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Odds are that whatever Haswell T-series Thinkpad that comes out in the next couple weeks will have the same 1440x900 dogshit TN screen, right?
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Jun 3, 2013 13:57
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Klaus Kinski posted:What pricerange am I looking at if I want something that plays lol/dota2 at good fps on low/mid settings? OP says $600 is the minimum price range to get a laptop that's not poo poo, and given that LoL runs on my 2 year old $400 netbook well enough to play I'd say that any computer on the planet in 2013 will work for what you need. Get a T430, with the B&N coupon they're $600 flat.
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Jun 3, 2013 20:14
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Klaus Kinski posted:Pretty much everything about it looks great (it's apparently really sturdy as well?) but lenovo loving hates non-corporate customers in sweden. If you're in Sweden that changes the price and availability of computers a ton, doesn't it? I can't estimate at all what a machine would cost over there.
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Jun 3, 2013 21:05
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Clown Meadows posted:Also, what does the release of Haswell mean for someone considering a mac? Is it irrelevant or should I be considering the thinkpads again? Do you need a laptop immediately? Will you be using it unplugged ever? It would be a very good idea to wait for WWDC 2013 next week if you can, new Macs should be announced with Haswell processors. If you care about battery life at all, it's worth waiting to get a Haswell mac.
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Jun 4, 2013 21:06
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WHAT A GOOD DOG posted:With laptops, aren't you supposed to use the battery until it goes all the way down to 10% then fully charge it to keep the battery healthy? I'm pretty sure we don't have to do that anymore with modern Li-ion batteries. I thought that the worst thing you could do was never ever use the battery, keep it plugged in 24/7 with the battery in.
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Jun 7, 2013 00:49
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Manifest Dynasty posted:In a couple weeks I'm leaving for a loooooong work trip where I'll be living out of a hotel for quite a while, and I'm thinking about getting a laptop that can play some games to preserve my sanity. (and I don't have a laptop at all right now, anyway) I know nothing about laptops, so for clarification: Thinkpads are good, Ideapads are... bad? Just "less good?" Should I be staying away from something like this? I'm surprised nobody addressed this yet. Generally, the Ideapads are almost as bad as Dell or HP's consumer lines. If you can't afford a Thinkpad or the corporate lines from Dell (Latitude 6xxx) or HP (Elitebook) then your best bet is heading for ASUS or Acer and finding whichever fits your budget and looks like the best design and build quality.
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Jun 7, 2013 13:08
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Gnomedolf posted:My opinion is that the 1366x768 resolution should be banned from the face of the earth. It gives such a terrible experience. I'm perfectly happy with it on my X120e, on a screen smaller than 12" it's perfect and any more would stress the GPU. It plays games better than most cheapo laptops I've seen, and it's a tiny netbook.
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Jun 9, 2013 01:20
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sigma 6 posted:Not going the Mac route because most everything I run is PC based and I don't want to spend the extra ram running virtualized PC apps. Also don't want to spend more on a Mac. I would rather put that extra money into better PC specs. You're not going to be virtualizing Windows, you're going to be booting directly into it. Things will run natively. Also, the Mac price premium is near zero for identically spec'ed and built machines. If you actually need all of the stuff that the Macbook Pro has it would cost you just as much to get an identical Windows box. The W530 is the only non-Mac option for what you are wanting to do, and its compromise is that it's significantly bigger and heavier than any flavor of Macbook Pro. Also, it wouldn't surprise me a ton if modern mobile CPUs are as fast as that i7-970 at single-threaded work. You'll have enough CPU to get by, I'd worry a lot more about GPU. I keep seeing you mention price sensitivity and student discounts. What you're asking for a laptop to do is extremely expensive, if you want something that can just barely get buy your cheapest option would be a more mainstream Thinkpad, but the screen would suck horribly. Generally digital illustration needs a decent screen, and all the laptops with powerful CPUs and good screens cost a fortune and are pretty big except the Retina MBP. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 13:10
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Clown Meadows posted:Tossing up between a 13" rMBP or one of the new 13" MacBook Airs. Can anyone weigh in with some advice or things I should be considering? On what time frame? The CPU refresh is pretty big for battery life and graphics. The new Airs should have a faster GPU than the outgoing rMBP. The Air is a better buy at the moment because its a brand-new refresh and should actually end up pretty similar in single-threaded speed. Whenever the Haswell rMBP comes out it'll be a harder question.
