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Recommend me a PC laptop for a dad who doesn’t want his son playing videogames on it I jokingly suggested a Mac but I wonder if there might be school software he needs that might require a pc Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 04:22 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 04:19
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no such thing exists. lower spec might mean playing games in bad/low resolutions, or only playing older games, but choice of hardware is not the tool for the job of restricting game playing it's like choosing shoes for your kid to stop them trespassing
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May 3, 2022 11:50
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Steve Yun posted:Recommend me a PC laptop for a dad who doesn’t want his son playing videogames on it Wait for the school to give the spec list. Depending on major they may request a Mac or Windows OS, they may also require a GPU if it's graphics design and anything 3D will be done.
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May 3, 2022 12:08
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I would be surprised if there is any software that requires a PC (most general use software will run on both), and if there is they will explicitly all it out. So Macbook Air/Pro or on PC a decent Thinkpad deal that comes around.
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May 3, 2022 12:39
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I'm looking to recommend a PC laptop in the ~$750 range to my sister. She plays some indie games, but nothing that an integrated video couldn't handle. The most important things are build quality, battery life, and portability (competing, I know), in that order. I'd like to give her a couple of 15" and a couple of 13" suggestions. She does have a Microcenter nearby (Chicago), but their offerings seemed more gaming focused. I'm a desktop guy myself, so I don't have great thoughts. How do these look: Dell Inspiron 15" Ryzen 5700, 16gb ram, 512 gb SSD $699 - https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/e43n Same, but 1TB HD, $749 - https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/e6bb Acer Swift 3 14" Ryzen 5700, 8gb ram, 512gb SSD $638 - https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Display-Octa-Core-Processor-SF314-43-R2YY/dp/B08YD1JLJF/ ASUS Zenbook 13" Ryzen 5700, 8GB, 512 SSD $769 - https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ZenBook-13-UM325UA-DS71-Ryzen/dp/B08XGV5GMQ/
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May 3, 2022 13:47
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Inspirons are crap, I don't recommend Acers at all. That Zenbook is ok, I like the OLED screen on that. This Yoga 2-in-1 is decent for a cheaper option at $600 https://www.ebay.com/itm/203600435959 (Bestbuy via ebay) or a 2-in-1 Vivobook is probably a bit better deal if you are a costco member https://www.costco.com/asus-14%22-touchscreen-2-in-1-vivobook-tm420ua-laptop---amd-ryzen-7-5700u---1080p.product.100742586.html
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May 3, 2022 14:22
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Steve Yun posted:Recommend me a PC laptop for a dad who doesn’t want his son playing videogames on it You need to sit that dad down and explain that what he's asking for is not only impossible but stupid.
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May 3, 2022 17:23
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I need a Windows laptop and dock, $1500 soft max budget. The most intensive work I'll be doing with it is running IntelliJ, no gaming or anything. It'll probably be undocked twice a year at max but it has to be a laptop for those few days. Please steer me towards something reliable, goons!
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May 3, 2022 18:49
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What screen size? Thinkpad is still a great option, intelliJ would imply you're doing programming so you'd appreciate the keyboard Budget $275 for a really good thunderbolt 3 dock, so $1150-1200 should be your budget for laptop. Lots of options for ThinkPads in that range
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May 3, 2022 19:05
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Hadlock posted:What screen size? Thinkpad is still a great option, intelliJ would imply you're doing programming so you'd appreciate the keyboard I'm looking at Lenovo ThinkPad L13 Yoga Gen 2 13.3". Any red flags with that model?
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May 3, 2022 19:26
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Generally I try and steer people to the metal frame p/t/x series as the L and e series are their plastic budget models handed out to junior accountants and clerks If you want a 2:1 convertible Thinkpad that may be your best option in that price range E or L series is still going to be a big step up from a $499 laptop at best buy Hadlock fucked around with this message at 19:53 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 19:51
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Hadlock posted:Generally I try and steer people to the metal frame p/t/x series as the L and e series are their plastic budget models handed out to junior accountants and clerks Rocking, I'm looking at getting the ThinkPad P15s Gen 2. It'll be a little over budget but it's ready to ship I won't lose sleep about the price.
