Author Topic: Laptop Advice  (Read 4576 times)

SpaceCoastPaul

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Laptop Advice
« on: September 24, 2016, 08:17:15 AM »
My laptop has given up the ghost.

Can any of you computer savvy SUPers recommendations on a replacement?

I'm not a gamer, but do edit GoPro videos. I rarely watch movies on the computer, but do on occasion particularly paired up with the outdoor HD projector.

My girls are all Apple disciples. I'm fairly embedded with Google / android, so I'll probably stay with Windows.

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SaMoSUP

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #1 on: September 24, 2016, 09:21:18 AM »
Surface Pro 4

Wetstuff

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #2 on: September 24, 2016, 01:00:14 PM »
Paul, I'm a Macuser since the mid-80's ..but, had to buy a PCLap to record video off Amazon, Netflicks, etc.. I only use it for one, non-Apple program: Audials.  I have good cable at my business and C'hit for signal off satellite at home (~125mi as the crow flies from Wash DC!?) so I have to record and carry a USB thumb drive home to watch interesting programming.

Bought a Samsung ATIV Book 4 NP470R5E-K02UB ..off Ebay* for like $300. because this video recording program needed more muscle than the typical, back-to-school laptop. Had a local PC shop tune it. It works great.

I'm not really all that comfortable with Windows (I run four Macs) but all I needed was to be able to use Tiger VPN for overseas programming and Google Crome.

Jim

*used Amazon for research.
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SpaceCoastPaul

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #3 on: September 25, 2016, 06:34:33 AM »
Thanks Jim and SaMoSUP. Time to go shopping.
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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #4 on: September 25, 2016, 06:44:19 AM »
Paul, I'm a Macuser since the mid-80's ..but, had to buy a PCLap to record video off Amazon, Netflicks, etc.. I only use it for one, non-Apple program: Audials.  I have good cable at my business and C'hit for signal off satellite at home (~125mi as the crow flies from Wash DC!?) so I have to record and carry a USB thumb drive home to watch interesting programming.

Bought a Samsung ATIV Book 4 NP470R5E-K02UB ..off Ebay* for like $300. because this video recording program needed more muscle than the typical, back-to-school laptop. Had a local PC shop tune it. It works great.

I'm not really all that comfortable with Windows (I run four Macs) but all I needed was to be able to use Tiger VPN for overseas programming and Google Crome.

Jim

*used Amazon for research.

Quote
My girls are all Apple disciples. I'm fairly embedded with Google / android, so I'll probably stay with Windows.

Why not Bootcamp?  It is preinstalled on every Mac and allows you to natively run Windows and MacOS on the same laptop.  Just restart hold the option key and select which OS you want to run.
« Last Edit: September 25, 2016, 07:45:05 AM by Admin »

Area 10

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #5 on: September 25, 2016, 07:37:34 AM »
I'm happy with my Surface Pro too. Handy if you do a lot of travelling.

SpaceCoastPaul

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #6 on: September 25, 2016, 08:21:57 AM »
Admin,

Not sure if I want to switch to Apple. They make elegant devices for sure, but I fear the change.
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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #7 on: September 25, 2016, 08:42:26 AM »
Admin,

Not sure if I want to switch to Apple. They make elegant devices for sure, but I fear the change.

Once Windows is loaded (very easy), you would not be able to distinguish your Apple laptop from any other Windows PC.  You press the power button and up comes Windows.  But...if you do want to use MacOS, you simply restart, hold the option key and select MacOS. 

You can have the elegant hardware and seamless Windows if you want it. 

« Last Edit: September 25, 2016, 08:46:20 AM by Admin »

Wetstuff

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #8 on: September 25, 2016, 11:15:34 AM »
Boss, It's sounds funny.. I know Bootcamp has been around for a while, but all I heard in the old days was complaints, so never bothered.  Windows was always a mystery anyway. I live on the surface and it seemed you had dive down to use a PC. Long developed prejudices are hard to abandon. 

