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Posted: 3/11/2010 10:15 PM
(Edited: 3/15/2010 6:32 PM)
Post subject: Advice for new laptop
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Dacicus
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
Unfortunately, the light for my laptop's screen mostly died last night. I say mostly because it's still possible to very vaguely see things as long as there's sufficient contrast (i.e., black text on white background); using the Windows magnifying glass feature is also helpful. Since the laptop is over 7 years old, I was expecting something to fail sooner or later. I'm probably going to have to get a new laptop, and I would like to get some advice from you guys. I'm mostly interested in which brands you would recommend and which I should avoid. Durability is the most important criterion for me atm, since it would become my primary computer and should last for several years (another 6-7 would be nice). Regarding the OS, I'm assuming that the chance of finding a laptop with WinXP is near 0 by now, as is the chance of finding one with a floppy drive. Correct me if I'm wrong, though. From what little I've read online, it seems that Win7 is way better than Vista. If anyone here has personal experience with both of them, I am interested in reading your thoughts. Thanks for any help. EDIT: I should have posted this originally, but here are the specs for the current laptop:
  • CPU: Pentium 4, 2 GHz
  • RAM: 480 MB (says Windows; System info for Windows says 2×256 MB)
  • Graphics: ATI Radeon IGP 340M (32 MB RAM says SiW)
  • HDD: 27-28 GiB
  • 8.5" × 11.25" of actual display (measured with ruler)
  • 2 USB ports
  • Ports for Ethernet and dial-up connections
  • DVD/CD-RW combo drive and floppy drive
  • Serial monitor and printer ports, S-Video port (what's this?), green non-USB port for mouse or keyboard
I don't care about the specific screen size as long as it's not much smaller than my current one. Also, I don't remember ever using any of the things on the last bullet. As far as what programs I use, here's the list from the batch file that I use to launch them:
 1. Delete                  21. CamStudio            41. Safely Remove Hardware
 2. Defrag                  22. DVI Viewer           42. Services
 3. Disk cleanup            23. Finale               43. Shutdown
 4. Defrag + DirMS          24. GIMP                 44. SIW
 5. Archive                 25. GraphCalc            45. Spybot
 6. Proxomitron             26. GSview               46. UBASIC
 7. Arachnophilia           27. HIEW                 47. VFD
 8. CCleaner                28. HxD                  48. VMWare Server
 9. Opera                   29. Internet Explorer    49. Volume Control
10. Firefox                 30. IrfanView            50. WinDirStat
11. OpenOffice              31. Irssi                51. XVI32
12. Adobe Reader            32. IZArc
13. Media Player Classic    33. Log off
14. VLC                     34. Lynx
15. Windows Explorer        35. Notepad
16. Abort shutdown          36. Noteworthy Player
17. Ad-Aware                37. Ollydbg
18. Agent Ransack           38. Process Explorer
19. Avast!                  39. Regshot
20. Bochs                   40. Restart
Numbers 1-15 and 29 are/once were the most frequently used, while the others can vary from several times a day to less than once a month.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Posted: 3/12/2010 3:40 AM
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arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
I just need to warn you: If you get a netbook, you should also get a USB DVD drive, or else you won't be able to re-partition and install Ubuntu.
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Posted: 3/12/2010 4:54 AM
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funnyhair
Player (118)
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 700
Location: suffern, ny
If you live in america, go to best buy and buy the cheapest laptop. purchase the trade in deal for an extra $150 get the trade in option and then you can trade your laptiop anytime and get a new one for equal or lesser value, or if its more, you just make up the difference.
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese [19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Posted: 3/12/2010 5:59 AM
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Randil
Skilled player (1827)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I recently got a new computer with Windows 7 after having used XP for several years. Personally, I'm very happy with Win 7 so far, it takes a bit getting used to, but overall I would go as far as to say that it's better than XP. Note that I'm just a "casual" user in the sense that I'm no big programmer who is looking for advanced options in the OS or so, so perhaps Win 7 is lacking in those areas. I haven't noticed any bugs at all with Windows 7 so far, so I guess that's a good sign.
My own page on this site.
