Author Topic: Computer Advice...? (Read 2681 times)

Cory Magel · « **on:** December 31, 2013, 04:23:36 PM »

So, it's about time I upgraded my primary computer. I have always bought desktops, because they are easily upgraded, however since I usually buy just under top of the line they last me a good 5-7 years and when I need to upgrade I might as well replace them completely as a result. So I think (unless it becomes PURELY a cost issue) I'm going to look at Laptops and a docking station as a result.

Does anyone know of a good, reputable, reliable custom build laptop? My initial research says Lenovo and Mac (and I'm not a Mac person, so that's out and I won't touch HP's). However I find specialty companies, like Falcon for example, that custom build for you. Lenovo is cheaper I suspect, but you get bloatware... which annoys me.

I know I want...
CPU speed I'm not too sure on. Anything new is going to be faster than what I have and RAM/Bus Speed is probably my bigger bottleneck.
24-32GB of memory (32 ideally).
250GB main drive and ideally a 1TB secondary (not overly concerned with that as I have an external 1.5TB now though).
Minimum of 2GB video card memory, maybe as much as 4GB if it's not an arm and a leg.
I would use the CD drive for standard the usual computer stuff, DVD's (soon to be blu-ray), Music, etc. Writer is cheap enough I'd that of course to burn discs.
A decent number of USB ports is a must
A CF Card reader would be nice, but I can get an external one of course (Canon SLR camera uses CF Cards).
64 Bit Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate (not Win8)
Mircosoft Word, Excel, and Outlook (I'm thinking Business Ed)
The larger the screen and the better the resolution the better, however screen size isn't THAT important as I'll use a docking station at home.

I'm seeing prices as low as $1900 (Lenovo on ebay - which I'm skeptical about) and as high as $3300 (smaller operation custom builds like Falcon) for things that fit what I'm looking for.

Amazon doesn't seem to find me what I'm looking for. So, anyone have much firsthand experience with this topic?
(Just FYI, I have a small/lightweight travel laptop already, but it's just not robust enough for some of the computer games out there).

Defendi · « **Reply #1 on:** December 31, 2013, 06:13:00 PM »

I take it that games aren't a requirement?

I don't have a good laptop recommend since I go straight to gaming laptops, however I'll point out that any equivalent laptop in power is probably 3-4 x the cost of a desktop? My laptop cost me about two grand and I probably could have built a comperable desktop for $500-600. At least on the high end. If your going for lower end, the discrepancy might not be as great.

Cory Magel · « **Reply #2 on:** December 31, 2013, 06:18:58 PM »

Well, I don't do online gaming anymore. Just don't have the time for it. While I do offline games those just don't need the high end graphics as much.

I'm really starting to think about scratching the idea of using a laptop as my primary. I can get a pretty darn good desktop built by a friend for $1500 on the HIGH end. Getting the equivalent Laptop is going to run around the low to high 3k range from the looks of it. I guess it all comes down to if being able to pick up and walk away with my primary computer is worth 2k... and I'm thinking it's probably not!

Defendi · « **Reply #3 on:** December 31, 2013, 07:22:09 PM »

Yeah, I have a Toshiba gaming laptop and I love it, but even when I got it, it wasn't able to keep up graphically with my three year old desktop.

It's funny that you feel you need higher end graphics for online gaming. My perception is the opposite, but then my idea of online gaming is an MMO that's probably catering to the lowest common denominator, hardware wise.

Cory Magel · « **Reply #4 on:** January 01, 2014, 01:58:06 AM »

I used to run into a lot of online gamers who had these high RAM, super high CPU computers but a mediocre graphics card who thought it was the RAM or CPU that were the problem when it was really just their graphics card. The high end eye candy MMOG's can bring your game to a crawl just because you don't have enough video memory if there are too many people in one place... so it's not as prevalent if you don't have that situation.

After looking around at laptop prices I think I pretty much convinced myself it's not worth it for my primary computer.

Defendi · « **Reply #5 on:** January 01, 2014, 03:33:14 AM »

And if you have a buddy who will build a machine for you, I don't even need to recommend Cyber Power Systems.

Cory Magel · « **Reply #6 on:** January 01, 2014, 04:49:09 PM »

CyberPower looks like a good source. Better pricing than most. If they didn't collect Washington sales tax (even though they are in Cali) I'd be more tempted to get a laptop from them.

Merkir · « **Reply #7 on:** January 01, 2014, 06:33:30 PM »

It's all about bang for your buck. You've covered most of the desirables, but I'll add one more - a hybrid drive. These are combination SSD + traditional Hard Drives. They come in a few types (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive).

I've recently bought some for my staff and I'm very envious. Their startup times for both boot up and program execution are extraordinary. Also bought a couple of new iMacs for my staff which use apple's equivalent called Fusion drive (just another word for Hybrid Drive). Again bootup and program startup extraordinarily fast.

Good bang-for-your-buck. Cheers.

jdale · « **Reply #8 on:** January 01, 2014, 07:36:32 PM »

In a laptop, a hybrid drive is a great compromise between the speed of an SSD and the price of a hard drive.

