Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

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Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Jillers » 05 Jan 2011, 21:52

So, as some of you know I'm really excited to be going back to school in roughly 2 weeks. This time around, I have an abundance of financial aid, and while I could just decrease that amount so I don't have to take out roughly $10,000 worth of loans, I could also just get a refund check.
Well, I'm poor and unemployed right now, so I'd like the extra money as a buffer between me and not being able to buy school supplies.
Among these school supplies I would like to acquire is a new computer.
Now, of course the amount I'm going to receive is up in the air, which gives me room to just imagine what I could get, and then narrow it down from there.

So, I'm hoping you can help me with this LRR forum, you are good people. I don't even know where to begin. Is it ok with you if I tell you the things I'll likely use my computer for and you can give me recommendations to consider? Or perhaps a good website?

Things I will probably use my computer for:

Writing papers
Going on the internet
Editing video
Skype calls/conferencing
Playing games
Drawing on a tablet

I'm going back and forth about whether I want a desktop or laptop. I'd enjoy the portability of the laptop, especially since I'd be spending more time away from home and, knowing me, will likely go to a library to research and write papers.

To the video games, I don't play the latest games, but I do play games from gog (older games) and steam (variable newness).

For the video editing, much of the equipment I can borrow, and my own video camera, needs a firewire port, and the media lab at the school uses macs (not a negative, just a thing to consider).

I think it seems smart to lean towards apple here (I have no OS affiliation anymore, the computer just needs to do what I need it to do).

Recommendations, suggestions, sandwiches?
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Metcarfre » 05 Jan 2011, 22:22

Just an aside; if your actually do receive 'extra' student loan money you don't need, stick it in some sort of safe investment and pay out a lump sum of your loan as soon as payments need to start.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Dutch guy » 06 Jan 2011, 02:15

For gaming and editing video => Get RAM, lots and lots of RAM. (6 Gb minimum nowadays it seems)

For editing video => Large HDD (Possibly a smaller fast disk for the OS and programs, and a large one for data and such)

Laptops are great if you do a lot of bits of work in a lot of different places. But a laptop with sufficient power (At least to my standards) is more a luggable than a laptop. Laptops are not really the most comfortable machines to type on for long periods, so writing long texts requires a laptop stand (To raise the screen) and an external keyboard and mouse. IMHO, go for a good desktop. A laptop is a great addition but atleast to me should not be your only computer.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Jillers » 06 Jan 2011, 03:15

metcarfre wrote:Just an aside; if your actually do receive 'extra' student loan money you don't need, stick it in some sort of safe investment and pay out a lump sum of your loan as soon as payments need to start.



I had a very long post to this and decided to delete it for the tl;dr version:

tl;dr:
You are not my parents, and I am no idiot, so please don't act like I am. I accept that you probably only meant to be helpful, but your wording and punctuation made you seem very self-righteous (to me)
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby SilPho » 06 Jan 2011, 04:10

I don't think it sounds self-righteous at all, it's very sound advice.

That said, the appeal of a new computer is very hard to pass-up if you can afford and justify it.

As far as a university machine goes, a laptop is a glorious thing. A machine powerful enough for video editing and decent gaming probably isn't going to be very comfortable for carrying around every day to take notes in lectures, and probably won't have the battery power for it anyway, but being able to use it like a portable desktop can be very useful. (My battery is fried so I always need a power socket, but I still prefer it to a desktop).
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Metcarfre » 06 Jan 2011, 07:09

Um.. I'm sorry?

I didn't mean do so instead of purchasing a computer, since one would obviously need one for school, it's just something I wish I had done instead if wasting it on frivolities like engagement rings.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby taza » 06 Jan 2011, 08:16

Okay. If you want gaming and video editing with even some sort of limited budget, you decidedly want a desktop.

My choice would be a cheap AMD+Nvidia desktop and a netbook to go with it, for the best of the both worlds on the cheap.

If you're willing to scrap video editing and non-GOG gaming, I'd decidedly suggest one of the Asus 10 inch netbooks. They're cheap, expendable and have excellent battery life.

Leaning towards Apple when you're on a limited budget is never a great idea - Apple makes quality hardware that is a prime target for theft, and you pay a $300 Apple tax on every computer they make. If you're dead set, I'd suggest the 13 inch MacBook Pro or the 11 inch MacBook Air if you absolutely must have more portability.