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Jun 12, 2013 03:35
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Bleh Maestro posted:I'm excluding apple...and talking about windows laptops. Why are you excluding Apple? The Macbook Airs are perfectly good machines, and it's not too crazy anymore to buy a Mac and then never run OSX ever on it.
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Jun 12, 2013 17:20
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Bleh Maestro posted:Listen Sperglord, I don't want what you're trying to sell. You say you don't want a gaming machine but want something that can play 'real' games. What makes a game real? Any of the HD5000 ones will handle Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Dota 2, League of Legends, WoW and lots of other serious games that people devote way too much time to. If you want a laptop that can play Metro: Last Light, Bioshock Infinite and that group you want a Gaming Laptop. Here's the best Gaming Laptop under $1k: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/y-series/y410p/index.html Edit: That article you linked was a less powerful Haswell GPU (4600 vs 5000) and at 1920x1080 when you wanted to play at 1440x900. I still think that Last Light would struggle at medium settings, that game's a system pig. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jun 12, 2013 |
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Jun 12, 2013 20:09
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hooah posted:What is this kerfuffle about the buttons on the new vs. old Thinkpads? Are people talking about the buttons above the trackpad you'd use while using the nipple? I can't see myself getting that much up in arms about that, as I've never thought the mouse nipple was all that great to use. Granted, I've tried it out for maybe a total of 10 minutes. Are they really that great once you get used to them? The nipple is the best mouse ever and I've never been able to use a laptop that didn't have it effectively. Fortunately work always gives me Latitude 6xxx of some sort and even my X120e has the full nipple mouse with buttons. If Lenovo actually pulls the nipple mouse buttons from the T440 then I guess I'm just going to have to buy a Mac, they're the only touchpad I can understand. Nipple mouse 4 lyfe.
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Jun 13, 2013 01:27
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FISHMANPET posted:And XP goes out of support, like, any minute now? One thing that blew my mind was realizing that XP is closer to Windows 3.1 (8 years apart) than to Windows 8 (11 years apart). I'd be surprised if modern ultrabook motherboard drivers worked well with it, and I'm impressed to hear Intel still writes drivers for it on new CPUs.
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Jun 13, 2013 17:48
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modig posted:I'm trying to help my brother pick out a laptop for college, and ever since getting my MBA I can't recommend buying a computer without an ssd in it. If given the option between a hybrid drive, or a cache ssd using Intel Smart Response Technology, which performs better? Are these really the only options? Your best bet would be getting a laptop you like and swapping in a 120GB or 240GB SSD.
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Jun 21, 2013 15:02
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hooah posted:Because some of them come with it already installed? Why pay for a hard drive twice (well, I guess like 1.5 times)? Put the old mechanical drive in a PS3 or sell it on craigslist or something.
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Jun 21, 2013 16:52
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vas0line posted:My boss wants a new laptop for MS Office, general web surfing, and a proprietary .net application. Can't be an Apple, unfortunately. I would really aim for at least a Sandy Bridge CPU if I were you. You can get a base T430 under $600 new using the B&N link!
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Jun 22, 2013 02:33
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Megaman posted:Are there any 11.6 inch i7 quad cores? Does that even exist? I'm looking to buy the smallest fastest laptop/netbook/whatever Even if someone built it, it would be near impossible to cool. What do you need that will use 4 cores but a 15" Macbook Retina is too big? Anyway, the Macbook Air is the fastest tiny machine. Just get the CPU upgrade and get a Haswell Macbook air if you need a powerful tiny computer for some reason. If you need a powerful CPU more than you need a small machine and your budget is the moon, option up a 15" Retina Macbook. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jun 26, 2013 |
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Jun 26, 2013 02:59
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Midee posted:i7 on mobile CPUs are worth it for audio, since they still have 4 real cores, whereas the i5s only have 2. I could swear that the Macbook Air i7 is a dual-core, though. Dual-core i5 vs dual-core i7 is mostly a wash, except for small hyperthreading gains. Aren't the majority of mobile i7 CPUs dual core? It has to have a Q in the CPU name, like you said.
