Recommend Thanas a PC

[Marcus Aurelius]

'Glossy' displays can provide perceptually deeper colors and higher contrast. Matte displays are available, but they tend to be on more expensive business-class laptops (e.g. higher-end ThinkPads, MacBook Pro, etc.).

Yes. On the other hand, if you can afford it, it could be a good idea to buy a business laptop in any case. Usually they have higher quality components (but not always, unfortunately) and typically come with a three year warranty as standard. You can buy warranty extensions to consumer laptops, but warranty is still something to consider when comparing the prices. Of course if you don't plan on using the laptop for more than a year or two, it matters less, but I take Thanas is not in the habit of being a fatty nerd buying a new computer every other year.

About the glossy displays: yes, they suck for real work. The "deeper" colors are not really deeper and higher contrast only matters if you use it in bright lighting condition, but it will in many situations be negated by reflections, which will make the display unusable in any case. I have also found that manually calibrating glossy displays for white and black point is a pain in the ass, although that is not an issue if you are not into photography, and preferably you should be using a hardware calibrator in any case (I don't, since I'm a cheapskate and you can get nearly as good results with software calibration if you know what you are doing).

[Skgoa]

Thanas, are you eligible for Apple on Campus? That would but the new white MacBook into your price range and since Apple started to put actual grafics chips into their laptops in the last generation, it would also mean you get as much or more for your money as/than if you bought a laptop in the 700-800 range from other manufacturers.
You would need to install windows yourself, though.

Did I understand you correctly, you absolutely need a laptop? If you get one of the cheaper netbooks, you would still have enough money to by a decent pc, but personaly I don't like to work with anything smaller than 13".

[General Zod]

Thanas, are you eligible for Apple on Campus? That would but the new white MacBook into your price range and since Apple started to put actual grafics chips into their laptops in the last generation, it would also mean you get as much or more for your money as/than if you bought a laptop in the 700-800 range from other manufacturers.
You would need to install windows yourself, though.

Did I understand you correctly, you absolutely need a laptop? If you get one of the cheaper netbooks, you would still have enough money to by a decent pc, but personaly I don't like to work with anything smaller than 13".

Why would he want an Apple when he said he wants to play games on it?

[Thanas]

Thanas, are you eligible for Apple on Campus?

Don't you start.

Sorry, but Apple absolutely sucks. Our last conference had to be delayed for thirty minutes because Apple apparently thought it a good idea to eliminate the VGA port from their laptops. Yeah, not that good if you need to give a presentation.

Cue USB-stick shuffling, major embarrassment and much fun when the conference schedule got screwed. Nice to be told: "Sorry, but we got to eliminate the latest discussion panel because otherwise we won't make it to..."

Screw Apple.

They are even worse than Microsoft when it comes to giving you control over your software. Itunes sucks and I freaking hate Quicktime.

I really would prefer it if Apple would not exist in this world. It would make my life about 30% easier.




Also, no gaming on Apple.

[Edi]

Note to self: Must always recommend Apple products to Thanas...

Seriously, for the laptop, buy a business model like Marcus Aurelius recommended and one with a matte display. If you find one with a metal casing, it's good for longevity, since the laptop itself is less likely to flex and put strain on the circuit boards inside.

For the desktop, I'll just defer to the advice already given in the thread since I haven't followed up on the hardware too deeply.

[phongn]

Seriously, for the laptop, buy a business model like Marcus Aurelius recommended and one with a matte display. If you find one with a metal casing, it's good for longevity, since the laptop itself is less likely to flex and put strain on the circuit boards inside.

That's pretty much just the ThinkPad, isn't it? Gaming isn't going to be so great on it, though, even for the models with a discrete GPU inside.

Sorry, but Apple absolutely sucks. Our last conference had to be delayed for thirty minutes because Apple apparently thought it a good idea to eliminate the VGA port from their laptops. Yeah, not that good if you need to give a presentation.

I'm guessing the presenters forgot the dongle? VGA ports are dying, though, it's only a matter of time until they disappear (if not replaced by DVI or HDMI then DisplayPort). I will be very glad when all laptops have digital output instead of analog.

Also, no gaming on Apple.

Dual-boot?

[Thanas]

Sorry, but Apple absolutely sucks. Our last conference had to be delayed for thirty minutes because Apple apparently thought it a good idea to eliminate the VGA port from their laptops. Yeah, not that good if you need to give a presentation.

