This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

Author Topic: Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...  (Read 502 times)

Joethelawyer

  • ENWorld Refugee
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 674
    • http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« on: June 05, 2010, 08:08:59 PM »
I know this isn't RPG related, but I couldn't find another forum here which deal with such a topic.  I was hoping for some advice, I know we have a lot of smart computer guys here but feel free to move the thread to a more appropriate forum.





My current laptop is on life support.  I had to buy a  docking station because the port to plug in the power cord to is shot.   Which required a base to put on my lap for balance.  The battery life is  exactly 16 seconds.  It runs so hot the fans sound like jet engines.   My replacement HD is only 80 gig.  It's a 2004 laptop.  Bottom line,  time for a new laptop.


I'm looking at some on  Newegg.com, which seems to have the best bang for the buck.  I'll never  go with HP/Compaq, and Dells are overpriced.  Alas, I can't afford a  good mac. Price range is like 700-900 bucks.  


I'm  definitely going to get the I3 or I5 Pentium, with at least 4 gig RAM,  and at least a 320 gig HD.  The real problem I'm facing coes down to the  software/OS side.  I still run XP, so I'd be jumping the whole era of  Vista, which from what I've heard is not such a bad thing.  Windows 7  seems to have a lot more fans.  
 
Now the question I have  is to go 64 or 32 bit.  I hear some basic 32 bit apps don't run on  Win7.  Even Firefox seems to have had issues.  My protection right now  is Avira, Zonealarm, and Spybot, along with Ad-Aware, all the free  versions. Will I have problems with those?


Next, the other programs I commonly use---Pidgin as a universal  chat interface, Shareaza, Bit Tyrant for torrents, Thunderbird, Firefox,  MS Word 2007, older version of WordPerfect.  I'm hoping those all have  editions which will run on 64 bit, or even under Win7 in general.


Then there's the list of programs I have that I use once in a  while, but are handy utility programs nonetheless.  Things like programs  to convert .lit formatted files to .pdf.  


I guess overall my question is, is Win7 worth it?   Should I  stick with XP?  How much am I giving up?  


Then, the question of XP mode which comes on more expensive  versions of Win7.  In other words, versions which don't come pre-loaded  on the pc.  I've sort of resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to  buy the full OS anyhow, because I loathe how they don't give original  CD's anymore with the pc.  Dell was the last holdout which used to do  that, but since they stopped that practice, I'm not buying from them.  Not worth the price.  Plus I don't want to have to a reinstall with all  the bloatware.  There's about a $100 difference between Win7 Home and  Win7 Pro, which has XP mode.  Is it worth the 100 bucks?


The hardware side of things seems to be the least of my worries,  ironically.  Hardware specs, chipsets, etc, are pretty straightforward.   The software side seems to be driving the price up.  What are your  experiences with newer laptops running Win7 with the latest Pentiums?  
 
Any  advice is greatly appreciated.
~Joe
Chaotic Lawyer and Shit-Stirrer

JRients:   "Joe the Lawyer is a known shit-stirrer. He stirred the shit. He got banned. Asking what he did to stir the shit introduces unnecessary complication to the scenario, therefore he was banned for stirring the shit."


Now Blogging at http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/


Erik Mona: "Woah. Surely you're not _that_ Joe!"

John Morrow

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6254
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2010, 08:16:48 PM »
Quote from: Joethelawyer;385967
Now the question I have  is to go 64 or 32 bit.  I hear some basic 32 bit apps don't run on  Win7.  Even Firefox seems to have had issues.  My protection right now  is Avira, Zonealarm, and Spybot, along with Ad-Aware, all the free  versions. Will I have problems with those?


Unless you have a very good reason to go 64-bit, I would strongly urge you to stick with 32-bit.  A few people in my office have 64-bit Windows installed on their systems and it seems to cause nothing but problems.  

Quote from: Joethelawyer;385967
Any  advice is greatly appreciated.


I use a Mac at home but I've used Lenovo notebooks at my last two jobs and they've been pretty solid.  I've also had the unfortunate opportunity to test the Lenovo spill-resistant keyboard (it drains through the computer) when I accidentally spilled a glass of milk into the keyboard while the computer was on and it worked -- no damage was done to the computer.
Robin Laws' Game Styles Quiz Results:
Method Actor 100%, Butt-Kicker 75%, Tactician 42%, Storyteller 33%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 33%, Specialist 17%

837204563

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 104
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2010, 08:18:43 PM »
Don't buy a laptop.  Laptops are generally overpriced POS that are much harder to fix when something goes wrong, and nearly impossible to upgrade.  At one point some people simply needed laptops because they were one the go so much.  But nowadays there are much better solutions.  Need to check your email on the go?  Buy an iPhone or an IPod touch (or similar equivalent).  Need to read lots of documents on planes for your job?  Buy an eBook reader that supports pdf.  A desktop plus one or both of these accessories is probably going to be cheaper than the laptop, more reliable, and possibly more powerful.

837204563

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 104
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2010, 08:20:03 PM »
Quote from: John Morrow;385968
Unless you have a very good reason to go 64-bit, I would strongly urge you to stick with 32-bit.  A few people in my office have 64-bit Windows installed on their systems and it seems to cause nothing but problems.


Been running 64 bit windows for years.  Never have had any problems and it runs every program I have tried to install on it: including old win 98 games.  Don't spread FUD.

John Morrow

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6254
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #4 on: June 05, 2010, 08:48:34 PM »
Quote from: 837204563;385970
Been running 64 bit windows for years.  Never have had any problems and it runs every program I have tried to install on it: including old win 98 games.  Don't spread FUD.

