Computerus

[Rico]

I'm happy with both the performance of my Samsung and their customer support. Had an issue with the boot sector of my drive failing, they cross-shipped right away with nothing more than a quick serial check, no required diagnostics or anything.

[Classic]

Kingston's V300 had good reviews, and an acceptable price point and feature set. People were talking about it like Kingston was turning around their mediocre everything-but-RAM reputation.

That is before it was discovered that it was only the first generation that were getting the full performance expected of the hardware.

EDIT:
The SSD is unopened, so I'm pretty sure I can still return, and at least apply it as store credit to the case and Amazon or TigerDirect the original SSD I wanted.
Barring any serious hullabaloo about them.

EDIT EDIT:
The above shit has been sorted without problems.

[Newbie]

As of fifteen minutes ago in CST, I am now 32, and I'm thinking of using my birthday subsidy to pick up a Surface Pro. Probably won't be able to afford either a Surface Pro 2 or the new 256 GB version of the Surface Pro, unfortunately, but preliminary research and this article in particular make me think the 128 GB will probably be sufficient. The main motivator at the moment is that I accidentally introduced Julie to Civilization V, and now we're getting tired of always playing hotseat multiplayer; this should enable us to play simultaneous multiplayer now that she has her own account and copy of the game. I also want to be able to play Hearthstone, but if I can even log into WoW on super-low settings to work on my professions or something, so much the better. Obviously 128 GB isn't a ton of space to work with, especially since a chunk of that is already in use, but I think this should work out fine. Anybody have any experience with one of these?

[Z%rø]

I've done some research into it myself, because I was interested in a new tablet.

It is, apparently, sufficient for gaming! And in fact you can definitely play WoW on it. (Note: This video is an old one on the Surface Pro 1, even.) But, one thing you should know is that the 256gb model actually has more RAM - so it's the best performing model.

The article you linked is correct, though, in that it has no actual battery life when you are gaming.

[Blossom]

It's probably worth scrimping a bit more to grab the better model.

[beatbandito]

I've been looking into gaming laptops lately. The portability has been more and more appealing lately, but they're big investments for something you can't swap parts on.

Anyone have horror stories about powerhouse laptops or any recommendations that may sway my thinking?

[beatbandito]

Heavy duty research leads me to believe that the Asus ROG G750-DS71 may actually be as awesome as everyone is leading me to believe; not just in performance but longevity, cooling and all the other stuff that means I'll still have it when Half Life 3 drops. The only thing holding me back is the Asus ROG G750-XS72. It seems like unnecessary upgrades, but I rather run it past some other people first.

Is the extra $550 worth...

Windows 8.1 TO Windows 8.1 pro (I know, but I'm including literally everything different)
Standard 17.3" TO 17.3" FHD (I don't know what that means! The both have a 1920x1080 max rez)
24GB DDR3L TO 32GB DDR3L
Blu-Ray-Enabled DVD+-RW TO Blu-Ray Burner
"Up to 3.4 GHz 6MB L3 Cache" TO "6MB L3 Cache Max Turbo Frequency 3.4GHz" (sounds basically the same but the 'up to' worries me)
Single 256GB SSD TO dual 256GB SSDs
1TB HDD at 5400 TO 1TB HDD at 7200
Standard webcam TO HD webcam
Enough USB and display ports for me TO Enough USB and display ports for me plus a 'mini DisplayPort'
Backlit Keyboard TO Illuminated Backlit Keyboard (okay this sounds like the exact same thing)

[Thad]

17" is freakin' huge; in my experience that's less a laptop and more a desktop that you can move to the other room and occasionally out of the house. You might be better off going smaller and just hooking it to a monitor when you're at home.

Most of that stuff looks like things you can upgrade yourself later; I'm not familiar with this specific model but in my experience drives and RAM are usually upgradeable. You'd be stuck with an SD webcam if that's a thing that matters to you, and no mini DP -- what's the video output on the lower-end one? If it's got HDMI then you should be fine unless you intend to hook it to a high-res screen.

[Classic]

Lately I'm feeling like there's no such thing as a high-end gaming laptop, only overpriced desktops lashed to an un-interruptable power supply.

I feel like you're placing a huge premium on portability, and I don't know that anything on the market is actually going to satisfy what you actually need with that...