Jim
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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #9 on: September 25, 2016, 02:20:10 PM »
Understood.  At this point I have no favorite OS.  I use Windows a bit more than MacOS but I use both regularly on my Mac.  We have all of our work computers set up this way with Windows 10 and MacOS Sierra.  Both are great.  BootCamp is seamless on newer Macs.  Here is the list that work: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204990 .

There are other ways to run Windows on a Mac (Parallels, VMware), but those run Windows "through" MacOS rather than as a clean OS of its own, and I have always found them a bit disorienting. 

Also, with BootCamp you can have Linux and various versions of Windows installed on the same machine and clean boot into any of them when you power up. 

Night Wing

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #10 on: September 25, 2016, 05:45:13 PM »
Well, with Microsoft bringing their Cumulative updates to Windows 7/8.1 where security and non security updates will be combined into one cumulative update starting on October 11 (Patch Tuesday) and this cumulative update is a "all or nothing" type of update where the updates inside the cumulative update cannot be separated, I didn't want to fight the non-security updates because I know Microsoft will try another Get Windows 10 campaign like the dreaded KB3035583 update icon in the system tray that I refused to install and hid for 12 months.

So, I bought 4 new hard drives for my 2 laptops and 2 desktop tower computers and installed 64 bit linux Mint 18 (code name Sarah) in the Xfce desktop environment to finally rid myself of Windows forever in every computer. Since I don't need any special Windows programs, everything I could do in Windows 7, I can do in linux Mint. I'm typing this post using 64 bit linux Pale Moon (browser) using 64 bit linux Mint 18.

If I ever need to run a special Windows program, I will install linux Virtualbox in linux Mint and run Windows 7 inside a folder in Virtualbox since I made 3 Windows 7 SP1 64 bit disks from the Windows 7 SP1 64 bit iso's (Ultimate, Professional, Home) and I still have the iso's backed up on thumb drives so I can make another disk of any of them.
Blue Planet Duke: 10'5" x 32" x 4.5" @ 190 Liters (2 Dukes)
Sup Sports Hammer: 8'11" x 31" x 4" @ 140 Liters
SUP Sports One World: 11'1" x 30" x 4.5" @ 173 Liters
CJ Nelson Parallax: 9'3" x 23 1/2" x 3 3/16" @ 78.8 Liters (prone surfing longboard; Thunderbolt Technologies build in Red construction)

PonoBill

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #11 on: September 25, 2016, 08:25:24 PM »
I'm an old school MS-DOS/windows guy that switched to mac for the hardware but stayed for the walled garden. I ran almost purely Windows for about a year and then started using Mac OS stuff. Greatly reduced pain.

I keep Linux and Win 10 on my computer but never use them. Linux is too geeky, Windows is too Windows (where did all my stuff go? Where did all these apps come from that I don't want. How did I wind up with Yahoo as my search engine. How do I kill this crap?). MacOS has it's nits, but it's basically painless. If you can use an iPhone you can do anything you want in MacOS.

I don't want to know the names of my OS and what each flavor does, any more than I want to know what runs my TV, or my phone. Android is a mess! Insane.
« Last Edit: September 25, 2016, 08:28:33 PM by PonoBill »
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Night Wing

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #12 on: September 26, 2016, 02:02:53 AM »
@PonoBill

Linux can be geeky if one chooses a geeky linux distro (distribution) like linux Arch which is command line heavy using the linux terminal. The Arch distro is aimed at linux power users. I'm not a power user so I avoid the using the linux terminal to solve problems and I'm lucky since I rarely run into a problem using linux Mint. I like to call myself a non-technical linux user just like I am with Windows 7. I started with linux Mint in December of 2012 and dual booted it with Windows 7. I didn't want a geeky linux distro so I chose linux Mint because it comes in 5 different "flavors" which are LMDE (for power users since it is a rolling release and not for users like me), Cinnamon, Mate, KDE and Xfce (the last four for us non-technical users). Xfce is my favorite since I can make linux Mint look like Windows XP or Windows 7.

