017 00:29
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the list of laptops that comes up when you search 'mx150' at newegg is mind blowingly dumb
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Oct 2, 2017 00:42
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It's because it's the cheapest way to advertise that it has nVidia graphics, which uninformed buyers may assume means "really fast".
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Oct 2, 2017 00:52
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Well....it actually is "really fast" when compared to the integrated stuff out there.
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Oct 2, 2017 14:22
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my asus n56v appears to be hosed and though it works with a power cord in it won't charge. I don't do a huge amount of stuff with it and basically I just want a 17 inch screen with not completely poo poo speakers and ideally an SSD. Every 17 inch laptop i see though is fairly expensive since they're all pretty high powered. Are there any cheap ones or am I out of luck?
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Oct 3, 2017 09:26
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Jose posted:my asus n56v appears to be hosed and though it works with a power cord in it won't charge. I don't do a huge amount of stuff with it and basically I just want a 17 inch screen with not completely poo poo speakers and ideally an SSD. Every 17 inch laptop i see though is fairly expensive since they're all pretty high powered. Are there any cheap ones or am I out of luck? A lot of people ITT will tell you the subjective reasons that they think 17 inch laptops are bad (size, weight, portability as a result, so on) but what other people think about those things is irrelevant. 17 inch laptops basically fall into two categories now for the most part I think: utter garbage (think: shoddy build quality and extremely lovely options like 1600x900 resolution @ 17.3 inches) and really expensive gaming type machines Could you tell us more about your budget? (preferred/max) and what you're going to be using it for? And also your comfort level with doing a hard drive/ram installation yourself
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Oct 3, 2017 11:19
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The best option for a 17" laptop-wanter is a really nice not garbage 13" laptop and a really nice 27" IPS monitor for when your laptop is plugged in to the wall Laptop speakers universally suck due to the physics of tiny rear end speakers, buy headphones or synch your laptop to your bedroom's stereo via wifi
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Oct 3, 2017 12:03
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I guess its more about volume than quality. I know the quality will be bad. I'm not exactly sure how much I want to spend but ideally no more than £500 and preferably a bit less. I'd prefer to keep using my asus if i can My asus wouldn't charge so I took it to a local place who fixed a motherboard problem that means it'll now switch on with the power cable in which it wouldn't before but still won't charge. The guy who fixed it suggested i needed a much higher amp power supply which seemed a bit odd
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Oct 3, 2017 12:16
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Jose posted:I guess its more about volume than quality. I know the quality will be bad. I'm not exactly sure how much I want to spend but ideally no more than £500 and preferably a bit less. I'd prefer to keep using my asus if i can My previous laptop was a N series Asus with way better sound than any other competitors. I don't think there's any other manufacturer choice if you prioritise good audio. Unless they stopped designing laptops with great speakers altogether which wouldn't surprise me based on reviews mentioning regressions in sound quality of their newer computers. Sininu fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Oct 3, 2017 |
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Oct 3, 2017 12:24
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Otoh a small Bluetooth speaker is like $20 so that issue is easily solved
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Oct 3, 2017 12:26
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Clevo/Sager makes 17" laptops that are not hot garbage and can be reasonably priced. If you're in the US, try the configurator at XoticPC.
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Oct 3, 2017 12:29
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Would it be a bad idea to use the new 8th gen intels for a laptop that primarily uses Traktor. Traktor works better using a single core. If it's only using one core will it stay at the turbo frequency? The lower base frequency is gonna be a problem if it dips, audio quality will suffer.
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Oct 3, 2017 18:03
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bruvs be4 luvs
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Statutory Ape posted:Otoh a small Bluetooth speaker is like $20 so that issue is easily solved It was completely obvious but I didn't really think about it so i'll just do this and keep using my work laptop. Unless anyone can offer advice on how to get the asus battery to charge? The guy did some repairs to the motherboard that got it to turn on at all but not charge
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Oct 3, 2017 20:39
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Dave2D review on the Asus Zenbook Pro UX 550: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTDResMIK_w Makes me sad. Soldered on RAM, 72Wh battery, $1700, and doesn't drop until October 14th - we'll have Coffee Lake CPUs and Raven Ridge by the holiday season.
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Oct 3, 2017 23:07
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