What laptop do you have? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 05:02:10 am
content: <rant>I used to be a desktop enthusiast, until about 5 minutes ago, when I realized they're pretty much useless.You can get a laptop that is close enough in performance to a desktop. A general desktop in the current age isn't orders of magnitude better than a general laptop. Plus portability, which you can't beat for school or work. You can add peripherals like mouse and keyboards and use external monitors for better productivity. Honestly unless you're doing 24/7 video encoding you should have a laptop. And at that point you shouldn't have a desktop, you should have a xeon workstation/server. The only other purpose I see is gaming, but we won't talk about that, because this is an intellectual forum, and anyone who games for the majority of their time most likely has zero intelligence.Overclocking is out of the question. Leads to instability if anything. I don't understand how you validate such a complex cpu by running a program written by a kid in his basement. You need actual test equipment for this. These days, they recommend to not even run prime95 as it "draws too much current"...My current desktop which cost 3 grand in parts can't even boot UEFI linux. What a piece of garbage.</rant>The powerhouse laptops seem like a good value. You can get one that has better specs than an ultrabook for $1000 less. But I don't really want those, as they're bulky, loud, burn your lap/desk and have 2 hours of battery life. I don't want a $300 piece of crap that isn't even x86-64. I think ultrabooks are what to get, even though they get costly really fast.Apple? I pretty much hate the company, but must admit they have quality laptops. HP consumer products are just trash. Dell seems pretty good. Surface book seems good, but it's overpriced. Would prefer to stay away from the generic lenovo/toshiba stuff as their build quality will probably will probably make my skin crawl after building high end watercooled desktops for 5 years.Recommendations please? Excuse my passive-aggressive tone. I'm pissed, as I've been trying for a week and failing to boot UEFI linux with my poor excuse of a motherboard from asus. So what do you have and what should I get? Don't care about price, but I must warn, I am extremely picky when it comes to computers.

author: Srbel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 07:29:00 am
content: I have old, shitty quality Toshiba Satellite A210-133. The mechanical quality is a disgrace. After opening it up for like 3 or so times, it is falling apart. Half of the plastic "things" that hold threads for screws to screw in have broken. Both screen folding cast metal brackets are broken (if you can call this pathetic excuse of a metal - a metal). Plastic is shitty quality, brakes off. It is held together by superglue now. For more than a year. Can not open it up any more...P.S. I run Ubuntu 12.04.x on it. Much, much better than any Windows bollocks.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 08:26:37 am
content: If you need a small, lightweight and portable computer, then a laptop is definitely the way to go, but a desktop PC is far better in almost every other way.

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 08:40:12 am
content: Desktops are nice but they aren't as useful as they used to be.Lenovo X201. Intel i5. 8Gb RAM. 512Gb Samsung 840 Pro SSD. 9 cell battery. Running windows 8.1 pro. Nice machines with proper keyboards and a trackpoint even if older than your average machine, impossible to break and I get 7 hours of battery life. Main thing is it's small enough to sling in my bag or in the shelf in my car. Have a car charger for it so I'm unlimited range really. This gets tethered to a Moto G3 via 4G when I'm on the road.I have spent literally bugger all on all of that. All came from eBay/Amazon. I think I paid 100GBP for the laptop and added the RAM, disk and bought a genuine second hand battery with 95% capacity. Phone was the only new bit and thst cost about 130GBP.This is just a dumb terminal really. I use it to SSH into my "desktop" which is a stacked HP DL380g8 server running CentOS 7. That and Google Apps is where the business takes place.Day job is solution architect for ref.Edit: just to add, I don't keep that X201 in a case; it lives in the back of the sofa and gets carried around loose in my bag. I knocked a glass of water in it and dropped it from the table and hand height onto hard surfaces several times and my toddler jumped on it. Just eats it every time. I bought a spare one in case I broke it and it has been in the cupboard for 2 years now. The headphone socket wore out on it and it was on a daughter board that cost me 6GBP to replace (eBay)

author: Monittosan
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 10:10:33 am
content: Lenovo X220 tablet my 2nd one with 250gb ssd and 8gb ram. Like above only a core i5 but pretty dam good in every other aspect.The Lcd is showing its age resolution wise!

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 10:20:32 am
content: Yeah display on mine is only 1280x800 but after going from two 20" displays to this, I find it's much better for the eyes and neck.I use tmux inside putty and chrome mainly and they are both tabbed interfaces so this isn't a major problem.I do have a docking station with a 17" TFT connected to it but I haven't used it for about a year now.

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 10:21:08 am
content: I only buy used Lenovo laptops.The one that I am using constantly is the W520They call it "W" for workstation and it really is a workhorseRunning CAD and EDA software on it is faster than on my real workstation.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 11:17:14 am
content: Lenovo X220. The last of it's kind. Managed to score one, which wasn't used at all. Only if it would have a slightly better screen.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 11:57:55 am
content: Quote from: rdl on January 27, 2016, 08:26:37 amthe OP said his PC is useless all this while, i'm not sure what he was doing. he certainly doesnt need features of a PC workhorse thats unavailable in laptop... if the keyboard screwed, everything screwed. same as monitor, display board, smps psu charger etc or at least you need to pay premium for a month service repair... newer technology means buy another one. limited memory/pci-ex slots, unable more than one SDD/HDD for separate data, ie if main OS physical HDD/SDD gone, the data in the other partition also gone.. not that serious if the data are only piles of selfies and few dso capture screen ready for eevblog upload.. laptop means danggling wires everywhere even for simple matters like multicard readers and DVD writers. most productivity tools like my bunches of printers here are Windows only, many danggling wires here if i dont manage properly behind my bench. i can go on and on but i dont think they will get it because they are truly generation X... for me... a 27" monitor, a full old qwerty keyboard and a WinXP is all it takes because i'm too old to remember another location for "Del, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down" to code quickly without looking...

author: _Andrew_
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 12:31:07 pm
content: For laptops for a while now I have been using Lenovo, generally reliable and have taken abuse to the point where bits are falling out but still going.You do have to watch out for the clandestine snooping lenovo have got in to trouble for. eg supper fish and bios that automatically calls on reinstalling lenovo's dodgy bits of software even with a clean install of the os.Since being cought with there pants down lenovo have released removal tools and new bios versions to address these isues but it is left to you to go and check as to whether your hardware is affected.I also use desktop systems too but these are ones I build up my self as I find that I can get more performance per £. I already have stock of the os and software licenseing I require so don't like paying for the bundled software that usually comes with a turn key system and never use.I do tend to avoid using AMD as I have had odd spurious problems with instability with software and hardware configurations that don't occure when using Intel baced systems. Never taken the time to dig in to why there is this difrence. At the end of the day I need it to work and don't have the time to mess about bug fixing what should just work.I no longer use nvidia chip sets / graphics cards in desk top systems. Every time I have they have failed, problems often with BGA's and bad caps.Dell once used to be good machines then after the Latitude D series they seemed to have dived off a cliff with cost, build and bazaar odd glitches.For OS I have one that runs Win 10 (not happy with 10 but better than 8.0, 8.1) but most systems I have run win 7.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 01:00:31 pm
content: My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 3520. I5 processor with 4 Gb ram. I don't know the hard drive size. Mostly used for EEVBlog reading and Netflix while winding down in bed at night. Also use it to program Handi-talkies for club members

author: AlxDroidDev
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 03:35:33 pm
content: Dell XPS 15 L502X.Core i7-2670QM, 16Gb RAM DDR3-1600 (Corsair), 2Gb NVidia GT 540M + Integrated Intel, 1920x1080 15" display.Originally it had a 1Tb HDD, 5400rpm, which has been upgraded to a 480Gb Intel 540Series SSD.It has a custom BIOS which allows me to tweak several aspects of the notebook - just to make it faster! I also stripped it and replaced all the original thermal paste (aka "white gunk") on it with Arctic Silver 5.From a fully off state to a completely loaded Win7 it takes no more than 14 seconds. It runs Win 7 x64 Ultimate, my own installation, and I don't plan on changing that. It has absolutely none of the original bloatware that came with it.I also use Kali Linux on it, but booted from a flash drive with persistent storage.I've had it for a few years, and its battery is already shot: it doesn't last more than 20 minutes anymore.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 04:07:24 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on January 27, 2016, 08:26:37 amExactly, totally agree.I have Acer V5-573G. 2kg weight, 2.5 cm thick, Full HD 15.4" IPS display. i5-4210U, GTX-850M GPU with 4GB of VRAM, 240 GB SSD and 1GB HDD hybrid HDD with SSD cache. Battery lasts about 6-7 hours if browsing internet. Pretty beefy for it's size and weight. Actually quiet decent for the gaming too.But basically I use it only when on trips, most of the other time it just collects the dust. You know, lurking on the tiny display sucks, I'll better use my main PC with two 30" monitors, mechanical keyboard, good soundcard and beefy speakers.Also I don't see a point in buying boat anchor gaming laptop which could compete with a desktop PC in performance when all desktop peripherals connected to it. Big and heavy so suck to carry it around, hot, loud and unjustifiably expensive.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 04:20:58 pm
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 05:02:10 amFirst of all, how old is your motherboard, model? Does it support uefi boot at all? Did you set the right settings in the bios?

