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Laptop Replacement/Suggestions Thread: Bring out yer dead laptops!

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Posts

  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    At least theoretically, USB3 has enough bandwidth for that to work. If you have a bunch of stuff chewing up resources at any point, though, it'll chug a bit. So it'll most likely work just fine.

  • QuantumTurkQuantumTurk Registered User regular
    So if you had a pot of someone elses money to spend, say a couple grand or more, and you long ago (like, 2009) liked the lenovo thinkpad you had, is there any reason to not just buy the best thinkpad you can? This won't be a gaming rig at all, just a workstation, and it's being bought with some use it or lose it money. I've only ever had lenovos, didn't know if someone else has come up in the work laptop game since then. Portability also won't be a huge issue, so kinda heavy is fine.

  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    As much as I loathe HP, their business class laptops are actually serviceable. I'd still lean toward Lenovo. Make sure you do a clean install when you get the machine. Dell's business machines have served me well in the past.

    ----
    Related: my Y50 has this program/technology to switch between onboard graphics and the GPU. I had assumed it was Lenovo-specific programming; which was the main reason I hadn't done a full wipe and install on that computer yet. I set up a new profile for my daughter recently, and lo-and-behold, she doesn't have the "switching" program; or at least I don't see the system tray icon for it.

    I haven't had time to do any digging to see where this program lies and whether it's a Lenovo program. Do any of you have experience with this?

  • LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    If it has an nvidia GPU, the switching is a driver-level feature that you can control per-application in whatever the program is that lets you control the 3d settings of each app.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    So if you had a pot of someone elses money to spend, say a couple grand or more, and you long ago (like, 2009) liked the lenovo thinkpad you had, is there any reason to not just buy the best thinkpad you can? This won't be a gaming rig at all, just a workstation, and it's being bought with some use it or lose it money. I've only ever had lenovos, didn't know if someone else has come up in the work laptop game since then. Portability also won't be a huge issue, so kinda heavy is fine.

    Honestly, the top end ultrabooks from Lenovo/HP/Dell are all really good. If your comfortable with the thinkpads, they're still fantastic machines and I wouldn't try to steer you away from them.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • CantidoCantido Registered User regular
    I opened up my laptop to inspect the dead secondary SSD, and, uh...I can't find it on the motherboard. I never opened a laptop before!

    3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    It may be on the other side of the board. Good luck! Try looking up your model + hard drive replacement in your search engine of choice

  • initiatefailureinitiatefailure Registered User regular
    So I'm going to replace my laptop from *sigh* my senior year of undergrad in 2012. It was 2nd gen i5 so it's still pretty serviceable honestly but I want a new one as I've been doing design work on the go more than from my home or an office since leaving my last job and I want an updated machine that's got a few years of future proofing.

    When she was getting ready for her grad program last year we ended up getting my partner the i7 version of the Huawei matebook X and she's loved it and I've been very jealous. I don't really do video work like she does so I probably don't need the i7 version but I'm leaning pretty hard toward getting one of those myself. Has there been anything to come out and rival it since we got hers? At the time it seemed to be pretty definitively the top consumer laptop out there, especially as people using them for art or design it was just a better MBP for half the price.

  • GdiguyGdiguy San Diego, CARegistered User regular
    Mugsley wrote: »
    At least theoretically, USB3 has enough bandwidth for that to work. If you have a bunch of stuff chewing up resources at any point, though, it'll chug a bit. So it'll most likely work just fine.

    I've run a Windows virtual machine on my mac off a USB3 external SSD for a couple years now and it's indistinguishable from normal... having said that, yeah I don't know if it would chug a bit on some game that's accessing the HD a lot

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    -Loki- wrote: »
    Noticed my laptop was running hotter than usual, but it's the middle of summer here and even with air con going the house it pretty warm so I chalked it up to ambient room temperature.

    Anyway, today I figured I'd pop the bottom panel off to see if there was an empty SSD slot, since I want to put a larger one in. Hold dust buildup, Batman!