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Jul 1, 2013 19:44
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movax posted:T430s is just a slimmer / 3 less battery cell flavour of the T430 right? Still a lovely TN screen? Yep, with what looks at first glance to be less robust and harder to service design in the pursuit of thinness and less weight. I'd take a way optioned up T430 over a T430s having seen both.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:18
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Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:The appeal is "designed for gaming." You're not one of those people, and neither am I, but the Blade is pretty much made for the 40% of people who come in here looking for PC gaming on the go. There's an option with way better build quality in the current Alienwares, though. The couple I've been around have been extremely well built and able to run stuff without thermally throttling at all.
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Jul 8, 2013 15:43
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Hopefully there's a T440 available with the conventional trackpoint buttons and no touchscreen. Maybe if we're extremely lucky we can get the IPS 1080 screen on it. I'm willing to put up with the extra pound in weight for normal Thinkpad stuff like removable battery, raised metal hinges, etc.
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Jul 9, 2013 17:05
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Gruffalo Soldier posted:So after much deliberation I settled for an L430 from eBay - I just couldn't stretch to the T series unfortunately. Does anyone have any experience of these? The Notebookcheck review seems fairly positive. I got an I3 with 4GB of RAM, I plan to whack another 12GB in there (apparently this is possible, though not supported by Lenovo), any idea whether the chip itself would be upgradable? I am torn between finding an I5 chip to swap it out with or an SSD, any thoughts? You can't replace the CPU. An SSD would be a good value for money for upgrade, but if you can afford an L430 and SSD couldn't you afford a T-series? Your earlier posts indicate you're a PHP developer, is there something unusual you're doing like running 20VMs that actually would need 16GB of RAM? You're unlikely to get anything out of doing that.
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Jul 9, 2013 20:28
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MeaningOfLife posted:- Able to play Civilization 5 via Steam 15" Retina Macbook Pro. Enjoy.
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Jul 11, 2013 17:08
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MeaningOfLife posted:$2500!?! What am I made out of money? I'm hoping to be in the $700 price range. I think I may just get the T430 that was suggested from earlier post. I think we should revisit what exactly you want before just throwing out a Thinkpad T-series recommendation. First you said money is no object, then you said that you want to spend $700 which is on the low end of decent laptops. Also, larger than 15" is absolutely gigantic and there are probably less than 5 laptops on the market that are not under ten pounds. Maybe instead of a huge laptop you could do a 13" or 14" laptop with an external monitor in the 22"-23" range? If playing Civilization is a huge priority, you really do want something a bit better than a 5400M.
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Jul 11, 2013 19:18
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Lovely Carnitas posted:So I need to get a laptop for school. My school's IT department recommends the dell latitude 3330 (13 in), E6430 (14 in), and E6530 (15.6 in), but the thread makes dell products sound like cheap plastic crap. The E6xxx laptops are really nice. I'd compare Dell Education Discount to the best you can do on a Thinkpad and buy whichever is cheaper or you like the looks of more between an E6430 and T430.
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Jul 11, 2013 22:55
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canada jezus posted:Ah the model she linked had a celeron, i didn't know there was an i3 version. Money is definitely an object, but the form factor was the main concern i think. We're in europe so that thinkpad is as expensive as a macbook air. I'll relay all the options to her, so thank you for the help friends. Jesus. I was about to recommend possibly finding a used X120e in good shape, as it should barely be powerful enough, but if $400 Thinkpads cost the same as $1000 Macbook Airs I doubt you'd find any used.
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Jul 13, 2013 20:46
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BigFactory posted:So does that inspiron fall into the plastic crap group? Yes, it does. If you want a well built dell look at the Latitude 6xxx series.
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Jul 17, 2013 16:31
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Frankie! posted:Lenovo Ideapad Y510 with Sli as a gaming/work laptop. Yea or nay? Think long and hard about getting a $700 desktop and $700 laptop instead, you'll have both a far more powerful computer and a more portable computer with longer battery life.