author: Chalcogenide
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 05:11:55 pm
content: Toshiba U840 with i5 3317U, 8GB RAM and an Intel 520 240GB SSD. The laptop was sold as non working, yet the only problem is that the previous owner dropped it and the LVDS cable disconnected from the panel. Total cost, including an upgrade of the wireless card to an Intel AC 7260, was around 230€ 18 months ago.Apart from the mushy keyboard, the toshiba has served me very well. The touchpad does not suck...Funny note: The SSD came from the previous laptop, a "fantastic" second-hand Olivetti Olibook T14 (which I found out was actually a rebadged Tsinghua Tongfang U45F - ever heard of them before?) - a low build quality Macbook clone, which is now being used by my sister. I literally had to drill holes to help with ventilation and to replace the piss-ant 2.1mm power jack (with non-standard barrel length, nontheless) with a more robust standard 5.5mm one.The engineers did such a good job that WiFi antennas were right on the aluminum shell, killing the range, and they also forgot to bring the USB lines to the WiFi card, so bluetooth doesn't work. But this one was also dirt cheap: 300€ for an i5 3317U, 4GB RAM and including the aforementioned SSD, which cost well above 150€ at the time (2.5 years ago).

author: AlxDroidDev
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 05:15:17 pm
content: On a side note, I consider my notebook (specs on previous comment) to still be pretty high-end, but my desktop machine is a lot better. Like wraper wrote, nothing beats a huge monitor (27" Dell U1713H, in my case), nice keyboard and a gaming mouse (even for non-gaming stuff, gaming mouses still rule).I built my own desktop PC, because I can get a much higher spec than whatever Dell or any other manufacturer has to offer. As a part-time photographer, I need huge amounts of memory and a large, calibrated display. A notebook simply can't suffice for most photo editing work I do on my desktop machine.

author: NilByMouth
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 05:24:42 pm
content: A laptop is okay for convenience, but if you want to do anything serious a desktop is a must. At least with a desktop, you can upgrade piecemeal and not splash the cash in one go and it's much cheaper (usually) if something fails. It's also good for gaming, but then I'm not intelligent enough to know any better.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 05:39:06 pm
content: MacBook air 11" here. This is where I do electronic design (Eagle), 3D design (Open Scad), 3D slicing (simplify 3D), firmware (LPCExpresso, Arduino), logic analyzer (Saleae), laser cut design (inkspace), mobile app development (Android Studio), general software development (java, python, shell), serial terminal emulation (CoolTerm), general internet and docs, and connecting remotely to the office.Goes with everywhere. I also have a car charger for it I tether it to my phone for internet access. Life is good.

author: Mark
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 06:39:28 pm
content: Anyone using a surface pro 4?

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 07:52:22 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 27, 2016, 11:57:55 amWhat features? A laptop and desktop are the same thing, just different form factor. The only thing I can see a laptop suffer with is games, because they need to be run in real time. A decent laptop can run any engineering software or general programs. As I said, if you're encoding, rendering or compiling 24/7 get a xeon workstation, no point in putting so much heat stress on a laptop. You can easily get an ultrabook with an 8 threaded i7 and a mid range gpu. It costs more than an equivalent desktop, but it also doesn't weigh 50lbs and isn't glued to your desk.Quote from: wraper on January 27, 2016, 04:20:58 pmNew x99 system, every component obviously supports UEFI, as windows boots without CSM. I have tried every combination in the bios and every combination of creating bootable media. I boot off the USB stick and get to the menu to select the distro and it just freezes. I can boot with CSM enabled and secure boot disabled, but I shouldn't need to or want to, because it makes dual booting a pain. And even then I run into trouble. I'm not the only one with this problem. Others with a different motherboard run into the same issues. Asus has no idea how to design a working board. I've had 5 asus boards over the years, all with different and stupid problems.Quote from: Mark on January 27, 2016, 06:39:28 pmThe stand seems awkward. I'd be more concentrated on preventing it from falling off my lap than my work. Plus to use the keyboard, you need a fairly flat surface.The only desktop I would even consider would be a xeon workstation. The QC of non server/enterprise parts is awful. As long as it boots windows and runs league of legends then it's stable. Almost every part is designed and named for gaming. But maybe that's for the reasons I stated above. Running something and getting 10fps isn't usable. But waiting an extra minute for a processing job to complete is fine.

author: TheSteve
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 07:57:01 pm
content: Lenovo Helix - I rarely use it as a tablet though, I prefer a trackpoint and keyboard. Picked it up off of craigslist for a good deal.

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 08:42:06 pm
content: I am the other way. I haven't used a laptop for anything serious in years. It's not for lack of speed/power. It's more about peripherals and cost. For what I do, screen real estate is often more important than pure speed, and I do not have to travel for work.If I plug my laptop into an external monitor, I can't use the laptop as a keyboard/mouse, because the screen is in the way. And a laptop takes more space than a wireless keyboard... and it's not wireless.If I plug an external keyboard and monitor into the laptop, plus a USB hub and Ethernet cable and power cord, that's fine and all, but I will have to put this mess somewhere I can easily reach it --- i.e. it takes up bench space.When you hook up a computer and LEAVE it that way, you can hide it away. Small form factor computers can even be bolted to the back of a monitor by the VESA mounting holes.If the laptop is your entire system, then that's fine. If it's a chain in a bigger link using proprietary docking ports and other jazz, have fun relying on something that will be obsolete and unreplaceable in 2 years.

author: Thorondor
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 10:08:20 pm
content: I prefer Lenovos with the TrackPoint; I absolutely hate touchpads.I'm currently using a T440s; it's just about perfect for my portable needs (after I swapped out the stupid buttonless pad for one with physical buttons). For 'real' work, I still prefer a desktop.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 10:21:45 pm
content: I also use a laptop for work-a Dell Latitude E6420 with an I7-2760QM, 8 GB and 256 GB SSD drive. When I am working at home, it is docked with dual monitors, 2 printers and nicer speakers than the internals. When I have to fix equipment on site, it goes with me and I take care of business. It has been working fine for the past 5 years and probably will until IT decides to upgrade us-supposedly convertible laptops in a year or 2. I hope whatever they choose comes with a dock. The first laptop they assigned to us 12 years ago came with a dock and I have certainly been spoiled by it. I wish there was a proper dock for my personal Inspiron 3520. I would also use it for my dual monitor personal setup instead of the HP Z210 with dual video card. I know it isn't much of a computer but it was free-I asked for a desktop to set up as a test computer and this was sent uninventoried. I kept it for me and asked for another and received it. The heaviest work it does is rig control for my 2 HF Transceivers with an add on serial card.

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 10:33:47 pm
content: Nice to see that I'm not alone !As above... Lenovo X220T since early 20128GB, 250 SSD, WLAN + ultradock with 2x 26-inch and all the ports I need. (except physical PCI etc)- and in a pinch it's a convertible touchscreen tablet when I'm travelling.Home includes a NAS for sharing and extra storage. Trackpad AND little red wiggle-stick

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 11:04:44 pm
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 07:52:22 pmsee? all you see is games, and whats written on the pamphlet... thing is quite hard to explain, sort of you have to feel it to know it, none is written on papers. to give an idea, is when you need many things connected to your workstation... printers, stylus pen, wireless keyboard and mouse, a decent hi-fi system, big monitors etc (has been mentioned actually several times at the top). but i guess your requirement is small so a laptop may fit your bill... not to mention a highly customized and specialized system on the cheap, that i guess you are not very good at anyway...Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 07:52:22 pmtodays laptop may run everything that is installed in my current PC plus more at faster speed, but that is not the point...Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 07:52:22 pmtodays laptop may do that as well, its just a matter of comfort..Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 07:52:22 pmyeah but that is not the point. my current system is 4 cored and most of the time i only need one...Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 07:52:22 pmthe point of a PC is to be "glued" to a bench with other peripherals, so when you are ready for work, you can go there with everything ready... but maybe thats not you... its like one guy have a glued office on a land with everything inside, and another guy with his "moving office", that like to move everything everywhere, or just only a few to move... i guess you are the 2nd type...Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 07:52:22 pmi dont quite understand whats this UEFI thing, it just came to my attention few hours ago when i tried to clone my asus pc OS and SW to another my custom (clone) pc just to realize from google that the Win10 key number is stored encrypted in this UEFI thing. all i know is its a higher level bios that is programmable by OS, well thats dangerous! anything programmable by an OS is just as programmable by a virus! no? well, thats not my main point. my main point is i dont know what exactly the practical application of this UEFI thing, what i know is now my custom pc (probably non EUFI chip) is running Win10 32 or 64 bits with legit key number bought from somewhere last night. now they both the asus (EUFI'd bios boot chip) and the cloned pc are good to go, there are only 2 things to take care now. one is my smaller atom "mini-pc", and another one atom netbook for my kids and wifey. i'm reformatting them all... and my 2nd point is i remember installing a linux variant in another partition and boot switchable from windows partition. no EUFI, very old system. can run both, so i'm not sure what importance to your problem or how you did it and failed, i'm not generation X so i'm not sure. btw, the linux was long gone as it has no practical application for me. me Wingows boot only...Quote from: wraper on January 27, 2016, 04:20:58 pmits ironic to think how people made mistake from step #1 and keep doing it till step #5. and now came to the conclusion to what this thread is all about. i believe the wise suggestion would be.... Not-An-Asus laptop... if i am you, i prefer the answer Not-An-Asus-All-in-One-PC and i'll make custom carrying case for it along with full old qwerty layout and wireless mouse. any finger tap mouse, that square flat area at the bottom of the laptop's keyboard, deserve its place under the truck's tyre if its for serious work, but too many times i'm unable to do that because if i do, all the laptop will go along which at least can do some usefull task... here it goes, i'm too tyred from reformatting job, i need some sleep.. ymmv...

