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Laptop Advice


Mr. Chatywin et al.

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So tis the season for shopping and I badly need a new laptop. I have a six year old HP i5 right now and it's nearing the end. I'm fairly tech savvy once I have the computer in front of me, but I'm not all that up to date on the specs I need to look for. I know I need to look for an i7, preferably with a larger screen that has as high a GB count as I can get , but after that I'm somewhat clueless. I know I don't want a 2 in 1. Most people I've spoken to say they rarely use the tablet feature. The main purposes I need it for are work and going back to grad/law school, but I also would like one that can run the occasional modern game.  There are no cost limits, but I doubt I'm dropping $3,000 on the first Apple i9 options.

Hivemind, I need your thoughts (but not your prayers).

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We did get an i9 MacBook Pro a few months ago.  Bloody expensive but I’m gambling that the better specs and less junk installed will help it resist obsolescence for longer.  Our last Windows laptop, which wasn’t cheap either, was declining fast after two years. 

But I’m still not really familiar with navigating on Mac.  I can find everything eventually but it’s frustrating as I have to search for it. 

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I love my Microsoft Surface Pro laptop (like you I decided against the 2-in-1 and have not regretted that), which I've had nearly 2 years now.  I haven't got such a high spec as what you are looking for but despite that I have had no problem doing complex data analysis or processing photographs on it.  It's delightfully light and portable, and feels and looks good, a pleasure to use.  The face-recognition log-in makes it very fast to get going. Oddly I really haven't found myself using the touch-screen capabilities much.

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I got a Lenovo Yoga 720 last year, and it's been very good so far (a lot better than the Dell it replaced, though it nominally had quite similar specs.)  I do use the touchscreen and flip over 'tablet' mode once in a while - a lot of my life is reading PDFs, and its nice to be able to twist the thing about and comfortably read on the couch or something (or on a flight without sticking your neighbour with your elbow every time you scroll down.) It's not even been a year yet though, so the test really lies in how its doing in another year or two.

ETA - I also have an incredibly annoying (to me) goldilocks thing where I *must* have a 14 inch screen. 15 is too large, I carry this thing everywhere and travel a lot and 13 is too small - I do a lot of mapping stuff which is very visual and needs some screen space. So I've settled on the most uncommon screen size as the one thing I cannot compromise on. So that was a big factor.

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14 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

I got a Lenovo Yoga 720 last year, and it's been very good so far (

I feel like this has become the go to laptop for *so* many people! I feel like all my peers in grad school had this laptop. Lenovo must be doing something right!

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1 minute ago, Raja said:

I feel like this has become the go to laptop for *so* many people! I feel like all my peers in grad school had this laptop. Lenovo must be doing something right!

For the windows side anyway - most of my colleagues have Macs. Well, the architects have strange, giant monstrosities, I see a lot of economists with thinkpads, dunno what's going on there, and for the rest of us, yeah, Yoga seems to work. Good balance of price, specs and doubling up as the thing you marathon netflix on in bed.

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Games are going to be substantially more demanding than anything else except maybe video editing, so while I'm glad you guys like your laptops, if you aren't using them for games, the endorsements are only going to be so helpful. 

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Gaming has such peculiar requirements that I'd get a separate machine for that. As for the CPU, laptops are not a very good fit for CPU-heavy tasks as the cooling sucks. I'd rather go low end on the CPU. If you have some number crunching to do, do it on a desktop computer or a server. When buying a laptop I always go for portability. If I had to buy one now it would probably be the MacBook Air. 

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On 12/7/2019 at 12:26 AM, Iskaral Pust said:

We did get an i9 MacBook Pro a few months ago.  Bloody expensive but I’m gambling that the better specs and less junk installed will help it resist obsolescence for longer.  Our last Windows laptop, which wasn’t cheap either, was declining fast after two years. 

But I’m still not really familiar with navigating on Mac.  I can find everything eventually but it’s frustrating as I have to search for it. 

I’d be very surprised if your Mac was decking after two years, I’ve had them since the early 2000s and I’ve changed them roughly every 5 years, I’m about due a new one now actually so might play about on the Apple store and spec one up want at least a 1TB SSD and ideally 16 or 32GB of RAM for my music software.

I’m the other way around to you I’m fine using a Mac but find using Windows very awkward as the last version I used properly was XP and the new versions of Windows work quite differently.

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On 12/7/2019 at 5:38 AM, Tywin et al. said:

 The main purposes I need it for are work and going back to grad/law school, but I also would like one that can run the occasional modern game.  There are no cost limits, but I doubt I'm dropping $3,000 on the first Apple i9 options.

Hivemind, I need your thoughts (but not your prayers).

I think you need to decided what you want - it sounds like you want a decent work laptop & a laptop you can play games on. In the past few years, I've bought two different 'gaming' laptops that allow me to do both. You can get a very decent 'gaming' laptop that will allow you to play most if not all games for 1500 to 2000, you can even get one cheaper than that for around 1000-1300 that will allow you to play most games on medium-ish settings.

Most gaming laptops will compromise on *some* aspect of the build, either the CPU/ GPU/ Storage or the screen or the thermals, it's about finding what you want and what you're willing to compromise on. I play a bunch of FPS games, so for me I prioritize my screen and compromise on storage.

What is your actual budget?

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3 hours ago, Inigima said:

Games are going to be substantially more demanding than anything else except maybe video editing, so while I'm glad you guys like your laptops, if you aren't using them for games, the endorsements are only going to be so helpful. 