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May 3, 2022 20:03
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This is the unofficial USB-C PD thread, so https://www.theverge.com/23053867/first-240w-usb-c-4-power-delivery-cables-20-40-gbps Looks like preproduction 240w cables are coming soon  These ought to replace 90% of home electronics power cables in 3-5 years as the only things that pull more than 200w these days are some high end subwoofers, and kitchen appliances like toasters and blenders
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May 3, 2022 20:59
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Xander77 posted:Can you connect a bluetooth mouse to this? Apparently that's the only option local computer stores can even suggest, as far as a mouse goes. I haven't bought the Chuwi so I can't personally confirm. But generally Bluetooth mice work perfectly fine. I've used a Logitech MX Anywhere with another laptop, it has a dongle but also works over BT. It also has USB-C ports, so you could use a USB mouse with a $2 USB-C -> USB-A adapter.
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May 3, 2022 21:15
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Hadlock posted:
Yeah, that’s not going to happen for the same reason why there’s a shitton of stuff today that still ships with a DC barrel connector even though the draw is far under 100w. Cost. If you don’t need to include a charging circuit because the thing doesn’t have a battery, then there’s a whole lot of complexity you can leave out by just doing a normal rear end DC power supply that you can drop in the box for $0.50 and skipping all the USB-PD standard stuff. If you don’t need negotiated power draw or need to charge a battery, it’s always going to be cheaper to not go USB-C. Not to mention the fact that if your device draws above 60w you need an emarked cable and no one’s support wants to spend time telling the average person why the cable they are trying to use isn’t running their device even though it looks exactly the same as the cable they SHOULD be using. 240w USB-C will be used for midrange gaming laptops, some monitors, and MAYBE some TVs. That’s going to be about it.
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May 3, 2022 22:05
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Does this seem like a decent build? https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/legion-laptops/legion-5-series-laptops/Legion-5-Pro-16ACH6H/p/WMD00000468 (It should be the build at the very end). Legion 5 Pro 16" AMD Storm Grey AMD Ryzen 7 5800H (8C / 16T, 3.2 / 4.4GHz, 4MB L2 / 16MB L3) 16.0" WQXGA (2560x1600) IPS 500nits Anti-glare, 165Hz, 100% sRGB, Dolby Vision, HDR 400, Free-Sync, G-Sync, DC dimmer NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6, Boost Clock 1560 / 1620MHz, TGP 140W 2x 16 GB SO-DIMM DDR4-3200 RAM 1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0x4 NVMe I can only find that specific model on the Australian Lenovo site, and it's currently on sale for $2872 from $3379 (about $2040 USD). It seems that Legion isn't popular/stocked here, and most places instead offer several flavours of Zephyrus and Strix.
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May 4, 2022 09:06
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Fall Dog posted:Does this seem like a decent build? https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/legion-laptops/legion-5-series-laptops/Legion-5-Pro-16ACH6H/p/WMD00000468 (It should be the build at the very end). Yeah, it's solid. It even has MUX switch (a piece of hardware that makes graphic card work better with the screen).
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May 4, 2022 09:31
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Fall Dog posted:Does this seem like a decent build? https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/legion-laptops/legion-5-series-laptops/Legion-5-Pro-16ACH6H/p/WMD00000468 (It should be the build at the very end). Yes very good, but seems overpriced. Legion is comparable to Asus Strix/Zeph, are those cheaper?
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May 4, 2022 14:13
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Has anyone bought from Lenovo very recently? I ordered a Legion 7 yesterday and the site estimates a 4 month wait time. A few Reddit comments suggest it’s probably closer to a month.
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May 4, 2022 22:18
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Casimir Radon posted:Has anyone bought from Lenovo very recently? I ordered a Legion 7 yesterday and the site estimates a 4 month wait time. A few Reddit comments suggest it’s probably closer to a month. That's normal. They have a schedule and they build what they build and then eventually they'll build more legion 7. If they build them tomorrow or in 4 months is a total crap shoot
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May 4, 2022 23:34
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Hadlock posted:That's normal. They have a schedule and they build what they build and then eventually they'll build more legion 7. If they build them tomorrow or in 4 months is a total crap shoot
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May 4, 2022 23:39
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Casimir Radon posted:I figured. I’m sure the chip shortage has things screwed up everywhere so I wanted to at least get the ball rolling. I have an MSI laptop that I’ve been using for almost 8 years. It doesn’t handle heat particularly well and developed an issue after the warranty was up where too much heat would cause the speakers to go staticy and then just cut out. Historically yes, Lenovo has been sending out well before the initial date. I'd guess it'll take a month but to Hadlock's point it might be closer to 4.
