Laptop Megathread: Your laptop doesn't have Haswell? More like Hasbeen~

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Laptop Megathread: Your laptop doesn't have Haswell? More like Hasbeen~

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Hadlock posted:

Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus is announced for August 18th (next saturday)

It's basically a 13" macbook air with Windows 8 driver support. And a 3,200x1,800 pixel QHD+ screen. So it's basically a windows native 13" macbook air retina.

With touch. With IPS. I mean, look at that sexy viewing angle. It's a macbook air with all the new improvements.

$1300

Several people in here post about Samsung 7, 9 series, buy them, and never return, that's a pretty strong recommendation for a device.

http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/pcs/NP940X3G-K03US

I'm a senior in college looking for a laptop that I can use for writing papers, doing some GIS work, some light research/stats work with programs like NodeXL, and the usual video watching, gif making, playing video games on Steam type of stuff. Right now I have a 2009 Sony Vaio all-in-one desktop that has been chugging along pretty well, but it's starting to slow down and lag a lot in the past few months. While I was planning on waiting for a Haswell laptop, but I really like the looks and specs of this one. Would I be better served waiting for the Haswells to get released or would this be a worthwhile purchase?

# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 04:52

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 19:36

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Duck and Cover posted:

It has a Haswell. Also yes no maybe. What kind of video games?

Inspector_71 posted:

That thing is Haswell powered

Mostly games like DOTA 2, LoL, Borderlands 2, etc.

Hadlock posted:

The chugging may be caused by an aging drive. You can pick up a 2tb rotational drive or a 128gb ssd for $100 which combined with a reinstall of windows will get you through the end of the year.

That said, the laptop pictured is one of the best laptops you can buy, period. You'll probably have to play games at less than native resolution though.

I've already replaced the hard drive and graphics card, so I'm kind of reluctant to drop more money on this PC. At this point I can afford to get a new computer, presuming it'll last me ~2 years of school/work/travel/etc, so I just want to get the most bang for my buck.

Thanks for the advice though!

# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 15:53

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

QuarkJets posted:

All of the Y410p buyers have been perpetually high fiving each other all week. It's a solid laptop with a great price and power, not without its problems but in my opinion it's the best game in town right now for people looking to spend under $1k and will continue to be that for at least the next couple of months

The reviews I've seen for the Y410p all mention that the wireless reception is a bit weak, is there anyway to fix that or are you just stuck with it as is?

# ¿ Sep 5, 2013 05:53

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

QuarkJets posted:

C) Has he considered getting the Y410p instead? It's 14" and 1600x900 maximum resolution, which is good for that screen size and will actually make games perform better because your GPU is outputting fewer pixels. Yes, it's not 1080, but it's still really good. It's also more portable (in case of deployment), and best of all it's cheaper. The cost savings of going with the Y410p and the 1TB drive (instead of 1TBHDD+24GBSSD) should be enough to cover the cost of a really nice SSD and then some. If he wants more space and is willing to forego the DVD drive, then he can put the 1TB drive in the ultrabay slot.

They take like a month to arrive after ordering, so that's another thing to consider (in case he wants something yesterday)

How hard is it to swap out a SSD on the Y410p? I'm not tech savvy at all, but I can follow basic instructions, so just curious how intricate the process is and if there are any tutorials for it.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2013 17:51

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Would anyone ITT who has purchased and tinkered around with their Y410p mind posting a hands-on review or PMing me about it? I'm on the fence between getting a y410p now or waiting for a t440s, but can't really find reasons to come down on one side or the other. Even a simple pros/cons list would be helpful. I've seen reviews about the y410p online in other places, but I trust goons and hands-on experience more than random reviews from some place I have no frame of reference for besides a google search.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2013 01:37

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Bob Morales posted:

Just saw this on Slickdeals today:

HP EliteBook 840 G1 Notebook PC
Windows 7 Professional 64 (available through downgrade rights from Windows 8 Pro)
Intel� Core� i7-4600U (2.1GHz w/ Turbo, 4MB Cache) Processor
14.0-inch diagonal LED FHD UWA Anti-Glare (1920 x 1080)
720p HD Webcam
Radeon HD 8750M (1GB) Graphics
16GB 1600 MHz DDR3 2DM Memory
256 GB Solid-State Drive (SSD)
Optical drive not included
Backlit keyboard with touchpad with scroll zone and gesture support
802.11abgn ac + BT (2x2)
Bluetooth� Wireless Technology 4.0
HP Fingerprint Reader
HP 3-Cell 50 Wh Polymer/Prismatic Long Life Battery
HP Elite Support with limited 3 year standard parts and labor warranty
3/3/0 Year WorldWide Limited Warranty

Weight: Starting at 3.48 lb;

$1099

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/103...8750m-windows-8

I generally disdain anything from HP or Dell, but holy poo poo. Is this real?

