Recommendations for a laptop

[moneymaker]

I think it is safe to assume Gigs here, I occasionally catch myself saying megs too, my first computer had 20MB hard drive and ran win 3.1 I want to say the processor was also 20MHz. That was 1993!

[gzz]

SPDrun,

It can actually be very hard to install Windows 7 on skylake chip PCs, and Microsoft will end Win7 support early on skylake, so I do not agree you can just get Win 10 and install an old copy of Win 7 on top of it.

Even aside from this issue, installing an OS is beyond the abilities of at least 80% of PC users.

-It’s even legal since Win 10 Pro has downgrade rights to Win 7.-

10 Pro is rare on low to medium end consumer PCs because it costs like an extra $50.

Anyway I have used Win 10 for 30+ hours on my newest laptop and one of the office PCs I support. I still hate it, both because it sucks as an OS and because I can no longer replace my company’s aged PCs with brand new PCs with Win7, but have to basically find old stock Broadwell desktops. Regular office worker users who mostly use internet and office applications all day seem to hate it too.

[spdrun]

1. Pro is a $100 upgrade online. Then you’ll have the right to downgrade to 7 Pro.
2. You can downgrade illegally anyway. No real way to prevent it.
3. Win 7 runs fine on Skylake. It’s just not officially supported other than security fixes past the end of 2017. Unofficially, it will work fine.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=XBoxBoy][quote=no_such_reality]
Blu 5.0 Android phone for $59.99 on Amazon, using a free screen grabber to automated the webserver connection and copy to a text file.

[/quote]

Don’t think that’s going to really work as we’re talking about 10-20k lines of text per session that needs to be copied. That’d be a whole lot of screen grabs.[/quote]

Is it 10 to 20K individual lines or one entire section? i.e. is the data in the same location, same format and just happens to rather long raw data?

Will a select all work on it before the copy?

you can get a cheapy laptop, but really seems like overkill since there’s already a $600+ computer hanging on your hip.

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=all][quote=XBoxBoy]
I’m thinking 8megs memory and at least 512meg SSD drive…[/quote]

512MB SSD might work, but with 8MB of RAM you will need MS DOS, or Windows 3.11. Win95 should also work.[/quote]

Opps… yeah gigs not megs

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=no_such_reality]

Is it 10 to 20K individual lines or one entire section? i.e. is the data in the same location, same format and just happens to rather long raw data?

Will a select all work on it before the copy?

you can get a cheapy laptop, but really seems like overkill since there’s already a $600+ computer hanging on your hip.[/quote]

Yes, it’s all in one window although it has obviously scrolled off the visible area. So, the idea is select all, copy, paste, save file. I’d like to be just that easy. A couple keystrokes.

At the risk of starting the flame wars over Apple which I don’t want to do, I’ll point out that the $600 computer on my hip is an iPhone and copy and paste is a pain, then what to paste it into? I have a text editor (textastic) so that’s doable. But then getting from the phone to the computer is a pain because iOS doesn’t have a finder. Yeah, it’s all doable, I grant you that. It’s just awfully clunky. I have a coworker who uses a laptop to do the same thing, and that has worked well for him, so I’m inclined to go that route.

Thanks for all the advice.

[Coronita]

[quote=XBoxBoy][quote=no_such_reality]

Is it 10 to 20K individual lines or one entire section? i.e. is the data in the same location, same format and just happens to rather long raw data?

Will a select all work on it before the copy?

you can get a cheapy laptop, but really seems like overkill since there’s already a $600+ computer hanging on your hip.[/quote]

Yes, it’s all in one window although it has obviously scrolled off the visible area. So, the idea is select all, copy, paste, save file. I’d like to be just that easy. A couple keystrokes.

At the risk of starting the flame wars over Apple which I don’t want to do, I’ll point out that the $600 computer on my hip is an iPhone and copy and paste is a pain, then what to paste it into? I have a text editor (textastic) so that’s doable. But then getting from the phone to the computer is a pain because iOS doesn’t have a finder. Yeah, it’s all doable, I grant you that. It’s just awfully clunky. I have a coworker who uses a laptop to do the same thing, and that has worked well for him, so I’m inclined to go that route.

Thanks for all the advice.[/quote]

So correct me if I’m wrong it sounds like what you need something that polls an HTTP url and grabs the response, saves the response, and then makes it available for a computer used elsewhere where you want to analyze data afterwards, right?

If so, I’m thinking you probably don’t need a laptop just to do this… Would a very simple app on a phone that polls the web url, grabs the HTTP response, and then at the the end of session, sends you an email and/or uploads to a cloud account (like google drive) work?