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May 5, 2022 00:22
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Fall Dog posted:
Eh, ok. Based on that then I think the Legion is probably a good bet.
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May 5, 2022 00:23
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Lockback posted:Eh, ok. Based on that then I think the Legion is probably a good bet. It's the price of living in Australia. Everything here is more expensive.
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May 5, 2022 00:43
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:If I'm looking for something that can play mostly strategy games like Humankind and Stellaris on good settings, looks professional enough that I can take it into the office without looking like I'm setting up a laser light show, and won't fall apart in a year Lockback posted:I'd still suggest that G14. Is there an easy way to tell if that Best Buy listing is still the best (reputable) spot to buy it? I tried searching by the model number and get results that are all over the place. And lastly question for anyone, is buying a laptop that I plan to use internationally (US/AUS/NZ) just a matter of getting the right power supply/adapter? Or should I be considering more
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May 5, 2022 07:01
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bull3964 posted:Yeah, that’s not going to happen for the same reason why there’s a shitton of stuff today that still ships with a DC barrel connector even though the draw is far under 100w. USB-C connectors are price competitive with barrel connectors, about $0.50 each in volume Texas instruments has a USB pd chip that runs $1.07 in volume but it would not surprise me if that number drops in half over the next couple of years. Maybe not for that exact product, but an asian designed one. I've seen micro USB on the cheapest electronic crap, I am starting to see USB-C on a lot of products https://www.digikey.com/en/products...vMaAoyYEALw_wcB Being able to ship your product with USBC means you don't need to include a power adapter or batteries. Not sure where the break even point is but I'm guessing wall wart DC adapters are similar in price to USB-C PD chip ($1) plus you can halve your packaging size and cost, probably shipment cost as well. Just look at how apple is shipping the latest iphones in tiny boxes
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May 5, 2022 07:38
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Welp I've just ordered the Legion. I guess I'll find out if I've made a wise choice when it's delivered in about two months time! Thanks for the help and suggestions.
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May 5, 2022 12:40
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Hadlock posted:USB-C connectors are price competitive with barrel connectors, about $0.50 each in volume If it was going to happen, it would have happened already. Very few DC devices need over 100w, but we haven't had this mass migration. Stuff like routers and network gear could have been USB-C for ages, but it's not. There have even been regressions. Google Wifi actually was USB-C, but they switched back to a barrel adapter for the Google Nest Wifi. The same goes for the Nest Mini which went from micro USB to barrel connection. Even if PD chips are cheaper than they have ever been, even 0.10 a unit premium would be enough to cut into profits for something that the product maker wouldn't necessarily see as a gain. Then there's form factor too, the C connector is larger than most mini barrel adapters so design may not allow for some stuff. The emarked cable problem is still very real too. 5a cables are still more expensive (especially in longer lengths) and are necessary over 60w, but look the same and plug into the same hole as 3a cables. Also, since the US is so iPhone heavy, there are surprisingly few USB-C adapters in the average household to even think about not having them in the box. At any rate, 100w cap was never the limiting factor for mass adoption so it being raised to 240w should have very little effect on the adoption curve. bull3964 fucked around with this message at 14:03 on May 5, 2022 |
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May 5, 2022 14:00
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bull3964 posted:If it was going to happen, it would have happened already. Very few DC devices need over 100w, but we haven't had this mass migration. Stuff like routers and network gear could have been USB-C for ages, but it's not. Yeah I have charged my phone with the Google Wifi adapter when I was too lazy to go upstairs to plug it in.
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May 5, 2022 14:44
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Have Some Flowers! posted:And thank you, great feedback across the thread. 1. Yeah best buy is fine, the location you buy it isn't super important. I'd get wherever the same model is cheapest, within reason of not being a scam store. 2. Yes, most power adapters will work 110v-220v, you just need a plug adapter.
