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Laptop for Backpacking

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  1. #76
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    It's all good. You have a good heart and you know your stuff.


    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    I start next week. Looking forward to it. All econ classes wooooooooooooooo
    Do your professors a favor and actually read the syllabus and any other written hand-outs before you ask them a question about how the class will run or what is expected of you or what to do if you need to miss a lecture, etc.
    In fact, also ask a fellow classmate if they know before you go to the professor.
  2. #77
    m.2 are effectively a card that plugs into a dedicated slot on your mobo . no cables etc and are faster than normal ssd's.
    http://www.computershopper.com/featu...-drives-tested . built my computer in january with a z170 mobo and nvme m.2 ssd as the boot drive .
  3. #78
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Keith View Post
    m.2 are effectively a card that plugs into a dedicated slot on your mobo . no cables etc and are faster than normal ssd's.
    http://www.computershopper.com/featu...-drives-tested . built my computer in january with a z170 mobo and nvme m.2 ssd as the boot drive .
    Great link. Thanks, Keith!
  4. #79
    Just was catching up on this thread, figured I'd pipe in since I've had my Chromebook for about a year now.

    In short, for anyone with a desktop or who does little that isn't browser based, or could be broswer based (think switching to google docs), the chromebooks are an amazing deal. They're light weight, they boot/wake up insanely fast, ChromeOS doesn't have a ton of functionality but that also means it's easy to get up to speed and forget you're on a new OS. Essentially everything I wanted in a laptop.

    I got my Toshiba Chromebook2 for about $200, and you just can't come anywhere close to that for a Windows machine and lolAppleprices. The only drawback so far: Video play back (of videos that are on disk) is spotty at best and the Android port of VLC is terrible-- however I've found that dropping the file in your Google Drive allows you to stream it from there, and that's worked great (however, there are a surprising number of relatively powerful web based apps now, from 3d modeling to picture and video editing.) Also, as I read in some reviews, this particular model has some issues with the screen getting vertical dead pixel lines-- mine has three now, luckily they're off to the side, and I've just been to lazy to follow up and ship the thing in for warranty.

    I love this laptop, but in the future I do think I'd spend just a little more-- at the time there was a Dell model that came in under $400 that reviews said had superior build quality (think full aluminum case/frame, etc), and no issues with the screen. But all in all, I'm really impressed with what you get for the price of a chromebook.
  5. #80
    Thanks to Bugrud for starting this thread. Thanks to Deanglow for finding the 950m. Thanks to Oskar for all the help and insight. Extra special thanks to MMM for the thorough explanations and ultimately convincing me to go with the 950m. Got it yesterday. Shit is gangster as fuck. It loads too fast. TOO FAST!
  6. #81
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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  7. #82
    Cool, I was thinking about getting that laptop myself
  8. #83
    Of the negative reviews on newegg:

    The viewing angles indeed aren't the best. I have little experience being a graphics nit so it doesn't negatively affect me much, but it could possibly somebody else.

    The battery life is certainly longer than I'm used to, but it could be accurate that at 25% you only get 5 hours. Rough estimates suggest that at 100% I'd get 4 hours out of it though.

    The guy who said it doesn't sit flat is not wrong, but it's not as bad as he makes it sound. I can't notice it with normal use. It's only when the screen is obtuse and I tap one of the left near corner that there is slight give. Per normal function it's not noticeable. I wouldn't be surprised if this is normal for most laptops.

    I didn't experience the bluetooth/wifi problem.

    The bloatware is minuscule. I didn't even bother to uninstall other than changing antivirus. Is it a problem that I didn't uninstall the handful of bloatware? I decided to not do it because I didn't want to wade through what may be useful and what won't, so I just deleted desktop icons for aesthetics. They appear to take up next to no space.
  9. #84
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The bloatware is minuscule. I didn't even bother to uninstall other than changing antivirus. Is it a problem that I didn't uninstall the handful of bloatware? I decided to not do it because I didn't want to wade through what may be useful and what won't, so I just deleted desktop icons for aesthetics. They appear to take up next to no space.
    This behavior is going to accelerate that creep we were talking about.

    It will be tedious, but it will only take an hour or two (at most) and you'll be much better acquainted with your new 'puter when you're done, which will run imperceptibly faster. Consider it a personal homework assignment.

    You like metaphors, how about a simile?
    It's like if you bought a new car and it came with a bunch of crappy plastic cupholders plastered with advertisements that are barely functional and easily broken. You find other junk in the glove box. You search the whole car and just get rid of that junk, right?

