Omnimaga
General Discussion => Technology and Development => Computer Usage and Setup Help => Topic started by: shmibs on April 17, 2012, 09:40:14 pm
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Clue, my current computron that i got from a friend after she had used it for three years, has taken a lot of abuse and served me well over the past year and a half. however, what with the optical drive having failed (and constantly resetting itself with an annoying buzzing sound :P) and the hard drive just ceasing to be detected once every few weeks or so, making me live boot to mount it again and fix errors, i think it's finally time for something new.
for Clewtew, i've been looking at getting system76's pangolin (https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/panp9) model, on a matter of principal :P. however, before making any rash decisions, i wanted to see if you guys had any drastically better suggestions. the most intensive stuff this will be doing is compiling code, so mega fancy graphics cards aren't a necessity.
thanks =)
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Well first of all, do you absolutely need a laptop or will it be mostly for home use? Because if it's the latter case, then I would suggest getting a desktop instead. You'll save about $200 and still get the same specs and it will last longer if you plan to use it intensively, especially for gaming, not to mention it might be easier to upgrade.
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i'm going to be commuting a lot this upcoming year, between school/my parents' house/other places, and need to access the internet from wherever i am at the time, so a laptop is pretty essential, and the most intensive game it would ever run is probably minecraft, so that's not a huge issue.
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I thought you had no internet at home? ??? (Noticing your 2 month absence last Christmas)
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there is internet access, but i was blocked from omnimaga.
my father has a router-based proxy to filter out anything he doesn't like.
EDIT: that, and i was out of town for pretty much all of december on a family trip.
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Ah ok, I guess next year you might want to figure out some proxies in case he blocks one that you use or something. :P
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I would say, the system76 laptop is pretty OK :) I have been tempted to buy it but my laptop is still all right.
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It seems pretty good deal considering you're getting i5 (or i7 for additonal $115 on laptop). It helps that ubuntu is installed instead of expensive windows :) The display seems mediocre tho, at 15.6" and 720p, and so-so graphics card, but as long as you won't be doing anything graphic intensive, it'll be fine (But if you plan on possibly doing graphics stuff for programs and such, this will come as hinderance). I really love the support for 3.0 usb but the drawback is there is only total of 3 usb slots (that's including both 3.0 and 2.0) so you might have to consider buying the usb extension or something.
RAM seems to be only 4GB at base price, which is on low end nowadays, so you might want to pay a bit more for 8GB. Meanwhile, 16GB is pretty overkill since this is laptop and you won't be gaming heavily. HDD is decent, 500 GB and 7200 rpm, and you can always buy external harddrive, which I think is always better choice than large internal SATA Harddrive because if the internal harddrive fails, you won't lose all the data.
Overall, from my point of view it is a decent laptop for its price (for being new and not refurbished) and the only drawback would be graphics, which you did say that you won't need it much anyways.
Edit: Also I can't find a source for battery