    Gave the vents a dust off, booted a game up, and waddaya know, temps dropped by about 10 degrees.

    Sadly, no free SSD slot.

    So, you don't need an SSD slot in your case. All you need is some velcro dots, and you can mount an SSD damn near wherever you want. Shit, stick it on top of the one that's already in there.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Wait, wasn't Lenovo the company that got caught putting shady shit in their BIOSes, then got caught doing the same thing AGAIN a couple of years later?

  • QuantumTurkQuantumTurk Registered User regular
    Wait, wasn't Lenovo the company that got caught putting shady shit in their BIOSes, then got caught doing the same thing AGAIN a couple of years later?

    Yup, but honestly, my assumption at this point is that everything is compromised all the time because that's the corporate cyberpunk hell we seem to live in. Honestly, based on the amount we KNOW privacy is fucked, I've just given up on the rest. I'll continue to monitor my cards for fraud, not use facebook, and cry that the internet knows literally everything else it could want to target ads to me. Its anecdotal but I've had the experience of talking about a thing I had never googled, and starting to see ads for that thing. I can only assume it was because my phone was listening in. Cause deciding I needed to see kayaks was quite left field otherwise. I've had similar (again, anecdote, not data) experiences with email and texting.

    And I really, really prefer that little red nub mouse to any trackpad I've ever used.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    So I'm going to replace my laptop from *sigh* my senior year of undergrad in 2012. It was 2nd gen i5 so it's still pretty serviceable honestly but I want a new one as I've been doing design work on the go more than from my home or an office since leaving my last job and I want an updated machine that's got a few years of future proofing.

    When she was getting ready for her grad program last year we ended up getting my partner the i7 version of the Huawei matebook X and she's loved it and I've been very jealous. I don't really do video work like she does so I probably don't need the i7 version but I'm leaning pretty hard toward getting one of those myself. Has there been anything to come out and rival it since we got hers? At the time it seemed to be pretty definitively the top consumer laptop out there, especially as people using them for art or design it was just a better MBP for half the price.

    a friend of mine just picked that laptop up a couple weeks ago to use mostly for photo editing and some mobile design work. He got the i5 model, and he loves the thing. the 3:2 aspect ratio is fantastic.

    They did just announce a new updated version with the coffee lake processors, so if you can find a good deal on the 2018 model that's a really good machine.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • initiatefailureinitiatefailure Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    wunderbar wrote: »
    So I'm going to replace my laptop from *sigh* my senior year of undergrad in 2012. It was 2nd gen i5 so it's still pretty serviceable honestly but I want a new one as I've been doing design work on the go more than from my home or an office since leaving my last job and I want an updated machine that's got a few years of future proofing.

    When she was getting ready for her grad program last year we ended up getting my partner the i7 version of the Huawei matebook X and she's loved it and I've been very jealous. I don't really do video work like she does so I probably don't need the i7 version but I'm leaning pretty hard toward getting one of those myself. Has there been anything to come out and rival it since we got hers? At the time it seemed to be pretty definitively the top consumer laptop out there, especially as people using them for art or design it was just a better MBP for half the price.

    a friend of mine just picked that laptop up a couple weeks ago to use mostly for photo editing and some mobile design work. He got the i5 model, and he loves the thing. the 3:2 aspect ratio is fantastic.

    They did just announce a new updated version with the coffee lake processors, so if you can find a good deal on the 2018 model that's a really good machine.

    ahh don't know how I missed that. I spent the last few days reading all about the ongoing saga with the US gov to make sure it wasn't something to worry about and I didn't think to search for a new model release. It looks like the new ones are just going to be incremental upgrades so I'm perfectly happy to get the current model for several hundred dollars cheaper than my partner's.

    initiatefailure on
  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    -Loki- wrote: »
    Noticed my laptop was running hotter than usual, but it's the middle of summer here and even with air con going the house it pretty warm so I chalked it up to ambient room temperature.

    Anyway, today I figured I'd pop the bottom panel off to see if there was an empty SSD slot, since I want to put a larger one in. Hold dust buildup, Batman!