This shouldn’t be hard to do, on Android or iOS. If it was Android, I’d put something together for you in 10-15 minutes. For iOS, I need to fire up my old xCode IDE, which I’ve neglected for the last year… I don’t mind slapping an iOS project together. But, you’re going to have to sideload it yourself onto your phone, since no way I can get something like this onto the app store quickly.

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=flu]

So correct me if I’m wrong it sounds like what you need something that polls an HTTP url and grabs the response, saves the response, and then makes it available for a computer used elsewhere where you want to analyze data afterwards, right?
[/quote]

Well, yes I think that’s correct. I’m not that knowledgeable with web related tech, my expertise lies with graphics rendering, AI, and game related type technology. The output from the device is a series of JSON messages. Having them in a browser means that I can monitor what I’m getting, making sure that data collection is going ok. (Although it’s a bit cryptic) After a dozen or so shots, I’ll copy the data and save it, then clear the browser page and continue collecting data.

[quote=flu]
If so, I’m thinking you probably don’t need a laptop just to do this… Would a very simple app on a phone that polls the web url, grabs the HTTP response, and then at the the end of session, sends you an email and/or uploads to a cloud account (like google drive) work?

This shouldn’t be hard to do, on Android or iOS. If it was Android, I’d put something together for you in 10-15 minutes. For iOS, I need to fire up my old xCode IDE, which I’ve neglected for the last year… I don’t mind slapping an iOS project together. But, you’re going to have to sideload it yourself onto your phone, since no way I can get something like this onto the app store quickly.[/quote]

If you think this is feasible, then maybe pm me. I have xcode, and I currently upload our tech to my phone and iPad, and while I know very little about the logistics of an iOS app itself, I can probably manage to build and run an xcode project that someone provides. Not sure how much hand shaking would need to be done to make the connection. There is a login process that requires a username and password.

XboxBoy

[Coronita]

[quote=XBoxBoy][quote=flu]

So correct me if I’m wrong it sounds like what you need something that polls an HTTP url and grabs the response, saves the response, and then makes it available for a computer used elsewhere where you want to analyze data afterwards, right?
[/quote]

Well, yes I think that’s correct. I’m not that knowledgeable with web related tech, my expertise lies with graphics rendering, AI, and game related type technology. The output from the device is a series of JSON messages. Having them in a browser means that I can monitor what I’m getting, making sure that data collection is going ok. (Although it’s a bit cryptic) After a dozen or so shots, I’ll copy the data and save it, then clear the browser page and continue collecting data.

[quote=flu]
If so, I’m thinking you probably don’t need a laptop just to do this… Would a very simple app on a phone that polls the web url, grabs the HTTP response, and then at the the end of session, sends you an email and/or uploads to a cloud account (like google drive) work?

This shouldn’t be hard to do, on Android or iOS. If it was Android, I’d put something together for you in 10-15 minutes. For iOS, I need to fire up my old xCode IDE, which I’ve neglected for the last year… I don’t mind slapping an iOS project together. But, you’re going to have to sideload it yourself onto your phone, since no way I can get something like this onto the app store quickly.[/quote]

If you think this is feasible, then maybe pm me. I have xcode, and I currently upload our tech to my phone and iPad, and while I know very little about the logistics of an iOS app itself, I can probably manage to build and run an xcode project that someone provides. Not sure how much hand shaking would need to be done to make the connection. There is a login process that requires a username and password.

XboxBoy[/quote]

Will send you a PM….(No I’m not fishing for contracting dollars, I’ve got enough on my plate at my FT job)

[no_such_reality]

It’s iPhone. Will something like the free CopyWeb app work? Easily copy web page content?

[bibsoconner]

XboxBoy,

Please, please post what you end up getting (model and place you purchased). I’m in a similar boat. FWIW, for work I tend to get Lenovo. My latest Thinkpad has a P7 SSD and 32 Gigs of Ram. I actually find the SSD and Ram give me more bang for the buck than the processor. As others stated the ThinkPads seems to take abuse well. This was about $2000

I need something simpler (and cheaper!) for home use. Like you, I’d like to be able to program on it. In my case Visual Studio. The 32 Gigs of ram is great, but suspect I could make do with 16. I’d be worried with less than that as Visual Studio, SQL Server Express, and other stuff I use tend to chew threw Ram. I don’t need a crazy fast gaming machine. 15″ seems like a good screen size. If I need more than that, I connect a monitor.

Cheers,
Dave

[gzz]

Dave, I agree about plenty of RAM and SSD are more important now than processor. I suggest since you like thinkpad searching ebay for thinkpad SSD and buying one in the range you want to spend.

For all the high-end software you are going to use, seems like you should just get a home desktop with a bigger monitor. Programming on a laptop screen sounds awful.

