Laptop Computers

slippery said:

I'm thinking about buying an inexpensive Thin and Light for shit like Word/Excel and minor web browsing. Something that doesn't feel cheap and won't just frustrate the shit out of me. Any recommendations?

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LG Gram 17 13th Gen can be found used as low as $700(on ebay) which is ridiculous - I had the 17 and then moved to the OLED Style -


slippery

Has anyone used a Lenovo 9i dual screen? It seems like the new Asus Duo is going to be a better value but it's not readily available right now.

My Dell precision is getting too cumbersome for travelling, and I'm considering switching to the new M3 macbook. Mainly office work with quite a lot of adobe shit. the price is absolutely crazy for this though, so I've been very hesitant. I've read that the Surface is ok but the battery gets drained super fast when you're doing some serious work, plus it's quite noisy. Is anyone having the same struggle ?

Anyone have thoughts on the new Windows on Arm laptops that are coming out? One of my main reasons for switching to a Macbook Pro was for the usable battery life. It is annoying to have to run a VM for Windows through Parallels for things like emulator coding for old windows games, and then also having to run crossover to play live EQ.
My main worry is the Adreno GPUs on the Snapdragon X Elite chips. I know it won't have an issue running EQ, and probably not running the Vanguard Client, but I worry about it doing anything in Unreal Engine 5.
There is also no guarantee Qualcomm will get eGPU support, so it may just be a smarter idea to get something like a Zephyrus G16 with the 4080 as I am hearing reports of regular productivity workflow battery life being in the 9-10 hour range which is pretty good. I'm happy to use a laptop plugged in for playing games or tinkering in Unreal, but I don't want a laptop to struggle to get 3-4 hours off charge for web browsing and word processing.

WIndows on Arm...Yeah or Nay for general productivity with bursts of software dev?

Edit: If I was going to get windows on arm, I would probably get the 64GB Surface Laptop 15 coming out in mid June.

My Framework 16 arrived this week and I spent some time with it. I'm sure anyone interested can find plenty of reviews on it, but I have some intial impressions. I bought it mainly for Linux support, which I've read to be quite good but haven't tested myself yet.

TLDR: It's probably not worth it. You can get something 10-20% faster for half the price. I think most users will be better off just buying a new laptop when the time comes to upgrade - it will be easier to resell or hand-down an entire laptop than FW16 parts.


I did the DIY edition with the upgraded CPU and dGPU. I added my own RAM and NVME (and swapped the WiFi card from Mediatek to Intel). I probably over-bought the modules (3x USB-C, 3x USB-A, HDMI, DP, Audio, Ethernet, MicroSD, and the 250GB Flash) and the RGB Macropad (was curious), but even scaling that back some it is still basically a $2.5k laptop. I skipped the Windows license, but did buy their 180W USB-C charger (it's not included). The DIY edition is something of a misnomer - it comes mostly assembled (at least the difficult bits). It took me less than 15 minutes to assemble (going slowly) and boot.

Performance wise, I have a Lenovo Legion pro 5 with a 7745HX and 4070m to compare it to (and numbers from my previous Legion model). The 7940HS in the FW16 has the much better iGPU, but otherwise is about ~10% slower in my benchmarks than the 7745HX, which clocks higher and has 2x the L3$ (32MB vs 16MB). The FW16 dGPU option is AMD's 7700s, which is about 20-30% slower in the synthetic benchmarks I ran vs the 4070m. It even loses to the 3070m from my previous Legion 5. When using numbers I have on a desktop 6700XT GPU for comparison, I'd expect the 7700s to be +/- 10% of a desktop 6600. I do expect decent enough in-game performance though.

The $200 upgrade for the 7940HS is basically pure waste with the FW16. Vs the 7840HS, you get +200 base clock and +100 on max boost and iGPU clocks which is probably meaningless in the real world. You also get EXPO and Curve Optimizer support, but neither of these options are exposed in the BIOS. Neither is cTDP.

The novel Expansion Card system is, IMO, gimmicky. The FW has 6 expansions ports. There are some restrictions and recommendations for specific ports (i.e. 4 of the 6 can be used for charging, 3 of the 6 for display). My Legion Pro 5 has a dedicated charging port, an HDMI port, an Eth port, and an Audio jack. So I would need 4 of the 6 FW16 ports just to replicate that. The Legion also has 4 USB-A and 2 USB-C ports (1 of which can do 100w charging). Thus 10 (fixed) ports versus 6 modular. 2 of the 6 FW16 ports are USB4 capable which is nice. I think the FW16 needs 8 expansion card ports, even if the extra 2 were limited to USB2/audio/card reader. The dGPU module only has USB-C output too - it would have been nice to include built in HDMI and/or DP too (Yes, you can use the HDMI or DP expansion card in the dGPU module, but it sticks out like a dongle). The process for removing the dGPU, while not hard, does not lend itself to daily changes. For example, if you need max battery for work/school and want to pull out the dGPU in the morning and then add it back in at night for gaming, it will take about 5-10 minutes, and requires accessing the internals. Ideally it should be just as easy as the expansion cards - open a latch or two, swap, close latch.