Yeah, my wife has been work on a video editing project for a long time, and our old laptop was not up to it.  I don’t run any CPU-intensive calcs at home any more, but managing the deluge of media files is the biggest demand now.  My son also plays some games, but nothing too demanding and not for long enough to really overheat.  The MacBook Pro gets pretty hot quickly.  The design seems densely packed with no cooling other than transmitting the heat to the external shell. 

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On 12/7/2019 at 1:08 AM, Tywin et al. said:

The main purposes I need it for are work and going back to grad/law school, but I also would like one that can run the occasional modern game. 

By "modern game", do you mean a AAA FPS or action title with high graphical demands? That'll decide whether you can get by with something like a GTX 1050 or GTXC 1650 Max-Q, or need something higher up like a 1070.  For my part, we have something like this (except not 4K) and it's an excellent, speedy device for content creation (have edited videos and audio on it) and I guess I'd say it's all right for lighter games but it's not really up to snuff for high level competitive gaming (in which case you should look for a 1060 or up card, and probably a 144hz screen to boot). For a sense of what the 1050ti graphics card can do, see here.

I'd suggest looking at this  and using their form to set a max price and focus on the things you're most interested in. Lots of options out there these days.

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Last year I got a 2014 Macbook Pro with an i7 and 16 GB of ram for $1300 at Microcenter.  There's one right off of 100 and Excelsior Blvd, and if you're willing to take an open box or floor model you can get a great machine for a very reasonable price.

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On 12/8/2019 at 8:42 AM, Raja said:

What is your actual budget?

Trust fund brat. Jokes aside, I can spend w/e I need to, but I'm not going to set money on fire for the sake of doing it (well, actually I once burned $1,000 at a party in college to prove a point). 

On 12/8/2019 at 10:58 AM, Ran said:

By "modern game", do you mean a AAA FPS or action title with high graphical demands? That'll decide whether you can get by with something like a GTX 1050 or GTXC 1650 Max-Q, or need something higher up like a 1070.  For my part, we have something like this (except not 4K) and it's an excellent, speedy device for content creation (have edited videos and audio on it) and I guess I'd say it's all right for lighter games but it's not really up to snuff for high level competitive gaming (in which case you should look for a 1060 or up card, and probably a 144hz screen to boot). For a sense of what the 1050ti graphics card can do, see here.

I'd suggest looking at this  and using their form to set a max price and focus on the things you're most interested in. Lots of options out there these days.

I meant if a new title comes out that interests me. Keep in mind I'm not much of a gamer these days. I've owned a PS4 for a year now and literally have four games for it. Since I'll be going back to grad/law school I'm guessing I won't have much free time, but it would be nice to pick up something here and there if something jumps out at me like RDR2 did. 

4 hours ago, aceluby said:

Last year I got a 2014 Macbook Pro with an i7 and 16 GB of ram for $1300 at Microcenter.  There's one right off of 100 and Excelsior Blvd, and if you're willing to take an open box or floor model you can get a great machine for a very reasonable price.

I live very close to this area. I'm surprised Microcenter was the one thing that survived the complete tear down. Is open box basically gently used stuff that got returned? 

 

ETA 

Thanks for the tips guys. The two things that have jumped out most to me are Dells because they seem like the best deals and the aforementioned Microsoft Surface as the reviews on them are very positive.

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We used Microsoft surface pros at work. The tablet feature is very handy for work as we are constantly going backwards and forwards to various meeting rooms and the more compact and less cumbersome the better. And at our desks we connect them to a monitor and expand the screen, giving us two (or more if we are on the project desks) screens - ideal for many of the tasks we do. 

However, i don’t think i would want one for personal use. The keyboard and mouse pad are too small and the two in one feature is only handy because of the nature of work - at home it would be a waste for me personally. To make a surface pro suitable for my use at home i would need to buy so many add ons/accessories i may as well just buy a totally different model in the first place. 

My home laptop is a HP something or other and i’ve not experienced any particular problems in 5 years (and it wasnt the most modern model when i bought it either, i went for affordability). Used it quite heavily since i bought it, mostly for my university studies and streaming services, but have done some light MMORPG on it which it coped perfectly well with

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15 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I live very close to this area. I'm surprised Microcenter was the one thing that survived the complete tear down. Is open box basically gently used stuff that got returned? 

The one I got was a display model, never left the store.  You can browse what they have online to see if there are any deals on the ones you're looking for.

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On 12/9/2019 at 7:04 PM, HelenaExMachina said:

We used Microsoft surface pros at work. The tablet feature is very handy for work as we are constantly going backwards and forwards to various meeting rooms and the more compact and less cumbersome the better. And at our desks we connect them to a monitor and expand the screen, giving us two (or more if we are on the project desks) screens - ideal for many of the tasks we do. 

However, i don’t think i would want one for personal use. The keyboard and mouse pad are too small and the two in one feature is only handy because of the nature of work - at home it would be a waste for me personally. To make a surface pro suitable for my use at home i would need to buy so many add ons/accessories i may as well just buy a totally different model in the first place. 

Same here: just started using a Surface Pro at work.  The SSD and OS are fast and smooth so far, but I wouldn’t want to use that screen, trackpad and keyboard all the time.  I dock mine into a huge screen and regular keyboard and mouse when I’m at my desk.  The cramped quarters are tolerable when I’m toting it to meetings because at least it’s very light and can be used in tablet mode. 

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