I'm guessing the presenters forgot the dongle? VGA ports are dying, though, it's only a matter of time until they disappear (if not replaced by DVI or HDMI then DisplayPort). I will be very glad when all laptops have digital output instead of analog.

Yeah, they did.

And sorry, but VGA has to stay, because most universities only have outdated equipment that accepts VGA only. It works for presentations and people are used to it. I do not really want to have the hassle of having to carry adapters or reminding people to bring them along (only to have them forget them).

Dual-boot?

Why? I can't stand Apple, so why would I want to run a dual-boot system if I already know I am never going to use one of the two OS?

[phongn]

Yeah, they did.

And sorry, but VGA has to stay, because most universities only have outdated equipment that accepts VGA only. It works for presentations and people are used to it. I do not really want to have the hassle of having to carry adapters or reminding people to bring them along (only to have them forget them).

It will die, just like a bunch of other legacy ports are all but dead for the consumer market (e.g. RS-232, parallel, FireWire). And there will be lots of legacy equipment that need adapters for newer laptops and much pain.

Why? I can't stand Apple, so why would I want to run a dual-boot system if I already know I am never going to use one of the two OS?

It was a general comment.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Yeah, they did.

And sorry, but VGA has to stay, because most universities only have outdated equipment that accepts VGA only. It works for presentations and people are used to it. I do not really want to have the hassle of having to carry adapters or reminding people to bring them along (only to have them forget them).

It will die, just like a bunch of other legacy ports are all but dead for the consumer market (e.g. RS-232, parallel, FireWire). And there will be lots of legacy equipment that need adapters for newer laptops and much pain.

Of course it will die some day, but VGA has a lot bigger installed base of compatible devices than RS-232, IEEE 1394 (fuck Apple) or even Parallel ever had. It is also still pretty much the lowest common denominator of display interfaces because of the connector AND signaling protocol mess the digital interfaces are. Sure, you can plug DVI-D to HDMI and vice versa with a suitable (and usually not available when needed) adapter, but don't get me even started on the DisplayPort. They should have made DVI-D compatible signaling a mandatory requirement from the start, but noooo, it would have been too expensive to implement, so now you need a separate signal adapter for that, which is still more expensive than a simple connector adapter, not to mention all the other hassles involved with any kind of external adapters.

[Starglider]

And sorry, but VGA has to stay, because most universities only have outdated equipment that accepts VGA only.

Insufficient reason to hold up progress in the entire IT industry.

I do not really want to have the hassle of having to carry adapters or reminding people to bring them along (only to have them forget them).

Too bad. Get used to it (or more sensibly, leave one plugged in to each projector permenantly). The old 5-way component (5 x BNC, almost all high-end CRTs used to use it) standard is already dead, thankfully.

They should have made DVI-D compatible signaling a mandatory requirement from the start

DVI-D signalling has neither the bandwidth nor the multiplexing/in-band signalling capabilities, and is harder to clock. You essentially have to implement a complete DVI-D controller as well as the DisplayPort controller, plus a switch to remap the pins. Some equipment actually does this (so-called DP++), which means you can save the cost of an active dongle if you want to pay the same cost as a price premium on your graphics card. Basically though this is a load of completely unnecessary legacy junk, when most equipment will probably keep a physical DVI-D port around for at least the next five years anyway. Arguably it was the failure of DVI to quickly replace VGA in the early 2000s - because of people whining about the inconvenience of adapters and hence being forced to keep an unnecessary VGA port on all video cards - that convinced the DisplayPort designers not to put backwards compatability in the core standard.

[Ryan Thunder]

<wrong button>

[Marcus Aurelius]

Too bad. Get used to it (or more sensibly, leave one plugged in to each projector permenantly). The old 5-way component (5 x BNC, almost all high-end CRTs used to use it) standard is already dead, thankfully.

They should have made DVI-D compatible signaling a mandatory requirement from the start

DVI-D signalling has neither the bandwidth nor the multiplexing/in-band signalling capabilities, and is harder to clock. You essentially have to implement a complete DVI-D controller as well as the DisplayPort controller, plus a switch to remap the pins. Some equipment actually does this (so-called DP++), which means you can save the cost of an active dongle if you want to pay the same cost as a price premium on your graphics card. Basically though this is a load of completely unnecessary legacy junk, when most equipment will probably keep a physical DVI-D port around for at least the next five years anyway. Arguably it was the failure of DVI to quickly replace VGA in the early 2000s - because of people whining about the inconvenience of adapters and hence being forced to keep an unnecessary VGA port on all video cards - that convinced the DisplayPort designers not to put backwards compatability in the core standard.

