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So is there any chance of getting a good quality laptop that is 13in or less for less than ultrabook prices? My lovely laptop that I started using once my usual laptop died just died itself, which leaves me in a bind for the next semester. So far the best I can find is a refurbished 13in macbook air for $850 (or a yoga or (haswell) 11in MBA for $900)
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Jul 30, 2013 04:04
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I've considered those, but I wonder just how good the keyboard, the screen, or the touchpad can be at that price. I want something that can last. I'm strongly considering stretching for the MBA, but I don't like the lack of a straight HDMI port, I still need windows to run some engineering software and I do like the Netflix windows 8 app.
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Jul 30, 2013 06:37
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Auralsaurus Flex posted:I'm looking for some advice/recommendations. For what it's worth, I've been a life-long windows user as well that got a macbook air. Sure there are a few idiosyncrasies that you have to get used to, like cut/paste being weird, navigating right click menus, and button combinations, but after a couple weeks I'm getting the hang of it. For the stuff that osx can't do or do very well, I just use a windows vm (which is only ~10gb for the base install).
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Sep 5, 2013 02:46
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when it comes to anything related to them and don't know if it would be such a good idea getting one. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Budget is pretty flexible, but I'd prefer not to spend frivolously.
Hughmoris posted:Best Buy has the 2012 MacBook Air 13" 128GB on clearance $599 new. Does the 2013 improvement justify a $500 price increase for the average user?  For $600 that seems to be a steal even without the battery life. Is the ram 4gb?
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Sep 5, 2013 19:01
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I've had an 11" MBA since 2013 (got that year's refresh) but the poor thing is losing it's battery. As it stands, it only lasts 2-3 hours now (which is still good compared to some things, I know, but that's due to the lovely screen and low power stuff) and I think it's finally time to move on. I'm not too married to the apple ecosystem; I've only invested like $10 into osx only programs, but I do like the unix underpinnings. I could get a replacement battery (as my only other issues are the general slowness (which really doesn't seem to be much worse than today) and the lovely screen (720p tn wtf)) but I might as well look into selling this for ~3-400 or however much I can get and get something with a newer battery and warranty support. In all honesty I might install some flavor of linux on a new laptop if the new ubuntu thing isn't good enough, and I have a desktop so I do not need power. I love the weight and size of the 11" air as it's perfect for my hands, and I'd need something similar in stature-- 13" would be too big, to be frank. A 1080p screen would be great (I don't know why the gently caress everyone seems to have a love affair with pseudo-4k tiny screens when all it does is suck battery life), as would an ssd that could be upgraded (if its even possible these days) and I could live with 4gb of ram, though obviously more is better. If Apple had been nice enough to continue working on the Air line, I'd probably just get a new 11" one, but they seem determined to retire it, so I might as well move back to windows. All I do on the laptop in order of frequency is browse the internet, watch video, stream from my computer or ps4, process words either in word or latex , and play the odd video game once in a while (though honestly everything can really be streamed so it's pretty much not a requirement) Unfortunately, due to the game streaming and latex requirement a chromebook is out, as all the latex options for it are poo poo or cost money, and game streaming is a deal breaker. So, to sum it up: either a new Air battery, or <=12" screen, (necessity) >= 900p & <= 1440p (absolute >, strong preference <) > i5 4250U (preferably) at least 4gb RAM (> preferably) > 128gb (if possible) > 6hr battery web browsing/video(necessity) Windows (necessity) Is there anything like this for less than a grand, or is it just a pipe dream? I've taken a look at the surface pros but I'm not too enamoured with the crappy battery life and the flimsy keyboard formfactor. The book, on the other hand, is very nice, but way too expensive for me at this time. My bonuses need to go towards student debt, not electronics  The Helix 2 looks interesting, though I'm not sure if the battery life would hold up, or if the construction is up to snuff. I enjoy the sturdiness of the macbooks. Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 05:32