If you can get PostgreSQL ODBC drivers to work on it, let me know how to get it to work.  And, no, I don't seem to be the only person having that particular problem.
Robin Laws' Game Styles Quiz Results:
Method Actor 100%, Butt-Kicker 75%, Tactician 42%, Storyteller 33%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 33%, Specialist 17%

John Morrow

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6254
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #5 on: June 05, 2010, 08:51:22 PM »
Quote from: 837204563;385969
Don't buy a laptop.  Laptops are generally overpriced POS that are much harder to fix when something goes wrong, and nearly impossible to upgrade.  At one point some people simply needed laptops because they were one the go so much.  But nowadays there are much better solutions.  Need to check your email on the go?  Buy an iPhone or an IPod touch (or similar equivalent).  Need to read lots of documents on planes for your job?  Buy an eBook reader that supports pdf.  A desktop plus one or both of these accessories is probably going to be cheaper than the laptop, more reliable, and possibly more powerful.


And I'm the one spreading FUD?
Robin Laws' Game Styles Quiz Results:
Method Actor 100%, Butt-Kicker 75%, Tactician 42%, Storyteller 33%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 33%, Specialist 17%

Joethelawyer

  • ENWorld Refugee
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 674
    • http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #6 on: June 05, 2010, 08:59:08 PM »
Thanks for the advice, but it's definitely gonna be a laptop.  I've also heard of issues with the 64 bit install.  What am I missing besides the ability to go above 4 gig RAM if I do 32 bit instead of 64?  Is there a significant speed difference?  I've read that Lenovos are good, just come with asstons of bloatware.  I figure buying the OS on CD and doing a complete reinstall ought to take care of that.
~Joe
Chaotic Lawyer and Shit-Stirrer

JRients:   "Joe the Lawyer is a known shit-stirrer. He stirred the shit. He got banned. Asking what he did to stir the shit introduces unnecessary complication to the scenario, therefore he was banned for stirring the shit."


Now Blogging at http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/


Erik Mona: "Woah. Surely you're not _that_ Joe!"

GameDaddy
BANNED

  • BANNED
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2931
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #7 on: June 05, 2010, 11:57:36 PM »
Dell? Overpriced?

Check on:

http://www.dellauction.com/

and get back to me on that.
Blackmoor grew from a single Castle to include, first, several adjacent Castles (with the forces of Evil lying just off the edge of the world to an entire Northern Province of the Castle and Crusade Society's Great Kingdom.

~ Dave Arneson

StormBringer

  • Harbinger of Chaos
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 9320
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #8 on: June 06, 2010, 02:10:02 AM »
Quote from: John Morrow;385968
Unless you have a very good reason to go 64-bit, I would strongly urge you to stick with 32-bit.  A few people in my office have 64-bit Windows installed on their systems and it seems to cause nothing but problems.  
This is wrong.  In every way.  Get a 64-bit system.  I am dual booting Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 on the dual core AMD Turion.  Zero problems, and 32-bit will be obsolete by this time next year, if not by the end of this year.  If you want to save a couple of bucks (as in, 'a couple of hundred bucks') go with AMD.  I can get you a list of differences and benchmarks that show the Intel as 'faster' or 'better', but you will never see those differences, because you will never run software that will exploit the speed.

Also, it is an HP that I admittedly searched around online for a discount code and saved close to $100 on.  It was about $775 all told, with a 17.3" screen, and beefed up video because it is a multimedia/entertainment system.  I have had zero problems in eight months.  Absolutely zero.

If you are not going to take this opportunity to switch to Linux, get Windows 7.  I am not going to start an argument, but if you are a lawyer, I will bet dollars to doughnuts you have no legacy software that absolutely needs to be run any more.  As far as I can tell, however, once you have Windows 7 installed and registered, getting this 'XP mode' is free:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

But again, whatever legacy software you have should run just fine.  The stuff that has problems running are things that I have only vaguely heard of, and that you will never run into, or will have installed.  I wouldn't worry about that.
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.'
 - Thomas Paine
'Everything doesn't need

John Morrow

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6254
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #9 on: June 23, 2010, 10:19:37 PM »
As a counterpoint to the "never have any problems with 64-bit Windows" posts...

From Playing an RPG with Skype and Gametable:

Quote
Initially our group, which includes people I’ve gamed with in person and people I’ve only chatted with online, was going to use a video chat application so that we could see each other as well. Since we had a mixed group of Mac and PC users we had been testing out TinyChat as a possible candidate. It’s free and uses a browser-based video chartroom that you can make private if you want, or leave open and allow people to sit in.  Unfortunately some of our players had trouble getting it to work properly on their 64-bit PC systems, and we ended up not using this.
Robin Laws' Game Styles Quiz Results:
Method Actor 100%, Butt-Kicker 75%, Tactician 42%, Storyteller 33%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 33%, Specialist 17%

StormBringer

  • Harbinger of Chaos
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 9320
Buying a New Laptop---All Help Appreciated...
« Reply #10 on: June 23, 2010, 11:12:37 PM »
Quote from: John Morrow;389658
As a counterpoint to the "never have any problems with 64-bit Windows" posts...

From Playing an RPG with Skype and Gametable:
And I have zero problems with Skype, too.  If you are referring to the Java program for Gametable, there are at least several dozen things that could be causing the problem that aren't related to 64bit systems.

I will virtually guarantee that the first quarter of '11 will see the end of 32-bit.  It is getting harder and harder to find single core CPUs, and once those are gone, 32-bit will be obsolete.  There are some issues here and there with 64bit programs, and I will admit to having a streak of luck in not having any problems with mine.  But the issues that do crop up are fixable, and by the time the general population has heard of them or experienced them, there is almost always a patch or a workaround or an upgrade to the software to correct it.
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.'
 - Thomas Paine
'Everything doesn't need