# ¿ Oct 3, 2013 02:42

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Butt Soup Barnes posted:

So I got roughly 6 hrs of battery life doing mostly web browsing. This was at balanced power settings with screen brightness at 50% (which is plenty bright) and the keyboard backlight on.

Tomorrow I'll use it in power save mode with the screen brightness down and the keyboard backlight off to see what I get.

Does anybody know if there is a program out there that will let me do battery run-down tests under different conditions? I'm assuming that's what reviewers do but I'm not sure what they use.

Edit: also, theoretically should lowering the resolution to 1152p increase the battery life at all?

How's the wifi on the Yoga 2 Pro?

# ¿ Oct 15, 2013 00:11

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

RVProfootballer posted:

$1149 for a 3200x1800 screen, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD. Not MBA battery life, but everything else is pretty great, like they're not horribly gouging for the RAM and SSD upgrades. Unless Samsung et al. reduce their prices quite a bit, I'm not sure how any other ultrabook is going to compete. You last few holdouts, time to give up your nipples and embrace the touchpad

I'm (STILL) holding out to see what the specs and prices on the t440s are going to be, but if it doesn't drop by holiday season I'll probably be going with the Yoga 2 Pro.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 00:14

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

RVProfootballer posted:

I'm fighting the urge to buy pretty hard right now. I just bought a Zenbook last year, 15 months ago, and have never kept a laptop for less than ~3 years. But I can sell that on eBay for $700-800 and get an upgraded screen, double the RAM and SSD, come close to doubling the battery life, and only be out $400-500.

The only two things holding me back right now are that I really like Thinkpads, and that I've heard that doing any kind of time-intensive work on tablets can be a strain or otherwise unpleasant. Not that I'm exactly going to be writing dissertations or anything, but given the amount of time I spend on the computer now, I'd rather err on the side of caution. And my current PC, although slowly crapping out on me, should be sufficient to get me through this semester and possibly next semester, worst case scenario. I'm willing to wait, but it is frustrating.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 02:25

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Barring a disaster or some drastic price cuts somewhere else, I'll be ordering a T440s with this configuration on Friday:

� Intel Core i5-4300U Processor on Mother Board
� Windows 8 Pro 64
� Windows 8 Pro 64 English
� T440s 14.0 HD+ WWAN
� Intel HD Graphics 4400
� 4 GB DDR3L - SDRAM 1600MHz Base
� Keyboard Backlit - US English
� Fingerprint Reader, dock
� 720p HD Camera
� 500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
� 16GB M.2 Solid State Drive Single
� 3rd M.2 SSD slot
� ThinkPad Battery 3 cell Li-Polymer (23.2Whr)
� ThinkPad Battery 3 cell Li-Polymer (23.2Whr)
� 45W AC Adapter - US (2pin)
� Intel Dual Band Wireless 7260AC with Bluetooth 4.0
� Integrated Mobile Broadband upgradable
� Publication - US English
� Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 (North America) - English
� 1 Year Depot or Carry-in

Planning on dropping an SSD and more RAM in it myself. Any recommendations or criticisms?

Also, would the tutorial that QuarkJets posted about modding his Y410p be applicable to the T440s as well? Can anyone recommend RAM, or give some pointers on which brands to avoid at least? I've already got a good idea of what SSD to use from the SSD thread.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2013 01:33

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Just got my T440p today, put some extra RAM in it along with a SSD with no problems. However, when I try to install Windows 8 from an USB stick, nothing happens. I followed Quarkjets tutorial to the letter (from this page: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3552651&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=91), but every time I boot it up I just get stuck at the Boot Manager. Is there something I'm missing or doing wrong?

# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 02:14

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

My girlfriend is in the market for a new laptop, since she might have to give up her work provided one soon due to going back to school.

-Lightweight, sturdy, 13-14" screen
-Able to handle light gaming
-Able to handle art software like photoshop, sketchbook, illustrator, etc
-Good battery life and wifi capability
-Upgradeable memory
-Not a Macbook

Her budget is about $1400. What's the budget laptop du jour?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 05:18

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Shopping around for a decent laptop for a cousin who is going off to college in the fall and came across this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Lenovo-...icep&rmvSB=true

Would this be suitable for your basic college student writing papers, watching videos, etc? Ideally this thing would last 2-3 years until we can scrap enough cash together to get something newer and better.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 03:38

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Thanks for all the advice. I would love to be able to just spring for a Macbook Air for this kid but I don't have that kind of money and their parents aren't able to contribute at all, so $400-500 is about as much as I think I'll be able to raise from various relatives.

Hadlock posted:

For $400 that's about average. Keep in mind it's built to meet that $400 price point and quality will suffer, you'll probably limp it along for two years before it needs a total replacement.

Your other option would be a refurbished T430 which will no doubt last all for years of college, for the same price.