The cost of course would not be the same as external dongle due to economies of scale. Yes, it would of course add cost, but the PC industry is paranoid about cost increases. The real reason why the DVI connector did not fully replace the VGA is a lesson of that. DVI was of course designed to carry both analog and digital signals from the start (DVI-I), but manufacturers skipped the DVI connector in favor of VGA for many years, because the DVI connector was more costly. And I really mean the actual connector. VGA has fewer pins than DVI-I and it was also manufactured in much greater quantities, including the cables which most of the time came included with monitors. So, for entry level graphics cards and cheap systems with integrated graphics (especially the latter) it was cheaper to implement only the VGA connector. The same was true with entry level TFT monitors, because the VGA connector and cable were cheaper. The internal electronics of the monitors already had the necessary circuits always integrated to digitize the VGA signal for flat panel displays, so that did not add to the cost like adding a DVI-I connector and cable plus an optional DVI-A->VGA adapter would have. I don't think there are monitors available to this day which could not accept analog VGA signal.

Believeme , I would have preferred a rapid switch to DVI with the introduction of flat panel displays, but it was just not meant to be. DisplayPort and HDMI are lessons learned from that in the way that the actual connectors are inexpensive as possible, especially HDMI. However, the lesson serves the profit margins of the IT industry more than the end users, because the cost is inevitable adapter hell. DVI-I <--> VGA was nothing compared to this clusterfuck.

[Thanas]

And sorry, but VGA has to stay, because most universities only have outdated equipment that accepts VGA only.

Insufficient reason to hold up progress in the entire IT industry.

I do not really want to have the hassle of having to carry adapters or reminding people to bring them along (only to have them forget them).

Too bad. Get used to it (or more sensibly, leave one plugged in to each projector permenantly). The old 5-way component (5 x BNC, almost all high-end CRTs used to use it) standard is already dead, thankfully.

Do you have anything worthwhile to add here or is this just another "sucks to be you, I LIKE IT" post from you? Because if that is the case, I know where it will end up.

You are not saying anything other people have not already said.

Yeah, I know VGA is outdated. I also said that for university purposes it would be good if the university did not have to change systems every five years because guess what, we got better uses for the money than to spend it on something that gives us no improvement whatsoever and instead even more trouble.

[Glocksman]

As a general rule, the mid-range Phenoms (actually Phenom IIs) provide slightly better performance/price, but slightly less battery life than the Intel equivalents. Note that the big refresh for this product segment is scheduled for spring 2011; AMD and Intel are both releasing chips with integrated graphics that are vastly better than the current chipset graphics. Probably not a big deal for you, since you want to play games and have ample budget for a discrete graphics card. That said, as I noted in the other recent threads of this type AMD are refreshing their mid-range graphics cards next month, so waiting a few weeks could net you significantly better gaming performance/price.

Sadly, as my laptop just died on me (repairs would cost 140€ which is just ridiculous for a 4 year old laptop) and I need it for work - travelling, speeches etc - I cannot afford to wait.

***************

Anybody have experiences with anti-glare screens?

I don't know if it's available in the EU, but I recently bought a Compaq C62-225NR Athlon II dual core laptop for US$350.
Granted, the build quality isn't nearly as good as the Dell Latitude D820 (metal vs plastic chassis, discrete video, etc.) it replaced, but spending $150 or so on a new battery for a 4 year old machine just didn't 'compute'.

It has some usability issues (power jack location, touchpad buttons harder to press), but for the price it was a bargain.

[Seggybop]

I'm guessing the presenters forgot the dongle? VGA ports are dying, though, it's only a matter of time until they disappear (if not replaced by DVI or HDMI then DisplayPort). I will be very glad when all laptops have digital output instead of analog.

I'm ok with this

What is not so ok is Apple always using odd connectors like mini-dvi or mini-displayport. It is incredibly frustrating to have to deal with presentations being delayed on a daily basis because someone lost/forgot one of the 3 different types of dongles that a macbook could potentially require in order to connect to a normal projector or screen.

[Thanas]

An update - Thanks for the suggestions, all of you.

As of now, I'll be calling myself the owner of the following system:

i5 2,56 (2,8 turbo) Ghz
4 GB Ram
650 GB Harddrive
Nvidia Geforce GT 420M