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Jul 17, 2013 21:17
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Tamayachi posted:I'm looking for a laptop that can run Guild Wars 1 and/or Team Fortress 2 while staying around the 500 dollar range. I'm not looking for anything spectacular since I have my desktop for that, just something I can take with me to a Starbucks or buddy's house for some LAN gaming. That said, I no next to nothing about laptops but saw this for a Back To School sale, would it fit the bill? Hi. When you say you're "not looking for anything spectacular", are you OK with a plastic pile of poo poo with iffy construction, a bad touchpad and screen, below average battery life, and excessive noise and heat? If you answered "yes" to all of these questions, then you might be a candidate for a cheapo AMD laptop like the one you posted! If you are OK with all of these things, you may as well see how low you can go, as this $285 after rebate one also will play Guild Wars and TF2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231019 If you want something that's better built, more powerful CPU, and better battery life you'll need to up your budget to around $600 at a minimum unfortunately. If your budget really cannot go above $400 at all, then an AMD laptop is your best bet for gaming extremely cheaply. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 14:03
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Naffer posted:Yes but that's a 33W GPU. The Iris 5100 is 28W including both the GPU and CPU, which means it can be lighter and quieter even if the performance is a bit worse. The lower TDP is the whole problem, when the CPU is going hard then the GPU doesn't have as much room to clock itself up and vice versa. If Intel does a 35W TDP package of the same part it would probably be significantly faster. Unfortunately Haswell has been less impressive in reality than on paper so far. Maybe when more SKUs come out we'll see better results.
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Aug 1, 2013 19:54
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Packstand posted:I'm looking for a good laptop for my mom. I can't find any decent resources as it seems like everything goes obsolete so quickly in the laptop realm. Did you read the OP? You described what any current laptop in the world will do, including chromebooks and small tablets. 4GB is now the standard amount of RAM, with 8GB as a larger option. Youtube and facebook are really low demands and any modern processor can handle them comfortably. You say that she needs a fast processor, what would this be for? Will she be saving video on this laptop? Video, games, or .RAW photos from a DSLR are the only things that take up significant amount of hard drive space. If she is really willing to spend $700, then a T430 would be a really excellent laptop but it also sounds like significant overkill for her. My mom has a $300 terrible consumer Dell Inspiron and she loves it, so if requirements are really low then any machine will do. Really, for youtube, facebook, email and browsing a $200 Nexus 7 tablet would work. It even has the 2GB of RAM! Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 03:13
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Packstand posted:poo poo, sounds like I'm still mentally stuck in the 2008 of mobile computing. How fast web browsing is, and specifically video buffering has near-zero to do with how fast the computer is nowadays. To reduce video buffering, you need a better internet connection, which may or may not be available in your area. A faster PC will not make videos load faster, and most C2D laptops from 2006 or later can handle any streaming video and web browsing anyway. If your main complaint for getting her a new PC is "Youtube is buffering", there may be no solution unfortunately. Youtube sucks more than the rest of the internet because ISPs don't want to reach agreements with them. My desktop with an i5 quad core clocked at 3.8GHz and 8GB RAM is slow as poo poo when it comes to buffering Youtube, and that's just how it is. I even officially am paying for a 25MBit internet connection. When you say "space to have movies on", do you mean ripping your own movies or somehow else saving movies locally? You don't need any hard drive space to stream movies from Netflix forever. With what you've told me I really think that a cheap tablet would meet all her needs. You can go as cheap as you want and have a happy mom if it is a machine just for content consumption. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 13:59
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Sire Oblivion posted:I'm looking to get my girlfriend a laptop to replace her (probably) 7 year old piece of poo poo one, I'd also like it to be a bit on the "gaming" side of things so we could play stuff together on Steam. The Y410p is looks to be the best bang for your buck, and reading up on it you can also get a second 750MX for SLI? This sale is making it look really drat tempting. The OP has lots of advice, but the Y410p is a ton of computing power for the dollar, and you should pretty much never do SLI on a laptop. The thing is constrained by thermals anyway, in real-world usage sometimes SLI laptops are slower than single-GPU because of overheating and throttling down. If you want a cheap, powerful laptop and don't care about it being thick and heavy, the Y410p looks like a good option.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:31
