General Computer Thread

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Amaris, May 26, 2016.

  1. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I use cabled LAN as much as possible.. here and there I've got a laptop in use but that is all.
     
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  2. Amaris

    Amaris Guest

    I much prefer cables over wireless, myself.
     
  3. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    My niece sent me this clipping. She saw it on her facebook feed and I warned her not to buy this as it looks like junk.

    crappylaptop.jpg
     
  4. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    Well if you'd pay attention you'd probably have realised that it's a Microsoft Surface which are a very good tablet (just my time timing was bad and got mine just before the new model came out earlier this year).

    That said it's the actual ad that's dodgy because they're a lot more than $69.90.
     
  5. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    These devices are usually hilariously overpriced... that ad is as fake as they come.
     
  6. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    Actually It's a Surface Knock off.

    https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/review/windows-tablets/chuwi-surbook-review-3670988/
     
  7. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    Not really.

    Look at the price you pay for even dell laptops that have similar specs (i5, 8GB ram, win 10 pro and similar weight) and the surface are pretty competitive even when you add the cost of the keyboard.



    They are even cheaper than the iPad Pro
     
  8. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Don't compare any Apple product with something else, you never know if there's a rabid Apple Guru around...

    As for the Surface, not sure if the newer ones are of better buildquality but the older ones were sure a stinker.
     
  9. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    well you know what they say about 1.0 releases :)
    but yeah it took Microsoft a few goes but they got there in the end except for one thing - the crappy marvel chipset used for the wifi and BT.
     
  10. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ^^ Guess that it was cheap..

    In other news, Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa has been released, it seems to work fine so far on my AM1 Athlon 5350.
     
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  11. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    probably - also carrying the chipset over has probably meant minimal redesign for each model and it's thermals are known (other than the i7 units the Surface Pros are fanless).
     
  12. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Reintstalled that old Athlon machine, runs peachy on XP now, the drivers available for XP are quite a bit better than those for Win2K, also tried the Audigy II soundcard, must say that it does sound very good. :mallory:
     
  13. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    Been cleaning up an old HP Presario for friend who bought it second hand ($50) for 12y.o duaghter for Xmas.

    Would have been a lot more than when new back in 2008 given it was marketed as a mobile workstation with a ATI FireGL graphics and Intel Centrino chipset and TPM.

    Though I'm not sure what the person who had it before did but I hope they didn't do any online banking. the malware and other crude was bad. Malwarebytes picked up 4000+ nasties.
     
  14. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I wouldn't even bother cleaning that thing, format and reinstall, I have friends who also have managed to totally kill their machines with gawd knows what kind of crap, cleaning would maybe be possible but at some stage you have to draw the line.. :wtf::borg:
     
  15. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    well I'm a nice guy and did think of a wipe and reload but it's being used by a 12y.o and still has a copy of MS Office installed which would have been lost if I'd done the wipe n reload.

    Plus I don't have a Vista or Win7 install media anymore.

    Oh and the thing runs real hot. Not something you'd want sitting on your lap if you were doing anything more than light work.
     
  16. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Woke up the biggest and one of the oldest beasts I have, BIG tower, Pentium III @ a whole Ghz 512mb RAM 80 Gb HDD, Geforce 4 MX, Adaptec and a really ancient NRC SCSI card, SCSI and IDE CD-ROM /Writer and a DAT tape drive, the thing runs Win2k, just going to let it idle for a bit and then see if everything is still 100% okay. :mallory:

    *edit*
    I just had to drag the DX2 66 downstairs, and yep, still working.. :adore:
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2019
  17. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    Forget HAL, you had a whole monolith there.
     
  18. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    HAL = IBM and I happen to have a IBM XT :biggrin::mallory:
     
  19. Owain Taggart

    Owain Taggart Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Speaking of HAL, I'm surprised Amazon & Google haven't released modules for their home assistants to give them the HAL voice. :D
     
  20. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    I'm not sure that copyright and licencing costs would make it worth their while to with the voice (plug Douglas Rain died recently and he was never that keen about his 2001 involvement as it overshadowed all his other work).

    However some-one has released an Echo enclosure that resembles a HAL9000 command console.

    https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hal-9000-product-line-from-2001-a-space-odyssey#/