In a desktop, you may as well have an SSD as your primary drive, with your OS and program files, and then if you need a lot of space for music, videos, ebooks, etc, put in a hard drive as well. Mid-size SSDs are pretty reasonable in price.

Cory Magel · « **Reply #9 on:** January 01, 2014, 11:54:42 PM »

You know, right before I came here I was looking at hard drives that had those as an option and I had selected a 240GB SSD and a 1TB Hybrid as my secondary (I like to keep my primary drive fairly 'clean' and everything I load onto my computer goes onto the secondary drive... that way I can back it up to an external and if the primary ever dies I just do a restore for it). I think I am going to go with a Laptop after all, but I'm going to start at 16GB Ram and add on to it later. While I do Photoshop and a few other things that can hog RAM, I'm not really in a hurry either. So, unless you guys think an extra $220 to go from 16 to 32 is a good idea, I'm going to wait on it.

To give an idea (for the RAM) I do Photoshop as I said and do use some AutoCAD like programs occasionally, however typically the hardest I'm going to make my memory work is have a browser open, be playing a game, and have music playing at the same time.

Colin-ICE · « **Reply #10 on:** January 03, 2014, 12:18:34 PM »

It doesn't really answer your question and I know it isn't "cool" but I've just bought a Microsoft surface. I genuinely hate mac and love Microsoft (completely irrational) but even I have been amazed at how good it is. I use it for work and play and it is better than anything I have ever owned. I understand why people may dislike windows 8/8.1 if they don't have touch screen, but with it, it is awesome.

Cory Magel · « **Reply #11 on:** January 03, 2014, 01:01:31 PM »

Oh I don't think liking Microsoft over Mac these days is irrational at all these days.

Mac is the new "man" if you ask me. While I'm not one to boycott something just because it's the most popular (everyone loves to go after 'the big guy') they got popular largely because people were rebelling against Microsoft, however Apple has now become worse than Microsoft in my opinion. Devices are intentionally built so you have to buy new ones (like the battery being built in/irremovable - well, to the layman at least), programs are setup in a way that has got to be intentionally opposite from most products in layout, and then you had Steve Jobs (the 'savior') conspire with the book companies to fix ebook prices, then out them by essentially bragging about it in his biography (maybe he wanted to "confess" but not while he was alive to face the music). I'm still using Windows XP (it's JUST starting to be a problem with some of the new games), but how many people are still using a Mac OS that old? The list goes on. They say power corrupts and some could claim that case with Gates too... but I don't see Apple investing millions upon millions into world improvement.

The worst thing is the bandwagon has gotten so bad that there are some pretty cool programs that you can ONLY get on a iDevice. Being a gamer geek I'd like to get my hands on the iPad Discworld interactive map and the iPad version of Carcassonne (way better than the non iVersions). I think the only thing that annoys me about Microsoft products these days is they insist on moving everything around within their programs with every upgrade, so you basically have to relearn where everything is in Word to use it again for example.

arakish · « **Reply #12 on:** January 03, 2014, 01:27:33 PM »

Quote from: Colin-ICE on January 03, 2014, 12:18:34 PM

It doesn't really answer your question and I know it isn't "cool" but I've just bought a Microsoft surface. I genuinely hate mac and love Microsoft (completely irrational) but even I have been amazed at how good it is. I use it for work and play and it is better than anything I have ever owned. I understand why people may dislike windows 8/8.1 if they don't have touch screen, but with it, it is awesome.

So did I. While up in Idaho, we went into Boise and I bought a Surface with a keyboard. I love it. Scratch that:

I LOVE IT!!

I have gotten very anti-Mac since their first notebooks came out. As unbelievable as it may sound, Apple has gotten so proprietarianistic that they make Microsoft look OpenSource. Thus I won't own anything made by Apple anymore.

The Surface is fabulous. I just hate the lack of memory so I don't have to do so much through the cloud. I prefer keeping my stuff on my computer. Maybe Microsoft will come out with a RAMpack for the surface. Or have they already and I ain't seen it?

Anyway, for portability, nothing beats the Surface. Even with the keyboard, mine seems to weigh less than a pound, but probably does. And the battery life is forever. I ran my Surface for over 12 hours (not solid, it just sat sometimes) once before needing to recharge. And if you are into using the cloud instead of having the software on your machine, I don't think you can beat the Surface.

rmfr

markc · « **Reply #13 on:** January 07, 2014, 12:05:53 PM »

Corry,
For specs I would take a look at photoshops recommendations on what you need per file size. In general it is going to give you a basic you should have X RAM per MB of file size.
Also for the processor make sure you get a Haswell i7 (hopefully the 4770K for desktops I do not know what the top of the line is for laptops right off the top of my head). The Haswell CPU's use a lot less power and generate a lot less heat that the old'er ones do. The i7's also have hyper-threading (HT)which uses the CPU better for programs that are HT enabled, like photoshop.
You are also going to want to have a primary and secondary HDD for rendering, if you want to be the most efficient. With the render partition on the secondary drive. Having the render partition on another dive can vastly increase your productivity do to the reading and writing to different drives.