    Gave the vents a dust off, booted a game up, and waddaya know, temps dropped by about 10 degrees.

    Sadly, no free SSD slot.

    So, you don't need an SSD slot in your case. All you need is some velcro dots, and you can mount an SSD damn near wherever you want. Shit, stick it on top of the one that's already in there.

    It’s more having a spare SATA port to plug it in to. There’s 2 accessible, and both are taken. I don’t want to remove them yet because it will void my store warranty, I’m looking at getting a USB to SATA and plugging one in to a USB 3 port.

    I also learned this week that you can throttle power to the CPU in battery settings. I dropped it to 85%, performance in games is so far unaffected and temps are consistently 25-30 degrees lower. Really wish I knew this when I bought it.

    -Loki- on
  • CantidoCantido Registered User regular
    Mugsley wrote: »
    It may be on the other side of the board. Good luck! Try looking up your model + hard drive replacement in your search engine of choice

    Found it!

    It was so small I thought it was RAM, jeez. After confirming it was dead, XOTICPC let me put an RMA in.

    3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
  • SpawnbrokerSpawnbroker Registered User regular
    Anyone got any recommendations for a programming laptop with light gaming every once in a while? I mostly want to do programming while on vacation or at a cafe.

    I like Windows, I don't use Mac very often and I hate Apple's right-to-repair bullshit. I mostly use Visual Studio Code while developing. I was looking at the Dell XPS 15, what do you guys think? I don't care if it's heavy and I'm not interested in those 2-in-1 things or whatever. I don't like touch screens, just want a normal laptop for coding. I don't really want a "gaming laptop" either because those tend to run hot and have low battery life.

    Steam: Spawnbroker
  • evilbobevilbob RADELAIDERegistered User regular
    Anyone got any recommendations for a programming laptop with light gaming every once in a while? I mostly want to do programming while on vacation or at a cafe.

    I like Windows, I don't use Mac very often and I hate Apple's right-to-repair bullshit. I mostly use Visual Studio Code while developing. I was looking at the Dell XPS 15, what do you guys think? I don't care if it's heavy and I'm not interested in those 2-in-1 things or whatever. I don't like touch screens, just want a normal laptop for coding. I don't really want a "gaming laptop" either because those tend to run hot and have low battery life.

    Well they only run hot and have low battery life while gaming, which basically any laptop will.

    l5sruu1fyatf.jpg

  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    So I finally pulled the trigger on a Razer Blade 15, the 2019 edition with the RTX 2080 Max-Q. It's basically lived up to my expectations so far. I wanted something fast, relatively light and easy to take with me places, with really good build quality. No flex in the keyboard etc. It's basically ticked all the boxes so far. The matte black finish does show finger prints and hand oil really easily which is meh, but overall it's a gorgeous laptop. I have to give Razer some props for how little shitware was installed on the machine. It's basically a bare Windows install with drivers and utilities, plus the Razer app and like one random utility I didn't care for called Launchy. I had to remove exactly one piece of bloat that didn't come with Windows itself, which was the aforementioned Launchy.

    My use case is gaming and development on the go since I travel a lot. I've wanted something I could easily use Unreal Engine on for a while so I can work on my hobby projects when I'm traveling. Plus being able to play basically any of the latest titles, at good frames, on 144hz screen is a huge plus. So far I'm really pleased with it. They aren't cheap by any stretch of the imagination but if you're willing to spend the premium price tag it's one hell of a machine.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • SpawnbrokerSpawnbroker Registered User regular
    The best part about getting a new laptop is having to uninstall all the viruses they installed on it at the factory.

    Steam: Spawnbroker
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    I took a look at my mom's laptop over the weekend, and now I'm on the fence of either replacing the machine or swapping out the hard drive. It takes way too long to start for my taste (even after pruning the startup tab), and is generally slower than I'd like.

