don't ever buy an eee pc
i've had two eee pc's and been pretty happy with them! the screen on my one is broken now i'm looking to replace it with something ideally just as portable but more powerful (i guess i'm looking for an 'ultrabook'). the asus zenbooks look pretty cool but they are almost as expensive as macs!
― tpp, Friday, 13 January 2012 13:56 (twelve years ago) link
yeah that was written in a fit of blind rage, it really wasn't all that bad.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 13 January 2012 17:08 (twelve years ago) link
i just bought the zenbook UX31E
― tpp, Friday, 13 January 2012 18:35 (twelve years ago) link
my eee pc has been pretty great. i can type on it and my battery life is 8+, it's just what i need given that i carry it by bike. biggest problem is video can choke it pretty easily ime.
― dead precedents politics as usual (Hunt3r), Friday, 13 January 2012 18:44 (twelve years ago) link
damn this thing is fast
― tpp, Saturday, 14 January 2012 10:31 (twelve years ago) link
this thing == ilx obv
― Aimless, Saturday, 14 January 2012 17:18 (twelve years ago) link
i need a new one to replace my '09 Compaq Presario
so, roughly equivalent
low to mid $, will stream video (mostly live baseball)
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 2 August 2018 20:37 (five years ago) link
i got a couple of these for the office recently after doing some scouring and i've been impressedhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BJLGJ9H
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, 2 August 2018 20:49 (five years ago) link
is that low to mid $$$, wouldve thought that a v decent spec
― dele alli my bookmarks (darraghmac), Thursday, 2 August 2018 21:38 (five years ago) link
$700 which I guess is mid given that you can buy a MacBook or a Dell for 1500 easily. I have the i5 version of the above and it was nearly £600 with a big anniversary discount about 1.5 years ago.
You should be able to go quite a lot cheaper than that though, you don't need an i7 and ssd to watch YouTube.
― koogs, Friday, 3 August 2018 00:26 (five years ago) link
ya think it's OK to buy something "certified refurbished"?
https://www.amazon.com/Elitebook-840-LED-backlit-Professional-Refurbished/dp/B07FSRST8M/
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 20 August 2018 16:19 (five years ago) link
I do it at work all the time, but only if the seller is Amazon themselves or Amazon Warehouse. They will accept returns without much fuss. Third-party sellers on Amazon Marketplace you have no idea if they will honor a returns policy or (more frequently) they'll be too incompetent/indifferent to do it correctly.
― com rad erry red flag (f. hazel), Monday, 20 August 2018 16:39 (five years ago) link
Wellll, in the last 90 days, the distributor above has 40/40 positive ratings.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 20 August 2018 16:42 (five years ago) link
(I don't even know how to search for similar products sold by Amazon.)
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 20 August 2018 16:50 (five years ago) link
They're probably fine, the order is fulfilled by Amazon so that means Amazon will process the returns. Looks like back in May they shipped out a bunch of defective systems, but Amazon took the returns.
― com rad erry red flag (f. hazel), Monday, 20 August 2018 17:51 (five years ago) link
thanks
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 20 August 2018 17:55 (five years ago) link
Is it better to wait till Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Holiday as opposed to getting a new laptop right now? QOL for my 8-year-old laptop is awful.
― Catherine Power (Leee), Tuesday, 16 October 2018 22:46 (five years ago) link
how are the prices on what you're looking for? i bought my current laptop after nearly ten years of using the previous one and prices had dropped so much in that time for what i wanted (nothing special or high-end).
― visiting, Tuesday, 16 October 2018 22:55 (five years ago) link
I'm eying something higher end, lord knows why since I'm probably going to just stream on it.
― Catherine Power (Leee), Tuesday, 16 October 2018 23:04 (five years ago) link
What's a good laptop just for web browsing/video streaming/ms office? I've got a mac, but my wife's laptop is dying and she's not terribly picky. I don't know anything about non-mac laptops though, and there appear to be a billion options.
― wmlynch, Tuesday, 16 October 2018 23:23 (five years ago) link
I'd probably just get a Microsoft Surface with a keyboard stand for anyone who just wanted typing and web in 2018.
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Tuesday, 16 October 2018 23:30 (five years ago) link
no idea if it's good but it's a choice you won't have to spend that much time thinking about!
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Tuesday, 16 October 2018 23:31 (five years ago) link
that said there's apparently six different ones of them now so even that's a drag
The surface keyboard is the worst and completely unusable without enough table space. If you career about using it on a plane or on you lap, don't buy one.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Wednesday, 17 October 2018 00:05 (five years ago) link
gonna choose to believe career was not an autocorrect there
― Dmac TT (darraghmac), Wednesday, 17 October 2018 00:11 (five years ago) link
didn't even occur to me that it was not the word intended
― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Wednesday, 17 October 2018 00:15 (five years ago) link
double unintendre
― Dmac TT (darraghmac), Wednesday, 17 October 2018 00:15 (five years ago) link
probably will mostly be used to work from home occasionally but yeah probably actually for lap use apart from that.