author: Muxr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 11:22:41 pm
content: Where do I begin:- My laptop is a Haswell i7 Mac Air, dual core 8Gb of RAM and 256 SSD. Used mainly for work travel and when I am not at my desk. The battery life is insane and two years later still going strong. 12+ hour battery last time I checked. Pretty overkill for anything I use it for, most of my work is done in an IDE and Terminal windows remotely which are both light.- My main workstation is a Mac Mini, quad core i7 (they don't make them in quad anymore): 256 SSD + 2TB external fusion drive, 16Gb of RAM. I prefer the workstation over a laptop because I never shut off my computer, and I like all the USB hubs and hard wire connections to stay connected. This thing is silent, uses very little power and very little space, which I need for all the test gear. I've had it for about 4 years now, probably the longest primary computer I ever had, the best computer I own. It's connected to a 30" HP high res monitor, and a light vertically mounted 27" IPS panel (AOC, I bought it because it was light for the swing arm). Little fun tidbit, the OS partition on it is probably 8 years old now. This was a time machine restore from my previous Mini, and I just kept upgrading without ever having to reinstall and start from scratch.- Then I have a collection of Wintel computers I've put together myself. An i7 4770k water cooled with a GTX 980 video card, 16Gb of RAM and 512 SSD for gaming. Which I power on maybe once every 6 months, to try out a new game as they come out. The older I get the less I game, but every once in awhile I get the urge so I have a gaming Windows machine just for that purpose. Not a fan of console controls.- I have a pair of Vmware ESX hosts, i7 quads with bunch of RAM and HDs for testing for work. I got bunch of Linux VMs running on them. This is unrelated to electronics, this is for my real job.- A little Intel Nuc, just a Linux server to help keep my network fast (dns resolver), it also blocks ads for anyone on my network. It's specced pretty modestly, was pretty cheap. I think it has like 4Gb of RAM and like a 128G mSata SSD disk.That's about it. There is probably another 3-4 decommissioned computers I haven't mentioned.I prefer OS X to just about any other OS. The main reason is keyboard shortcuts, for instance CMD-C, CMD-V (copy and paste) doesn't overlap with Terminal commands ctrl-c and ctrl-x. Just about anything on OS-X is CMD-<some key> so it's really easy to tab between aps and just navigate without ever using a mouse. The other reason is that it's Unix. Since I write software for Unix systems all the stuff runs natively on it. I used Linux as my primary Desktop OS for years, but OS-X is best of both worlds, a lot of the commercial software runs on OS-X plus you get all the goodies from the Linux ecosystem as well.With that said if you are into Electronics, Windows is probably still a king there. I purposely avoid tools which require Windows, but it's impossible to avoid them all. I still have to drop to Windows in a VM for FPGA programming for example. With mapped drives it's not a big deal.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2016, 11:42:53 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 27, 2016, 11:04:44 pmYou can connect all of those things to a laptop just as easily. Every printer in use today has wireless capability, and it performs very well, especially in a home environment with little interference. So does every stylus, keyboard, and mouse. You can get wireless speakers as well. Or you can just use your headphone jack or output the sound to an external dac using USB or HDMI. With thunderbolt currently at 40Gbps and doubling in bandwidth every generation, having multiple high resolution monitors connected to a laptop is a trivial task.Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 27, 2016, 11:04:44 pmPerformance per dollar is the biggest advantage of a desktop, and you say that's not the point? How do you compare the versatility of something you can pick up and go to a 50lb box with 10 wires attached to the wall.You highly exaggerate the amount of effort it takes to setup a laptop as a desktop. You need 1 cable for an external monitor, and 1 cable for your USB hub which houses your wireless dongles and everything else you need. I keep my current desktop on my desk, because even with filters, it sucks up all the dust on the floor. So if anything, a laptop would take less space in my room and on my bench. I agree a laptop would make little sense if you never have a need for a computer outside of your room, but I don't think that's the case for most people, especially students, where laptops are not only helpful, but sometimes required for classes.Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 27, 2016, 11:04:44 pmIf dual booting, it is ideal to not have to change your bios settings every time you want to use another OS. Some OS's perform better with some settings, and others do not even work on those settings. You can use a VM but that's beside the point.Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 27, 2016, 11:04:44 pmThere are a million different vendors for each component. When all the "enthusiasts" flock to one specific item, it's hard to not bandwagon when you haven't tested everything yourself.

author: Vgkid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 12:29:37 am
content: For me,a Dell Inspiron 1525. A computer i kind of regretted getting at first, but ended up really liking. The only reason i did not like it was no dedicated gpu. I came from only having a desktop( which i upgraded almost everything in it) to only using a laptop. My next laptop will be a used mobile workstation Precision/W-series from around 2011/12.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 12:58:38 am
content: Just a quick update, continue with the laptop discussionThrew this thing together in 2 minutes using some spare parts. The entire thing is smaller than the power supply...Booted Fedora on my first try, and every try after that, with every bios setting combination, including CSM disabled and secure boot enabled.Something this piece of garbage failed to do.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 01:19:25 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 28, 2016, 12:58:38 amI just wonder, are you crazy or what? First you blow away a lot of money on over-engineered x99 mobo, DDR4 RAM, CPU, 1kW PSU and water cooling, then say this thing sucks and you need a laptop.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 01:23:47 am
content: BTW is this Define R5 case? Looks very similar to mine.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 01:29:11 am
content: Quote from: wraper on January 28, 2016, 01:19:25 amLet's see you keep your sanity after trying to boot an OS for a week.Quote from: wraper on January 28, 2016, 01:23:47 amYes it is

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 01:33:40 am
content: Just bought a Dell Latitude E6230. Have a Dell Latitude D430 and a Dell Latitude C400 on the workbench.I will sometimes think I should build a nice desktop but realize for the same $300 I can just get another used/refurbished business grade laptop and use it for another decade so I can't seem to bother building a desktop.There is a quality difference between the Latitude and Inspiron lines so I don't bother withe the inspiron's any more.A Raspberry Pi and Pi2 are my internal and web server which sync all my important files across all three laptops and my phone and tablet.Whatever you do, don't ever waste the $ on an Apple product. No point in paying 4x the cost for lessor quality.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 01:44:32 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 28, 2016, 01:29:11 amAt least you have a workaround and also can partially change the hardware (motherboard). BTW GPU also might cause this issue. If it's BIOS is not UEFI compatible, motherboard most likely will start in legacy mode.If you are "lucky" to get with such incompatibility with a laptop basically all you can do is to replace a whole laptop.

author: encryptededdy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 01:49:24 am
content: A Latitude E7450. Prefer business laptops due to their quality and alsopointing stick!!!!!!(even though the Dell ones are not as good as the Lenovo ones).Only thing it lacks is a higher res screen... 1080p IPS is okay but I would like that new 2560x1440 OLED panel that lenovo is shipping... perhaps I will try to retrofit it.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 02:14:09 am
content: Quote from: wraper on January 28, 2016, 01:44:32 amThe culprit was indeed the GPU. I figured it out when I could boot using the igpu on my spare build, and also a spare 750ti. But when I tried with the 980ti, it failed.I tried the 750ti in the x99 and it booted with CSM disabled and secure boot enabled. I was also getting lag in the bios. Sometimes it was so much that it as unusable. The lag seems gone with the 750ti.How is a 980ti UEFI compatible with windows but not in the bios or any linux distro, wtf? I flashed a custom bios to the GPU a while ago, but have since reverted to the official one from gigabyte. Could this have screwed something up?This damn GPU has caused me so much pain. It's going out the window unless I can fix it somehow. GPUZ reports that the GPU is UEFI compatible.Maybe I can keep my desktop but also get a laptop. It was my original plan anyway

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 02:27:44 am
content: You can check by running GPU-Z, there is uefi checkbox shown near to the vbios version.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 02:41:26 am
content: Quote from: wraper on January 28, 2016, 02:27:44 amI already mentioned in my previous post that I checked that. It's the reason why I ignored the GPU. Any other suggestions?