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Ooo, yeah, that does look good. I had previously discounted them due to the whole 13" screen and >1k things, but if something similar comes around again it's definitely something to look at. e: Although I'm seeing a ton of reports that the skylake XPS' have poo poo battery life and wifi issues, which is a huge knock against them... BTW, would a base model mid-'13 MBA 11 (i5, 4gb, 128gb sandisk, I'm assuming) with a 654 battery cycle count and a 'service battery' status fetch? $300? I'm thinking I should've seen if I could've replaced it under applecare a few months ago before it ran out... ah well Also, I will say I'll miss the apple trackpad enormously, as well as the magnetic power cable. Has anyone else ever come even close? I have some contenders here: Asus UX305CA which apparently has an amazing battery life basic m3 processor but rather comparable to what I have now 8gb RAM 256gb ssd 1080p IPS Little bit larger in all dimensions than mba <$500 open box at microcenter, $600 new Trackpad not that great the XPS 12 9250 Mediocre Battery Life (seems to be endemic to Dell) 2in1 design basic m5 a bit faster than mine 8gb RAM 128gb SSD 1080p IPS Similar size to mba, 0.5lb heavier would be weird in lap $640 Trackpad supposedly rather good or a 13" XPS Awesome dell bezel aesthetics normal laptop i5 a fair bit faster 8gb 128gb (upgradable) 1080p ips apparently bad battery life? touchpad seems good $700 used from amazon fulfillment, but no tax or shipping $730 refurb dell outlet, but will have tax at least... Are there any other good recommendations? To be honest, a super long battery isn't that important at the moment, as I don't really need to take my laptop anywhere anymore, however it would be nice. Also, if someone could comment on the dell battery life issues I've seen I'd appreciate it a bunch. I'm actually leaning towards the xps 13, all told. Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 07:40
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Are the battery life concerns for the xps 13 valid, or is just an old bios bug? I like the roughly 10 hrs of the zenbook, but it looks a bit run of the mill. Im actually really liking the xps 12 convertible thing. Someone talk me down pls
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Dec 12, 2016 20:23
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Eletriarnation posted:Is this a model with a Broadwell Core M? I've heard a lot of negative things about performance for those compared to the 15W chips, you may want to check around and see if others have had success with the same applications you want to run on similar systems. Skylake y, and its pretty closely matched with my current i5-4250u, if slightly slower in most things. The power savings might be worth it though, and the most strenuous thing I do is browse with a fair number of tabs open, stream video and games (video) and compile the odd latex document. Right now my current computer gets slowdowns when a bunch of things are open, and it frequently maxes the 4g i have in there, and has to constantly compress decompress and take from swap. I think ill try it out at least and I can always return it...
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Dec 13, 2016 17:05
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So contrary to the advice of people, I'm going to try out the xps 12. It's a used model and less than 600 bucks, so if turns out poo poo, I'll just return it. I always just remote in to my desktop if I need something strenuous done, and this seems sufficient for my purchases, and with 8gb of ram this time, I will no longer run into swap file trashing like I currently do... It will only be 128gb, but I already get by with that amount and if I need more I can actually upgrade this time! Processing seems to be roughly equivalent which, again, was sufficient. The only downside is I'd have to buy a usbc to usb hub and hdmi adapter, but most of the things I plug into my laptop are microsd card readers (which I wont need), flash drives (hub) and a controller (which I can do via bt on windows!) I'm mainly getting it for the 2-in-1 aspect that actually looks sturdy enough to sit in my lap (and I can always just tabletize it.) Hows that for defending my purchase lol What I don't get is why it seems like Dell has discontinued the xps 12-- I can't find it for sale on their web site. Of course, watch the microsoft store put it on sale for cheap thursday.. I have issues with delayed gratification
Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Dec 14, 2016 |
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Dec 14, 2016 07:18
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Mu Zeta posted:Because it didn't sell well and the XPS 13 was a more revolutionary design They are entirely different market segments though-- the whole tablet thing works for my circumstances, and the xps 13 will only get convertible next year, at a >1k price point. I'm only looking to spend 800 at the most, and there are a ton of refurb 12's for like 600, which given it will come with a new battery, more RAM and no degradation to performance (that I only ever max out when something is bugged or the rare time I play a local game or when I had a windows vm. If I can get one of the xps 13s for <800 with 8gb of ram, then yeah I'd go for that, otherwise i'd do just as well paying the $125 to replace the battery in my macbook and keep on keeping on or buying a refurb macbook with better specs for like 600-700. e: plus yeesh, some people have issues with the screen, speakers, or hard drive failing on the 13... Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Dec 15, 2016 |
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Dec 15, 2016 00:04
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It seems that the ones that got further discounts were all inspirons. All of the xps' are the same price theyve been
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Dec 15, 2016 19:48
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Does the xps 13 have the same or similar trackpad as the 12? Cause holy poo poo this thing sucks. Even if I try to change the few trackpad options there are, there always is a dumb hysteresis which means precision movements are impossible. I have to move my finger a few millimeters before the cursor will start to move. Im honestly considering getting a refurb macbook. Like the new 12" single usbc macbook over this trackpad.
