Laptop recommendations
 

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 18:26:49 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 17:00:19 -0400, wrote:

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 16:25:49 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally
giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

I have had pretty good luck with Lenovo (formerly IBM) and my 2 1996
vintage 365s still run but they are not fast enough to do much.



We use tablets. Both wife and I have iPad mini. Works well for traveling.
Gets and sends email. Which is 80% of the travel use. Other 20% is
looking up local places or maps. Tablets are great for that. We download
books from our local library as well as Amazon so when on airplanes can
read or play games. For wifi we either use hotels, phone hotspot, or
Starbucks or McDonald's. I also have Xfinity for home, and they have
public wifi wherever Comcast is a provider. The tablet is a lot more
convenient than a laptop for travel, where you do not need it for business
use.

I like a laptop when I travel because we hijack the TV for our music
and streaming movies if their connection is fast enough to do it.
Otherwise I usually have 150-200 G of movies on the laptop we can
watch.
It is also better for editing pictures and videos. Sometimes I do that
on the TV if we are connected.
Some hotels use special TVs that you can't hack into but when we are
renting a house they are regular TVs and you just plug in.

A friend down the road, Air Force Major, gave me the movies he'd gotten on his last trip to
Afghanistan. I had to buy a 1 TB harddrive to hold them. The military in the mideast has a hell of a
bootleg operation going...all legal of course.

I have a lot of movies I recorded with my Replay TV off of the
cable/satellite but these days I find myself getting DVDs from the
pawn shop for a buck and ripping them to a hard drive.
Newer movies come from Amazon, Netflix or HBO/Sho. I don't bother
recording them and they make it hard to actually do it in anything but
NTSC quality.

Laptop recommendations
 

On 3/29/2017 6:37 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 18:12:58 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 06:41:45 -0400, wrote:

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

===

I've always been partial to HPs. I believe their engineering and
reliability are a notch or two above the others. I'd also get a
wireless mouse for it since most touchpads leave a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately you will probably be stuck with Windows 10 if you buy a
new machine. People seem to like it once they get used to the new
interface but I'm set in my ways in that regard.

Coincidentally, I've kinda had my eye on this one:

https://www.costco.com/HP-ENVY-17t-L...100317268.html

Thanks for the comeback.



That is a nice machine if you are gaming or doing video editing. It
may be a little bit of overkill for the normal user.


I don't "game" on a computer but the last two HP's I've had were/are
their Pavilion "entertainment" versions, meaning high speed video, CPU
and other features apparently gamers want or need. I figured if they
can do games well, they will probably do everything else well also.
They have.

Laptop recommendations
 

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 19:02:30 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


That is a nice machine if you are gaming or doing video editing. It
may be a little bit of overkill for the normal user.


I don't "game" on a computer but the last two HP's I've had were/are
their Pavilion "entertainment" versions, meaning high speed video, CPU
and other features apparently gamers want or need. I figured if they
can do games well, they will probably do everything else well also.
They have.



You can get back in forth to work in a Tesla too but you don't really
need all of that power. I guess if you want the biggest and baddest
machine on the block, go for it. You can afford it. ;-)

Laptop recommendations
 

On 3/29/2017 7:27 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 19:02:30 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


That is a nice machine if you are gaming or doing video editing. It
may be a little bit of overkill for the normal user.


I don't "game" on a computer but the last two HP's I've had were/are
their Pavilion "entertainment" versions, meaning high speed video, CPU
and other features apparently gamers want or need. I figured if they
can do games well, they will probably do everything else well also.
They have.



You can get back in forth to work in a Tesla too but you don't really
need all of that power. I guess if you want the biggest and baddest
machine on the block, go for it. You can afford it. ;-)


Lesson I learned a long time ago from a old timer
mechanical engineer (P.E.)

"When in doubt, make it stout".

Laptop recommendations
 

Poco Deplorevole wrote:
This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

I stopped dragging my laptop on most of my trips and now carry my
Samsung tablet and a Chromebook. Combined they weigh about half of my
laptop alone. The tablet is used mainly for movies and games on the
plane. The Chromebook is for email and surfing the web. The tablet can
do that, too but I prefer an actual keyboard for choosing restaurants
and finding other things to do. I can also access my work computer with
the Chromebook and tablet but the Chromebook wins again for the real
keyboard. The two combined are less than a decent laptop.

Laptop recommendations
 

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 19:34:37 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

You can get back in forth to work in a Tesla too but you don't really
need all of that power. I guess if you want the biggest and baddest
machine on the block, go for it. You can afford it. ;-)


Lesson I learned a long time ago from a old timer
mechanical engineer (P.E.)

"When in doubt, make it stout".


Unfortunately, in the computer biz, stout is not the same as fast.
I had to give up my PC based MP3 players because once you got much
beyond a P1 166, reliability in the Florida car environment because
you couldn't keep them cool. The same was true of hard drives. Once
you got much over 10-15gig, they started getting more heat sensitive.

