New Computer Advice Thread

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

If I had 8 GB RAM, I'd use it for computational linguistics research!

[乳头的早餐谷物]

If I had 8 GB RAM, I'd use it for computational linguistics research!

Fuck computational linguistics.

[Vyacheslav]

maestro would rather use 8GB RAM for Japanese linguistic research.

[BEAR_LORD]

If I had 8 GB RAM, I'd use it for computational linguistics research!

Fuck computational linguistics.

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH FUCK COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTS, BECAUSE THAT NEVER HAPPENS

THOSE VIRGIN GENIUSES

[smartalco]

THOSE VIRGIN GENIUSES

I think you might permanently fit in to one of those descriptors if you yell at everyone you talk to.

[Tanner]

THOSE VIRGIN GENIUSES

I think you might permanently fit in to one of those descriptors if you yell at everyone you talk to.

GENIUS_BEAR_LORD. I like it.

[Tanner]

Girlfriend's brother wants a laptop. Must be portable (no desktop replacements), 1080p screen is a bonus but hist price range is 1000 to 1500 CAD.

Any recommendations would be helpful. Especially helpful if it's purchasable in Canada (no amazon.com, only .ca D:).

[otters~1]

Also about to buy a laptop, probably just in the ~550 USD range. Space, RAM and processing power are more important to me than screen size; won't be playing too many games.

Recs would help ... I'm defaulting to a run-of-the-mill Dell right now.

[mediate]

Girlfriend's brother wants a laptop. Must be portable (no desktop replacements), 1080p screen is a bonus but hist price range is 1000 to 1500 CAD.

Any recommendations would be helpful. Especially helpful if it's purchasable in Canada (no amazon.com, only .ca D:).

You're going to need to be more specific there, Tanner :P With a 1500CAD capsize, there are a lot of options ...

I found these which may be what he's looking for:
http://www.amazon.ca/ASUS-U43JC-X1-14-I ... 068&sr=1-2
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 6834152258
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as ... 4157691CVF

I also recommend that any laptop he chooses to buy he also reinstalls himself. Usually, OEM OSes are FULL of crap, and is much easier to reinstall than to go through and remove it. I recommend the Dell 1545 as well, as it is my personal portable-allround laptop, getting around 4-5 hrs of battery (9-cell) and can play SOME source engine games (however, that's because I got it with an ATI Radeon HD 43xx card. The ones in store are most likely Intel GMA's and not ATI's).

Also about to buy a laptop, probably just in the ~550 USD range. Space, RAM and processing power are more important to me than screen size; won't be playing too many games.

Recs would help ... I'm defaulting to a run-of-the-mill Dell right now.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How much space minimum, how much RAM minimum?
Again, please be more specific. Also, what dell are you looking at/using?
These are what I've found:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834115888
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834215057
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834157551

[Tanner]

Heh. If I had more specs that he wanted, I'd pass them along but that's all I got from him. That MSI one looks really great, though, so thanks!

[otters~1]

I should have been more specific. Anyway, I found a Dell, i3, 2.53 ghz, 500 gigs, 3 gig ram, about a 16 in. screen for like 580 total. Will edit later with details.

[The Black Lion]

Hey guys I need to buy a laptop for advanced graphic work and gaming. I will maybe take it to school or different places but also using it like a desktop. So firstly 15.6" or 17"?
I mean is a 15.6" usable like a Desktop for graphic work? And/or is a 17" transportable?
What I need:
- Something powerful, with an Intel-core i7 preferably second generation and about 8G of Ram.
- I would love to have a Nvidia graphic card (Geforce or Quadro). An HD resolution would be perfect: 1920 x 1080.
- With low weight and good battery life.
Does someone have an idea of what could be nice for me?
Thanks! ;)

[Vyacheslav]

If you could afford it, get a 15 or 17" MBP. Do you have $1500 handy?

[Tanner]

If you could afford it, get a 15 or 17" MBP. Do you have $1500 handy?

Macbook Pro has Intel and AMD graphics and a max resolution of 1440 by 900 on the 15" and 1920 by 1200 on the 17".

[Vyacheslav]

"The 15-inch MacBook Pro comes with a 1440-by-900-pixel LED-backlit glossy display. You can also choose a high-resolution 1680-by-1050 glossy or antiglare display that gives you 36 percent more pixels."

[mediate]

At school, for heavy CAD work and VS work, they loan us Lenovo T510/T520 depending on what year you're in. They're pretty good for most games. Can't handle Crysis and GTA4, but are good with L4D2, WoW, LoL, and other games. They put in them dual core i7-2620M, 4 GB RAM, and NVS4200M. They're not horrible, but the OEM OS blows. However, something that's more powerful is the W520 which, customized to meet your specs, runs you $1700. You can find both on lenovo's site. Again, OEM OS blows so prepare to reinstall.

[The Black Lion]

If you could afford it, get a 15 or 17" MBP. Do you have $1500 handy?

Thanks but the MBP only has 4G of Ram instead of 8 and the graphic card is a AMD Radeon 6750M, it's quite good but not for enough for what I need. And... I'm really not a fan of the macbook.

However, something that's more powerful is the W520 which, customized to meet your specs, runs you $1700. You can find both on lenovo's site. Again, OEM OS blows so prepare to reinstall.