Watermelon Daiquiri fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 16:48
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The Apple trackpad has ruined me for other ones
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Dec 16, 2016 19:12
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Agent355 posted:Standard laptop with a touchscreen is what I'm looking for, yah. Out of curiosity, why?
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Dec 17, 2016 01:55
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:I believe the XPS 13 has a "Precision Trackpad" where the 12 does not. Effectively that means that Microsoft does the trackpad software where the usual approach of oem's otherwise is to literally have the trackpad driver written by amplifying cosmic noise over and over until it resembles x86 assembly enough to ship. Well, the one in the 12 is listed as 'precision' as well... Is it just a Windows thing in general where once you put your finger to the pad, you have to move it a certain amount before it will register? Like I had to move it 3-4mm before the cursor would move, which made it impossible to be 'precise' ironically enough. It took forever to check boxes, for instance, since I would get close before I got to the edge of the pad, and then overshoot due to the stupid hysteresis. Ugh, I REALLY hope it isn't windows based, otherwise ill have to either suck up and get a retina macbook pro or that usb-c macbook...
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Dec 17, 2016 06:35
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In my experience its rarely convenient or easy to use a mouse. If I was in a circumstance to use a mouse on my laptop, I'd be better off using my desktop. I'm sure its probably similar for them, and if you are paying over a thousand dollars for a device, wouldn't you want it to, you know, work?
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Dec 18, 2016 08:50
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Hadlock posted:If you want to avoid the trackpad but don't want to use a mouse, you can do what the big boys are doing and get a Thinkpad with the Trackpoint Well, the trackpad on the 12 is an 'alps' model, not synaptics, and no installing newer firmware did nothing...
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Dec 19, 2016 19:52
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space marine todd posted:Is the new Dell XPS 13 FHD's battery life really that good (11-12 hours)? I'm on a 2013 rMBP 13 and I'm rarely getting more than 6 hours just browsing/using Google Docs. Nope. I only was getting ~4 hours with mine browsing the internet. Streaming lasted longer b/c of hw decoders, and that was closer to 8. Mostly a great laptop, but the battery doesn't last as often as most mac stuff and the trackpad and wireless went on the fritz a couple times in the 3 days I tried one out.
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Dec 23, 2016 12:45
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And the Dell Outlet is a great source as well
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Dec 23, 2016 20:01
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Agrikk posted:Help me pick a new laptop, laptop thread. The del xps would be good, though youve probably missed the xmas sales. i'm pretty sure the skylake up ones use nvme ssds, so i really don't know if you could bring in your old ssd, but it should be fairly painless to add in a new one, from what I've seen. The touchpad on it is moderately close to the apple ones, though i've had a few hiccups with the one I tried where it would spaz out and select everything or change zoom level or something like that. The battery life would be comparable to yours I'm sure, on the 13 I tried out I was getting like 8-9 purely streaming, and 4-5 or 6 browsing the internet or doing office-y things. The nice thing about the dells is that the min resolution is 1080p, with an option for uhd though its detrimental for battery life. The dell outlet has them from around $800 for 128gb ssd to over $1k for things like UHD, 960m, 256+GB SSD, i7, 16GB ram etc.
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Dec 24, 2016 21:04
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That hasnt generally been an issue for a while. Windows 10 is pretty good at guessing the correct scaling for a screen, though I find it errs on the side of caution and makes things a tad bigger than id like. But then again, I prefer hidpi turned off in osx so I get more usable screen space when I need it
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Dec 28, 2016 16:25
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wooger posted:It works fine provided you don't use any software which doesn't support it properly (unlikely), and you never connect to an external monitor which requires a different scaling resolution (without rebooting). The only scaling wierdness ive seen is with chrome and how it sets the viewports to the scaled res, so a 1080p image is blown up on a scaled 1080p screen as is when I use chrome remote desktop. Everything should fit, but it doesnt. I never really noticed- would 1080 and 1440 have different scales? And you can do what I did- I bought one of those 1 Usbc port macbooks which has a 16:10 1440p screen and bootcamped windows on it. Connecting that to a 24" 1080p screen didnt really mess anything up. The port is a downside, but for me the only thing I need is the occasional flash drive and video out to up to 1440. My only beef is that no one has a >12 gbps DP adapter with power passthrough, so Im resigning myself to have to try my hand at making my own... My pcb skills are a tad rusty, but a small enough board should minimize the differential fuckery id have to do. Lol I think I might be able to still remote into my school and use their altium license too. Otherwise Ill have a hell of a time implementing everything into circuitmaker.