Posted: 3/12/2010 6:22 AM
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Dacicus
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
arflech: Based on the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article about them, I'm probably not going to get a netbook. Like I said, this will be my primary computer for [hopefully] the next several years. If these netbook things don't even have DVD drives, they're out of the question. Ubuntu isn't an appealing option to me. I have a rarely used virtual machine with Debian on this laptop, and I'll probably set up a similar one on the new one. funnyhair: Yes, I do live in the U.S. I'll look into that deal at Best Buy. Why do you recommend getting the cheapest laptop, though? Randil: Thanks for the info. I'm mostly going to be using the new laptop for casual purposes as well, other than the virtual machines and emulators (VMWare, Bochs, DOSBox, and emulators up through N64/PSX era). What did you find the largest differences between WinXP and Win7?
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Posted: 3/12/2010 1:48 PM
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Randil
Skilled player (1827)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Dacicus wrote:
Randil: Thanks for the info. I'm mostly going to be using the new laptop for casual purposes as well, other than the virtual machines and emulators (VMWare, Bochs, DOSBox, and emulators up through N64/PSX era). What did you find the largest differences between WinXP and Win7?
The most obvious difference is that the start menu is different, it looks more like the one from Vista now. If you have several Firefox windows open, and you move the mouse over the firefox icon on the start menu, you will see small miniatures of all windows currently open. I also think both starting and shutting down the computer is faster in 7 than in XP. The control panel has been changed a bit too. To be honest, I haven't found that many changes, I would say that an overall improvement is that things simply run a bit faster on Windows 7. All emulators I've tried have worked fine with Windows 7, so you shouldn't have any problems with that.
My own page on this site.
Posted: 3/12/2010 2:14 PM
(Edited: 3/12/2010 6:10 PM)
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Brushy
Former player
Joined: 11/13/2005
Posts: 1587
If you're going to Best Buy, I found this there. Lenovo Thinkpads are durable and they will probably last for those 6-7 years you're thinking of. This one also has pretty good specs and Windows 7 (which is really recommended nowdays, because XP is getting old), so I can recommend it. Thinkpads have also been very Linux friendly.
Posted: 3/12/2010 3:35 PM
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funnyhair
Player (118)
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 700
Location: suffern, ny
Dacicus: it doesn't have to be cheap. but it is a good plan.
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese [19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Posted: 3/12/2010 3:40 PM
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adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3573)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
TASer of 2010 NES TASer of 2010 DS TASer of 2010 Arcade TAS of 2010 NES TASer of 2008 NES TAS of 2008 Funny TAS of 2008 TASer of 2007 NES TASer of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
He's probably saying that because these days notebooks are so powerful that even the cheapest one is more than adequate for what intend to use it for.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Posted: 3/12/2010 4:06 PM
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Kuwaga
Joined: 10/20/2006
Posts: 1248
adelikat wrote:
He's probably saying that because these days notebooks are so powerful that even the cheapest one is more than adequate for what intend to use it for.
Mine isn't. I recommend buying the "second-cheapest" ones instead, just to be safe. Also, watch out for stuff that isn't in the specs. How robust is its DVD drive? How hot does the laptop get and where does it get hot? How durable is its laptop battery? I'd definitely go for Windows7, so it'll be longer till the next time you'd have to change OSes.
Posted: 3/12/2010 8:48 PM
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Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
Brushy wrote:
Lenovo Thinkpads are durable and they will probably last for those 6-7 years you're thinking of.
IBM thinkpads sure were, but the stuff Lenovo sells seems on par with all the other cheap consumer trash out there. My R61 is 1.5 years old and the CPU fan is basically dead. The whole thing doesn't run above 800MHz for more than a few minutes and makes noise like a woodchipper. We bought three of those, one for me, one for my brother and one for my girlfriend. They don't use their laptops as frequently as I do, but theirs too show signs of degradation. In other words, don't expect a notebook to be any better just because there's a "Lenovo" sticker on it. Unless you like Track Points, which I (unfortunately) haven't found on any other brand yet.