Do you just want to be able to tote it from socket to socket? At an unknown number of locations?
Does it actually have to do "heavy computing" on the battery?

[beatbandito]

'Portability' means staying at someone else's house for a few days, not playing dark souls in the back seat of a car during a road trip.


Though if I had a converter...

[sei]

Heavy duty research leads me to believe that the Asus ROG G750-DS71 may actually be as gnilley as everyone is leading me to believe; not just in performance but longevity, cooling and all the other stuff that means I'll still have it when Half Life 3 drops. The only thing holding me back is the Asus ROG G750-XS72. It seems like unnecessary upgrades, but I rather run it past some other people first.

Is the extra $550 worth...

Windows 8.1 TO Windows 8.1 pro (I know, but I'm including moist everything different)
Standard 17.3" TO 17.3" FHD (I don't know what that means! The both have a 1920x1080 max rez)
24GB DDR3L TO 32GB DDR3L
Blu-Ray-Enabled DVD+-RW TO Blu-Ray Burner
"Up to 3.4 GHz 6MB L3 Cache" TO "6MB L3 Cache Max Turbo Frequency 3.4GHz" (sounds basically the same but the 'up to' worries me)
Single 256GB SSD TO dual 256GB SSDs
1TB HDD at 5400 TO 1TB HDD at 7200
Standard webcam TO HD webcam
Enough USB and display ports for me TO Enough USB and display ports for me plus a 'mini DisplayPort'
Backlit Keyboard TO Illuminated Backlit Keyboard (okay this sounds like the exact same thing)

Having had a 17" laptop, I had no problem whatsoever with its portability, and I think my use case matched yours. It wasn't an impediment at school, either.

• Get the processor models (not descriptions) and check some benchmark sites.
• It sounds like the more expensive rig might have a 3rd hard drive bay. You can buy your own SSDs (and the Crucial MX100 is looking mighty fine).
• The RAM difference probably doesn't matter, as you can upgrade on your own. They may have a different # of RAM slots (4 vs 6) but you're probably fine with anything 16+GB. At high-end gaming, you might worry more about shit like CAS latency, which you didn't list.
• FHD apparently just means 1920x1080 resolution. Double check the res on the other laptop. They're probably the same screen.
• BD burner = giant who the fuck cares since no one uses optical discs

[Brantly B.]

Windows 8.1 TO Windows 8.1 pro (I know, but I'm including moist everything different)

Maybe. The major relevant differences seem to be "sideloading Microsoft App Store apps" (though as far as I'm aware, you can install any application like a normal Windows program) and Remote Desktop support, which may or may not figure into stuff like Chromecast, Steam streaming, GameStream etc. (but probably not).

Ideally, though, you should put in an extra hundred to get a (questionably legal!) OEM Windows 7 and stay the fuck away from Microsoft's attempt at an Apple/Google walled garden environment.

Standard 17.3" TO 17.3" FHD (I don't know what that means! The both have a 1920x1080 max rez)

FHD means 1920x1080, so they probably just omitted it from the first display's spec.

24GB DDR3L TO 32GB DDR3L

Like sex and oxygen, you only ever think about RAM when you don't have enough of it, and you probably won't need more than 24GB worth of sex. I mean, RAM.

Blu-Ray-Enabled DVD+-RW TO Blu-Ray Burner

If you're not planning to burn 25GB of shit to a single disc then you're probably never going to need to burn 25GB of shit to a single disc, and if you do, you can buy an external burner cheaply.

"Up to 3.4 GHz 6MB L3 Cache" TO "6MB L3 Cache Max Turbo Frequency 3.4GHz" (sounds basically the same but the 'up to' worries me)

They have the same processor, so they should have the same cache setup.

Single 256GB SSD TO dual 256GB SSDs

You should never need more than one SSD of adequate size.

1TB HDD at 5400 TO 1TB HDD at 7200

Sssssort of an improvement, but if you have an SSD then any data you have where the r/w speed is actually an issue should already be on the SSD. Unless you're filesharing, you probably won't experience much difference.

Standard webcam TO HD webcam

Also sort of an improvement, but if you really care about the quality of the camera then you probably want an external one anyway.