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 02:45:34 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 28, 2016, 02:41:26 amTry some other bios from techpoweruphttps://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?architecture=&manufacturer=Gigabyte&model=GTX+980+Ti&interface=&memType=&memSize=

author: Selectech
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 04:01:54 am
content: Asus UX305CA { Skylake } with 8G ram, 256G SSD, Win10 X64.Love it. Light, no fans, long run time on bat.My 3rd Asus, still have the others as test machines, one is 4 yrs old, one is 6 years old. New one was a Christmas present.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 04:37:39 am
content: Quote from: wraper on January 28, 2016, 02:45:34 amTried both, plus the one on the gigabyte site, plus another custom bios from oc.net. But they're all based on the same official bios from gigabyte, except the older one which is a sample bios on techpowerup. None of them made any difference. If you google 980ti uefi, you will find a couple of threads, some with users with the same exact problem as me. The good news is that I've found the problem, bad news is that I doubt this is fixable. I don't even think a new card will help, unless it's from a manufacturer whose last firmware revision wasn't from half a year ago...Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 28, 2016, 03:46:50 amNa I didn't claim a pc is useless. I claimed desktops are useless, but to be more specific, my desktop is useless, as it currently can't properly boot linux with the main gpu in it. So unless I get it somehow fixed, your 8 year old pc > mine.If I'm going to keep my desktop, then I'll probably get something like a surface book. Specs are a bit low for the ridiculous price, but it doesn't really matter if you have a powerful desktop. Seems like good quality and good for note taking.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 04:47:03 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 28, 2016, 04:37:39 amas said i made a linux partition years back i dont know, maybe you expect too much out of your water cooled machine, well as other have suggested, you can get one more machine specialized for linux and keep your gaming desktoppeace, good luck...

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 10:03:32 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 28, 2016, 12:58:38 amFeel free to send it to me. I pay half the shipping.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 10:16:23 am
content: X220 - (for mobile use, not desktop substitute), with SSD, obviously.I previously had an IBM Thinkpad with a similar small form factor which took a hell of a beating over the years, so replaced it with a new X220.I really like the small size of the 12" form factor, the nice keyboard and IPS display.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 28, 2016, 06:10:59 pm
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 28, 2016, 04:37:39 amIf the PCB itself is a reference design, you could try BIOSes from another manufacturers. Though fan RPM very likely will be fucked up because tuned for particular cooler.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 05:31:02 am
content: Quote from: wraper on January 28, 2016, 06:10:59 pmThe problem was with linux... a common issue with everyone who has a new gpu and is using a new kernel.You have to add nomodeset in the grub boot config.Installed fedora with CSM disabled and secure mode enabled. Problem solved.

author: Srbel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 07:03:47 am
content: What brand of laptop offers the best quality nowadays? DELL?On the interweb, every site says different.All I know is, most of today's laptops fail really quickly (in like couple of years). Mostly due to cracked solder balls on GPU.

author: Srbel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 07:43:48 am
content: I am asking for my friend, actually. He can't afford expensive brands. I was asking about these "regular" brands (Toshiba, DELL, HP, Lenovo, Acer, MSI,...). Less than 500 euros price range.From what I see, they are all dodgy quality.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 08:00:50 am
content: I wouldn't say they're all dodgy quality on purpose. You can only do so much with $500. Lenovo has probably spent thousands of hours optimizing each system to save every penny. You get what you pay for.On the flip side, the surface book seems really high quality, but I don't understand why it's so damn expensive. $1500 for a 256gb i5, which is $400 more than the pro 4 with student discount.The chromebook pixel looks cool. But it's a grand and runs chrome OS... You can install Windows but the largest drive space you can buy is 64gb, which is ridiculous to put windows on.The new xps 15 looks like a good value for the specs. But what use is an 8 thread cpu and 960m when I have a 4.3GHz 12 thread and 980ti at home... I would rather have the versatility of the surface books. Looks real good to take notes on in tablet mode.

author: Srbel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 08:05:20 am
content: I wouldn't touch Lenovo. I know it has very bad thermal design. Same heatsink for CPU and GPU, but it only has contact with CPU. You have to place a copper plate between the GPU and heatsink to fix it.

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 08:37:57 am
content: Quote from: Srbel on January 29, 2016, 08:05:20 amWe've got a huge mix of Lenovo X201, X220, X230, T420, T440, X1 units (about 300) and zero problems in this department. ALL have integrated graphics and/or that thermal arrangement. The only problem we do get is blown up USB ports and user errors (mainly coffee incursion and losing them).

author: pickle9000
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 08:55:54 am
content: I have one silver one and two black ones. One of the black ones has yellow tape on it so I can tell it from the other black one.Does that help?

author: Kostas
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 09:21:16 am
content: Back in June I got a Lenovo G710 as a 17,3'' desktop replacement. Obviously not lightweight, but light enough for me. The 1600x900 resolution is rather odd, but looks fine. Having the i5 4210M means it's not very low power - efficient, but performance is very nice. It can be upgraded with an i7 if needed be. Came with 6GB of ram, 1TB hdd, dvd-r and a 820M gpu. I replaced the optical drive with a 250GB 850 evo ssd and it made an already good system awesome. I've upgraded to Windows 10, but I've reserved some space for a Linux installation, although I've been too lazy lately to do it.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 29, 2016, 02:59:33 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on January 29, 2016, 07:56:23 amCannot agree. There are expensive laptops with a shitty cooling (like apple) and cheap ones with good cooling. Mine 750 EUR acer with GTX 850M (summer 2014, good IPS LCD, actually this model started from about EUR 450, with even hotter GPU from previous gen and shitty display) does not overheat at all, and it's quiet. And this is because there are 2 fans and 2 heatsinks regardless of it being very thin

author: encryptededdy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 01:58:57 am
content: Quote from: Srbel on January 29, 2016, 07:03:47 amNo longer a problem afaik, the bad solder was due to bad lead-free solder used for attaching the BGA when they first switched to lead free solder. This is why many say you can fix laptops from that generation by sticking the motherboard in the oven. I believe nvidia was sued over this; but don't think this is a issue anymore.Quote from: blueskull on January 29, 2016, 07:19:44 amStudio is XPS: "XPS Studio", but I don't think they use that brand anymore.Latitude is their business line, XPS is high end Consumer, no idea what AW is (did you mean ATG?), Precision is workstation. Lower end consumer line is Inspiron.Perhaps you mean Inspiron cannot compete with XPS, Latitude or Precision?Yoga is IdeaPad; "Ideapad Yoga". Also the ThinkPad Yoga 14 is pretty bad, probably ThinkPad E tier (I mean, they sell them in Best Buy). The Yoga 12 is much better, as it's technically under the X series I think.I would imagine the new X1 Yoga is better.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 03:53:05 am
content: My main personal system is a Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 with an i7 processor. It was a reward from my employer for our department completing the process development at the maximum goal targets.My employer-provided work system is a Lenovo ThinkPad UltraBook with an i5. They had several systems to choose from, and I chose this one because it is compact and light-weight. They like for us to carry our work systems with us so we can securely VPN into the office. I have four 1920 monitors (plus the built-in screen) in my cubicle and a regular keyboard & mouse.I had a Surface 3 Pro (mainly for the Killer App "StaffPad") but I dropped it on a corner and it not only broke the glass screen, but also crunched the rather lightweight aluminum case. The thing is so remarkably integrated and glued together, I despair that it is not repairable.

author: jwm_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 04:55:48 am
content: I believe in the RAIL system, namely redundant array of inexpensive laptops. My actual main real computer is in a vault in new Orleans maintained by rackspace. I use laptops as ssh and x windows clients on laptops to talk to it but the laptops themselves don't have much on em. I can be up and running on a nrw one without loskng my place in as lomg as it takes to boot ubuntu from my usb key. I also have a desktop at home I use (via the same RAIL laptops) for some stuff, video processing, huge drives, that would be expensive for rackspace to host.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 06:04:32 am
content: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-yoga/wtf? OLED display coming soon? 2560x1440p + touch screen?vPro cpu. It's also thin and has a pcie ssd. This thing looks amazing.

author: encryptededdy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 08:13:52 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 30, 2016, 06:04:32 amYeah, the OLED screen should be really, really nice.Another nice thing is the stylus runs off a supercap and charges in 15 seconds (inside the laptop) for a few hours of use.