    It's about 5 years old but she only uses it as a web browsing and light tasking machine (pictures, medical records, finance, etc). Overall this wasn't a problem until she tried playing a DVD for my daughters and the drive refused to work. In the short term I can probably find her an external drive and give her one of the Blu-ray players we aren't using at home.

    If she was a bit more hardware savvy, I'd look into other options.

  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    Upgraded the Blade to have 32GB of RAM and a 2 TB NVMe drive. It's officially beast mode status now.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • AridholAridhol Daddliest Catch Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Mugsley wrote: »
    I took a look at my mom's laptop over the weekend, and now I'm on the fence of either replacing the machine or swapping out the hard drive. It takes way too long to start for my taste (even after pruning the startup tab), and is generally slower than I'd like.

    It's about 5 years old but she only uses it as a web browsing and light tasking machine (pictures, medical records, finance, etc). Overall this wasn't a problem until she tried playing a DVD for my daughters and the drive refused to work. In the short term I can probably find her an external drive and give her one of the Blu-ray players we aren't using at home.

    If she was a bit more hardware savvy, I'd look into other options.

    if it doesn't already have an SSD that's a cheap but very very worthwhile upgrade.

    Aridhol on
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    I may or may not have 3 SSDs sitting on my desk at home.

  • AridholAridhol Daddliest Catch Registered User regular
    I just put 8GB of ram and an ssd in an 11 year old T500 thinkpad and it runs at least as good as new budget laptop or chromebook.
    SSD and max out the ram for under $100 and you're laptop gets a new lease on life.

    Worst part about old laptops are generally the screens though, that tech has come a loooooong way in 5 years.

  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    edited March 2019
    The washed out plastic look of a lot of older laptop screens have is always interesting to show younger people. Thinking on my daughter I realized the other day that she's grown up in an "HD world". Every screen she's ever interacted with for a serious amount of time has been clear with a decent resolution. This includes laptop screens. A "bad" laptop screen to her is something like the display on my MSI Ghost (which is now her gaming PC), which is a completely functional, if not spectacular, display. She commented almost immediately that the display wasn't as nice as her iPad or my Razer. I had a good chuckle and "get off my lawn kids" moment about it.

    GnomeTank on
    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • JazzJazz Registered User regular
    GnomeTank wrote: »
    The washed out plastic look of a lot of older laptop screens have is always interesting to show younger people. Thinking on my daughter I realized the other day that she's grown up in an "HD world". Every screen she's ever interacted with for a serious amount of time has been clear with a decent resolution. This includes laptop screens. A "bad" laptop screen to her is something like the display on my MSI Ghost (which is now her gaming PC), which is a completely functional, if not spectacular, display. She commented almost immediately that the display wasn't as nice as her iPad or my Razer. I had a good chuckle and "get off my lawn kids" moment about it.

    Dig up a CRT TV and plug in some old stuff via RF to show her how it used to be and how far we've come.

    Bonus points if you can track down a black & white TV.

  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    Tell her for that comment she's forced to use a trackball mouse

  • BigityBigity Lubbock, TXRegistered User regular
    Mugsley wrote: »
    Tell her for that comment she's forced to use a trackball mouse

    Hey! I love trackball mice, at least the nice ones. Logitech M570 or the Kensington Expert Mouse series. Just not enough buttons for me to use for everything (aka gaming).

  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    Mugsley wrote: »
    Tell her for that comment she's forced to use a trackball mouse

    A serial one-button mouse.

  • JazzJazz Registered User regular
    MichaelLC wrote: »
    Mugsley wrote: »
    Tell her for that comment she's forced to use a trackball mouse

    A serial one-button mouse.

    With gunk on the rollers.

  • initiatefailureinitiatefailure Registered User regular
    I never followed up on this, but I ended up getting the Huawei after spending a few days reading every news story about them ever and came to what seemed to be the consensus conclusion from the reporting that the US government is full of shit and this is likely just a proxy for the ongoing tradewar and also one article wanted me to know i'm not special enough for the chinese government to spy on.

