Do you ever replace computers just for something newer and faster?

[Xist]

Apparently, Realtek makes garbage wifi cards and HP should always use Intel, but presumably, they're more expensive.

I don't remember why I chose an AMD processor, but I have chosen them in the past because they come with discrete graphics, not garbage on-board video, like Intel.

Maybe Intel machines come with better Wi-Fi cards.

I just know that I have needed to reboot my laptop many times, since it was new, just because wireless disappeared.

I felt stunned when my laptop lasted the 4 hours of orientation without charging, but when I didn't use it over fall break, the battery discharged completely.

From what I can tell, the capacity is down 30%, but if it still lasts 4 hours, I am not complaining.

However, if I open it to replace the Wi-Fi adapter, I might as well replace the battery, right?

Right?!

I bought an extended warranty, which runs out next month, and I doubt that HP would do anything useful.

Just out of curiosity, I went to see what was available, although since we are still long ahead of Black Friday, I probably should have seen what Costco has.

This is the first one that I found on SlickDeals: HP EliteBook 860 16 inch G10 Notebook

Why 16"?!

The other option is 14!

It is $1,304 off, so I can't afford not to buy it!

Google Bard says that the processor is 46% faster than this one.

Two aspects of my laptop are mildly inconvenient, so I am not racking up predatory debt until I actually worry about reliability, but a $2,000 laptop being 46% faster than an almost-3-year-old $800 one doesn't impress me.

[redpoint5]

I've got my finger back on the pulse of the market again now that I've decided I want to replace my insane 16 core Xeon tower that idles at 100 watts.

Black Friday 2019 was the last time I purchased a laptop. Costco always has an insane deal on a consumer grade HP. Paid $280 for a 10th gen Intel i5 14" display.

I replaced the battery last weekend with a compatible part on Amazon for $27. I was getting 20 minutes of run time on the original battery.

You should be able to replace the WiFi card fairly easily. Pro tip, lay the screws out in the same pattern they are installed in so you're sure the right size screw goes back in when you put it back together. I told my friend this once, and he immediately proceeds to pile them all together. Then he drove a too-long screw through his keyboard when he assembled it, so he got more practice when he had to take it all apart again to replace the keyboard.

It's been years since I've owned AMD, and I only bought it because there was a hack where you buy a cheaper 2-core CPU and unlock the other 2 cores in software. Quad core for the price of dual core.

Intel CPUs are more energy efficient, which is why I always prefer them. Their product lines containing 'F' means it has no built in video processing, meaning a discrete GPU is required.

My graphics needs are modest, so my preference is for the integrated graphics, which have massively improved in performance in recent years. Gen 12 and 13 (most recent Intel generations) are way more power efficient than prior generations and the integrated graphics are much better.

For a laptop, 14" is the largest I would go with, otherwise portability tanks. 13.3 might even be better. If the laptop is to go everywhere, then consumer grade is too fragile. Dell's Inspiron line is an example of fragile consumer grade. At minimum, I would be looking at entry level business product lines like the Dell Vostro, Lenovo Thinkpad or HP Elite.

My wife's ThinkPad X1 Carbon purchased for school back in 2015 is still flawless and on the original battery. She has used it every day and abuses the battery, but it's still going. Probably get a decade of use out of it.

Finally, I would never game on a laptop. Too noisy, too expensive, to hot, to confining... better to have a tower where individual components can be upgraded at will. This is precisely why I'm in the market again to build a mid-sized tower. It's going to house 3x 3.5" hard drives and 1x SSD. I'll have the option to add a GPU if I want to game. It will be a Plex server, NVR, and NAS.

[Xist]

This laptop was $350, but it seemed like everyone compared every deal that season with one sale that must have been an accident, it was taken down almost immediately, but I read over and over that the same laptop had been available for just $250.

I believe that I paid $80 more for a FHD screen and another $10 for a backlit keyboard, which doesn't work great when everything is silver.

I paid $90 for the extended warranty, which is supposed to be refunded in full if I don't use it.

Wish me luck!

I always say that I paid $800 for a $350 laptop because I bought RAM and an SSD that I swapped in because it was cheaper than having it ship like that.

It didn't have shipping included, either.

People kept talking about going through different sites or buying with particular credit cards to get cash back.

I believe that one of those things was supposed to work, but didn't seem to work for me.

I found Chinese batteries for $25-30, but only IFixIt sold the OEM battery for $90.

That may have been more than I wanted to pay...

A friend told me that he always put screws in a jar so his kids didn't kick them.

Remember when my then-girlfriend kicked my laptop screws?!

I thought that was bad, but having loose screws is just annoying, while you can do actual damage driving a screw that is too long!

I always try to lay out screws in the order they came out, but I also bought ice cube trays for at least putting fasteners in the order I removed them, but if you pull screws of different lengths for the same step, that doesn't help you.

They also have repair mats with grids on them to help you keep track.

I miss WoW and I spent 6 minutes showing the lady with whom I went hiking 3 times how to play the one lower-level character that I can still access.

I think that I mostly miss it because I want a break from grad school!

I posted in my other thread that I bought my Dell XPS 8900 on 5/21/2016.
I have just upgraded the RAM and SSD, but I couldn't play WoW at some point after buying this laptop even though I think it came with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650.

When I showed Miss Hiker WoW, I had it full-screen on my 43" television, and I was in a capital city, where the game tends to slow down, but there is another capital city with each expansion.

I don't even know how many there are nowadays, and for several expansions, there have been fewer and fewer players, although the last time that I saw, it was still the most popular MMORPG.
(if you count Classic, it is a distant #2, with Baldur's Gate III being #1)

25-man raids were also extremely demanding, but I don't have any idea how to do that at level 20.