    I suggest to put in the 1 time investment to get rid of a bunch of adware and other useless bits of software. Geez, new 'puters come with all sorts of crap and it'll mostly be some music player which is crap or some low-end security BS that costs $$$. Worst of all, it'll likely create some popup window at some point and try to beg you for money, no matter what it is.
  10. #85
    Cool. I'll do that then.
  11. #86
    Am I right in guessing the best way is to google the questionable items in the "uninstall a program" list to see if they're unnecessary bloat?
  12. #87
    How about the stuff from Acer itself? Like there's an Acer Care Center. Is it a good idea to use the company's program, use a third party program instead, or use no program?
  13. #88
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    I pulled this from the Rando thread:
    Quote Originally Posted by oskar View Post
    Yeah, you can safely disable everything in "services" that isn't tagged with microsoft. If that doesn't help either re-install or if you're uncomfortable with that chances are you have an oem version that can be reset to factory with the press of a button at startup... check your manual for that.
    The only things that can really deteriorate on a PC are the harddrive and the OS. Everything else tends to either be broken or not broken.
    This is in response to my comments about cleaning out your startup folder once every month or 2.

    I didn't get it at first, then today I was going to do a pass on my startup folder and I noticed that it was extremely much easier ever since I got my new(ish) 'puter. I hadn't noticed that the messy BS I needed to manage had been moved from the startup tab to the services tab. So I'm dealing with that today.

    Just to refresh:
    1) Go to Start / the windows icon / that windows button on your keyboard between L-ctrl and L-alt to the left of your space bar.
    2) Type "msconfig" in the text box (search programs and files).
    3) Double click the search result.

    You should see something like this (I nabbed a Windows 10 screenshot via google for ya):


    This is the startup tab I was mentioning.
    The quote from Oscar is referring to the tab just to the left of it, services.

    Services now contains the jumbled mess of crap I was talking about when I was talking about creep.
    Bloatware is insidious, too, but this is on another level.

    My tactic on this is to do it a little bit at a time. Google each thing and keep a record in a Word file of what's good and what's bad.
    When I get sick of it, I quit. It's gonna take a few tries before I get through the whole thing.

    I'm considering taking Oskar's suggestion and disabling all non-Windows services... but I suspect that many of those Windows services are not anything I want, either... baby steps.
  14. #89
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Am I right in guessing the best way is to google the questionable items in the "uninstall a program" list to see if they're unnecessary bloat?
    Yes. Do this.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    How about the stuff from Acer itself?
    It's probably crap, but google it and see what people have to say about it, just to be sure.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Like there's an Acer Care Center. Is it a good idea to use the company's program, use a third party program instead, or use no program?
    Here's a link to a summary of what Acer Care Center does. It looks like it's purpose is to automatically search for driver updates, which is OK. You'll probably want to keep it unless you fancy updating your drivers manually, which I'm guessing sounds like torture to you.
  15. #90
    Thanks. I will do all. A file with every decision sounds like a great idea.
  16. #91
    It appears that there may be very little I need to delete at this time. I'll check it periodically to see if creep builds up.
  17. #92
    My bluetooth went out. Apparently Windows 10 has system restore disabled by default. Who would consider that a good idea?
  18. #93
    And it's back. It does not appear to have returned based on any change I made. Lots of people reported the same problem yet I couldn't find a solution.
  19. #94
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    I haven't actually used a system restore in years, now that I think about it.

    I've never had to use a fire extinguisher in my home, either.

    It still seems foolishly risky to go without either of them.
  20. #95
    For reals. I used system restore twice. Majorly fixed my shit. Fortunately this was before Windows 10 was a thing.
  21. #96
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
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    You ever finish barebacking Asia?
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  22. #97
    On occasion I get streak-like black blocks on the graphics. Wassup wit dat?
  23. #98
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    On occasion I get streak-like black blocks on the graphics. Wassup wit dat?
    You may need an old priest and a young priest.
  24. #99
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    Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post
    You ever finish barebacking Asia?
    Barebacking!
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  25. #100
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    On occasion I get streak-like black blocks on the graphics. Wassup wit dat?
    sounds like you got the BLM virus , trying to remove those black streaks then carries racist connotations.
  26. #101
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    My lady bought me a POS laptop (she doesn't know tech and the salesman schmoozed her into getting it. She can't find the receipt, so I'm trying to make the most of it.)

    It's got the Intel Celeron N3060 chip in it and I was googling it to see how many cores it has when I came across this:

    This Celeron Mobile series CPU operates at a stock clock speed of 1.60 GHz0.40 GHz slower than average for a laptop processor. If that isn't enough power, the Celeron N3060 has been tested by Intel to handle a maximum overclocked speed up to 2.40 GHz

    That's a 50% increase in clock speed, and I'm suddenly motivated to overclock a CPU.

    Any good advice or resources on how to do this?