All in all laptops are more expensive for what you get and have a bigger problem with heat and expand-ability and not to mention problems with battery life when you are doing serious number crunching all day. You can also figure on upgrading twice as often with a laptop as a desktop just do to the fact they have to make things so small.
IMHO the best might be a duel setup with a smoking desktop and a mid-range laptop to show your work on. But it all depends on what you are doing with photoshop in the first place. That way you can do your heavy lifting on the desktop and then do minor stuff on the laptop. But if you are using Cloud services for your rendering then it mainly depends on your bandwidth IIRC.

On Mac's, back in the day Mac's were very very graphics friendly, even more so than PC's with you able to set the amount of RAM each program could use vs on the Windows (W) side you had to take what the OS gave you. I think this is still the case but I am not sure as I have not worked a lot with Mac's for a few years. But if you still can you might wan to look into a MAC as this added benefit was the one that frequently set the slider onto the MAC's side for the buy'er.

Well I think that is all if I did not hit a point please PM or email me and I will try and help you out.
MDC

Ynglaur · « **Reply #14 on:** January 08, 2014, 10:58:21 AM »

I highly recommend Sager/Clevo. You can get them through XoticPC (www.xoticpc.com). They're the same ODM that makes Dell Alienware, but without the logo tax. Very solid build quality: my last 3 laptops since 2006 have been from them.

markc · « **Reply #15 on:** January 13, 2014, 11:17:44 PM »

Another thing that I just saw the other day is a SSD and a HDD in one box so it only takes up one slot in a laptop. If you do get a lap top I would try that out and it seems the best of both worlds and then if you have a 2nd slot get a hybrid drive for it.
MDC

Cory Magel · « **Reply #16 on:** January 16, 2014, 07:47:05 PM »

Quote from: Defendi on January 01, 2014, 03:33:14 AM

And if you have a buddy who will build a machine for you, I don't even need to recommend Cyber Power Systems.

Ya know, I checked them out, priced out a somewhat high end Laptop. Pretty good price, but the customer service I received was horrendous. Seems to be a fairly standard opinion on their own forums too. I don't think I'll be buying from them. If they treat potential customers like that I don't even want to know how much help you'd get if you had already bought something from them.

markc · « **Reply #17 on:** January 28, 2014, 06:08:41 AM »

Cory,
I just saw this deal but it was out of stock, IMHO this is what I would look for in a laptop for photoshop use, MDC.

MSI GT Series GT70 2OD-039US Intel Core i7 4700MQ(2.40GHz) 32GB Memory Super RAID 2(128GB SSD*3 RAID 0+ 1TB HDD 17.3" Notebook Win 8 Multi-language
4th Gen Intel i7-4700MQ, 32 GB Mem, GTX 780M, 1080p, Win 8

(12) | Write a Review

OUT OF STOCK.
Intel Core i7 4700MQ(2.40GHz)

32GB Memory Super RAID 2(128GB SSD*3 RAID 0+ 1TB HDD

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M

1920 x 1080

Win 8 Multi-language

BD Burner

Keen_Man · « **Reply #18 on:** January 28, 2014, 11:44:53 AM »

these guys rock

I Buy Power

http://www.ibuypower.com/Site/Laptop

Alarian · « **Reply #19 on:** February 08, 2014, 06:55:32 PM »

Don't know if you've purchased yet, but here's my 2 cents. I've done both the laptop and desktop as a primary computer and if you plan on using it for more than a year or two you're much better off with the laptop. For me the biggest problem with a laptop with a docking port was an almost complete lack of driver updates. With a laptop, every manufacturer has their own version of many of the drivers (mainly video). Because of this, you can't update your driver from the manufactures drivers (i.e. AMD or Nvidea) you have to get updated versions from whoever made your laptop. What happens is they have no incentive to continue updating drivers for a laptop they no longer sell and probably stopped selling a year or two ago and so they don't ever bother to update drivers. I had a ton of problems more than once because new games (mainly) that would come out that wouldn't work without updated drivers and no chance of ever getting them updated. (Several of these laptops were high-end Dell laptops so they weren't cheapo's. In the end, I decided it was better to go with a desktop and as of a few years ago, a tablet to take on the road with me. Which I must admit i use FAR more than I ever thought I would.
When I first got my tablet, when traveling on the road, I would always bring my laptop and my tablet with a keyboard. After about 6 months, the laptop just got left behind as the tablet was easier to use, much lighter, had built in cellular internet so I could use it anywhere and anytime I wanted.

As to Cyberpower, I've bought several computers from them and have been very happy with both. They are built with name brand parts and the one problem I had they had shipped out the replacement part quickly and with no problems. I haven't been on their sight in about a year, so that may have changed, but the computer I'm typing on now is a 3 year old cyberpower machine that still plays every game out there on the highest settings with no problems (I did replace my video card last summer so that gave it new life).

Whatever you decide, good luck.

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Author Topic: Computer Advice...? (Read 2681 times)