I don't recall ever having a smaller laptop than 15.6".

People rant and rave about numeric keypads, but I use them.

[freebeard]

Do you ever replace computers just for something newer and faster?

Yes.

And I'm about to do it again.

I've been procrastinating getting another Raspberry Pi, and now the Pi 5 is shipping. Same price point with 2-3X performance.

https://www.raspberrypi.com › news › introducing-raspberry-pi-5
Introducing: Raspberry Pi 5!
7 days agoToday, we're delighted to announce the launch of Raspberry Pi 5, coming at the end of October. Priced at $60 for the 4GB variant, and $80 for its 8GB sibling (plus your local taxes), virtually every aspect of the platform has been upgraded, delivering a no-compromises user experience.

Now with two (count 'em two) video inputs. Here's an overclocking video where you can assess the gaming performance.

Overclocking The Raspberry Pi 5 To 3.0GHz! Taking The Pi5 To The Edge!

Overclocking is simply a matter of editing the Config.txt. PCIe if you want a graphics card bigger than the SBC.

[redpoint5]

People wanting to do serious work dock their laptop or have a workstation. A numeric pad probably requires 15"+ making it not a laptop, but a desktop that cost a lot.

Wish I could claim I speak 3 foreign languages fluently because I avoided WoW, but alas, I cannot. I did complete a prolific amount of foruming though.

[freebeard]

I avoided WoW, but alas, the three languages are English, Basic and HTML.

If anyone watches the part on gaming performance, is the result mediocre or very mediocre? Not that I care, I have no standard for comparison.

Insofar as the form factor, once the computer fits in your shirt pocket, the display could be a tablet, laptop, desktop (like mine) or a wearable. An interesting tablet is the Seeed reTerminal.

https://www.seeedstudio.com › ReTerminal-with-CM4-p-4904.html
reTerminal CM4104032 - AI, IoT, IIoT Human Machine ... - Seeed Studio

reTerminal CM4104032 - AI, IoT, IIoT Human Machine Interface, All-in-one Board, Modular Design, RPi CM4 32GB powered, IPS multi-touch screen, 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi & Bluetooth 5.0, rich interfaces
SKU 110070048
Rating:
18 Reviews
The reTerminal is a Human-Machine Interface facility, designed in modularization, offered multiple interfaces and components. It is your hand-size, powerful, Raspberry Pi-based all-in-one board, assisting you to develop individual IoT & AI projects and being ready to materialize industrial-level monitor and control functions.

$215.00
1+ in stock

For twice the price you get brass threaded inserts on all sides and a PCIe port on the back for industrial levels of control. You can see the breadth of applications at www.seeedstudio.com/blog/news-center/.

Haven't read this, but there's hope for a CM5 board.

https://forum.clockworkpi.com › t › cm5-adapter-when › 11084
CM5 adapter when? - clockworkpi
7 days agoAnnouncing Raspberry Pi 5, coming in late October: over 2x faster than Raspberry Pi 4, featuring silicon designed in-house at Raspberry Pi. Estimated reading time: 15 minutes It doesn't mention the CM5 explicitly there but I think we can all agree it will be on the way before too long. PeterMount September 28, 2023, 10:34am 2

[Isaac Zachary]

If you want a computer to play World of Warcraft, I'd start with looking up the recommended specs for World of Warcraft (or whatever it is you want to do with your computer).

Buying a faster computer doesn't mean whatever you do with the computer will be faster. It could be like buying a Ferrari and using it only to drive around the local school zone to help move books from one school to another.

What was considered bad in the past may not be bad today. Intel's next gen laptop CPU's are scheduled to come with really good integrated graphics that even include ray-tracing.

If I were to get a laptop right now I'd go with a Framework Laptop 16 with AMD. I'd get the AMD version because right now they are more efficient so have better battery life. Framework laptops are designed to be repairable, customizeable and upgradeable, all of which is important to me.

However, since I have desktop, I'm contemplating just getting a tablet when my Surface Go dies. The problem is I don't know what tablet to get.

[Piotrsko]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

However, since I have desktop, I'm contemplating just getting a tablet when my Surface Go dies. The problem is I don't know what tablet to get.

For my significant other I chose the tablet based on size and whether it had expandable memory (NOT sdram). Os was a consideration as was price. After that they are pretty much the same except for size, shape and color

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

For my significant other I chose the tablet based on size and whether it had expandable memory (NOT sdram). Os was a consideration as was price. After that they are pretty much the same except for size, shape and color

If I'm going to carry around a tablet, I need it to hold all my stuff. A 1TB would be nice. SD card would be nice for that reason as opposed to buying an expensive tablet.

Size, it would need to be close enought to replace a typical 8.5" x 11" piece of paper.

I do use it outside. I find my Surface to not be bright enough. I like the Eyemoo EPaper-S1, but it seems to be lacking features like an SD card slot (limiting me to 128GB) and is a new company.

Longevity is also important. With 5 or more years of updates an iPad does seem enticing.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. My Surface Go 2 works just fine. As long as it works I have no reason to get another tablet.

[Nissandriver]

"Do you ever replace computers just for something newer and faster?"

I usually do that every 5-6 years. I might use my Ryzen computers for 10 years. They are 5 and 6 years old now.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Intel CPUs are more energy efficient, which is why I always prefer them.

AMD Ryzens have often been more efficient than Intels over the last 3-4 years. You could not say that about the several years preceding that. I'm drawing 65 watts from the wall receptacle from my Ryzen 2400G computer, 43" 4K TV, and cable modem while browsing this website. Intel's integrated graphics suck compared to igpu in the Ryzen G cpus.