    Thanks!
  27. #102
    oskar's Avatar
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    I don't think you can overclock a mobile processor. Otherwise it's just a matter of going into the bios, finding the multiplier and making that number incrementally bigger until you BSOD and then you either go back one step or raise the voltage.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MckeAmnDeTk
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  28. #103
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    Quote Originally Posted by bigred View Post
    Hey dudes,

    I posted about this once before but my wife and I are going on a backpacking trip across Asia and possibly Africa, budget permitting. I need to buy a laptop for this. I'll use it mainly for internetting and movies but would love if I could play some of the low-graphic games like Fez or FTL. No expectation on anything high powered like Crysis.

    My budget would preferably be under $1000 (I know, tight) and from my research it should be 3 pounds or less to lighten the load in my backpack. I'm eyeing refurbished Macbook Airs but I've never used a mac before and I'm not sure how well they work with Steam games and such.

    Thoughts?
    Get this one:

    http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/Laptop...x360-211501--1

    review

    http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/12/1...ew-2016-laptop

    fuck apple with a passion, after all of their latest price-gougy-planned-obsolesence-bullshit-thinatallcosts-bubble moves
    Last edited by Jack Sawyer; 12-21-2016 at 05:10 PM.
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  29. #104
    Don't buy the lappy I did unless bsods are your bitch.
  30. #105
    oskar's Avatar
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    Anything that could cause a bsod should be covered by warranty. Just make sure your drivers are up to date and you have nothing plugged in that could be causing them, and if you still get them, return it.
    The strengh of a hero is defined by the weakness of his villains.
  31. #106
    The warranty's gotta be up by now. Maybe not.

    I've followed all the usual steps to update drivers. They're supposedly all updated. Is there a better way to more appropriately find what's needed in drivers?
  32. #107
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Thanks, Oskar. I'll check into it. That sounds much easier than I suspected.

    @wuf: That sucks. I haven't faced a BSOD in quite some time, but when I do, it's usually just fixed by a reboot. I don't recall if there's any information on what caused the BSOD when the blue screen comes up. If there is, I'd be writing that down and googling to see what the problem & solution are.

    Keep this thread alive with your BSOD's and I'll help you troubleshoot what can be done to make your system more stable. (although, I'm not the best here to do that, so grain of salt.)
  33. #108
    Thanks.

    I was unable to write down the one I was getting a few times due to swift automatic reboot, yet I got into the logs and found what I thought the problem was and fixed it (according to google), yet it didn't fix it. I've gotten a different bsod once which I have written down somewhere. The bsod that happened multiple times appears to be related to sleep mode. I kinda sorta just stopped putting it in sleep mode. They could also be related to moving from one wireless to another. It is unlikely that I'll get another bsod until back in school.

    I'll update with specifics if/when I get them.
  34. #109
    How quickly after an event will the event viewer log it, and at what time will the log say the event was? I'm asking because at about 12:04 I got a several second stalling (the type that includes audio wigging out like rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr). Sometimes with other computers this has preceded a bsod, but not on this laptop, at least not this time. So I went into event viewer to find what the problem was, and there's nothing listed at about that time, not error not critical not anything else. A few minutes after it happened, something under warning shows up with a timestamp a few minutes after the event happened, and it's the same type that shows up many times an hour it seems and doesn't seem to accompany any sort of problem. It appears to me I can't find the actual event. Any idea what's going on?
    Last edited by wufwugy; 01-07-2017 at 03:22 PM.
  35. #110
    oskar's Avatar
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    Is this recurring?
    Check windows update and taskschd.msc if there's something going on at that time.
    The strengh of a hero is defined by the weakness of his villains.
  36. #111
    I have experienced it at least once before (maybe more but maybe not), but it doesn't appear systematically recurring. Windows update isn't it because last update was yesterday. taskschd.msc doens't show anything scheduled for that time, although it is possible I did not see an entire list of tasks because I've never used that before, but I think I did it right.
  37. #112
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Were you online / connected to wifi at the time?

    ***
    It's possible that some background process maxed out the demand on your processor and was stubborn about taking priority.
    It's probably a good time to double check your startup tab and services tab for crap programs again.

    Check this post for reference.
  38. #113
    Thanks. Could be from steam running in the background.
  39. #114
    Can you expound on the wifi/online thing? I have had issues with the wifi on this already, so that could be it.
  40. #115
    Just happened again. Could be related to the utorrent client I'm using. Back to qbittorrent.
  41. #116
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Can you expound on the wifi/online thing? I have had issues with the wifi on this already, so that could be it.
    You didn't say, and it could be relevant.

    I've never heard of steam causing issues, but there's a first time for everything.
  42. #117
    I'll let you know if the wifi problem I had a while ago comes back.

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