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 10:19:58 am
content: OLED screens have a limited lifespan so I wouldn't bother. Typically the different colour LEDs have different lifespans as well with green leds lasting much longer than blue so your display will slowly drift to an overall green tinge over time.YMMV but that is ~2-6 years of lifespan for the display depending on how much of the time it is on. Mine does about 14 hours a day so that's just over 4 years if it was an OLED. This laptop is 6 years old now so you can imagine the problems.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 09:34:12 pm
content: IBM T42 with SXGA+ 1400x1050 screen. 12 years on and still going strong...

author: encryptededdy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 12:29:06 am
content: Quote from: MrSlack on January 30, 2016, 10:19:58 amThat's certainly true, however I think this is alleviated somewhat since this is a Samsung AMOLED screen and, for their larger panels, they use a "S-Stripe" subpixel layout.The blue subpixels are larger to somewhat make up for their reduced lifespan.Unfortunately lifespan and burn-in certainly are still problems with OLED, however after owning a modern OLED Phone and seeing LG's OLED TVs in person, I can't get over how crappy blacks appear on any LCD screen... they all look like a horrible grey when put up against any OLED panel.The other nice thing is that most OLED screens dim without PWM down to a point, and then after that use very high frequency PWM, whereas most laptop screens I've encountered so far use fairly low frequency PWM, which certainly annoys some people I know (personally I'm not sensitive to the PWM backlight, but I know many who are).Finally most OLED screens I've encountered go much dimmer than LCDs, which is nice when working at night.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 06:20:04 am
content: Quote from: encryptededdy on January 31, 2016, 12:29:06 amfrom the picture you posted, if you are talking about larger area, i cant agree. but if you are talking about larger longest dimension then its ok... for computer monitor, to compensate for reduced color lifespan, buy monitor calibrator. but for tv, if you are not happy anymore, buy another one. but its ok with me, what is not ok is if i have to buy another one, knowing the other components like mobo, gpu etc where the cost is mostly at are still working fine. and esp when you have an option to buy and customize separately.btw, if this OLED is the newer generation like my Samsung LED monitor here, then i'm not so happy, i prefer the older LCD technology and to stretch far back, i remember i still prefer CRT monitor better. the newer LED monitor has a strange color shift from yellow to blue if you move viewing angle from top to bottom which is not present in LCD. and to strecth far back, LCD has a strange contrast or brightness shift compared to CRT. CRT is the most perfect color viewing monitor from any angles, except large and heavy.. AFAIK... i trust to myself that if the present market still produce 23-30" computer CRT monitor, i'll sure buy it and will provide space for that perfect color monitor...

author: rickselectricalprojects
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 08:23:53 am
content: Both my home and school laptops are made by HP. They both have decent performance but the build quality isn't the best.

author: diyaudio
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 09:42:22 am
content: MSI GT70, Gaming Laptop.. (played games 4 years ago )Needs a battery though and the dam thing weighs a ton... 38 Kg, its powerful enough though. battery life 3-hrs.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 09:47:06 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 30, 2016, 06:04:32 amAnd awful keyboard, no keyboard back lighting or thinklight, no rollcage, bad trackpoint, no dock connector, no dedicated buttons for volume, switch for wifi.That is the issue with new thinkpads. They are: Woo shiny!

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 09:49:25 am
content: ThinkLight is awesome.That and the yellow USB port is a charge port even when the unit is turned off.

author: TinkerFan
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 11:02:32 am
content: I've got a HP EliteBook, 2540p, which I'd say is really good, although useless for gaming (some intel on-chip graphics). It has an i7 quad core in it with 4GB RAM standart, but I upgraded to 8. It is quite small, but thick and relatively heavy.CAD and that sort of stuff works great, but the laptop has a very small HDD (170GB), which really sucks....

author: kaz911
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 12:05:37 pm
content: Quote from: Srbel on January 29, 2016, 07:03:47 amApple Macbook Pro - or Lenovo ThinkPad has the best build quality. My MBP is a Late 2013 and it is good - better than my previous MBP 17" in board quality and have not had any issues with it. My ThinkPads are solid- the one I use currently is the W540 - and apart from Lenovo's experimental crappy trackpad "buttons" - it is a workhorse once you remove bloat ware. The W550 went back to normal Trackpad but sacrificed on performance - so won't upgrade to that.But I do miss my 17" ThinkPad and 17" MBP - no longer madeBut ThinkPad quality is slowly declining compared to the olden golden days. But still better IMHO than Dell/Alienware, HP and others. But with Lenovo you get real service manuals - something you do not get with most other notebooks. And parts are still "relatively" cheap. So anything from changing display panel to putting in a UK/US/DK keyboard - where many others it is impossible to change anything.And I do love my little red thingy (known by many naughty names) in the middle of the keyboard. I would not consider any notebook (apart from MBP) without it.

author: kleblanc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 02:55:59 pm
content: I prefer the Dell and Lenovo business laptops. They are generally designed for end user upgrades without having to take everything apart like my Lenovo Yoga 3. I am at an impasse between the Flex 3 and Dell E7240. The Yoga has a QHD that has scaling issues with Windows and the Dell is a 720 screen. Looking to get rid of both and find a 13"ish laptop with 1080 anti glare IPS.My go to machine for field service is a Surface 3. Not the greatest or fastest. Better than a cellphone and charges off of micro usb, my spare battery is an Anker portable that I also use on my phone. With the type cover and a "rugged" case it's about the size of a 3 subject notebook plus the Bluetooth travel mouse. The pen is great for notes and marking up drawings, other than that I rarely use the touchscreen.Not an EE, just a calibration/field service technician.Desktop is just an consumer HP i5 with a 1TB SSD.

author: encryptededdy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 02:04:52 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 31, 2016, 06:20:04 amOLED should produce near-perfect viewing angles.As for the contrast/brightness shift on your monitor, it's likely that your monitor is just using a cheaper TN panel. Have you tried a higher end LCD monitor with a IPS / PLS / AHVA panel? They're not that expensive if you know what to look for, and they will give you very good viewing angles.Quote from: NANDBlog on January 31, 2016, 09:47:06 amIt has a keyboard backlight and a dock connector (on the side, "OneLink+")I haven't used the X1 Yoga keyboard personally but imho the new Thinkpad keyboard is better than the old (Sandy Bridge and earlier) ones except for Layout.Quote from: kaz911 on January 31, 2016, 12:05:37 pmThere is no W550, only a W550s. The new high power 15" mobile workstation is the P50. There's also a 17" Workstation ThinkPad now, the P70.Both have proper TrackPoint and trackpad dedicated buttons back. Also Intel's new Skylake mobile Xeon E3s (so ECC RAM in a laptop that's not a huge Sager, finally).Also take a look at the Dell Precision 7510 and 7710 for mobile workstations.

author: reagle
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 03:11:28 am
content: All my machines are used Thinkpads. They are very reasonable on fleebay once a few years old and parts are aplenty.Main laptop is an oldish Thinkpad X200 (circa 2010), while an even crustier Thinkpad X31 (2004) runs things like serial terminal etc.These things just keep on goingAnd if not- easy to fix. I may look for an X230 one of these days. These are all slim/light/single drive machinesIf you need a more powerfull thing- T420+ or W5xx series are a good choice.P.S I do use a desktop for coding/boards design and some gaming.

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 04:49:43 pm
content: It's Thinkpads all the way down for me; 770Z, 600E, 600X, X32, T42p, T43p, X60, X200t, X200s... Next in line will be an X201s, then maybe the X220 - beyond whichdespair and misery looms.Best keyboards ever.Trackpoint.Thinklight.Matte screens..Supremely serviceable.Great docking stations.Being in the same club asNASA,and other serious types.Not being in the same club asclueless hipsters.Starless and business black.

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 06:08:34 pm
content: I'm making my X201 last forever or retiring. That's the only path to non misery.

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 06:33:01 pm
content: One little party trick you can try if you're lucky enough to have an X series Thinkpad is to turn it over and carry it by the lid while still open. Not only won't the screen crack - there isn't even any flex, and the much heavier base is easily supported by the hinges. I would not recommend you try this with any other laptop - and of course will not be held responsible if doing so with a Thinkpad causes damage either... But these machines really are something else. It's just sad that there's no market for them any more - truly something to enjoy while it lasts.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 06:47:36 pm
content: Always Dell from their 'for business' section.

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 06:53:16 pm
content: Also

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 06:59:18 pm
content: Moar

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 07:14:32 pm
content: Random page from the Hardware Maintenance Manual for the X200 series - they even show you which way to turn the screwsEdit:Yes, page 104. The HMM for the X200 is 280 pages long! Suck on that Apple, with yourzeropages of hardware documentation

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 07:24:15 pm
content: The HMMs are amazing. Also the little known video service tutorials (x220 demonstrated here):https://www.lenovoservicetraining.com/showcase?sid=623&key=TGVuZw==Also you can dismantle and reassemble the entire thing with just a swiss army knife with a philips driver on it!

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 07:44:16 pm
content: Quote from: MrSlack on February 01, 2016, 07:24:15 pmOh nice, I didn't know about this!Quote from: MrSlack on February 01, 2016, 07:24:15 pmAnd the single(!) screw that retains the (externally accessible) harddrive has a coin-friendly slot width - they are the only laptops I know of where you don't needanytool to swap the harddrive.Edit:I realise this has turned into a bit of a Thinkpad wankfest. Sorry! Will stop now and allow the less fortunate to confess

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 08:04:23 pm
content: Ok, ok, ok, just one more thing @MrSlack @reagle @kaz911 and the other Think-fans here - did you see Errol Morris'documentaryhalf-hour long advert for IBM?Pretty excellent stuff, as can be expected of Morris, and a Philip Glass soundtrack always helps!

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 09:12:35 pm
content: Never seen that - thanks for posting!Nothing wrong with a ThinkPad wankfest. Need something to balance the Apple ones.Ironically my evening is repairing my wife's 2011 MBP which is overheating (again). At least there's no glue in that one.