My interest in laptops used to be as cheap (to run) servers since they
used to run at "night light" levels of power. This last one I got came
with a 90w power brick. You need to put a towel in your lap if you
actually use it as a laptop or you will roast your nuts. The Dell
Latitude (P3/400 W/98 machine) I am running back in the shop is always
cool to the touch.
The specs say it pulls a max of 36w but it seems to cruise in the
10-15w just talking to the printer, scanner or banging an external
hard drive.

Laptop recommendations
 

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 19:46:11 -0400, Alex wrote:

Poco Deplorevole wrote:
This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

I stopped dragging my laptop on most of my trips and now carry my
Samsung tablet and a Chromebook. Combined they weigh about half of my
laptop alone. The tablet is used mainly for movies and games on the
plane. The Chromebook is for email and surfing the web. The tablet can
do that, too but I prefer an actual keyboard for choosing restaurants
and finding other things to do. I can also access my work computer with
the Chromebook and tablet but the Chromebook wins again for the real
keyboard. The two combined are less than a decent laptop.

If you are outdoor people Google Earth is essential and the bigger the
display the better. We can scope out the hiking trails before we book
the trip. I pin the ones we want to hike and we go from there. Then
when we get there we can pull them all up and switch to maps and find
them.

Laptop recommendations
 

On Wednesday, March 29, 2017 at 4:44:35 PM UTC-5, Bill wrote:
wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 16:25:49 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally
giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

I have had pretty good luck with Lenovo (formerly IBM) and my 2 1996
vintage 365s still run but they are not fast enough to do much.



We use tablets. Both wife and I have iPad mini. Works well for traveling.
Gets and sends email. Which is 80% of the travel use. Other 20% is
looking up local places or maps. Tablets are great for that. We download
books from our local library as well as Amazon so when on airplanes can
read or play games. For wifi we either use hotels, phone hotspot, or
Starbucks or McDonald's. I also have Xfinity for home, and they have
public wifi wherever Comcast is a provider. The tablet is a lot more
convenient than a laptop for travel, where you do not need it for business
use.

I like a laptop when I travel because we hijack the TV for our music
and streaming movies if their connection is fast enough to do it.
Otherwise I usually have 150-200 G of movies on the laptop we can
watch.
It is also better for editing pictures and videos. Sometimes I do that
on the TV if we are connected.
Some hotels use special TVs that you can't hack into but when we are
renting a house they are regular TVs and you just plug in.


I rarely edit my pictures, and do not watch much TV.

Same here. Well unless my wife wants me to watch a movie with her, but that's about it.

Laptop recommendations
 

Poco Deplorevole wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:04:36 -0400, "Mr. Luddite" wrote:

On 3/29/2017 6:41 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally
giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

===

I've always been partial to HPs. I believe their engineering and
reliability are a notch or two above the others. I'd also get a
wireless mouse for it since most touchpads leave a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately you will probably be stuck with Windows 10 if you buy a
new machine. People seem to like it once they get used to the new
interface but I'm set in my ways in that regard.


I agree with Wayne. My last two laptops have been HP Pavilions. The
first, purchased in 2007, finally died after about 8 years of heavy,
daily use in the guitar shop. The second and the one I am currently
using, is an HP purchased in 2010, still running Win 7. I downloaded
the free upgrade to Win 10 but have not installed it.

That said however, I wonder how much of a particular brand contains
unique and/or proprietary hardware. Seems like most of the major brands
use the same CPU (usually Intel) and hard drives made by others.
I suspect the same is true with mother boards and power supplies.

I'd consider a Dell if I could find one designed for commercial use.
Seems to be many of them around that are still chugging away.



My problem with Dell is all the software crap that comes loaded on the
computer. Of course, Best Buy
and others will remove, for a fee, all that crap, but still...


Just got an advert for Dell at $140.
http://deals.dell.com/mpp/productdet...02922624028084

Laptop recommendations
 

Poco Deplorevole wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 16:25:49 -0000 (UTC), Bill wrote:

wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally
giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

I have had pretty good luck with Lenovo (formerly IBM) and my 2 1996
vintage 365s still run but they are not fast enough to do much.



We use tablets. Both wife and I have iPad mini. Works well for traveling.
Gets and sends email. Which is 80% of the travel use. Other 20% is
looking up local places or maps. Tablets are great for that. We download
books from our local library as well as Amazon so when on airplanes can
read or play games. For wifi we either use hotels, phone hotspot, or
Starbucks or McDonald's. I also have Xfinity for home, and they have
public wifi wherever Comcast is a provider. The tablet is a lot more
convenient than a laptop for travel, where you do not need it for business
use.

My wife's got a tablet she uses in the truck for finding campgrounds,
cheap fuel, etc, plus all the
stuff she does. I want something on which I can store files, pay bills, etc.


I can bank online with the the iPad. Depending on memory size, can store
stuff, and use for pictures. It runs safari or Crome.