Enough USB and display ports for me TO Enough USB and display ports for me plus a 'mini DisplayPort'

Only relevant if you have an Apple monitor.

Backlit Keyboard TO Illuminated Backlit Keyboard (okay this sounds like the exact same thing)

I would love to see what a non-illuminated backlit keyboard looks like. Infrared backlighting!

So yeah if cost is an issue you can easily skip most of this stuff, or buy an external equivalent.

[Grath]

24GB DDR3L TO 32GB DDR3L

My fancy workstation laptop only has 16GB of RAM. My (admittedly aging) gaming computer only has 6GB of RAM. You don't need 32GB of RAM.

[Thad]

Seagate 1TB hybrid drive for $75 (affiliate link). On the one hand, it's Seagate. On the other, it's $75 for a 1TB hybrid drive.

The caching scheme works, too. It cut our system's boot time nearly in half, putting the hybrid barely behind the latest SSDs. Adaptive Memory also reduced the Desktop SSHD's game load times, and it delivered quicker access times in our real-world DriveBench simulation.

Despite coming close to SSD performance in some tests, the Desktop SSHD fared no better than traditional mechanical hard drives in others. If the cache can't accelerate a particular workload, you're bound by the drive's mechanical side. At least the 7,200-RPM platters have a little oomph—in relative terms, anyway.

Even when the cache kicked into gear, the Desktop SSHD was a step behind the SSDs. Blame the itsy bitsy flash payload, which has less storage than your smartphone and much less internal parallelism than modern SSDs. Seagate has managed to improve a few key performance metrics by marrying a tiny solid-state sidekick to its standard desktop drive, though. That's an impressive accomplishment despite the compromise involved.

[...]

Given the choice, I'd rather combine separate solid-state and mechanical drives. I'd even pay a premium to get a decent-sized system SSD; the extra performance is worthwhile, and low-power secondary storage solutions are quieter than the Desktop SSHD. But my power-user preferences aside, Seagate's desktop hybrid has some appeal for instances where a dual-drive setup isn't possible or affordable. It's a solid entry-level desktop offering best suited to basic systems that want to add a little pep to a lot of storage with minimal hassle.

So, y'know, middling. But if you're in the market for a 1TB mechanical drive anyway, this performs better than most.

[Thad]

Continuing the SSD discussion from the Jobs thread:

AnandTech reviews Samsung 840 EVO line -- the comments are worth reading too.

Windows 7 and SSDs: Cutting your system drive down to size

Food for thought. Like I said, I'm planning an SSD upgrade but not until I've finished my move, which puts it a couple weeks out at least.


EDIT: And, having gotten home and taken the time to check my space, I'm only taking up about 400GB on my Windows partition, even with all my games installed. And of that, at least 150GB is stuff that wouldn't benefit from being on an SSD.

So yeah, now I'm thinking a 512GB drive for Windows and keep the platter drive for general storage, with a 256GB drive for OpenSUSE. Or maybe a 256GB drive for Windows and another for OpenSUSE, though it might be a good idea to go with 512GB for Windows just so I know I've got plenty of space.

[MarsDragon]

I think this is the right thread.

So my Logitech wireless headphones died, again, about a year after I got them. This is bullshit. I want a comfortable headset (mic included), preferably wireless, that will last me for over a year. Any suggestions?

[Brantly B.]

Nope! For whatever reason practically every wireless on the market has horrific build quality problems. Your best bet is probably to go full-on richgamer and buy an Astro A50 setup, which will at least net you a warranty that actually gets honored sometimes.

[Joxam]

yeah i haven't had a set of wireless headphones that lasted for longer than about 18 months, this included the 400 dollar pair I had.

[Grath]

In my experience, headphones suck and break in general so I buy ones that are kinda cheap but decent so that it's not too expensive when I inevitably have to replace 'em. My wired Sennheiser PC 310 G4ME headset has held up pretty decent (got it back in August or so and it's survived being brought in and out every day at a call center for months, and now several weeks of getting carried in to the office in the same pocket as my hefty workstation laptop) but my buying criteria was wired headset with 3.5mm jacks and no volume control on the wire.

[Mothra]

Been wrapping electrical tape around the breaks in my shitty $9.99 Logitech one for four years and it's still chuggin'