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 09:50:00 pm
content: I dunno if you saw the image I linked to earlier, but here's a Thinkpad that has suffered a little "overheating", from external causes:Still going I see.My office got badly flooded once (leaking roof), and I had left my T43p open and in standby mode my desk - which turned out to be directly under where the water came in. When I got there the next day the laptop was completely waterlogged, absolutelydrenched, and although I took some basic steps to try and rescue it (battery & HDD out, keyboard off, placed sideways on top of a gently warm radiator) I fully expected it to be deader than a dead thing. I left it like that for a few days, plugged the bits back in, and it booted straight up like nothing had happened. All keys working too, That's after spending 12+ hours virtually submerged in a pool of water. Still works perfectly today, three years later. The LCD monitor and keyboard that were also on my desk were both write-offs. I dunno how they've designed the membranes for the Thinkpad keyboards, but they handle liquid spills amazingly well - usually a membrane keyboard is completely destroyed by even minor spills; the liquid seeps between the layers and corrodes the contacts, sometimes eating up the thin deposited traces too. The only way to save them is immediate disassembly, cleaning and drying the membranes one by one, which is a fairly labour intensive (and boring!) undertaking.

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2016, 10:10:19 pm
content: They're pretty water resistant. I carried my X201 in a Karrimor Sabre bag which I incorrectly assumed was waterproof. Had condensation ask over it but was fine. Poured orange squash in it too. Plus I have three kids who like to get and kill everything. Amazing devices.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2016, 12:33:54 am
content: Well if quality has been declining since the 201/220 then I don't see a point in waiting for the x260 skylake update.I was going to get a surface book, but it feels like pissing away money. The XPS 15 seems like a better deal in terms of specs. Quad core vs a dual core with HT, higher resolution screen, USB C, gtx 960m, all for the same price. But at the same time it's heavier, and battery life should be worse from the higher tdp components alone. Feels like a desktop replacement laptop, which I don't really want.

author: blackbird
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2016, 01:17:57 pm
content: My primary laptop is aThinkpad T420s. It is small enough to carry around (mostly between home and uni) and big enough to work comfortably at.I use Ubuntu Gnome (currently 15.10) with Window$7 and Solaris 10 & 11 in a Vbox. I use W7 only when I absolutely need to (like fpga synthesis via Altium because I need to for study).My T420s has an Intel i7-2620M on board with (currently) 8Gb of RAM, 256Gb SSD and 750Gb HDD. It also includes an extra videocard (Nvidia NVS4200M).The laptop is primarily used to view EEVblog video's, beside this, I also use it for my study, usually (embedded) software development and documentation.It is my first Thinkpad but it will be not my last. I like the quality, its robustness (albeit not a ruggedised laptop) and the speed (for what I need).

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2016, 02:58:52 pm
content: My Thinkpad W520 is my main workhorse.It has two graphics modules installed, and depending on what software you run, it automatically adapts.One other great thing with ThinkPads are the docking stations.I have a few of them and leave them an my clients place with an extra screenAnd when I arrive at a customer, I arrive with my own notebook and just set it on the docking stationNothing to hook up and always works perfectly.I have so much good experience with the high end T and W series of the Thinkpad's I would not even look for another brand.

author: Tom45
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2016, 03:23:03 pm
content: Just to pile on, I've been using Thinkpads since the 701c butterfly.Current one is a W550s with the 3K display.Before that I had a T61p for many years. Would have upgraded sooner, but Lenovo was in their unloved "Clackpad" keyboard phase so I just waited. When they finally announced that the buttons were back, I jumped on a new W550s.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 02, 2016, 04:05:44 pm
content: MacBook Pro Retina 15".Thin and light compared to similar machines in its range, and good enough flexibility to go from 6-8 hours run time on light loads (web browsing) to full on power that will drain the battery in 1.5h but deliver the punch when needed.But that's of course complemented by a nice high end self-assembled desktop and 40" 4K screen. I've used the MBP with external screen and peripherals, it runs well but still far from the same level of comfort/responsivity.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2016, 04:35:10 pm
content: Quote from: Armxnian on February 02, 2016, 12:33:54 amIt's not like they are actually making a difference with the newer X200 series. They recieve the mandatory CPU update and the look and feel downgrade. Really there is no point to upgrade from a x220. I guess they realised that they shot themselves in the foot, making something that will last a decade performance and quality wise.And now every company tosses away laptops after the 4 year tax and warranty period. So why build something that lasts?

author: ryanscott6
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2016, 05:16:40 pm
content: I have a Lenovo Yoga 12. It's pretty nice but I'd like something a bit bigger. I'm a big fan of the Yoga design since you can flip the screen around. I don't use it in tablet mode often but it's really nice when you need it.

author: nazcalines
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2016, 12:54:12 am
content: 2008 macbook going strong here. Maxed out ram and and an SSD. Main apps are Eagle and gcc for ARM dev. Also use inkscape for enclosure layout/graphics and Octave. Battery only lasts an hour, but once that's replaced it should be good for another 2-3 years.

author: bills
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2016, 01:22:29 am
content: Lenovo G770 6gb ram,1tb hd,win10, 2.4ghzx2old but works well

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 06, 2016, 02:03:25 pm
content: I have a Macintosh PowerBook G3 (Lombard) with a 333MHz G3 Processor, running MacOS 9.2. Might put Linux on it at some point to complement MacOS.I also have a rather nice Toshiba Libretto 100CT running Windows 95.I do ponder getting an IBM ThinkPad at some point to add to my computer collection.

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 06, 2016, 04:21:16 pm
content: Quote from: steve30 on February 06, 2016, 02:03:25 pmConsidering the impressive vintage of your other devices (I always wanted a Libretto!), may I suggest theThinkpad 600Xas a fitting candidate?

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 07, 2016, 03:32:50 pm
content: Quote from: Lomax on February 06, 2016, 04:21:16 pmOoh, looks nice.

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2016, 04:09:59 am
content: Quote from: steve30 on February 07, 2016, 03:32:50 pmIt's my impression that the 600X is the model that would get the most votes in a "greatest Thinkpad ever made" poll (though the 701C, with its innovative "butterfly keyboard" is a serious contender). Having owned and used (up) a great number of different Thinkpads, the 600X would get my vote at least. The fact that they were made by IBM, who treated their workers with some measure of dignity, at a time when the floodgates to products made by slave labour had already been thrown wide open, only adds to the magic. The build quality lives up to its £2000 (not adjusted for inflation) price tag - if anything it feels like it must have cost even more; the mechanics are almost surreal, like some priceless gadget from a nuclear power station or a space ship. It also manages to get the size just right; at 13.3" it's wide enough to fit a full-size keyboard (and boy, what a keyboard!). and have enough room for an optical drive, and it'sjustlight enough at 2.3kg to remain transportable. Of course, the technical specifications are woeful by today's standards - a 650MHz PIII, a maximum of 576Mb RAM, just 4Mb graphics RAM, USB 1.1, PATA HDD interface, no HDMI or even DVI output, no built-in LAN or WiFi - but with a slim Windows 2000 installation (or some lightweight Linux distro) plus Firefox and VLC (and a network card of some sort) it would still be quite usable for 90% of the things I do on my laptop today. Which is quite remarkable, when you think about it.Edit: It does have an internal Mini-PCI slot, which can be used to add a LAN or WiFi interface (maybe even an SSD?), as well as two CardBus slots. It is also possible to upgrade the (socketed) CPU, to a maximum of 850MHz, though these are extremely rare and hard to find.

author: kaz911
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2016, 08:51:48 am
content: Quote from: encryptededdy on February 01, 2016, 02:04:52 amOhh - thanks for correcting me - I had not spotted that their new workstations are P models - I had just checked the W (workstation) page and nothing there but the W550 (s) - Now I have put a P70 on the wish listbut my god you have to save a lot to afford it!/Kasper