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May 5, 2022 14:47
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Lockback posted:Inspirons are crap, I don't recommend Acers at all. That Zenbook is ok, I like the OLED screen on that. Thanks very much for this! I talked it over with my sister, and we really liked the look of the Vivobook, mostly because she currently uses a 14" laptop for work, and thinks that's the right size. She thinks she'd notice the drop off to 13", and if anything would go 15" rather than 13". However, by the time we finished deciding, it was no longer available at Costco. Sorry to come back to the well for a 2nd round of recommendations, but are you aware of any other 14" in that range (or even that Vivobook similarly priced elsewhere) in that same $600-$850 range?
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May 5, 2022 20:24
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Is it worth $250 to upgrade from 16gb to 32gb RAM? What I'm looking at will mostly just be for study with maybe some gaming and light image editing. I'm thinking no, but also kind of want to future proof because this poo poo needs to last me like 10 years ideally. E: maybe a different way to put it is would you choose the extra RAM or upgrade the processor from i5-1250p to the 1260p? The latter has slightly better integrated graphics. voiceless anal fricative fucked around with this message at 23:02 on May 5, 2022 |
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May 5, 2022 22:57
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More RAM won't really help anything up until the point where what you're running no longer fits and gets swapped to disk, then RAM becomes the most high-impact upgrade you can do. For an internet/word processing/photoshop/media playing/gaming workload, I wouldn't bother unless you want to be doing multiple heavy things at the same time (e.g. alt-tab out of a RAM-heavy game then flip through a million browser tabs and have everything remain immediately responsive). 16GiB is common enough that most games won't routinely have bigger working sets than that.
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May 6, 2022 05:21
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Almost all games are designed to run on 8gb, leave the OS 4GB to do it's things, and 4GB for a couple tabs of chrome, it's really hard to fill up 16GB even today Now, if you're alt+tabbing between Battlefield and Fusion 360 you might see some minor improvements going to 32gb but they would still be small 16gb is a lot, even by modern standards
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May 6, 2022 05:39
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I notice some chugging when tabbing out of a game into a browser on my laptop with 16gb RAM but I suspect that's more of an issue with the amount of VRAM allocated to the Intel GPU. Doesn't seem like they let you increase that allocation either unfortunately.
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May 6, 2022 05:49
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Hadlock posted:
or even further back, between Halo and your Skype call with Chet
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May 6, 2022 06:03
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I only played halo on my buddy's Xbox I mostly missed out on that generation and played a ton of quake 1 on my pentium 90 with 32mb ram There are some utilities, or at least used to be, that would allow you to allocate more than X GB ram to the GPU than the BIOS/UEFI UI led you to believe was the maximum Also, when you have integrated graphics, I think this is still the case, the CPU will underclock the GPU first, to take thermal pressure off the die, before it begins to underclock the CPU. So if you're having chug problems could just be thermal in nature, especially if you're really pushing things with a AAA game and no RAM is going to fix that. You'll have to log clock rates to watch that. My x230 could decode and export ultra high bitrate blue ray rips to my TV but about 30 min in it would heat soak and once it started dropping the GPU clock rate, video got choppy fast
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May 6, 2022 06:13
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I guess it's also a question of future proofing. Realistically I'm not going to replace this computer for like 10 years. The CPU is like a 5% upgrade at the moment, is anyone willing to forecast whether 16gb of RAM will still be enough in 5+ years? It's soldered unfortunately so the option of upgrading later isn't there. Obviously there's no way to tell but it seems like the RAM is more likely to become a bottleneck than a slightly better processor?
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May 6, 2022 06:19
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Can you link to the Intel ARK pages for the two i5, and also the i7 I would lean on more cores and max turbo clock speed than ram, and use the ark pages to compare, to future proof I would consider myself a power user and I can't tell the difference between my x13 with 8gb ram and xps15 with 16, I think the xps15 is 5 years old at this point having bought it summer of '17 Really unless you're doing like SOLIDWORKS, fusion 360, cad engineering stuff, or massive hundreds of gigabyte dataset analysis there's really no need for 16gb now or in the future. I guess eldritch or whatever just came out and recommends 16gb but that's mostly because they're bad at programming and probably doesn't represent a long term trend Hadlock fucked around with this message at 06:28 on May 6, 2022 |
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May 6, 2022 06:26
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