m00
Posted: 3/13/2010 5:06 AM
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arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
It turns out the end of the ability to get along with XP is coming near; Pivot doesn't work in XP, although it does work in Vista and Windows 7 is recommended: http://www.getpivot.com/download/
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Posted: 3/13/2010 5:22 PM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
When in doubt, buy a unibody MacBook. Seriously, though, there is no particular brand free from deserved criticism. As well as no particular model perfect for all uses, nor an OS that suits everybody. We've been through it. 6-7 years is way more of a span than one might think about computers, especially nowadays, with the prevailing trend of making components cheaper (thus, less sturdy) and of course the Moore's Law-powered performance race (technologies becoming completely obsolete within a few years). I've always been among the last to upgrade, and during the last 6-7 years I've already gone through it twice: Athlon XP 1900+/384MB DDR/GeForce 2MX → Athlon 64 3400+/1GB DDR/GeForce 7600GS → Core i5-750/4GB DDR3/GeForce GTS250. And in this context I'm not talking about durability, but rather functional incapability: after a certain time the range of new/updated applications it can endure becomes progressively less. That's assuming you're going to use any new software, of course. If you want to be realistic, try looking at 3–5 years at most. By that time you will definitely change or update a good part of your active software library because better and more efficient things keep coming out, and a better and more efficient laptop will be available by that time. The only piece of hardware I've found myself completely unable to find a worthy replacement for is my iriver H320 which is the only DAP with such a set of I/O ports (on-board mic and line-in recording, USB host) and non-sensory controls. Still, I had to hard- and softmod it into oblivion to make it cope with my raising demands. It has served me well for 5 years and I sincerely hope it will serve me until I find a more suitable hardware platform for my needs. So, my advice is: pick anything you will be comfortable with working for the following 5 years. Alternatively, get yourself one of those weather-protected laptops designed for use in harsh conditions, install FreeBSD and enjoy the durability until its screen starts to decompose of old age. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 3/13/2010 5:32 PM
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Dada
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Regarding the OS, I'm assuming that the chance of finding a laptop with WinXP is near 0 by now, as is the chance of finding one with a floppy drive.
Depends. Netbooks still come with XP a lot, and you could always find a good laptop on eBay that still has a floppy drive. Whether you can find one that still has a good screen is a different story, though. I've been a Mac user for quite some time now and am very happy about the quality of these things. Lenovo also has a good reputation. Aside from that I have a Compaq (HP in the US) Netbook (Compaq Mini 110c) which runs very well. As for your old one, to me it sounds like the backlight of your LCD panel broke. It might be possible to fix, but only if you're a handy guy.
Posted: 3/13/2010 5:35 PM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Also, please avoid using any Atom-based computer.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 3/13/2010 10:26 PM
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arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
I thought those were only used in netbooks and smartphones
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Posted: 3/13/2010 10:48 PM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Nope, also nettops, subnotebooks (including some Lenovo Ideapad models) and UMPCs. Anyway, the point is it sucks kilometers of dongs. Go for nothing weaker than 2 GHz Core 2 Duo (Penryn core and on) if you don't want to encounter problems with common present-day applications, let alone future ones.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 3/14/2010 12:09 AM
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Warepire
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Editor
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
I have an Acer Timeline 3810TZ and I love it but it has no CD/DVD reader, the bigger model does though. The 4810, they are a bit expensive but have a look at them, if you do not use it for anything heavy the battery can last up to 8-10 hours.
Posted: 3/14/2010 2:21 PM
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Sir_VG
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Player (40)
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 1913
Location: Floating Tower
moozooh wrote:
Also, please avoid using any Atom-based computer.
Only if you're planning on playing games. For basic usage, this thing is slick as hell. If you want some thing robust and are willing to spend a little more, the HP dv series is fantastic. My coworker has a dv6 and it's one sweet little laptop. I believe it's this one: Best Buy Link
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
Posted: 3/14/2010 3:13 PM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Sir VG wrote:
Only if you're planning on playing games. For basic usage, this thing is slick as hell.
Right, basic usage like GMail, Google Buzz, 720p YouTu- OHHHHHH!
