Thursday, June 9, 2011

Working on furniture



Okay so furniture is all working except for one bug that I can reproduce and still haven't found a reason for it. A bit of a head scratcher, and that usually means I start re-writing the functions. Which is the next thing it seems my code in the main game is just turning into a function calls. I guess that's a good thing but it sure is interesting code to read and debug.

Today and tomorrow will probably turn into lazy days since I have training at work rather then actual work/programming time. Yes I chose my job based on the amount of time I have for doing nothing but surfing the net.

So completely off topic, I'm thinking of replacing my 5 year old dell laptop with a new state of the art one. Mainly because its taking the damn thing two minutes to compile the main otherworld game now. And when your trying to debug a head scratcher two minutes to compile for a 10s change in code is starting to annoy. So I was wondering if anyone out there has any suggestions for labtops out there.

I am looking for one with:
8gigs of ram or more
good fast processor I can't even figure out the new processors its like there renaming them to be slower I still expect a 486 to be next years model.
15"-15.4" Don't want smaller and don't want bigger I have to cart the thing to work every day.
Blu-Ray player DVD/CD Burner
Looking at the touch screens, but not sure if its worth the loss of HD quality.
No Integrated Vid Cards!!! at least a 512

Those are my main items... pricing it out at dell was $1200 but that's a bit pricey. I want to be in the grand range, should I be requiring any other features? And is there a better model or whatever out there open to suggestions. Though I'm pretty Loyal now to Dell Laptops I carted mine to work and back every day for 5 years and the only thing wrong with it is its getting a bit slow...

Daisy

9 comments:

  1. good luck with getting a new laptop, but I'm kind of distracted by the Rozen Maiden up there

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  2. May I recommend the

    ASUS G53SW-XT1 ~ 1,300 USD
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=576146&CatId=4938

    Lenovo IdeaPad Y560p ~ 900 USD
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=93790&CatId=4938

    Both
    15.6" widescreen
    8GB RAM
    Second Generation Quad core i7
    Dedicated Graphics with minimum of 1GB GDDR5 VRAM
    Finally,
    Asus comes with Blu-ray drive and HD 1080p while
    Lenovo does not

    For around the price you were looking at and the requirements I'd say go with the Asus one, the graphic card offered is definitely better than any of the cards offered on the 15" dell XPS series

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  3. Depending on what you do with it at work, I'd just get a powerful desktop and stay with the old laptop for mobility. You can get much more performance per dollar with a desktop as long as you build it yourself. It's quite easy these days. Other than that I can't really help since I'm not much of a laptop-person, lol.

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  4. Whatever you buy, don't buy a HP laptop! it got shit tier durability and break rather quickly, stick with Toshiba or Asus for quality and durability.

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  5. Both machines proposed by Anon#2 look quite fine, but for working purposes I'd probably take the Lenovo. I havent worked with an IdeaPad yet, since they target the non-business consumer market. But if you happen to get your hands on a T-series Thinkpad for about a grand, take it!

    The T-series used to be the work horse in every major IT-departement I worked for. The machines are exremely robust regarding the case and the other mechanical parts like sturdy hinges - Something that's very important to me since I carry the darn thing around a lot..

    Another topic is your requirement for Blue-Ray, since IMHO you really should invest your money into a fine display with full HD and good speakers which speaks more for a consumer-oriented machine like the Asus or any other high-class laptop.

    Summarized: Take (Business-)Dells and Thinkpads, especially T-Series for coding and work.
    Get yourself an high-end consumer notebook if you want to use also it for gaming and watching Blue-Ray without an external monitor/TV.

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  6. Some really great advice in here. I'm still looking around, its a big purchase that I expect to last 3-5 years. As such I won't hurry. If anyone else has suggestions please post them.

    Daisy

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  7. I agree about the ASUS -- far better quality than Dell. Best choices are that or a Toshiba (although I have a pretty good Samsung myself, but it's smaller). And the Core i7 is about the highest end you could find. But with the requirements you have, finding cheaper will be tough without heading towards crappy ones like HP. The high-end CPU and GPU and having 8gb built in are going to keep you over $1000.

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  8. Whatever you do, make sure the GPU device IDs haven't been altered from the stock values by the manufacturer or you'll have a lot of trouble finding up to date drivers. Make sure AMD's or Nvidia's official drivers install fine before you purchase.

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  9. umm a suggestion or 2 for the list

    a minimum hard drive memory. maybe nothing fancy but it would suck if they swapped out an old 64 megabyte HDD just to lower the price.

    second off im not in that part of the computer field but the integrated video cards might meet that need depending what you get and if you decide to upgrade you can disable the integrated one.

    just an fyi and you can take it or leave it computers supposedly go obsolete within 3 years of leaving the factory so you probably will want to upgrade sooner and payless now.

    the anonymous pheonix guy on his first lazy day in a while

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