For a laptop, you do want an Intel+Nvidia or Intel+Intel combo, just for the battery life and thermal issues. For a desktop, Intel+Nvidia offers best performance at a considerable price - AMD+Nvidia offers decent performance on the cheap, with increased thermal issues (that you can solve in a desktop by installing extra fans) - AMD+ATI offers cheapo DX9 performance and a boatload of reliability issues. Which is great for gaming with any games not using DX10/DX11 - and if you don't mind occasional crashing - and pretty much horrid for video editing and work use.

Intel+ATI is a great choice if you like punishing yourself, and should be skipped otherwise. You pay extra for Intel's thermal properties and reliability, only to have it all undone and more by your choice of ATI.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby gcninja » 06 Jan 2011, 08:18

I've heard nothing of a budget so
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15/pd?oc=d ... _id=xps-15
500GB HDD
1GB video card
2.5ghz i5 core cpu
HD Webcam skype verified laptop
4GB RAM BUT its too expensive to buy ram from them to install, go get some from bestbuy or something MUCH cheaper
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Myrph » 06 Jan 2011, 08:34

I'm in a similar position at the moment, looking to upgrade my laptop, and actually the amount you've got available is well in excess of what you actually need to get a laptop which would suit all your requirements. I'm guessing that when you're doing most of the stuff you want to do, you'll be at a desk with a power socket, so although battery life may be an issue, its likely most of the time its not something you need to worry about because you'll have access to wall power, or be doing something that doesn't put an excessive drain on the battery.

As previously mentioned, a decent amount of RAM and a decent sized hard drive are a must, although a decent external drive isn't usually too expensive and with technology going the way it is, if you didn't mind forking out the extra for a USB 3 device, you likely wouldn't notice any drop in speed compared to an internal drive. In addition, getting a decent sized SSD for running the OS and core software from wouldn't be a bad idea either. Processor wise, its probably worth going for an i7, although and i5 or i3 would probably suffice and be less of a drain on battery resources. Even if you aren't playing the most recent of games, getting a half decent graphics card is never a bad idea, something in either the 300 or 400s if you take the nVidia route, or 5000s if you choose ATI/AMD.

Just as an example, the main contender for the laptop I'm considering buying is the Sony VPCF13Z1E/B or one similar, for roughly £1500 ($2300), most likely a custom one with slightly different specifications, but in that price range with approximately those specs. It wouldn't be too difficult to acquire all the extra accessories and still have a reasonable amount to spare as well, not to mention the fact that as a student you should be able to get most of it discounted by a considerable margin as well.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby taza » 06 Jan 2011, 08:37

gcninja wrote:I've heard nothing of a budget so
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15/pd?oc=d ... _id=xps-15
500GB HDD
1GB video card
2.5ghz i5 core cpu
HD Webcam skype verified laptop
4GB RAM BUT its too expensive to buy ram from them to install, go get some from bestbuy or something MUCH cheaper


The first post didn't imply a rather strict budget to you?

Also, a Dell? Dear god ugh no.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby taza » 06 Jan 2011, 08:50

Myrph wrote:*snipping in all ways horrible advice*


Okay, honestly, that there was a HORRIBLE post.

i7 / a powerful graphics card IN A LAPTOP? That would make the thing impossible to use on your lap.

A *horribly overpriced* *Sony* laptop that doesn't even have OSX?

ATI (well, AMD's graphics card branch now) just doesn't do well in laptops, either.

A 13 inch MacBook Pro beats the laptop you're suggesting in *EVERY POSSIBLE WAY*. Including price. An Apple laptop beating a generic, badly-built laptop *in price*.

*normal post follows*

As far as real laptops go I'd right now recommend the Asus UL series or if you want to go cheaper, a HP laptop. Or if you have the money to spare, the cheapest new MacBook Pro with hard drive replaced with a SSD.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Myrph » 06 Jan 2011, 09:05

taza wrote:
Myrph wrote:*snipping in all ways horrible advice*


Okay, honestly, that there was a HORRIBLE post.

i7 / a powerful graphics card IN A LAPTOP? That would make the thing impossible to use on your lap.

A *horribly overpriced* *Sony* laptop that doesn't even have OSX?