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2016, 09:39:12 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 05:02:10 amThere's one huge disadvantage to laptops that often gets ignored (and I don't think anyone's mentioned it here yet): ergonomics. Working at a laptop is just nightmarishly bad for your neck and hands. As someone with significant repetitive strain injury (and high susceptibility for it), I have sworn off laptops. (I have one for travel and the occasional sofa browse, but it's rarely used now.) A desktop system (as in, on a desk, not the form factor of the computer itself) on an adjustable height desk, with the display on a monitor arm, does wonders in preventing RSI problems. If you need the portability as well, then you can do as others have suggested and have all the desktop peripherals connected via a USB or Thunderbolt umbilical, making untethering easy.Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 05:02:10 amThis has been the case for something like 10 years (and on the Mac side, since 1998, other than a break during the lousy G4 era).Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 05:02:10 amUnfortunately, if you're gonna run Linux, you're gonna run into more problems with regards to choosing hardware.Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 05:02:10 amRecent Apple laptops have, as others have stated, AMAZING battery life. But mind you, this is only when running OS X. If you run Windows or Linux on it, you will sacrifice something like 20% of the battery life. The new Force Touch trackpad is also amazing, but again, also functions only in OS X. If the things you do can be easily migrated to OS X (which is usually the case for people running Linux as their desktop OS), you might find it to be a mighty fine platform to work on, since it's got a true UNIX on the inside, with a great UI, broad selection of open-source software, broad selection of commercial third-party software and accessories, and tight hardware integration.They are not, however, as mechanically robust as a Lenovo. It's been a looooong time since Apple made a laptop that survives being driven over by an SUV without a crack!Quote from: Armxnian on January 27, 2016, 05:02:10 amWell, it's easier to recommend something if you actually said more about your needs -- what it's to be used for, etc.That said, if you're gonna go with a PC laptop, go with a Lenovo. I don't think there's a better built laptop on the market, period. (I live in Switzerland, in a city known for banking. Swiss banks tend to lavish pretty much endless amounts of money on IT, and I think it says something that here, they all buy Lenovo. Similarly, the insurance companies, whose entire business is quantifying risk, seem to all use Lenovo as well.)Quote from: Muxr on January 27, 2016, 11:22:41 pmCouldn't agree more. The Mac has evolved from the eccentric enthusiast's platform it was in the 1990s, to one that's now in many ways found the best of both worlds, in that you have the entire OSS ecosystem, plus commercial software (MS Office, Adobe, Autocad, etc.), and VMs for everything else, all with a good OS, on great hardware, with great support. I know a ton of developers who abandoned Linux as their desktop OS for the Mac, because it really can run everything, and runs it well. They were tired of having to choose between great OSS IDEs (and the UNIX environment) OR having a good desktop UI with the commercial apps they needed (e.g. Outlook for corporate communication). (Cuz let's face it, while OSS has made great strides in applications, most are still miles away from their commercial counterparts. LibreOffice doesn't come close to MS Office in functionality or usability. The Gimp is light-years away from being a professional Photoshop replacement. Etc etc etc.)

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 10, 2016, 06:12:21 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on February 08, 2016, 09:39:12 amWhile I agree that The Gimp is nothing short ofan embarrassment, there are many FOSS programs I count as leaders in their category. For one thing I think LibreOffice ismilesbetter than MS Office; faster, easier to use, and less cluttered (though admittedly this may be because I do not have any need for the tight integration with other MS products that MS Office offers). Further examples where I would choose a FOSS equivalent over paid for/closed source applications includeFirefox(web browser)Inkscape(vector graphics editing)Tox(secure instant messaging & voice/video chat)Evolution(personal information manager)Blender(3D modelling, animation and rendering)LibreCAD(basic 2D CAD)Scribus(desktop publishing)KeepassX(password management)Qalculate!(advanced calculator)Grsync(rsync file synchronisation GUI)VLC(media player)Regexxer(multi-file search & replace tool)Wikipedia(encyclopedia)SailfishOS(mobile device operating system)Those are just some of the FOSS tools & applications that I would find it very hard to live without. I'm not saying these are always better or more feature complete than the paid for alternatives, but they are certainly good enough for my needs, and offer plenty of polish and user friendliness. In many cases a smaller set of features is actually abenefit; less is more and all that. Ultimately, I think a lot of the time when people say things like "most are still miles away from their commercial counterparts" it's just borne out of ignorance of what's out there - and the FOSS community is not very good at marketing itself.Edit:Paid for/closed source software that I could not live without:Adobe Photoshop (bitmap/photo editor)Sublime Text (text editor on steroids)

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 10, 2016, 08:55:29 pm
content: Quote from: Lomax on February 10, 2016, 06:12:21 pmwhy dont live with GIMP?-blender with 3d studio max or inventors or solidworks or autocad?-inkscape vs coreldraw?-libreoffice vs ms office?if you have tried them all, i bet its the commercial packages that you cant live without... to some extent, i've tried gimp and blender, i dont see much reason to continue using them... not to mention the close to nonexistent documentation...

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 10, 2016, 09:28:32 pm
content: If all you need is basic graphics editing, then GIMP is a bloated, overly complex, and a confusing mess. I still use PSP 4.0 which I bought back in the 90s, runs fine on Win 7 and can open, edit and save almost every possible format. I also use LibreOffice and have since the OpenOffice days. It totally destroys MS Office because of one thing, no ribbon.Some other useful free programs (I have no idea as to open source because I don't really care).TrueCryptFreeFileSyncEraserSumatraPDFNotepad ++Handbrake

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 05:04:46 am
content: As someone who has done a ton of professional technical writing and translation, I can say that LibreOffice Writer doesn't come close to having Word's functionality. Writer is fine for simple documents (regardless of length), but it lacks all sorts of things that I find crucial as a writer, both in terms of formatting options, but also in how it doesn't help you automate formatting (e.g. with capable style sheets), and its change tracking is just laughably bad. If I had to do professional writing work in Writer (or Google docs, for that matter) I think i'd kill myself.As someone who worked in customer/tech support at a software company that made an application that integrated with both Word and Writer, I can also say that Writer is a buggy, inadequately tested piece of crap from a technical standpoint. Its documented APIs simply didn't work at all. Or if they did work, their behavior would change dramatically in some little point update. In contrast, Word's APIs work beautifully and reliably. In the end we had to remove features from our Writer integration because we could not make it work reliably, and the nonexistent or incorrect API documentation made it too time consuming for the developers to investigate. In the version of the application released after I left the company, Word got an entire add-on to allow real-time integration. They didn't even attempt it for Writer, that's how hopeless it was.I'm not saying Word is flawless, it's not. But it's far, far, far better than Writer.As for usability: the people who like Writer better are the ones who simply don't like the Ribbon. Writer's original UI was basically a (bad) clone of Word 97. Very recently, they made their own Ribbon-like UI, which I confess I have never bothered to try out since I don't use Writer. Microsoft invested a fortune in usability research for the Ribbon, and in actual user testing, it does really well, no matter what some people insist. Microsoft has published a great deal of information on the creation of the Ribbon as well as the specs of the end result; it's fascinating. I highly recommend looking into it for anyone with an interest in UX.

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 08:21:12 am
content: Quote from: tooki on February 11, 2016, 05:04:46 amIt's funny you should say that, because I very recently completed a ~50 page technical user manual in LibreOffice, with lots of tables, illustrations, etc. LO handled things likechapter indexing,keyword indexing(including the use of a concordance file),change tracking,external data linking,styling and formattingwith remarkable ease. I was able to perform all the tasks typically associated with the creation of a technical manual without running into any issues, and I was extremely pleased with the polished results. It may be that your needs are more advanced, but LO Writer is more than good enough for my needs. I cannot escape the suspicion that you are making assumptions about limitations that are either not present, or have been overcome since you last used it.Edit:Here is a feature comparison with MS Word 2016.

author: Muxr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 08:40:55 am
content: Quote from: Lomax on February 11, 2016, 08:21:12 amLibre Office is great unless you have to collaborate with other people who use Word. Formating gets out of hand very quickly when multiple people edit a document using different programs.

author: Lomax
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 08:41:40 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on February 10, 2016, 08:55:29 pmI use Gimp daily, but it sucks rotten eggs. Worst UI/UX of any desktop application in the history of software. No really. Which is a tragedy, since underneath it's shitty exterior lies a very capable image editing engine.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 09:03:28 am
content: Quote from: rdl on February 10, 2016, 09:28:32 pmi know i'm also the one who dont like ribbon, but i dont care ribbon crap or not as long as it functionally robust...

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 09:21:37 am
content: if we are talking merely photochopped chicken on a dinner plate then, just FOSS can do the job fine...