Laptop screens go up to 17 inches, with both HD and non-HD resolutions available at that size. That is something else to look for if you are doing serious work on a laptop. Seeing a 15 and 17 side-by-side, the extra size really makes a difference. Might be better for your posture and eyes too! I am not sure going with the HD 17 inch is worth it over the regular one however.

I have also purchased several custom computers from cyberpowerpc.com, based in inland empire. What is nice about them is they use brand-name internal parts and disclose what they are, and you can customize the PCs far more than Dell allows. Prices are somewhat better too.

[XBoxBoy]

Just thought I’d post an update. (And probably rant a bit!)

So after all the posts I decided I should really see if I couldn’t make this work without a laptop. I’ve got a nice iPad Pro with a decent sized screen so it should be doable. I’m connecting to a Trackman 4 which is a device that tracks your swing and the flight of your golfball. It has apps that do this for you, but I need the raw data, and that is only available through their debugging tool. To access that I launch a browser and open a web page. The trackman and the browser open a socket and then the trackman starts streaming JSON data. It takes only a dozen shots to get to about 10-20k lines of JSON.

I went today to the range and I was able to easily get the data into the browser. Now here’s the incredible rub. iPad browsers don’t support select all. The only way to select all the text was to highlight a word, then move the little blue ball to enlarge the selection. It takes over a minute to scroll all the way up and down to get the data for about 8 shots! I find this incomprehensible. Why in God’s name did the designers of the iPad browsers, (I tried Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome) feel that they should not support select all? Other iPad apps have select all, so why not the browsers?

Once I’ve managed to select all, it’s not too bad to copy and paste to my text editor (textastic) which I can get the files off later with out too much trouble. (Although this weird invention called a file system would probably make it much easier, but I guess that’s too advanced for iPad.)

However, I’ve got to say. It’s absolutely dumbfounding to me that the designers of these systems have decided to abandon support for basic computer operations like, select all, copy, paste. I guess that’s my real problem with these devices (tablets, smartphones, etc) if you are facebooking, taking selfies and sending to friends, or twitting, I guess it’s all great. But if you want to do any real work, to actually be productive… forget about it!

At any rate, I realized after I struggled for so long trying to select all that I do have a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad, but I hadn’t brought it to the driving range. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll take that with my iPad and Trackman and see if it goes better. (The keyboard does allow me to hit cntrl-A to select all.) If it still is an awkward pain, I’ll look into a low cost laptop.

XboxBoy

[spdrun]

This is why Crapple and Cripple are the same word, pronounced differently 🙂 Cripplecrapple.

And people wonder why I don’t have a tablet when excellent, robust used laptops that run a real OS (Win 7 or Linux) can be had for under $200.

Why not get the laptop — it’s so much more pleasant to use for most tasks than an iPad or other fondleslab that the lack of aggravation is worth a C-notes.

[ucodegen]

[quote=XBoxBoy]I went today to the range and I was able to easily get the data into the browser. Now here’s the incredible rub. iPad browsers don’t support select all. The only way to select all the text was to highlight a word, then move the little blue ball to enlarge the selection. It takes over a minute to scroll all the way up and down to get the data for about 8 shots! I find this incomprehensible. Why in God’s name did the designers of the iPad browsers, (I tried Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome) feel that they should not support select all? Other iPad apps have select all, so why not the browsers?
[/quote]There’s no ‘save page as’ function w/ the iPad? I am not that familiar with what is available on the iPad browsers. The ‘parsing’ of the saved data might be a bit different then copy paste, since it would be raw html and not formatted ‘rich text’.

[quote=XBoxBoy]
Once I’ve managed to select all, it’s not too bad to copy and paste to my text editor (textastic) which I can get the files off later with out too much trouble. (Although this weird invention called a file system would probably make it much easier, but I guess that’s too advanced for iPad.)[/quote]{snark}iPad has a file system – everyone other than Apple is not special enough to be allowed to see it… {/snark}

[quote=XBoxBoy]At any rate, I realized after I struggled for so long trying to select all that I do have a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad, but I hadn’t brought it to the driving range. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll take that with my iPad and Trackman and see if it goes better. (The keyboard does allow me to hit cntrl-A to select all.) If it still is an awkward pain, I’ll look into a low cost laptop.

XboxBoy[/quote]
Good luck..

You can also look at getting a laptop from Dell – directly. That is how I have gotten several of my past laptops. Dell also has a ‘refurbished equipment’ sales department. These are often ‘turnins’ from corporate leases and are built better than most of the equipment you find at places like Office Depot, Frys – etc, while also being cheaper in most cases (because of being refurb). If the company you work for has a purchase agreement with Dell, your company may allow you to ‘piggyback’ an order. The company I once worked for allowed it, it was a 20% discount.

Note: Dell owns Alienware…

[Author]

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