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 3/14/2010 3:21 PM
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Brushy
Former player
Joined: 11/13/2005
Posts: 1587
I'm seconding moozooh here. Atom CPUs are just slow and if something needs even a bit more processing power, it's gonna be tacky and crappy and hot and not good, not even for food. So if there's an Atom under your hood... By the Atom processor, you might as well be a porcelain collector yo! Core 2 Duo and at least 3-4 GB of RAM is recommended for any computer nowdays.
Posted: 3/14/2010 3:31 PM
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Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
oh, I'd love to have an atom-based, fanless netbook instead of a notebook. It's plenty for everything I'd use a portable computer anyway. But if the notebook has to double as the main desktop computer (like Dacicus wants), it's probably a poor choice. 720p youtube is a poor argument though. Why would you buy a faster, hotter, more expensive CPU just to compensate for a totally crappy piece of software called flash? Even youtube offers a <video> based alternative now.
m00
Posted: 3/14/2010 6:11 PM
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EEssentia
Joined: 4/13/2009
Posts: 431
Honestly, the video tags in today's browsers is pretty crappy. Even Flash 10.X performs better usually with hardware acceleration. Otherwise they're pretty close (IOW equally crappy). I second this: don't buy Atom. It's such a weak CPU. It definitely won't last you a lot of years! Also, drop the floppy. Do you honestly need one today? I think you'll be surprised how little you do. It's dead technology. Let it remain dead. Then there's the XP vs 7 argument. It's simple. Go 7. XP is old, and won't be supported for much longer. Please do us all a favor and drop XP. Then developers can concentrate on Vista as the minimum platform, giving us a much richer experience as a result. Plus a lot of other benefits, such as taking more advantage of your hardware, and updated for the future. Now that there is 7, there is simply no reason to stay with XP, since you can skip the "terrible" Vista :) Other than that, it's sticks and stones. Brands are good for some, bad for some, so everyone usually recommends something different. Go for what seems to fit you the best, I say. And definitely go for a notebook, not a netbook. Netbooks are slow and non-upgradable. You can save yourself some money by upgrading some components later to breathe some life into a dying system. Then there's the question of what do you actually need? Do you need SATA? Do you need Core i? Do you need fast DDR2 memory? Or maybe DDR3? Is it important to be able to have a lot of memory in there, like say, 4 GB? Or is 2 GB enough? Those are some of the questions I would look into. Then I would find some models, read the reviews, and choose the cheapest.
Posted: 3/14/2010 8:18 PM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Tub wrote:
720p youtube is a poor argument though. Why would you buy a faster, hotter, more expensive CPU just to compensate for a totally crappy piece of software called flash?
In that distant non-Linux world it's still used a lot. :) As well as another horrible piece of software called Javascript that everybody seems to hate. And also stuff like Silverlight. It's not really going away anywhere, and there's no reason to be severely limited by something as simple as CPU in this respect. CPUs are supposed to deal with this stuff, and Atom just can't. (Speaking from the experience of somebody who has used an Atom-based netbook for half a year.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 3/15/2010 12:04 PM
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Sir_VG
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Player (40)
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 1913
Location: Floating Tower
moozooh wrote:
Sir VG wrote:
Only if you're planning on playing games. For basic usage, this thing is slick as hell.
Right, basic usage like GMail, Google Buzz, 720p YouTu- OHHHHHH!
I stream audio and video (both in and out), watch SDA NQ videos (and anything from here), deal with work email (built in Wi-Fi? Hell yeah!), and I get absolutely kick ass battery life (if fully charged, I can generally get 7+ hours, even with a non-optimal configuration). I've never been much of a PC gamer, so I don't need something screaming fast. But if I do? That's what my tower is for. And if I do need to do a robust task (like video encoding), I can remote connect into the thing and let it do the dirty work. BTW...No Google Buzz or GMail for me.
Netbooks are slow and non-upgradable.
Um, what? I can certainly change some basic things, like the HDD and RAM if I want to. I'm sure there's other things that can be changed out if you feel like tearing it apart, just like any other laptop. But I'll stand by my opinion that if you are doing basic things, this is a nice laptop (I have the Acer AspireOne). If you want to do gaming or video encoding or more robust things, then get something else, like that dv6.
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
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