author: Muxr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 09:57:54 am
content: UI based software is a 2nd rate citizen on FOSS platforms. Not a lot of people write or care about UI apps on Unix (and Unix-like systems like Linux).QuoteThat's Unix philosophy. And I wouldn't have it any other way. This is also one of the reasons I prefer OS X for desktop because you get the best of both worlds. Native Unix support as well as commercial support of the big GUI apps.There are always exceptions of course. Chromium and Firefox, Eclipse, Atom, KiCad (lacks polish though) to name a few are all FOSS apps that beat their commercial counterparts.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 01:49:24 pm
content: Aaaargh, I'd written a nice detailed response and an errant mouse click made it all go away. (Curse you, websites that don't use AJAX to silently save your draft as you type!)Let's see how much I can reproduce without causing my RSI to flare up:Quote from: Lomax on February 11, 2016, 08:21:12 amI didn't say it was useless. It's just not as good. And there's no question that some things have been improved since the last time I tested it. But most of my complaints remain entirely unaddressed.I'll be the first to admit, proudly, that I'm a very discerning, demanding user. Microsoft has managed to deliver a professional level program that meets my needs almost all of the time. LO reminds me of using ClarisWorks in the 1990s, which was awesome for middle school work, but would be woefully inadequate for my professional needs now.I just reinstalled the latest LO to make sure I'm not talking out of my ass. The user interface is still a wreck, mostly a poor knockoff of Word 97. (I'm a trained UX designer and technical writer, so both the lousy choice and implementation of many UI elements, and the terrible wording of the UI text, both stand out to me like sore thumbs.)Change tracking is still laughably primitive. It's now caught up with about the level of Word 97. It has only an annoying dialog to show a list of all changes, and even that is very barebones. (Word is much better at showingwhatwas changed andhow, not justthatit was changed.) At least it now can track changes within a table -- a few years ago, it handled the entire table as a monolithic inline image of sorts, and would only show you thatsomethingin the table had been changed, but notwhat!Writer still lacks a great many automation features that Word has, which either save time right away, or correct poor formatting to good (for example, converting a tab added after-the-fact to the beginning of a line into a proper indent, thus convertingdisplaymarkup intosemanticmarkup -- a huge win for document consistency). Nothing this automation does cannot be done manually in Writer, but most users don't know anything about that, and so will do crazy things like number all their paragraph headings by hand. Word helps by turning what you actuallydidinto what youintended. (And if it guesses wrong, a simple Ctrl+Z reverts it and leaves it as entered.)Also, on Windows (but not Mac, sadly) Word can autodetect the language of a sentence, which is very handy for multilingual documents. (In Writer or on Word for Mac, you must manually assign a language to a span of text.)But I think my real point was this: LibreOffice is often paraded out as an example of how great OSS desktop apps can be. Yet frankly, it's not that great. If that's thebest, what's theaverage?!?Quote from: Lomax on February 11, 2016, 08:21:12 amThat's a laughably bad comparison, in that it doesn't actually really list many features. Totally useless.Quote from: Muxr on February 11, 2016, 08:40:55 amIndeed, formatting can suffer tremendously when going round-trip between programs. One problem I've seen is that out of habit, lots of users continue using the .doc format to go between Word and Writer, even though it's arguably theworstformat for that. ODT and DOTX both fare far better. But ultimately, even if both programs can parse the file formats perfectly, it's intrinsically impossible for the document representation to be 100% faithful all of the time unless you faithfully and flawlessly reproduceevery single feature, behavior, and bugof the program whose file you're opening.For example, did you know that an Excel spreadsheet internally uses one of two different date formats? One, the one for files originally created on a Mac, uses the January 1, 1904 epoch. The other is for files originally created on a PC, which use the January 0, 1900 epoch. Yes, January 0, because of a bug in Lotus 1-2-3's date handling. When Excel was first released, Lotus was the dominant spreadsheet, so Microsoft had to recreate that buggy routine to preserve file compatibility. This post is a fantastic read on the subject of file compatibility:http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.htmlThe only way to not have formatting degradation is to use a lowest-common-denominator format and never attempt to use a feature that exceeds that. But neither Word nor Writer has some mode to limit you only to the LCD.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2016, 11:10:27 pm
content: After having to use MSExcel on $work$ computer I'm very happy with LibreOffice at home. I've lost track of the number of times Excel has crashed and totally corrupted my spreadsheet.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2016, 01:01:32 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on February 11, 2016, 10:58:17 pmThis goes right at my point about the adulation over OSS apps like Gimp: They are regularly compared (favorably) to commercial counterparts, but by home users with minimal needs. For them, the free OSS apps are absolutely sufficient.What they totally forget or ignore is that Photoshop isn't designed for home users, it's designed for graphic design professionals whose needs are significantly more advanced, and for whom any inefficiency that slows them down adds up to significant lost income in the long run. Not to mention that since it's an industry standard, everyone in the industry expects Photoshop files.My entire career, I've worked closely with graphic designers (both print and web), and what they do in Photoshop, no other program can do. Not even close. There are various specialized apps that can do some aspect of Photoshop's functionality the same or better, but nothing integrates them into one universal tool. In particular, the print side of things is woefully absent in Gimp. (Even just "rudimentary support" for CMYK requires plugins.)Photoshop does not have any meaningful competition atanyprice. Many software companies have tried, but none has succeeded. At this point, it's almost impossible for anyone to do that, since Adobe has a 25 year head start over any newcomer. (That Adobe has a de-facto monopoly on professional graphic design software is a sad state of affairs. I've come to hate Adobe as a company, but their products are solid. Or at least they were… ever since they became a monopoly, their QA has been neglected, as has customer friendliness.)

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2016, 01:08:14 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on February 11, 2016, 11:10:27 pmHere's something I've wondered about (and do not have an answer to): Many people, like you, talk about Office being buggy, crashy, causing lost work, etc. I don't have any reason to doubt that that has been your experience. Yet nonetheless, that cannot be so widespread as to be a universal problem, because if it were, companies would have ditched it ages ago, since downtime = lost income. So why is it so buggy for some people, yet not for most??When I worked at a software company a couple of years ago — the only job I've ever had where I had to use a Windows PC instead of a Mac — my PC had seemingly 10x as many troubles as anyone else's. I swear Windows could tell I don't like it and exacted revenge on me!(A less mystical explanation might be that I'm far more versed in Mac troubleshooting than Windows, but even the PC sysadmin at work couldn't fix my PC's problems.)

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2016, 05:12:40 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on February 12, 2016, 01:08:14 pmFrom my PC fixing days (fortunately far behind me) I have learned that there are PCs out there which crash when executing certain programs. A PC may work fine for days but a certain order of instructions/memory reads corrupts something and crashes the whole thing. Now imagine what gets corrupted without you knowing about... The bottom line is that the first step in trouble free computing is getting a good quality computer and most certainly not a piece of consumer crap! Too many people just compare by specs on paper without looking at the quality of the components used.

author: AlxDroidDev
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2016, 07:04:13 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on February 11, 2016, 11:10:27 pmI use MS Excel quote a lot (daily, actually), both at work and at home, and have been using it since version 2.0 (on windows 3.1), and I never had the problem you described, and some of my files are huge. The few times I've seen other people with corrupted spreadsheets, was due to:- a failing hard drive or some other bad media- a bad PSU, that would randomly turn the PC off, without closing Excel- an I/O system (IDE/SATA interface, HDD, etc) bottlenecked by other programs, that would hang everytime Excel would save the file. Does anybody remember the time when the IDE card was an ISA add-on card?- lack of memory on the computer, which would cause Excel to hang, making the user force-close it. This could corrupt data, but Excel is not to blame: memory is cheap and there is no reason not to have a computer with less than 16Gb of RAM.Quote from: nctnico on February 12, 2016, 05:12:40 pmExactly! That's another reason why I have always built my own computers (except for my very first PC, a Gateway 2000 386DX/25). I choose the motherboard, CPU, memories, GPU based on detailed specs, quality and compatibility among them.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2016, 08:06:16 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on February 12, 2016, 05:12:40 pmThat certainly sounds plausible. That's one of the reasons I use Apple computers: I know they're using top quality components, with drivers that are tested and tweaked to work together optimally.My Mac Pro tower is about a month away from turning 8 years old (!) and it's hands down the most stable system I've ever had. Of course, it's basically server hardware with a beefy graphics card. (ECC RAM, Xeon CPUs, etc.) It was so ridiculously overpowered for my needs when I bought it that it's still more than adequate for me today, after a few upgrades (RAM, SSD, GPU).

author: testmode
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2016, 05:20:19 pm
content: I've been a Thinkpad user since theT500. Learned from experience with T500 that with laptops, it is sometimes better to sacrifice a bit of power to trade-off for portability. So am now currently using aT430s. I've also always opted for a high resolution display, which was a premium back then, as it provides more "real" working screen area. Hard drive has been upgraded to SSD with prices going down the "worth spending for" territory. RAM is a bit of overkill for my actual daily needs at 16GB but I got the sticks on a good price back when I got them. But it really comes handy when running *at-the-same-time* virtual machines, Firefox with 74 tabs (don't even get me started with Chrome and it's load up everything when you open it behavior), Excel with tons of data, multiple PDF files and the ever memory-hog Eclipse to name a few.I have to admit though that I haven't been happy with the direction that Lenovo is taking the Thinkpad lately - for instance, the display of T430s is so inferior on almost all display aspects to what I was used to with the T500 that I considered "hacking" the LCD itself with something better at one point in time. I eventually came to my senses that it won't be worth to do it and I just accepted it over time. The keyboard feel/quality is also another topic by itself. The *trackpoint* is practically the only thing that is making me hold on to the Thinkpad line now.Having said that, my next one will probably be a Surface Book which I hope becomes "affordable enough" by the time my T430s becomes due for replacement. I currently have a Surface 3 and I won't hesitate recommending it to anyone.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2016, 07:04:58 pm
content: I was tied to the ISA bus until I finally took the plunge to PCI. I would like to get a new desktop but need a PCI slot and would have to write a new interface to support a newer OS. It makes more sense to give up on PCI and move to Ethernet for everything. For now an old P4 with XP is still my main computer. I have a Lenovo MIIX2 8 that runs circles around it.

author: Thorondor
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2016, 09:34:35 pm
content: Quote from: testmode on February 14, 2016, 05:20:19 pmSame here. I would love to have more options when it comes to laptops, but I can't go without the TrackPoint. Last time I checked, every non-IBM/Lenovo pointing stick sucked.