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Dec 29, 2016 17:41
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:Yeah, Apple is one of the very few places one can still get a 16:10 screen. Unfortunately they have rather gone beyond the reasonable on pricing in the last generation, so I figure you must really want OSX to motivate buying one. A used/refurb one is around a grand, though granted the processor is a 5W thing compared to the what, 15w #200Us?
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Dec 30, 2016 04:44
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I'd be very interested to see a comparison between the mobile and desktop 1050s. Given that this is an apple to apple comparison, itd be neat to see if there is an appreciable difference, especially since I have a pet theory that the giheung fab (the main one) makes the 'desktop' 1050s while the austin one (constantly playing catchup and follow the leader) is producing the 'mobile' ones. I'd love to be able to directly compare the two fabs given that austin would be well described as that sad child who is constantly looking up to their cold, distant parent who doesnt spend much time with them and is constantly striving for attention and approval from them.
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Jan 1, 2017 03:38
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Arent there both kepler and maxwell 860ms? I'd imagine youd want to make sure you get a good one lol
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Jan 2, 2017 23:28
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I'm sure the answer will just be 'dell blahdy blah' or 'lenovo blurdy bloo' but I need to spec out a laptop specifically for scientific computing purposes (IC layout and simulation though research scale and not, you know, a full cpu or even a crappy one). Graphics aren't(shouldn't) be an issue and its mainly memory bandwidth and amount thats the bottleneck. I would probably be ok with 8GB but want to stick to 16+ for safety's sake but none of them explicitly state whether or not everything is dual channel. I've been out of the game a while though, so is that a given now (especially with two ranks of memory)?
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Apr 25, 2019 08:41
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CommieGIR posted:Dell Precision M7510/M7520 Ooo yeah I completely forgot about ECC stuff. I'll have to spec out a few different things to see what my professor is ok with. Thanks!
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Apr 25, 2019 18:52
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Which brand is better (for scientific workstation applications) the Thinkpad P series or Dell Precisions? Ideally Xeon and ECC would be nice but there is a server for that. It'll mainly be physics multisim design and IC layout stuff (which I'm pretty sure will never get hairy enough to need rendering power above the baseline intel stuff), so would XPS/thinkbook tier work well enough, or is there a definite build quality/support difference between that and the explicit workstation stuff?
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Sep 1, 2019 17:41
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How much does a surface book throttle (i7 with dgpu) under pressure compared to a precision or another workstation laptop? I do have a server to off load most of the number crunching to, but if I have something I have to do locally I don't want it too limited. The only reason I ask is the rest of the lab is considering the books and if it is sufficient I don't see why we have to go out of the way to get something else for me.
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Sep 3, 2019 16:57
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I needed a new laptop for my lab work, and I was given a price ceiling of 'it doesn't matter.' I naturally considered the big rear end workstations but we do have a personal set of servers to do big simulation number crunches so I decided on something on the prosumer side of things. I went with the HP Spectre x360 (the latest and greatest 15 inch version with the geforce 1650 and 9th gen i7) and it really a great machine-- it's very sturdy, the keyboard and touchpad are both fantastic (almost as good as the macbook touchpads), the tablet function is a bit unwieldy but works perfectly fine, the upgraded 4k oled screen is gorgeous... There's just one small niggling detail that is rather annoying for such an expensive and well thought out machine-- The keyboard backlight has NO setting other than 'Off', 'On for ~30 seconds after you hit a key', or 'Dimly on for ~30 seconds after you hit a key'. There is NO way as far as I or other people have found to keep it on permanently. Also, it's kind of weird how it has two USB-C ports (with one of the back diagonal edge for extra ~uniqueness~ factor) but the power deliver is via a normal coaxial power connector, but it's not really an issue. Still, if you have the budget for a ~1500-2000 laptop I would recommend this one so long as you don't mind the backlight timeout issues.
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Oct 12, 2019 12:45
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Does anyone with an HP Spectre laptop ever experience a chromium browser doing this to a web page? Usually it's limited to images so I'm pretty sure its an issue with the intel gpu, but you never know:
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Jul 11, 2020 00:53
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