I build this Gigabyte Brix for about $120. It has a Celeron CPU, 4G of RAM, and a 60G SSD I had laying around. It's about 5"x5"x3". Tiny. It runs my home automation system
This is a super nice tiny system. It's got an I7 7700, 32G of RAM, 450G NVME super fast boot drive, 960G SSD, and an external 4TB drive I use as a time machine backup for my Macs. This system is mostly for pure computing. About 90% of my work is done on it, since program builds, etc., are faster on it than on my Macs. It's 5"x5"x4". It's hooked up to a $299 40" 4K TV as monitor. I use the Ubuntu (Cinnamon) desktop on it most of the day.
The power efficiency is a big driver for me with the boat computer. While I need it to run special software, Radio control, Weather, Navigation, and sensor integration, I also want it to do all the stuff I do on the home desktop. It needs serial port to interface with other hardware, so it has to be a special setup. All that is working now and loath to mess with it. But if I can cut the power requirements down with 7 or 10 nm architecture, I will go for it. That will force me to Win 10 I suppose. Damn! I bet it will be a bitch to get all that serial port stuff running on 10.
This one is a WWW server. I have 150/150 internet so I have plenty of outbound bandwidth to serve fast sites. It's 5x5x4" as well. Has an I5 6400t, 16G of RAM, NVME boot drive, 400G SSD.
Of these, only the I7 system uses a lot of power. The others use very low power (15 to 35 Watt) CPUs and efficient components. They all have laptop power supplies, something like this:
MarAzul's primary computer. Older backup on the backside of this one. Ivy Bridge 3450T 35W processor 2 SSDs, 2 32G SD cards, and 500G Western Digital. Looking to step the power requirements down to about 15W , then we move.
my favorite part about windows 10 is a recent update that completely froze my computer. I had to google why my computer is freezing and turn off some program that installed. then i had to change some setting in the bios because windows 10 was fucking up the process. the windows crashed while booting and went back to a previous version. only to start demanding i install the new update. then i had to google how to turn off windows update in windows 10 because they made it more confusing on purpose. apparently i cant update windows now until im sure they've fixed what ever problem they cause with the previous update. and sadly i still prefer it to shitty fucking mac products simply because mac marks their shit up for no reason other than they are mac. And dont get me started on mac's technical support, they charge you $50 to ask a question and they look up the answer in their database that you have access to. it's like paying someone $50 to let me google that for you. it's a fucking scam to rip off old people that can't use the internet.
So, your position is that Apple should provide free googling services to people who don't know how to use the internet? Wouldn't that effectively transfer that cost to all the other customers of Apple? Seems sort of socialist, if you ask me. barfo
The laptop now has a thick black line across the screen near the top. I took it back to best buy and they sent it in for repairs. I'm without the damned thing for a couple of weeks. I didn't drop it or even use it as a tablet. I moved it from my desk to a table in the living room a few times, and that's it. Welcome to Windows and CHEAP computers. Meanwhile, my 2015 MacBook Pro is working like a champ.
What a clusterfuck. A clown car just pulled up and out piled a bunch of Microsoft support people. I've literally been on the phone with them for 45 minutes. All I want to do is transfer the $99 windows 10 pro upgrade to the replacement laptop I got today.
Yeah, so I got this thick black line across the laptop screen. I find a thread on reddit where the OP asked if anyone else was having this issue and then a bunch of "me, too!" replies. NOT. APPLE. QUALITY. CONTROL. Anyhow, I call Lenovo and they tell me to take it in to best buy/geek squad. Geek squad sent it to a repair center and 2 weeks later (2 weeks without my laptop, geez), I get an email telling me they're going to replace it. I go to best buy and they give me a new laptop, which is great. I have to set it up from scratch again. I paid $99 to upgrade the old one to PRO and figure I paid to have PRO on the replacement, too. I've been on hold for 5+ minutes at a time, talked to 5 or 6 different people at Microsoft support, and still no resolution. There's no product key for my purchase in the email they sent verifying the purchase, nor online in my account at microsoft.com. It does show the purchase, etc., but no product key. I'm really ][ <- close to just installing linux on it and calling it a day.
Finally got the upgrade done. 59:33 seconds (my phone has an elapsed time on the display). How not to do technical support.
Someone once told me that only rich people can buy cheap products. If your use is not trivial - it pays to pay up-front for better hardware. FWIW - while I do have an old Yoga Pro here from Lenovo - I believe that my next portable machine will come directly from Microsoft - not from Lenovo - these are not the same people that used to make the good old ThinkPads - even if they can still use the name.
I was dazzled by the tech specs at the price. $1250 for the 7700HQ processor, true 4K screen, 500G SSD, 16G of RAM, NVIDIA 1050 graphics card. It's 2 years newer technology than in my 15" Macbook Pro. It's roughly the same experience (dimensions, retina resolution, memory size, SSD performance, etc.). Some things better, some not so much. The reviews on this computer are extremely good. But I have higher expectations than people going from bad to slightly better
I am not sure what the issue is - since I do not have any experience with this specific machine - but my Yoga Pro has always had issues with drivers etc... - great tech specs for the era - a lot of stuff around it which was a real hassle. We have people that have Surface Pro or Surface Books seem to be pretty happy with them - so I suspect that this will be my next one - I have also heard good things about the XPS Dells as well (not the entry level plastic boxes the spew) - but those, like the Surface machines cost more for the same kinds of specs. Hope your machine gets better once it is stabilized.
