The Techno-Bleg Thread

[JasonL]

Ok, so looking for a laptop for wife. Windows based probably. Doesn't play games. Web surfing, some document preparation stuff, youtube rabbit holes, etc. Anyone have thoughts on quality and value options?

Considering the phone upgrade - has anyone lived in the no headphone jack world of the iphone 8 yet? How annoying is it? I kinda like cheap headphones for working out and those will be wired. I will sweat in them and they will die so i'm not gonna drop more than like $20 on the sony's or whatever.

[dhex]

how big of a screen? lenovo is generally solid, but the cheaper ones are all 13" screens.

[Mo]

They come with a pair of headphones that use the lightning port and an adaptor for regular headphones. I got wireless headphones and they've worked for me as well.

[Highway]

I've actually been really happy with those Dylan on-the-ear wireless headphones I asked about here. They're not much more expensive than 20 dollars, came with an extra set of covers, and might be a better solution than wired through the adapter.

[nicole]

I recommend getting a cheap ASUS, I've had like four or five now.

[dhex]

cheap asus is a good choice as well. you can do very, very cheap for an internet machine with a big screen.

[JasonL]

Cheap asus is the vivo book series as opposed to zenbook?

[nicole]

Based on what I just looked at on Amazon, yeah. They also have chromebooks but I've never had one of those.

[JasonL]

I think chromebook is out as wife has low tolerance for new OS to learn. I'm thinking minimum 1080p screen, I'll check on size but maybe 13" is okay, Core i5, 256GB SSD, no supplemental drive.

[Highway]

I've been starting to look at a convertible chromebook to replace my iPad2. A friend has one that he's getting more used to. It's now basically a big android phone with sometimes iffy app compatibility from what I understand.

[D.A. Ridgely]

So, not so cheap tho under $1k laptop arrived yesterday. It's been a pain in the ass removing bloatware, loading programs, learning how to live without a mouse and what combination of keys do what, increasing font sizes everywhere, etc. but it's handsome and light and I now have one less reason to try to go off somewhere more often to write. Thanks to all for input; I'm sure I'll have questions in the weeks and months to come.

[JasonL]

Has anyone used a machine with an eMMC hdd? I was thinking SSD or bust, but I don't know what an eMMC is like.

[Highway]

eMMC is a bootable flash drive. It's basically the storage on your phone. It's significantly inferior to SSD, but if it's a cheapish laptop, it might be all you can get. And you're not going to store everything for the laptop on it, you'll probably need cloud storage, with the associated storage and data fees.

[JasonL]

Eh, I think I'll hold for SSD and drop down to sub Core i5 processor if I need to save. Honestly the Asus zenbooks look pretty good and $700 something isn't bad for what you get. Probably overpowered for her needs but not the worst deal in the world.

[Andrew]

Eh, I think I'll hold for SSD and drop down to sub Core i5 processor if I need to save. Honestly the Asus zenbooks look pretty good and $700 something isn't bad for what you get. Probably overpowered for her needs but not the worst deal in the world.

My Acer Aspire has done everything I've needed: web, word docs, spreadsheets, basic photo editing, etc. It was $550 for the 15.6" screen, core i5, 256 SSD, and 8 GB ddr4 ram. My only major complaint is the off center mouse pad.

[nicole]

My newest asus is not available anymore obviously but these were its specs:
15.6-Inch Full-HD Display with Windows 10 Pre-installed, Refer user guide below for firmware update
Powerful Intel i5-6200U 2.3 GHz Processor (Turbo to 2.8 GHz), Refer description for software update
256GB Solid-State Drive for blazing-fast boot times and program launches

and I paid $529 on amazon which I think is the most I've paid for one of these

[JasonL]

That's the one I'm eyeballing. So the processor is powerful? The boot times are blazing fast?

[Andrew]

It takes me longer to type my password than it does to boot up.

[nicole]

Yeah I mean I’m not gaming on it, I’m doing pretty much exactly what you want it to do though.

[JasonL]

Are convertible laptops stupid?

[Highway]

Are convertible laptops stupid?

Stupid? No. You just need to realize the downsides. As a tablet, they're very large, heavy, and thick. So if you're comparing them to tablets, then the tablets are going to be way more portable and comfortable to use on the go.

But.

Personally I hate laptops. I dislike, even loathe, the sitting-on-a-table-with-the-screen-up form factor. To me, having a laptop turn into a tablet - even a heavy, thick one - and using the touchscreen instead of the stupid hockey rink, is a qualified win. And one of the reasons I'm considering a chromebook as a iPad replacement is that there are things I don't like about the tablet UI as well, particularly the on-screen keyboard.

[JasonL]

May wind up getting the one db was looking at upthread. It keeps popping up among favorites sub $900.

[Dangerman]

It passes my humble standards, with the exception of the gimmicky fingerprint reader which I would recommend disabling and uninstalling. It has USB 'C' ports and an IPS/PLS screen at 1080p, a decent CPU and a decent SSD. Take the time to do a full reset of Windows right out of the box so you can do a custom install without features your don't like, and without attaching a Microsoft account (which you can add later as part of the actual User, don't have your Administrator account be the daily driver).

[Eric the .5b]

RAM might be a bit low; I haven't been doing much with Win10, though, so not 100% sure how much you really need.

[Dangerman]

8GB is fine for anything less than gaming/production, especially in a laptop where clockspeeds will be limited by thermals before you can saturate the RAM. If you leave every app and tab open all the time, you could run into problems I guess