October 24, 2019 at 1:44 pm
EDIT: I also wanted to mention that having a full size keyboard with a seperate number pad makes such a huge diffierence in comfort and convenience.
Totally agreed, there. That's also why I went with a "gaming" laptop... the keyboard just seems better made to handle "punishment" than those made for lightweight business usage and the "feel" is better for the way I type.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
November 15, 2019 at 5:45 pm
So I ended up with an alienware area 51 laptop. Odd thing is for full-power it requires 2 power supplies.
Still early, but so far I like the power. it's heavy, but not unbearable.
April 5, 2021 at 1:34 pm
Alienware it's amazing, but it's a very heavy laptop. The good thing about technology is that it is constantly upgrading. Actually, it's upgrading too fast for us, because we cannot keep up with it. What seemed impossible for 2015 for example, now it's the standard. It's pretty difficult to give a recommendation when it comes to a laptop because everybody has different needs. If you ask me, I would check out this list from https://thepcenthusiast.com/top-gaming-laptops-with-rtx-3080-3070-3060-ampere-gpu/ to see which one fits my needs the best. After all, that's the most important thing
April 5, 2021 at 1:55 pm
Revised this below 02/2022
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
February 9, 2022 at 9:14 am
It's been a few years since I purchased any new computers. Does anyone have a favorite brand or good reviews on Laptops? I don't want a tablet, touchscreen, 2 in 1 or cloud device. I would use it for run-of-the-mill stuff, maybe some gaming, photography, etc. It doesn't have to be the fastest out of the box but I would like it to be upgradable if needed. Any advice would be appreciated.
February 9, 2022 at 2:10 pm
See my more recent post
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
February 9, 2022 at 3:43 pm
I'm a small and light person, so I use the HP Spectre, but that's not likely what you want.
I hear good things about Lenovo from friends that get the workstation class machines: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/subseries-results?visibleDatas=992:Workstation
A little pricey, but often upgradeable over time. I'd look at these as well as the Asus ones mentioned previously.
February 9, 2022 at 5:16 pm
Ok... despite the fact that I love my Alien-ware that I previously described, I'm finding that ALL laptop keyboards suck. I have had one yet where frequently used keys don't end up "losing paint". I've now had to buy a replacement keyboard because that's almost cheaper than replacing the individual scissor keys, which never seem to work quite right ever again once you've replaced them.
So, I bought an external keyboard for use at home that's a heavy duty, mechanical, gaming keyboard about 9 months ago. So far, so good. No signs of wear, yet and I can actually type a whole lot better because I can put the keyboard in a comfortable position and there's actually some separation between keys, unlike laptop keyboards.
The machine itself has been awesome. I bought it a while back but it has 6 I7's threaded to 12, 32 GB of RAM, 2TB of NVME SSDs, 1TB of spinning rust (for low performance testing and archive of info), and (at the time) one of the best display chips that drives the 17" monitor on it. It does not come with an internal CD but I bought an external one that works well enough and I only connect it when I'm going to use it.
Yep... it's a heavy beast (heavy duty aluminum frame with heavy speaker magnets, etc) and it won't fit a standard 17 inch carry bag, but I don't travel much (especially in the last 2 years) either. Heh... I think of it as a portable "desktop" box that doesn't take as much room. Ah...and I forgot to mention, it's auto-magically over-clocked to speeds up to 4Ghz. I can set it to stay that way or I can set it to "normal" where it'll automatically ramp up if it needs to. I haven't yet measured battery life between charges. If I start to travel again, I'll have to do that. And, this beast is not going to work well on the fold-down tray of an airplane seat. It's just too big for that. That's actually good for me because, when I did travel by plane, I used it as downtime to catch up on some Z's. 😀
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
February 9, 2022 at 5:58 pm
Jeff, that's a good reminder about using an external keyboard. The reminder being that I have a box of at least a half dozen in storage that date from when they automatically were included with desktops. There's everything from the tiny ones about 10 inches long to the big fancy gaming ones with the rotating colored lights.
And then there is another box of hard drives, a couple moving boxes of cables, etc.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
December 28, 2022 at 12:47 am
This was removed by the editor as SPAM
December 28, 2022 at 2:08 am
As I have recommended before, again I really like and recommend the Asus ROG (Republic of Gamers) laptops. I'm on my fourth one in the series, that I think is called STRIX SCAR which is a 2.4Ghz, 32gb ram and 64-bit processor 17" display with a second 32" display. I configure it with two internal drives and use USB for other stuff like cd/dvd, and removable drives. I run SQL Server 2012 on it and it is a ball of fire. I've done queries that return 1.3 million rows from a local SQL Server database in less than 60 seconds. ( see correction below). Only problem I have had is some commercial applications do sort of flicker for a bit on inserts to large files with 80 years worth of personal data, but I am convinced that is due to poor design of the applicaiton and it's data storage.
I also run other batch-processes such as heavy-duty batches of 50 1000-dpi digital scans of slides and you cant' even tell it is happening. Wireless is good, but I do use a wired connection to internet and two NAS devices, overall a total of 18 drives in Windows 11, including 4 USB and 2 SATA disks on a USB hub.
This is without a doubt the best system I've ever used out of a total of probably 30 laptops between myself and my wife over the years.
The only problem I have had was my own fault when I upset a glass of Coke on the keyboard on my previous one and haven't yet installed the replacement keyboard.
Correction: Due to my aging brain, I mis-stated the query stats. I just re-ran my query on the whole table and the results are:
select * FROM [dbo].[GenericImportQIFOld]
Time: 00:00:13 2372160 rows
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
December 28, 2022 at 3:56 am
@jefferyjordan26 - my advice would be to ask that recommendation on a vdj forum not a SQL server forum. That being said, I would look at the recommended specs for vdj and grab something that exceeds them BUT still fits your budget.
For example, I wanted a laptop for some web based gaming and some SQL presentations while hosting SQL server in the cloud. I went with a budget laptop (4 gb ram, Intel Celeron processor, integrated graphics, 64 gb emmc drive, and a 256 gb m.2 drive) for roughly $300 USD. Not beefy by any means but met my requirements.
Now that laptop eventually died on me and got replaced with another budget laptop that is a bit before but still definitely a budget laptop. I don't know what vdj requires, but I suspect that it likes high memory and fast disk. The GPU likely can be some budget thing (integrated). I do recommend finding one with a keyboard layout you like. If you can afford a large one (17" or higher) they usually have a standard keyboard instead of a compact one. But that is just a personal preference thing. I know I hate touchpads so I have a nice trackball, but some people have no problems with touchpads or may prefer a regular mouse.
My guess (again, I've not looked into vdj) is that an Asus ROG or Alienware are going to be overkill for your purposes and you may even benefit from a MacBook. I'd ask on a vdj forum OR investigate the specs required for vdj...
The above is all just my opinion on what you should do.
As with all advice you find on a random internet forum - you shouldn't blindly follow it. Always test on a test server to see if there is negative side effects before making changes to live!
I recommend you NEVER run "random code" you found online on any system you care about UNLESS you understand and can verify the code OR you don't care if the code trashes your system.
December 28, 2022 at 11:48 am
Brian, I agree that for a vdj system you don't need a whole lot of power. Mine runs on a little 11" Samsung netbook, but with a really good output system. However, all my maintenance work such as ripping, editing and tagging of over 70,000 files takes place on my Asus ROG machine and then is transferred. The only downside of the smaller machine is that it takes roughly four minutes to start up, due to software design being not-so-hot. Keyboard is quite small, but it doesn't get much use anyway.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
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