I have a T440p that I've been using for 3 years that I love, so I'll definitely give this a look.

Atomizer posted:

I'm not going to be "that guy" and suggest a goddamn Macbook when you've clearly set a price and mentioned money being an issue, but I will be the obnoxious guy who keeps recommending Chromebooks. You can spend less than $400 and get everything you mentioned covered: productivity software (Google or MS if you prefer,) Web browsing, multimedia streaming, etc. On top of that you can run pretty much anything in Linux, and many models will gain access to Android apps over the coming months. If you really need Windows you can use Chrome Remote Desktop.

There are several models I can recommend, depending on what you're looking for in terms of size/portability, including but not limited to the Acer 15 (the biggest Chromebook, but with solid performance and build quality,) the upcoming Asus C301 (a 13.3" display and a notable 64 GB of local storage,) or the Acer R11. The latter is a touchscreen convertible and has pre-release access to Android apps on the Dev channel, and is regularly in the $200-300 range refurbished on Acer's eBay store. The Dell 13, Acer 14, Acer Chromebook for Work, Lenovo Thinkpad 13, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 11e, Toshiba 32, and Asus Flip are all other options with varying caveats (price for most of them, an ARM CPU for the last one, and questionable durability for the Toshiba.)

Chromebooks are something that I've been keeping in mind, given the quality of recent products and the price point. IMO it's the perfect option, but I worry about my relative needing access to some niche program for school and not being able to run it on a Chromebook. I'll talk it over with them and see what they think.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 14:28

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Atomizer posted:

Walmart has an HP 15" 1050 Ti 4 GB laptop with the 8300H (4C8T) for $480, local pickup. Seems to be the regular (holiday) price and not a doorbuster/clearance/limited supply thing. Comes with an HDD but has a free m.2 SATA/NVMe slot, and 8 GB of DDR4 and one DIMM slot free. Comparable to the <$500 refurb'd Acer Nitro 5 that was in short supply during the last eBay 15% off everything sale.

Thanks for sharing this, my family has been looking for options for a new laptop in the $500-600 range for my brother as a Christmas gift, this is perfect.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2018 19:39

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Well, the Thinkpad T440p that I got back in 2013 has finally died on me. It's been sputtering for the last year, so not exactly unexpected and I managed to coax it along until I finished the semester at least. A clean Windows install could probably keep it going for another year or two but I honestly would rather avoid the headache.

Looking at the current slate of products the X1 Carbons seem nice but a bit rich for my blood. Both the P and T series of Thinkpad appear to be in line with what I can afford right now and what I need - something fast and reliable for basic loving around on the internet, light gaming, and occasionally some GIS work. Any recommendations one way or the other?

I haven't heard about any glaring problems on Lenovo products recently but I'd like to avoid unpleasant surprises in the future (like the wifi adapter on the t440p that would crap out from time to time if the driver got auto updated).

# ¿ Jun 18, 2020 06:00

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Any word on when the new Lenovo thinkpads are dropping? I know they've said July vaguely but I kind of want to either see if the upgrades are worth waiting for or take advantage of the clearance sales on the previous gen stuff that happen around release time.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2020 21:59

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Phone posted:

Lenovo C940s are on sale at Best Buy again.

i7-1065G7, 1080p, 12GB RAM, and 512GB SSD for $1k here
i7-1065G7, 4K, 16GB RAM, and 512+32GB SSD for $1.3k here

Anyone have experience with the c940? That 4k model looks like a pretty good deal. I've heard that the yoga line tends to have screen issues out of the box but that's rarely anything that can't be fixed with driver and BIOS update.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2020 20:08

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Phone posted:

I've been posting about C940 deals because it's the one that I have. I bought one back in February for $1300 for the 4K, 16GB, 512+32GB NVMe SSD in Mica from Best Buy.

I don't really use my laptops when I'm in the house, which has made buying a laptop on the cusp of the American COVID pandemic a real decision; however, I have been using it more as a 2nd screen for when I'm working.

The 4K screen is gorgeous and bright as all hell, but you're trading between 3-5 hours worth of battery life over the 1080p screen. The Iris Pro graphics punch above it's weight; I'm able to run FF14 at 1080p with stuff turned down and bounce between 25-35 fps, which isn't too bad considering that it's in the ultrabook class. The top of the keyboard gets warm if you're pushing it (~100F when I pointed an IR thermometer at it), and the fans are a bit noisy, but the 10th gen Ice Lake mobile line is probably one of Intel's better products considering the last 2-3 years of Intel based processors. The sound bar is kind of ridiculous on how crisp and loud it is.

