October 24, 2019 at 1:44 pm
EDIT: I also wanted to mention that having a full size keyboard with a seperate number pad makes such a huge diffierence in comfort and convenience.
Totally agreed, there. That's also why I went with a "gaming" laptop... the keyboard just seems better made to handle "punishment" than those made for lightweight business usage and the "feel" is better for the way I type.
--Jeff Moden
November 15, 2019 at 5:45 pm
So I ended up with an alienware area 51 laptop. Odd thing is for full-power it requires 2 power supplies.
Still early, but so far I like the power. it's heavy, but not unbearable.
April 5, 2021 at 1:34 pm
Alienware it's amazing, but it's a very heavy laptop. The good thing about technology is that it is constantly upgrading. Actually, it's upgrading too fast for us, because we cannot keep up with it. What seemed impossible for 2015 for example, now it's the standard. It's pretty difficult to give a recommendation when it comes to a laptop because everybody has different needs. If you ask me, I would check out this list from https://thepcenthusiast.com/top-gaming-laptops-with-rtx-3080-3070-3060-ampere-gpu/ to see which one fits my needs the best. After all, that's the most important thing
April 5, 2021 at 1:55 pm
Revised this below 02/2022
Rick
One of the best days of my IT career was the day I told my boss if the problem was so simple he should go fix it himself.
February 9, 2022 at 9:14 am
It's been a few years since I purchased any new computers. Does anyone have a favorite brand or good reviews on Laptops? I don't want a tablet, touchscreen, 2 in 1 or cloud device. I would use it for run-of-the-mill stuff, maybe some gaming, photography, etc. It doesn't have to be the fastest out of the box but I would like it to be upgradable if needed. Any advice would be appreciated.
February 9, 2022 at 2:10 pm
I had an ASUS 17" gaming laptop that I used for about 6 years, and it was keeping up just fine, though the only upgrade I did to it was to add an SSD. But, I had to retire it because ASUS wasn't providing Windows 10 drivers for the hardware anymore, and Windows updates became a nightmare because of this. I use a company issues Surface Pro, and I would not recommend one of these, as there are always issues with RDP on this thing, where it doesn't display other desktops on Server 2008, 2012 and sometimes 2016 well due to the resolution differences. And if you are older, and the old eyes are not up to par, you may want to avoid the Surface anyway. Once you start changing the resolution, it becomes a pain to work on.
I'm on my fourth Asus ROG laptop and have never had a better machine. This one is an i9, 32gb, and runs Win 10 and my SQL Server like a champ. These are gaming machines, but I don't use them for that. It has two internal SSD drive bays, but not an internal CD/DVD, so I keep a USB version of each. 17" display is touchscreen if you want it to be (I don't use it). I also use a second 27" LG monitor when it's on my desk.
My wife has had two of these also for running her high-end graphics software. The only failure we've ever had was when I poured a cup of coffee over the keyboard on one.
The ROG's are definitely a bit on the heavy side, and very solidly constructed, but I don't find that to be a problem as I use an over-the-shoulder bag when travelling only a few times a year. Do move it around the house once in a while to my lazy boy or out to the deck.
I haven't had any driver issues on any of these, and never had any Windows Update problems that I recall. Even recently used a USB 3.5" floppy drive on my latest one with no problems. Yeah, I have finally retired boxes of old floppy disks from long-term storage.
I've always been able to keep them up to date, able to easily upgrade Windows versions as needed.
We still have three of the retired ones stored away and they are all functional except for the one I have yet to install the replacement keyboard into.
The Asus ROG machines are not the low-end pricewise, but I definitely think they are worth the price.
Ray, a followup on the eyesight issue. I'm 79 years old, with trifocals, and I see double images of text on the screen especially in the morning. My eye docs solution to this is to use TheraTears or Visine Dry Eye solution and these really help me with the vision.
And as I have posted before, when you get to the trifocal stage, it helps to have the middle-distance (arm's length) portion of your lenses made taller than is normal so you can see the entire screen without tilting your head up and down. This does require a bit of adjusting to at first when walking since the trifocal extends further up into the distance portion, so I actually look under the lenses for things like climbing stairs. I had single-vision lens implants done years ago, so can drive and watch TV with no glasses at all. Opted for keeping the trifocals for reading and computer work. And they're LOTS less expensive than the trifocal implants.
Rick
One of the best days of my IT career was the day I told my boss if the problem was so simple he should go fix it himself.
February 9, 2022 at 3:43 pm
I'm a small and light person, so I use the HP Spectre, but that's not likely what you want.
I hear good things about Lenovo from friends that get the workstation class machines: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/subseries-results?visibleDatas=992:Workstation
A little pricey, but often upgradeable over time. I'd look at these as well as the Asus ones mentioned previously.
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February 9, 2022 at 5:16 pm
Ok... despite the fact that I love my Alien-ware that I previously described, I'm finding that ALL laptop keyboards suck. I have had one yet where frequently used keys don't end up "losing paint". I've now had to buy a replacement keyboard because that's almost cheaper than replacing the individual scissor keys, which never seem to work quite right ever again once you've replaced them.
So, I bought an external keyboard for use at home that's a heavy duty, mechanical, gaming keyboard about 9 months ago. So far, so good. No signs of wear, yet and I can actually type a whole lot better because I can put the keyboard in a comfortable position and there's actually some separation between keys, unlike laptop keyboards.
The machine itself has been awesome. I bought it a while back but it has 6 I7's threaded to 12, 32 GB of RAM, 2TB of NVME SSDs, 1TB of spinning rust (for low performance testing and archive of info), and (at the time) one of the best display chips that drives the 17" monitor on it. It does not come with an internal CD but I bought an external one that works well enough and I only connect it when I'm going to use it.
Yep... it's a heavy beast (heavy duty aluminum frame with heavy speaker magnets, etc) and it won't fit a standard 17 inch carry bag, but I don't travel much (especially in the last 2 years) either. Heh... I think of it as a portable "desktop" box that doesn't take as much room. Ah...and I forgot to mention, it's auto-magically over-clocked to speeds up to 4Ghz. I can set it to stay that way or I can set it to "normal" where it'll automatically ramp up if it needs to. I haven't yet measured battery life between charges. If I start to travel again, I'll have to do that. And, this beast is not going to work well on the fold-down tray of an airplane seat. It's just too big for that. That's actually good for me because, when I did travel by plane, I used it as downtime to catch up on some Z's. 😀
--Jeff Moden
February 9, 2022 at 5:58 pm
Jeff, that's a good reminder about using an external keyboard. The reminder being that I have a box of at least a half dozen in storage that date from when they automatically were included with desktops. There's everything from the tiny ones about 10 inches long to the big fancy gaming ones with the rotating colored lights.
And then there is another box of hard drives, a couple moving boxes of cables, etc.
Rick
One of the best days of my IT career was the day I told my boss if the problem was so simple he should go fix it himself.
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