I've heard of the Lenove Thinkpad w520, I think it's a really good one and $1700 is still OK for me. But what's OEM OS? The special OS of Lenovo?
And the thing is that those thinkpad are 15.6", is it enough for working on it at home?

Anyways thanks for your help guy! :)

[Vyacheslav]

OEM = Original Equipment Manufacture. What he's saying is install your own copy of Windows 7 when you get it.

[mediate]

What he's saying is install your own copy of Windows 7 when you get it.

Also, ask for the install disks when you get it. Here's their guide to clean install.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Hey guys I need to buy a laptop for advanced graphic work and gaming.
...
With low weight and good battery life.

You should know that these two things might as well be mutually exclusive. Either drop all expectations for one of these two categories or prepare to pay out the ass.

I mean is a 15.6" usable like a Desktop for graphic work? And/or is a 17" transportable?

I'm less sure about graphics design, but I think 15.6" is a fine size for work and personal entertainment (i.e. gaming, watching movies). 17" is definitely portable so long as you don't have some super-slim notebook case or something. At the very least, you could go for the 15.6" to keep it very portable but use it with an external monitor when you do your graphics work.


I bought a Lenovo Y570 recently that meets most of your specs (minus battery life) and ran me about $1400. I wouldn't buy something like it again, but you probably have different expectations from your laptops than I do.
It has 8 GB of RAM, a stupidly good NVIDIA graphics card (at least I'm impressed by Assassin's Creed 2 running smoothly at max settings on a laptop), a quad-core Intel i7 (which, with hyperthreading, is effectively 8 virtual CPUs), an HD screen, etc.
...buuuut it's got a heavy air of cheapness of quality to it. It's mostly a combination of little things, like the fact that the keyboard is total crap and no OS I've installed on it seems to like its USB 3.0 ports. Also, the network card likes to make the computer randomly crash horribly, but I'm not allowed to complain about it because I only seem to trigger that when I'm, er, doing things I shouldn't. I also have a personal gripe with this NVIDIA Optimus thing (dynamically switching to the Intel graphics card to save battery life) because the CUDA development kit won't install on it (which was half the goddamn reason I sprang for a machine with such a powerful graphics card in the first place), but that probably means very little to you. Optimus won't fuck your shit up when you do graphics work.
When I bought it, I was torn between it and a W-series ThinkPad, and if I could make that choice again with the experience I have now, I would go for the ThinkPad. The IdeaPad Y570 was the only machine Lenovo sold* with a quad-core CPU and its graphics card beat out every other offering by quite a wide margin, so I sold out and went for the non-ThinkPad.

*I'm a fan of ThinkPads, and mistakenly assumed Lenovo's other products might have similar quality. Yes, I realize ThinkPads were originally IBM's baby.

Macbook Pro has Intel and AMD graphics

Fuck Apple and fuck AMD.

Lenovo T510/T520... pretty good for most games.

I strongly disagree. In my experience, an NVIDIA or AMD card is an absolute must for decent gaming. Intel graphics cards are fine for graphics design and stuff, but they blow mile-long lines of goats at gaming.

[Vyacheslav]

Integrated anything is shit for gaming.

[Apakenua]

Old iBook G4
Freezes from overheating
I have the fan set to run at 40 degrees
Fan runs, but it still freezes.
Still gets too hot.
HELP?

[smartalco]

So firstly 15.6" or 17"?
I mean is a 15.6" usable like a Desktop for graphic work? And/or is a 17" transportable?

15". With a decent resolution it can still provide plenty of pixels, and I find a 17" too big to comfortably use in many places (however this is a personal opinion, with size you are better off just messing with a few at Best Buy or the like and seeing what you think will work)

What I need:
- Something powerful, with an Intel-core i7 preferably second generation and about 8G of Ram.

1) What exactly are you doing that requires it to be 'powerful'?
2) Why do you think you need 8gb of RAM? 4gb is plenty, 6 is excessive for almost everyone, 8 is just stupid for all but .1% of people. And given that you mention school, I'm doubting that you are doing excessive editing on 20 megapixel RAW images or editing cinema quality video (I could totally be wrong here, please inform me of such if I am)

- I would love to have a Nvidia graphic card (Geforce or Quadro). An HD resolution would be perfect: 1920 x 1080.

Why Nvidia? (I agree with the other part of this, I'm all for more pixels)

- With low weight and good battery life.

As Tsukatu said, these are pretty much mutually exclusive without paying out the ass. The MacBooks have about the best battery life you can buy, but they're also pricey and you have stated you don't want one. You also seem to be emphasizing performance over general utility, which also hurts both of these, so be willing to take some compromises.

I'm curious though, why not split it up in to a desktop to do graphics work and gaming on, for which you can get a lot more performance for cheap, and then carry a cheaper laptop other places? A $1000 desktop and $500 laptop sounds like it'd be within your price range, and might match your usage better than just a high powered laptop.

[smartalco]

Old iBook G4
Freezes from overheating
I have the fan set to run at 40 degrees
Fan runs, but it still freezes.
Still gets too hot.
HELP?

o_____O

The G4 laptops were already slow when I stopped using my iBook, in 2007. Also I'm not sure why you have the fan 'set' to run at anything, it should be auto. My best guess is the thing has filled up with dust in its, what, 7 year life span? Open it up and clean it out and see what happens.

[Tanner]

Open it up and clean it out and see what happens.

Always good advice.