Posted on 04/02/2021 6:58:34 AM PDT by Red Badger
For me, the best laptop I owned was a Gateway. It was a workhorse and was made in the USA. But then the company was sold and the new brand was Lenovo and made in China.
I thought Lenovo took over IBM’s thinkpad line. I didn’t know that they aquired gateway’s too.
I knew someone who had a gateway desktop in the 90s that lasted for well over twenty years. They stopped using it because the OS was long since obsolete. They were very well made in the early years.
Intel constantly changes pin counts and configurations to force buying a new motherboard, which to 99% of all people, means you buy a new computer instead of swapping both the motherboard and processor.
Why hide the speed of these computers?
Do they have the cooling needed to support continued operations?
Even the best laptops have cooling issues and throttle down. I laugh when they talk about phones displacing computers. For idiots maybe.
I’ve always wondered what happened with Gateway. My dad told me the story about them which I thought was cool.
I have a bunch of HP laptops and an Asus, and my Mac is better for video editing but otherwise I’d say a basic laptop running Windows is good enough. They live long and behave well.
However, Windows 10 is not a great improvement over Windows 7.
I have one of the Intel NUC devices. I use it as a media player, with the HDMI out going to my stereo, and from there to the TV. Works great!
OTOH, I don’t really see why so many systems with i5 chips are on this list. Even being 10th generation, you’re still looking at pretty old tech. I have an i9 (16-cores) in the desktop that I built from scratch early last year. When I build a box, I expect to use it for 10 years. Prior to my current desktop I had a 9yo i7. The only reason I ended up deciding to upgrade is because I use VMWare for some work stuff, and the new version wouldn’t run on my older i7 because of some of the new virtualization instructions it expected to be present.
I desperately need a new laptop, but I'm looking for a high-end performance machine like Razer, MSI, or Alienware. The problem is that the newest versions aren't out yet (they said March, now April, but with chip shortages who knows).
I haven't made up my mind on what to get, so I'm hoping my Surface Book hangs on and doesn't explode or something in the meantime.
-PJ
P
But I will say there was a drop in Apple product quality after Steve Jobs passed away. Some more recent machines we owned from the 2012-2016 era did not fare as well as the two old iMacs.
Silly Rabbit Tricks are for kids.
I just build my own desktop
I’ve used Lenovo desktop computers and laptops for years. At the Computer Learning Center where I volunteer we have 10 Lenovo desktops. We are on our second batch as the technology overran the first bunch.
Here’s the good part: in all those years with all those computers, not one problem.
The holder on a DVD drive got broken off due to a dumb student. When I called the Lenovo 800 number it was answered with “Hi this is Mike with Lenovo Support in Atlanta, how can I help you.” Nice southern drawl. I explained the problem and he said, “No problem, we’ll over night you two DVD drives. Put one on the shelf as a spare.” Now THAT’S customer support.
About to turn my Dell XPS last gen box but with an i7 8 core chip into a Linux box.
................... 
Something like that... :)
OMG, is that a cigarette lighter too? I want one of those! I bought one for my car that has “Fire Missiles” printed on the end.
I judge them by how well they will launch AutoCad Civil 3D with a 80MB drawing and then do a full regen on it.
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