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Sire Oblivion posted:Interesting about the SLI being worthless on laptops, but it makes sense. Thanks for the info, the Y410P it is. Not worthless on all, but as far as I know Alienware are the only guys who build their machines with enough cooling capacity to run all components at 100%, and their machines are hulking gigantic things covered in fans because of it.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:49
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How is the build quality on Chromebooks? My father is looking for a machine solely for browsing, office work which could be done on Libre Office or even Google Docs, and streaming video. If Chromebooks have solid build quality and the CPU is enough to stream Hulu and similar services, then a Chromebook is go. Otherwise the best option I see is a Thinkpad X-series. Priorities are portability, under 13" size, good build quality, and battery life of 5 hours with moderate usage. A DVI, HDMI, or DP output is also required as it will be used plugged into external monitor and KB+M when plugged in. He's open to spending the ~$700 needed for a basic X230 or X240, but really has no need for that much CPU & GPU power. Solid build quality is very important, he has complained to me that all of the laptops except the T-series and Latitude 6xxx he's dealt with at work are cheap plastic junk. Budget has a hard line at $750, with a strong preference to spend less.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:28
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ValleyOfWalls posted:It's been 4 years since my last computer purchase and I think it's time to amend that. The Lenovo Y410p/ Y510p has incredible specs for the cost, isn't overly gigantic, and is goon-approved to have "good enough" build quality. The screen upgrade should be mandatory, but a GT750m won't get you to High details on new and future games but very solidly playable Medium. If you really want high settings at 1920x1080 on a 15.6" screen you're going to need to go big and expensive. Serious gaming on a laptop requires something huge and with good thermal management. If you can deal with a giant glowing whirring contraceptive the Alienware laptops have great build quality.
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Aug 26, 2013 15:52
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Socrates16 posted:The processor on my buddy's computer is twice as fast as the C7's, it can game a lot better, it has 4 gigs of ram rather than 2, the screen is 3 inches bigger and the resolution is higher at 1600x900. You're comparing a Sandy Bridge CPU to a Merom, the C7's CPU is at least as fast as 2007 Pentium-branded laptop mobile CPU despite clock differences. 15.6" is waaay bigger than most people want a laptop to be. If you really want a 15.6" bulky, cheap plastic laptop look for clearance Dell Inspiron 15r models. My mother picked up a Core i3 packing Inspiron for $330 two months ago. Don't buy that poo poo. It's a terrible deal.
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Aug 27, 2013 20:43
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The Iron Rose posted:Jesus I thought the little ball in the center of the keyboard (I don't know its name okay) went out of fashion 8 years ago. The nipple mouse is the superior laptop input device by miles. You don't have to take your fingers off the home row for general usage, scrolling is far more natural, and I've even successfully played Starcraft and DOTA 2 with it happily.
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Aug 30, 2013 15:28
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On Terra Firma posted:Maybe the OP should be changed to reflect some of the recent revelations about the T440s or at least signify that the newer think pads might not be up to snuff with the old ones. I want to feel one in person before I condemn it, but I'm in the group that's pretty unhappy about the loss of physical nub mouse buttons and lid clasps. I don't really know where to go because even the Latitude 6xxx series doesn't appear to have nub mice anymore. Maybe a thread title change to "Extra, Extra: Best midrange laptop sucks"?
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Sep 4, 2013 15:35
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Koth posted:Do any of you do any photo editing in Lightroom on your laptops? Is this something I would need a gaming laptop with a video card for, or would a home use laptop suffice? As of Lightroom 4, it's not GPU accelerated at all. If Lightroom performance is a priority, just spring for the fastest CPU available in the laptop of your choice. For example, if you're looking at Macbook Airs be sure to get the CPU upgrade. A home use laptop would be fine, and lots of Lightroom work is one of those cases where a quad-core CPU would actually provide sigificant benefit. You'll be looking at the 14"+ space at minimum for that, though.
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Sep 6, 2013 20:13
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