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Socoder -> Hardware and Technology -> Jay's 3rd Laptop

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Wed, 23 Nov 2016, 00:05
Jayenkai
At the end of 2012 I realised I wasn't going to be sitting at a desk very much, so bought my first laptop.
2 years later I bought a replacement, more for the sake of my sister than for myself. She needed a decent laptop, so I bought myself a kick-ass new one, and handed down the old one.

It's another 2 years later, and although the current lappy "looks" ok, and mostly still works, it does have one tiny little quirk.
Every so often it simply reboots.

I'm not 100% sure why this is, but having prowled through a variety of possibilities, I'm worried it may indeed be a hardware issue.
After all, the laptop only ever seems to reboot when I'm physically moving it, which suggests to me that it's either the hard drive getting fucked, or maybe there's a screw loose inside, or something?
I'm not 100% sure, but it seems to be getting worse.

I've been awake since 3:30 this morning. It's now 6:52.
I spent my first hour doodling my morning Platdude Pixelart, and have spent the last hour browsing Amazon, so realistically I've only had the laptop "going" for about an hour..

Within that hour, it's rebooted three times.
Three..
Maybe it's too cold!?
I dunno.

But the damn thing's pissing me off, this morning.
I'm sitting here trying my damndest to get my Advent Calendar finished, but every 20 sodding minutes I need to wait for the fucking thing to reboot again.

Not to mention the fact that I'd've lost anything I hadn't saved yet.


No. I can't deal with this.

The rage that I felt when it reset for the third time, this morning, was probably audible throughout the country!

So, I scanned through Amazon's deals for the day, and found a nice HP 15-inch laptop. It has features, like a 2TB drive, 8Gb Ram, AMD quad-core processor, AMD/ATI graphics, ~5 hour battery life and frivolous unimportant stuff.
More importantly, it has a numpad.

Ordered it.
It'll be here tomorrow.

.. Tomorrow can't come fast enough.

linkage

My bank balance isn't very happy, though!

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Wed, 23 Nov 2016, 00:47
rockford
As I said in the "Branded" thread, I've had three HP lappys and they've all been great machines.

Not looked at the link, but hopefully your HP will do you proud
Wed, 23 Nov 2016, 00:50
Jayenkai
Yeah, my last desktop was a HP slimline pavilion thing.
They do make decent systems, but .. damn, are they loaded up with garbage!!! Day 1->28 will be removing all the shite!!

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Wed, 23 Nov 2016, 01:38
Pakz
It has ddr4 memory

I am still waiting until the nvidia 1050 models become available.

A laptop I had a number of years ago from packard bell started resetting when it got to hot(Team fortress 2) Not long afterwards it died completely. It was about 2 years old. The MSI I got then now has been working for 3 years without problems. So I am buying another MSI.

I hope you have lots of fun with the new laptop (No dead pixels I hope)
Wed, 23 Nov 2016, 02:22
Jayenkai
To be honest, the specs aren't super important to me.
I'm not really into PC gaming, at all.
Last PC game I bought was RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, when it reappeared on Steam a while back, but I barely even play that.

PC Gaming without a mouse, touchpad only, is kinda crap!
..And I'm too lazy to plug a mouse in!

As long as it runs Monkey and doesn't randomly crash, then that's good enough for me!

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Wed, 23 Nov 2016, 04:12
GfK
Is HP still the same as Compaq?

I bought a Compaq some years ago and it was nowt but trouble. The screen packed up after a few months and was repaired under warranty. Then the same thing happened again out of warranty and I tracked it down to the video cable, which I replaced. I noticed at the time that the lid was now held on with just two screws instead of the four that would have been there originally, so I replaced those as well.

I've replaced the same part AGAIN since.

Less than a year later, and it's up to its old tricks once more but I'm buggered if I'll spend anything else on it.

The video cable is such a flimsy piece of shit, it's always going to happen because of the way the cable has to be routed. Never again.

As an aside, are you selling your old crashy one?
Wed, 23 Nov 2016, 04:54
Jayenkai
I think it's probably going to go to my nephew. Haven't started doing the family rounds, yet.

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Thu, 24 Nov 2016, 06:42
Jayenkai


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Thu, 24 Nov 2016, 07:04
Jayenkai
Kickass!
All I did was turn it on, and log into my Microsoft account.

A pleasant Platdude surprise!


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Thu, 24 Nov 2016, 09:01
Jayenkai
Still going through my default apps, getting everything I need reinstalled..
.. I'm about 5% done!

This is going to take about a week!

Review so far

Keyboard

Hmmm..
The layout's a little bit quirky, and will probably take some getting used to.

That teensy-tiny up and down, for starters..
And fuck knows how often I'll be adding #'s instead of just hitting Return!

*sigh*

Curious thing.. The numlock doesn't have a light.
Hmm..

Trackpad

The trackpad is part of the metal, so is invisible.
Thank fuck it has physical mouse-buttons!! Can't stand that tap-to-click bollocks!


Unfortunately, the two clicky buttons aren't aligned to the bottom of the laptop, and are instead shifted up quite a bit (a full button could fit down there!)
"Looks" nice, but it means that the trackpad itself lacks a good chunk of usable area.
It also stops about the same gap-size at the top, too, so you end up with a fairly narrow touchpad. It's certainly wide, but just not very tall.