    Anyway, this laptop is sweet. I had to do some odd compatibility fixes with my adobe creative suite though because this laptop is like 3000x2000 and they never updated cs6 to handle the higher def screens but once i got through the stage where every UI element in photoshop was too small to read, it's been smooth sailing. I've even been playing a little bit of magic arena on it, but most importantly the feeling that i can do design things on the go again, well, feels very good.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    My girlfriend has a 2008 Macbook, It's the weirdest model of macbook they ever made, It was the replacement to the white plastic macbook, aluminum like the pros. This was about a year before the Macbook Air became a mainstream computer. It has a 160GB spinning hard drive and 2GB of ram, and a Core 2 Duo processor. Now, she uses her iPad and iPhone 90% of the time, her laptop is basically just there for the odd time she needed a keyboard. but the first time I ever saw it running, god was it slow.

    That model only supports 4GB of ram, so I pillaged a couple 2GB sticks out of a laptop at work that we were throwing out, and grabbed a 120GB SSD I had sitting in a drawer at home. After figuring out how to image the drive in OS X, I changed out the ram and put the SSD in, and the thing performs at least as well as a modern chromebook. The SSD upgrade remains a legit thing.

    I'm pretty sure she actually uses the laptop more now than she has in a couple years since it's you know... usable.

    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    My wife has the same model. I recently replaced the battery so one of my daughters could use it. She used it for about a day (she's only 8).

    I'm actually considering jumping through the hoops to at least Bootcamp it into Windows; if not make an outright Windows machine. Right now, she's using the Lenovo Y50 I used to take with me on travel.

  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    Any recommendations for a gaming laptop with GSYNC that will last me a few years?

    Currently using a ASUS 752VT that has a 970M so it's starting to show its age. Looking for something around $1,700 or so, 15" is fine. Thanks.

  • Casual EddyCasual Eddy The Astral PlaneRegistered User regular
    Might be in the market for a gaming laptop, what's the hotness these days? I don't have room for a desktop and I loved my last gaming laptop which I think was a lenovo

    it had a ginormo heat exhaust for the fan which I think helped it from getting too hot. Plus I use a roost for latpops which help with air flow

    I don't need to run the latest and best graphical games, I have a PS for those. But I'd love to be able to run civ six and phoenix point (when it's out) on high graphic settings.

  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    Both of you start here:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/laptopdeals/comments/b3q325/_/

    The main subreddit is good to poke through. I'm not an Acer fan even though their build quality has increased lately.

    For brands, I'd do:
    Lenovo
    Asus
    Gigabyte (Aorus)
    MSI
    Dell
    (not in order)

    Some like Razer Blades but I feel they are overpriced, even though they have decent build quality

  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    Long story short, I'm buying an Acer laptop with 8GB RAM, and an Amazon search pulled up an 8GB expansion for cheap. However, I'm a little wary, since Amazon's got a problem with Chinese knock-offs, and I don't want to put any janky shit into a brand new machine.

    Does this RAM expansion seem ok? Or should I look elsewhere?

    Switch: 3947-4890-9293
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    edited April 2019
    Internet rando, I know, but all SO-DIMMs are the same. You can try other manufacturers and you don't have to search for your specific laptop model. As long as you have an idea what speed your RAM is that's currently installed, just get chips that are as fast or faster than them.

    Example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077SB72QN/


    Edit: here's a paired-down PCPP list: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#s=402400&t=15&Z=8192001,8192002

    Mugsley on
  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    Mugsley wrote: »
    Both of you start here:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/laptopdeals/comments/b3q325/_/

    The main subreddit is good to poke through. I'm not an Acer fan even though their build quality has increased lately.

    For brands, I'd do:
    Lenovo
    Asus
    Gigabyte (Aorus)
    MSI
    Dell
    (not in order)

    Some like Razer Blades but I feel they are overpriced, even though they have decent build quality

    Sending us to Reddit? That's just cruel, man. :P

    If I wanted something to last another few years to play the current FPS and open world games at reasonable settings , would I be ok going with the Wirecutter ASUS pick that has a 1070, or the newer edition with a 2070?

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