ATI (well, AMD's graphics card branch now) just doesn't do well in laptops, either.

A 13 inch MacBook Pro beats the laptop you're suggesting in *EVERY POSSIBLE WAY*. Including price. An Apple laptop beating a generic, badly-built laptop *in price*.


Firstly why the heck would you ever want a 13 inch MacBook for gaming or video editing? Going and taking a look at the Apple website, and looking at the 15" MacBook Pro, the thing starts off £30 more than the laptop I linked to, and actually the site recommends I go for an i7 processor, so I call bull on your statement about i7s in laptops, which then automatically jacked up the price to £1838. Also its got a 300 series nVidia graphics card in it as well, so that calls bull on your comment about graphics too. Not to mention the fact that its only got 4GB of RAM as well. Sure the Apple OS is less demanding of the RAM, but quite frankly I'm not really sure I trust any of your other points given how wrong you appear to be.

And Sony is actually a lot better than you seem to be implicating it to be. They're hard wearing, long lasting laptops (an ex-girlfriend of mine had one for over 10 years and it served her brilliantly throughout, for similar purposes as the OP describes) which as far as I can tell offer very good specification laptops at better prices than a lot of their competitors.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby goat » 06 Jan 2011, 09:11

taza wrote:
Myrph wrote:*snipping in all ways horrible advice*


vitriol


That was a little harsh.

Having a little extra heat in your lap is not always a bad thing, but chances are, as other people have said, that 9/10 times Jillers will be at a desk/somewhere an outlet is available.

While OSX is great for video editing, Jillers plays games off GOG, which seems to suggest Windows. At best, we're looking at a dual boot situation here.

Totally right about the AMD/ATI thing, though. Go NVIDIA, you won't regret it.

I dunno about going full macbook, for the kind of systems other people have been specing up, you could do far better for far less with a PC.

My advice: get a PC, split the HDD favoring the MAC side for video editing, stick the baddest NVIDIA card you can afford in and cram as much RAM as possible in there. For CPU: i7 would be nice, i5s are cheaper and put out less heat. An external device with USB3 would be a good call, especially if you're doing considerable video editing.

Good luck.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Metcarfre » 06 Jan 2011, 09:17

Honest question; what does the term "GOG" mean in relation to games?
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Myrph » 06 Jan 2011, 09:22

metcarfre wrote:Honest question; what does the term "GOG" mean in relation to games?


Good Old Games, they're a company related to CD Projekt (the guys who made The Witcher) who rerelease old classic PC games, which are made to be compatible on newer computers, Win XP, Win 7 etc, for under $10. Got some absolute classics over there!
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby taza » 06 Jan 2011, 09:23

metcarfre wrote:Honest question; what does the term "GOG" mean in relation to games?


Good Old Games - a game service selling games of yesteryear on the cheap, updated to be Windows XP/Vista/7 compatible.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Metcarfre » 06 Jan 2011, 09:23

Ah, the things you don't know when you own a Mac.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby taza » 06 Jan 2011, 09:36

Myrph wrote:*snip*


Okay. So, you're recommending on doing every possible upgrade to make a MacBook Pro worse, and therefore are saying MacBook Pros are worse. Kthx. Next time, don't use a strawman.

Sony is a lot worse than I'm implicating it to be, because I cannot share my honest feelings about Sony products without going onto a fifteen-page essay composed mostly of swearing. Or saying they have better prices than the competitors, which is blatantly false.

A MacBook comes equipped with much better video editing software by default, and the 13 inch MacBook Pro is also fairly portable and does a better job at the other tasks he requires. A MacBook does a poor job on the gaming front without dual booting, but is an ok laptop.

Also the graphics cards in both the UL series and Apple MacBooks aren't "half decent" from a performance standpoint. They, however, are bloody excellent from a "laptop" standpoint - seeing they sacrifice a fair bit of performance to do an acceptable compromise between performance, heat production, reliability and power consumption.

Unlike ATI's laptop chips, which require laptops of a ridiculous size to cool properly, and cut your battery life to very little.

My recommendations stand: Asus UL series for a cheap, efficient compromise of a laptop. Very poorly suited to ONE task you might be finding you have to do - graphical design. The display... isn't too great.

Asus netbooks if you don't need a lot of screen estate and are willing to forego performance-requiring tasks.