As for the touch screen, it works as advertised. Don't expect it to be 100% accurate and there's a lot of diagonal based jitter if you're using an aftermarket pen such as the Wacom Bamboo Ink Plus; however, it's more of a function of the number of zones on the digitizer and trying to go fast. If you go slow, you won't wind up with wavy diagonals; however, I doubt it's a deal breaker if you're going to use it to take notes on the regular. I frequently put the laptop into tent mode and navigate solely via the built-in pen or the Wacom, and the experience isn't bad.

tl;dr: you can spend $1-1.3k on a significantly worse laptop

So I ended up pulling the trigger on one of these and I have to say that your assessment was mostly spot on. It's a very nice machine, especially for the discounted price, and overall seems to be a nice improvement in the product line.

That said, I had some serious issues with the screen - it would sputter and freeze up on me at least once each day in the week that I had it, during the most mundane of activities and despite driver updates and/or lots of tweaking, so I returned it today and will be going with one of the souped up t490s on clearance. I almost never take my laptop anywhere and I don't mind a heavier machine as long as I can depend on the drat thing to work when I need it to without issue.

Maybe I just got a bum one, but I don't know. My wife has an older Yoga that has similar screen issues (when it's unplugged at least), so maybe there's just something about the configuration in that line that Lenovo hasn't been able to figure out yet.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2020 03:47

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Phone posted:

Huh, that's interesting. Did you flatten and reinstall Win10 from scratch or did you use it out of the box and tweak from there? 1080p or 4K?

I'm just curious as to what could have been the issue. I installed a 1TB SSD in it, so I played around with the out of the box config for all of 20 minutes before starting with a blank slate.

It was the 4k touchscreen. An extremely pretty display, NGL, I wish I had been able to figure out what the issue was.

I tried tweaking the settings, then I did a bunch of direct driver and BIOS update, then I did a factory reset with a clean Windows 10 install. Same issues every time - it would work fine for a while, then the screen would glitch out and not work unless I did a restart.

Maybe I should've gone with the clean install first but c'est la vie.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2020 16:16

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

SourKraut posted:

Yeah, when I was looking at it in Best Buy the other day, the size doesn't bother me (it's fairly similar to my XPS 13's).

Does anyone know if Best Buy charges any extra fees if something is opened? I'm thinking of opening the G14 so I can directly compare the two, but I don't want to pay a restocking fee if they do charge something when an item is returned opened.

The return policy on laptops is 15 days, assuming no damage and everything that came in the box is there - everything means everything so don't forget the manuals or rebate cards or whatever other fluff. There might be some other conditions if it's a final sale type deal or whatever but they lay it out pretty clear on the website.

I just took back a Yoga that I bought online from BB in a sale. Had it for exactly a week, open and using daily for some basic stuff. I just packed it up, went to the nearest BB, and handed it over with the receipt. Whole thing didn't even take 10 minutes if you discount transit time.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2020 03:09

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Hadlock posted:

Update, two years later, moved to another house, but still using the TB3 dock with great effect. Wife took my giant 35"wx30"h cabinet, but was able to downsize slightly, still only doing one cable to all my laptops (except my current work mac laptop, which is not TB3, sadly). Cabinet is some mango wood thing I got off wayfare for ~$180. In the first photo you can see the dockin the bottom left corner of the upper shelf. The only regret I have about the cabinet is that the internal width is only ~17" which means most 19" rackmount stuff will not fit. Still finalizing things but this is how it's looked now for about a month. Most everything is plugged into the dock. And then there's a single 120v AC 120mm fan to vent air out the back

Nice! I'm not quite there but almost, though I have a lot fewer doodads than you. Need to just bite the bullet and get a dock.

The big challenge with be finding a way to reduce my wife's rats nest of wires under and around her desk. It was manageable before but now that she works from home I can't walk past it without feeling like it's a fire hazard.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2020 20:50

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Lockback posted:

Lenovo Slim 7 15.6" 3060 for $1300
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo...black/6470819.p

Really good price and really good buy. BB has the Black Friday Price matching thing until January, in general I would doubt you will find a significantly better value on a gaming laptop this season.

Lockback posted:

4K OLED, 3060 Gigabyte 15.6 from BB for $1,250
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/gigaby...p?skuId=6463823

It's generally a decent, middle-range gaming laptop but the 4k OLED is kinda rare if that's your thing.

Thanks for sharing both of these, they look like great deals. Perfect timing too, as my wife's 6 year old Yoga is crapping out and we've been discussing what the best options are for replacing it.

Would either of these be better suited for someone who is a fairly average user but does a good bit of graphic design stuff on the regular? My wife has an art tablet that has to be linked to a laptop for full functionality so that's about the only thing I'd want to make sure a new machine can facilitate.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2021 03:36

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 19:36

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

That's super helpful, thank you! Will probably pull the trigger on that Gigabyte as an early Christmas present for my wife.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2021 13:46

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Laptop Megathread: Your laptop doesn't have Haswell? More like Hasbeen~