If a Windows 7 user wants to try linux Mint, I would suggest the Mate desktop environment since Mate looks, acts and feels like Windows 7. As for the geeky command line when using the linux terminal, I have used the linux command line "twice" in the last 4 years to fix a problem. Since I didn't know the linux commands in Mint to use the terminal, I asked for help on the linux Mint forums and help came that very day when I asked and the problem was solved.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/

With Windows 7, if a user has "check for updates but let me decide when to download and install them" prompt, Microsoft couldn't get the "Get Windows 10" app (KB3035583) on any of my four  computers. But this angered CEO Nadella so he has decided to get around our much loved prompt with the his new "scheme" to bring cumulative Windows 10 type updates to Windows 7/8.1 users. This was a no-no for me. So I finally ditched Windows 7 and made the leap to run linux Mint as my default operating system. When I turn on any of my four computers in the morning, they all boot directly to linux Mint since I changed the boot order via the BIOS in my two desktop tower computers since each desktop tower computer has 2 hard drives in each one. My two laptop computers boot straight into linux Mint since I removed the Windows hard drives and replaced those two hard drives with new linux Mint hard drives. The laptop Windows 7 hard drives are in my computer drawer just in case they're ever needed.

Bottom line. With Windows 10, Microsoft can change anything in Windows 10 that Microsoft wants with the automatic updates in Windows 10 and the Windows 10 user, if he/she doesn't like the change, he/she can't do anything about it. Basically, a Windows 10 computer is nothing more than a glorified Microsoft computer terminal since Microsoft can control any user's computer through those automatic updates in Windows 10.

BTW, since you have Windows 10, search for a file named, "UpgradeSubscription.exe" and it should be in Windows 10. The file will be empty. That is because somewhere down the line, Microsoft is going to add new features to Windows 10 and those features, some of them will be subscription only if you want to use them just like Office 365 is by subscription. Windows 10 will be free for the the life of the device, but not so the features and Windows 10 users will eventually find that out in the future. Some will say this subscription file will be only for Enterprise (business), but one would be unwise to trust CEO Nadella when it comes to home users of Windows 10. Nadella wants all Windows 10 users in it's walled eco system garden and Nadella is going to do his best to accomplish his goal.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/mystery-file-in-preview-build-hints-at-windows-10-subscriptions/

Many home users using Windows 10 say this subscription file will never be activated for Home and Pro users, but Nadella is counting on people getting ticked off, ranting, complaining but he is confident these mad people will never leave Windows. But Nadella has already lost users like me since I moved to linux.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2016, 02:29:06 AM by Night Wing »
Blue Planet Duke: 10'5" x 32" x 4.5" @ 190 Liters (2 Dukes)
Sup Sports Hammer: 8'11" x 31" x 4" @ 140 Liters
SUP Sports One World: 11'1" x 30" x 4.5" @ 173 Liters
CJ Nelson Parallax: 9'3" x 23 1/2" x 3 3/16" @ 78.8 Liters (prone surfing longboard; Thunderbolt Technologies build in Red construction)

SpaceCoastPaul

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #13 on: September 26, 2016, 02:23:19 AM »
Thanks for all of the input. I don't think I'm tech savvy enough to go the linux route.

I will though stop by the Apple store, hopefully this afternoon to see what they're offering.

This old Dell won't last long, it's running Windows Vista Home Basic.  :)
8'8" x 31" Stu Sharpe WaveHog
10' x 32" Foote

linter

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Re: Laptop Advice
« Reply #14 on: September 26, 2016, 02:42:58 AM »
well i'm an old cp/m guy but i love my windows 10 -- especially when i run a shell over it that makes it look and act like window 7 -- Classic Shell, free.

my lenovo died last monday.  i went to staples and bought a dell 5555 inspiron for 299.  works great for movies and video editing with powerdirector.  no hitches. 
   a lot of the performance comes from the hard drive however.  i swapped out what the dell came with for the SSD i took out of my dead lenovo.  i'm telling you, no matter what you get in PC land, an SSD (solid state hard drive) will make the biggest diff to performance of anything.  once you try one, you'll never go back.

 


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