And the cheapest 13 inch MacBook Pro on the Apple site right now for a fair bit more money and risk for superb build quality, OSX and a great screen too.

Or a netbook + desktop computer for best of both worlds.

EDIT: Also worthy of note: If you're dual booting on a Mac, booting to Windows requires a separate Windows purchase and will utterly bring your battery life to ruin. The OSX battery life of a MacBook is miles ahead of the Windows battery life.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Danielle Pepin » 06 Jan 2011, 09:53

Check out the requirements for all the software and games you plan to use on it.

High grade video card and the highest processing power you can get being very important. Screen size you can dual monitor with a larger screen to get away with a smaller one but only go with 13 in if you are limited on initial purchase funds like me. It's possible to get a good size monitor for around $200 on tiger direct along with adapters.

For video editing make sure you have a firewire port or something else just as fast that will speed up the capture scratch from your camera.

Drive space you can go external and always recommend you back up all your video mirrored in case something happens to one of them. Good starter is 2 500GB drives or by now 1TB should be affordable.

$10000? You should be able to get the computer top notch for under $5000 including most of the software at full price and possibly external drives. There's also option to build your own from barebones with PC desktop but that can take a while and not as fun if you don't know someone that really knows what they're doing to help you with it (both order and installing stuff).

Reading most of this makes me glad my mother did buy the macbook pro. Oh might want to try out the touchpad before you take it...not sure if all of them typically are finicky to click or if mine is just being stupid.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby korri » 06 Jan 2011, 10:08

If you wanted, you could probably get a decent desktop and a little netbook for about the same price as a fancy laptop. That way, you could still have the power of a desktop and the ability to take one almost anywhere.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby taza » 06 Jan 2011, 10:30

korri wrote:If you wanted, you could probably get a decent desktop and a little netbook for about the same price as a fancy laptop. That way, you could still have the power of a desktop and the ability to take one almost anywhere.


This is fairly close to what I did, except instead of a netbook I took an Asus UL30Vt laptop. The price increase was relatively significant - about $300 - but the UL30Vt has enough power to serve as an ok machine alone.

The UL30Vt has been replaced by the UL80Jt nowadays, though. UL30Vt is both underpowered and difficult to acquire.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Dutch guy » 06 Jan 2011, 10:52

One important piece of advice. It might be CALLED a LAPtop but do NOT use it directly on your lap. This most often blocks several vents or intakes and causes a lot of dust buildup inside the case. And more importantly a laptop gets pretty damn warm (uncomfortably so at times)
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby taza » 06 Jan 2011, 11:02

Dutch guy wrote:One important piece of advice. It might be CALLED a LAPtop but do NOT use it directly on your lap. This most often blocks several vents or intakes and causes a lot of dust buildup inside the case. And more importantly a laptop gets pretty damn warm (uncomfortably so at times)


This would be why I recommend the low-power laptops like the Asus UL series and their non-Ion netbooks. They can actually be used as laptops. Well, the UL if you turn off the discrete graphics card, at least. It has side-vents too, just to accommodate people using it on their laps.

Because where you can carry a super-high-powerful huge laptop around and try to use it as a laptop, neither is a good idea. Large screens are cumbersome and expensive, the things suck up enough juice to practically require you to camp around a power socket, the thing is either heavy as a case of bricks or far too fragile to be able to handle things such as "using" and using it on your lap is a colossally bad idea unless you really, really want a roasted dick sandwich.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby Dutch guy » 06 Jan 2011, 11:20

I use a Dell Inspiron with a 15,4 inch widescreen and relatively strong number crunching powers. Yet I can get about 3 hours out of a battery (Even more when it was new). I just need something between my laptop and my lap if I want to use it that way.
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Re: Shoppers' Paralysis (help me choose a computer)

Postby taza » 06 Jan 2011, 11:23

Dutch guy wrote:I use a Dell Inspiron with a 15,4 inch widescreen and relatively strong number crunching powers. Yet I can get about 3 hours out of a battery (Even more when it was new). I just need something between my laptop and my lap if I want to use it that way.


I use an UL30Vt and get that amount of battery life using the laptop for EVIL... err, using the laptop for gaming.

And the specs say I can get 10 hours if I turn everything into power saving mode. Not that I've ever reached a point where I need to use a laptop for that long.

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