There are also quirks, like the backlight on the numpad module is not linked to the keyboard, so you have to enable or disable them both separately. There is also no Num-lock indicator light (but there is a Caps-lock one). There are 2 NVME slots, but only one is a 2280 and the other a 2230 (I couldn't find a 1TB+ 2230 drive with a DRAM cache). FW lists liquid metal cooling, but I think it's just phase-change and not classic liquid metal. The keyboard feels fine to me but I don't like the key tradeoffs made, like the half-height arrow keys. The secondary options are displayed as the main icons on the F-keys, with F1, F2 etc. in small print. The track pad seems good, but the finish on the track pad module differs too much from the track pad spacers. The entire track pad area seems like wasted opportunity - the track pad module takes up about 80% of the width of the laptop but the track pad itself is maybe 40%. Shrink that down, and now maybe the track pad can shift over and extra space can be used for input - macro/stream-deck like functionality, LCD readout of speeds, battery, temps, etc, or move the numpad here to allow for a larger main keyboard with better key spacing. The top and bottom halves should be interchangeable too, so I could put the keyboard on the lower half and use the top half for other input devices or maybe even a display.

If you are hard on your laptops and break things, then the FW16 might be a good investment. The parts list is extensive and seems priced fairly. Spill on your keyboard? It's $59 and takes 10 seconds to swap. New screen hinges? $24. New screen? $279. The internals are accessed through the top - remove the keyboard, track pad, etc (which is tool-less and quick) and then remove 16 captive screws and one ribbon cable to take out the midplate and you will have access to the RAM, drives, etc. Things are labeled and parts have repair instructions. It's quite nice, although accessing the RAM, NVME, and wifi card on my Legion isn't too hard either. The trade-off, aside from cost, is that the chassis is a bit larger and heavier (but not excessively so IMHO).

As for upgrades, I think this is where Framework will fall short. The FW13 model did have both an Intel and AMD platform upgrade, which is a positive sign. Presumably the 16 will have at least 1 platform upgrade too, hopefully more. And dGPU upgrades. But current pricing is $749/$949 for the mainboard and $499 for the dGPU. You can get a new laptop for those combined prices, even current gen (though maybe a little late in the cycle) and it will certainly be easier to hand down or sell your old complete laptop than your old FW16 mainboard or dGPU module. They can be repurposed sure - you can buy a custom case (FW13 version no FW16 version yet) and turn the mainboard into a desktop PC/HTPC/NAS, etc. but that is another expense and comes with some limitations too. Discounting the input deck for keyboard/touch pad, the FW16 only has 7 connections (6 USB-C expansion slots and the 8 lane PCIe interposer for the dGPU), new tech like Occulink might not be possible or at least, not convenient, and thus require an entirely new laptop.

I am not sure if FW will ever have the marketshare to have options for every type of user. Right now, I think they should have a high-powered 4080m/4090m option for a dGPU. Put that in a thick dGPU module and give it great cooling with large fans to keep the noise down. Users still have the option for no dGPU or the modest 7700s. I'd also be interested in the 16c/32t 7945HX / HX3D Vcache CPU mainboard. Both of these will challenge the 180w adapter, but 240w charging should be possible on the FW16. I worry that upgrades will be limited to "next year's model" rather that upgrades up and down the product stack/tier.

I'm also waiting for someone to exploit the modularity. There are no physical locks or authentication for the parts, so it should be quite easy for someone to modify the keyboard module to be a keylogger. It would be quite simple for a secretary or employee to swap the keyboard on their boss's FW laptop. The Goodix fingerprint biometrics have already been hacked (and patched, but I'd wager other exploits remain).

Edit: The more I use the keyboard, the more it sucks. FN + Right arrow for End, really? They also have issues with USB C PD - apparently only 65w and their own 180w work correctly - if you buy the dGPU version you currently need to buy their 180W PD charger else it will run in a reduced power mode. The speakers may suck compared to a Macbook, but they are better than what I've had previously from Lenovo Legions. I swapped out the Mediatek wifi card to an Intel one - but I f'ed up and did it without checking if the Mediatek one worked correctly first. So when I used the Intel one, bluetooth had about 18 inches of range. I had trouble connecting the antennae to the card so I wasn't sure if that was the problem. FW might have a shitty batch of antennae because it's the first time I've seen a plastic frame to help hold the antenna to the card. I ended up soldering them to the card, but must have damaged the card in the process. I ordered another set of antennae from FW and did the swap myself and all is well with the same Intel wifi card.

Looking to pick up a gaming laptop and this one seems decent for the price (Ryzen 9, RTX 4070).

Asus TUF A15 FA507UI

Any thoughts?

I flipflopped around between a Macbook and this but I need something I can run MS365 on for Excel/Word for work as well as play some games like EQ and beyond using a Macbook as a superfast web browser I doubt I would use any of it's performance for anything remotely useful.

I have an inventory program that runs on Windows. It doesn't need much computing power at all.

Are there any cheap tablets available that I can load the program on instead of buying a Surface Go/Pro?

Sledge said:

I have an inventory program that runs on Windows. It doesn't need much computing power at all.

Are there any cheap tablets available that I can load the program on instead of buying a Surface Go/Pro?

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I'd probably just get a refurb surface go.

Just snagged a Lenovo pro 7i with rtx 4080 on a sale (there’s always a sale somewhere loooks like) after my current system had one too many coffees spilled onto it and no longer powers up. Really impressed by the 240hz screen, I always felt like those high refresh rates wouldn’t affect me much not playing fps games but it’s just so smoothly satisfying you notice it in most games.

side note I managed to salvage the storage from my last pc, any chance I can get the system back up and running? Guessing the battery got shorted but not sure. It’s over 5 yrs old so am not that motivated as it was time to upgrade anyways and I got all my porn out

I already got my drive out and stuff back, just wondering how to best troubleshoot my old laptop. It stopped working after the coffee (or was it Diet Coke) spill on the keyboard so trying to figure out where I should look first, or is more of a repair shop thing, in which case I’d rather trash it than pay for something almost 6 yrs old