― wmlynch, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 04:03 (five years ago) link
I recently bought a used Chromebook for about 60 euros and use it for surfing/streaming/writing
it's lightweight, has good battery time, basically great value for money (I use Google Docs for writing, if you have Office 365 or whatever the cloud Office is called, it should work fine too)
― niels, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 08:48 (five years ago) link
If one has a laptop with a keyboard that's fucked up -- ie, some keys don't produce the characters they're supposed to! -- can one download a fix, or have to box up the thing and ship it back to the fuckups? Asking for a friend. :/
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 18:47 (five years ago) link
nb: what I have in REALITY (ie what shows up on the screen) is a QWERTZ keyboard like this, mislabeled as a standard US keyboard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTZ#/media/File:KB_Germany.svg
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 18:55 (five years ago) link
try rebooting and moving to austria
― j., Monday, 19 November 2018 19:02 (five years ago) link
Is it new enough to be on warranty? If so, get it replaced! It is unlikely that yours was the only fuck-up, so they are already fielding complaints and replacing yours would be just S.O.P.
If it is approaching its expiration date but money is too tight to buy a replacement, it might be worth looking for a keyboard remapping utility program. I know such programs used to exist, ages ago. There are fans of non-standard keyboard layouts, like the Dvorak keyboard, so such programs may still be floating around out there. This might provide a relatively cheap workaround, but only if all the required characters can be produced by pressing a key somewhere on the keyboard; it could not magically produce characters all on its own.
Even then, I won't guarantee success.
― A is for (Aimless), Monday, 19 November 2018 19:05 (five years ago) link
I am on a 90-day warranty, so i should be able to get it replaced.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 19:21 (five years ago) link
Is it definitely the keyboard? I've definitely been on Windows machines before where the language got switched somewhere in Control Panel (or, obnoxiously, through obscure keyboard combinations which can be hit accidentally) so that it was interpreting input as German, or Chinese.
― |Restore| |Restart| |Quit| (Doctor Casino), Monday, 19 November 2018 19:24 (five years ago) link
well, i hit the keys and different characters come up. i don't know how to begin to determine what causes it. how would i unfuck the control panel?
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 20:00 (five years ago) link
this is what i hate about this century. i never wanted to own a car because you have to be an amateur mechanic! now i have to be an amateur geek.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 20:01 (five years ago) link
give this kind of thing a try
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/258824/how-to-change-your-keyboard-layout
― j., Monday, 19 November 2018 20:16 (five years ago) link
will do
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 20:18 (five years ago) link
this thing has Windows 10
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 20:24 (five years ago) link
similar, i think https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4027670/windows-10-add-and-switch-input-and-display-language-preferences
― j., Monday, 19 November 2018 20:28 (five years ago) link
thx
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 20:30 (five years ago) link
yeah, def sounds like settings
― niels, Monday, 19 November 2018 21:24 (five years ago) link
wishin & hopin
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 November 2018 21:24 (five years ago) link
so it's kinda funny, right next to date/time at the bottom it sais "ENG LB", which stood for English/Luxembourgish keyboard. I have clicked and changed it to "ENG US".
Thanks for everyone who pointed out the obvious, lob 'senile uncle' jokes at me.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 20 November 2018 01:11 (five years ago) link
I'm thinking of buying a new laptop this year and, for the first time a non-macbook
I had the 2014 Air which was great, but has gradually ground down over the last few months and now no longer turns on. I have a 2017 Pro from work, and Ive never liked it. Bad keyboard, and would hang sometimes, has never felt particularly solid. That had an incident and is now also dead, anyway
With both being dead I've had to buy an emergency laptop so i could actually work. Got the cheapest one in the shop, a €250 Lenovo Ideapad. 4gb RAM and runs like a dog (on windows), awful. I put Linux on it, and its actually kind of not that bad. I still have to reboot it as it does hang, so not a good longer term solution. its bulky and heavy but usable for right now
Going to need a proper replacement though, and looking at macbook prices idk I can justify it! Was looking at the Asus Zenbook as a possibility. 800ish doesnt seem so bad, but can i go cheaper and still have something good to use?
criteria:1) light/small-ish2) good battery
zenbook looks good, maybe the dell xps? the vivobook is cheaper so maybe theres a trade off. is there any reason in 2019 to got back to macbooks?
― cherry blossom, Wednesday, 15 May 2019 07:13 (four years ago) link
its a decade since i bought a laptop but im always peeking
id have said an xps with min i5 to futureproof a little but a decent spec thinkpad or similar should be zippy enough too
im presuming that you know enough to get an ssd in and max the ram for whatever model it is you currently have. makes a huge difference in a windows.
― deemsthelarker (darraghmac), Wednesday, 15 May 2019 07:33 (four years ago) link
I won't have windows on it, will be a linux distro!
the zenbook is 8gb ram and 256gb SSD for €849. I don't think i need to spec it up any more than that. I'd like to be able to run vagrant and docker, but above a certain level of performance, size, weight and price are more important
― cherry blossom, Wednesday, 15 May 2019 07:55 (four years ago) link
Just make sure you're comfortable with the keyboard, mousepad and screen before you buy. My laptop (Acer, 8mb, SSD) is perfectly functional but the screen isn't great and I find not having separate mouse buttons really awkward.
― thomasintrouble, Wednesday, 15 May 2019 08:14 (four years ago) link
this is definitely a worry, never thought about it with the Air, but the keyboard and feel of the last macbook just wasnt right
― cherry blossom, Wednesday, 15 May 2019 08:51 (four years ago) link