Further testing to be posted later.. Back to installing!!

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Thu, 24 Nov 2016, 09:20
Jayenkai
Am now staring at the "windows can draw a circle of dots!!" updating screen...
The joys of modern technology.

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Thu, 24 Nov 2016, 13:24
Jayenkai
Still not used to those squidgy cursorkeys! In such a bizarre orientation. Hmm..
System has been "Jay-Benchmarked". It seems a teensy bit slower at rendering my ALChoons music videos, which is a shame. Whether that's the CPU, the GPU or the Hard Drive, I'm not 100% sure.
It does play the FR-025 demo wonderfully smoothly at full 1920x1080 res, however, with full "Quality", so that's better than my previous laptop which struggled as soon as you turned the quality above 1!

Audiowise, it's a bit muffled.
I've had a play with the settings, but there's not a lot can be done.
The issue, as is the norm with Laptops, is that the speakers project the audio down.
If you're sat at a desk or with your laptop on a table, the audio projects down, reverbs off the flat surface and is generally a good quality.

If, like me, you're one of those CRAZY people who put a "LAPTOP" on "TOP" of their "LAP", then you instead get a whole bunch of audio being played at your crotch, and it all being rather muffled.
Quite why it's so fucking hard to put speakers up on the top of the damn thing, I don't know..
All that space above the keyboard.. Nope.. Completely wasted!

It does include a function which I've been sorely missing, lately.. FUCKING STEREOMIX, DAMNIT!!!
Now, quite why I needed it a few weeks ago, I can't remember, but still. It's good to have it back!

.. More later. Laptop is now doing the SyncToy thing, whereby it's hopefully about to copy a bazillion files, and not go "Oh, he must've deleted them from the laptop... I'd better delete the ones on the NAS drive!!"

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Thu, 24 Nov 2016, 13:59
rockford
My HP lappys have never had their speakers underneath. Wonder why they started now. Sound on my current machine is awesome, but it is labelled as having a good sound system.
Thu, 24 Nov 2016, 14:02
GfK
It's perfectly sensible. Because all the people who work for HP, are aliens with ears for testicles.

So, probably that.
Fri, 25 Nov 2016, 02:39
Jayenkai
Knew it'd take a while, so left laptop on, last night.
Changed Power Saving to "when plugged in, sleep : Never" and left it downloading those millions of coding/website files from the NAS.

Then slept.

Woke to find that, even though I remembered to set "Sleep : Never", I'd neglected to set "Useless Lockscreen : Never", so the system locked itself, and SyncToy stopped.

Fucking lock screen, ffs...

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Fri, 25 Nov 2016, 05:13
Jayenkai
Still backing up.. :/

Meanwhile, been attempting to make use of the keyboard, and those damn tiny cursor keys are causing no end of typing frustration!! Grrr!!!
I'm slowly starting to get used to them, but occasionally I find myself hitting the 0 key on the numpad, or the Shift key...
Leisurely tapping away at the shift key, and wondering why the text cursor isn't moving upwards, is going to become a common occurrence, I imagine..

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Fri, 25 Nov 2016, 07:02
Jayenkai
The transfer of my JNKSoftware folder is now up to the "Artzy Shitz" folder, where it's currently copying a fuckton of my disorganised scanned photos!

... only B->Z to go!!

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Sat, 26 Nov 2016, 10:46
Jayenkai
*sigh*
OK, backup/restore complete. SyncToy can now whizz through decades of coding, music, websites, photos and more, all within the space of .. 7 and a half minutes!!
And it only took 2 and a half days to copy everything over!!!

Next up, benchmarks and other frivolous stuff!

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Sat, 26 Nov 2016, 11:15
Jayenkai
Passmark 9.0 results



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Sat, 26 Nov 2016, 15:04
cyangames
Ohh, I'll run mine on that also now, just outta curiosity.

Yup, my system is about where I thought it'd be, fairly poor compared to most



Still, does what I need it to do well enough

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Web / Game Dev, occasionally finishes off coding games also!
Sun, 27 Nov 2016, 05:31
Jayenkai
Yeah, I'm fairly comfortable with a "At least it works" laptop.
I'm certainly not about to shell out thousands of pounds for a high-spec one, that's for damn sure!!

The price is slowly creeping up, though.
I spent £349 on my first, £379 on the second and this one's £449.

*tsk*

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Sun, 27 Nov 2016, 06:37
Jayenkai
God, I'd forgotten how much of a fucking nightmare it is, trying to get all the things installed so that Monkey can compile to all the different targets!!
.. Getting Android to work is SUCH a fucking pain in the arse!!

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Sun, 27 Nov 2016, 08:06
Jayenkai
.. Still trying to get Android compiles working!!
ffs..

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Sun, 27 Nov 2016, 10:34
cyangames
mmm the joys of re insalling and downloading EVERY gosh darned android os sdk thorugh it's mananger....

Side note, my lil 3 year old Layla has got into spike dislike 3, she loves the sheepy levels

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Web / Game Dev, occasionally finishes off coding games also!
Sun, 27 Nov 2016, 10:40
Jayenkai
What on? iOS/Android?
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