New laptop, don't like the built in mouse pad thingy

Hertz32

I got a decent laptop as I bought it knowing I'd be a student. As it transpires I won't be, so yeah. I'd rather have a desktop, but the laptop does all I throw at it with aplomb. Including playing DOOM last night for 3 hours continuously, whilst running two 1080p monitors, and all my performance monitoring software at the same time. 
Nothing went over 50°C during the entire session. (CPU's were relatively stable at 35, GPU liked to be 40 - spiking 50 once. Normal operating temp for the battery is 21c, it got to the dizzying heights of 22...) 
I stream my laptop audio to a Bluetooth dongle thats plugged into my speakers too

So, on balance I quite like my laptop... 

lloyd

crunchman said:

@Lloyd the CPU is the central processing unit - it's kind of the engine of the computer.

I can understand the need for something portable but I use a tablet for that - or occasionally use my wife's laptop.  If that's what you need then fine but I'd always want a desktop for my main computer.  The original post on this thread was essentially about the lack of usability/ergonomics of laptops.  One solution is to get a desktop with a decent keyboard and mouse.

It does depend on your usage as a well.  If it's occasional a laptop makes sense, but for heavy usage it's not good.  If you are using it a lot, being hunched over a laptop is a dreadful posture and will cause problems for your back/neck/shoulders.  I'll quite often sit at the computer for 2 or 3 hours in the evening - for that I really want a desktop.  The improved performance of a desktop over a laptop also helps.  I'd have had to spend at least £200 more on a laptop to get something that even comes vaguely close to my desktop in performance. I've upgraded some bits but for a lot of things my older (nearly 8 years old) desktop that my kids use is still faster than my wife's one year old laptop for a lot of things.

You can probably see by my total lack of understanding of what a CPU is show's my knowledge and usage of computers, this was just a cheapo laptop to do the stuff above.

I've had a desktop in the past and found it restrictive because of the lack of portability, the screen size is nice though, but these things always come to compromises.

I have nowhere to put a desktop in the current house either.

Fretwired

stickyfiddle said:

Fretwired said:

The original IBM ThinkPads had a decent solution with the little red joystick thingy ..

"The nipple", as it's known in this office. Hateful, spiteful, horrible invention.

The early ones were very good. My laptop was made in the late 1990s and was built like a tank.

lloyd

Fretwired said:

stickyfiddle said:

Fretwired said:

The original IBM ThinkPads had a decent solution with the little red joystick thingy ..

"The nipple", as it's known in this office. Hateful, spiteful, horrible invention.

The early ones were very good. My laptop was made in the late 1990s and was built like a tank.

Probably weighed the same too and gave equal defence to light arms fire!

stickyfiddle

Fretwired said:

stickyfiddle said:

Fretwired said:

The original IBM ThinkPads had a decent solution with the little red joystick thingy ..

"The nipple", as it's known in this office. Hateful, spiteful, horrible invention.

The early ones were very good. My laptop was made in the late 1990s and was built like a tank.

They're still (relatively) built like tanks. I'm on a T450s, which is a bit flimsier than the T420 it replaced, but still a meaty think compared to similarly priced consumer-targeted machines.

I often joke when the bombs drop the next world order will be cockroaches working on thinkpads...

Fretwired

lloyd said:

Fretwired said:

stickyfiddle said:

Fretwired said:

The original IBM ThinkPads had a decent solution with the little red joystick thingy ..

"The nipple", as it's known in this office. Hateful, spiteful, horrible invention.

The early ones were very good. My laptop was made in the late 1990s and was built like a tank.

Probably weighed the same too and gave equal defence to light arms fire!

Yep. And I always got suspicious looks going through JKF airport security as it was pretty thick - large hard drive, DVD and HD floppy drive. Mine was an office machine which ran some applications that needed Oracle - they were standard laptops for the senior consultants.

lloyd

Fretwired said:

lloyd said:

Fretwired said:

stickyfiddle said:

Fretwired said:

The original IBM ThinkPads had a decent solution with the little red joystick thingy ..

"The nipple", as it's known in this office. Hateful, spiteful, horrible invention.

The early ones were very good. My laptop was made in the late 1990s and was built like a tank.

Probably weighed the same too and gave equal defence to light arms fire!

Yep. And I always got suspicious looks going through JKF airport security as it was pretty thick - large hard drive, DVD and HD floppy drive. Mine was an office machine which ran some applications that needed Oracle - they were standard laptops for the senior consultants.

I'm watching "Halt and catch fire" on Amazon right now, and while no doubt it's full of inaccuracies, it's a good nod back to the early days of computers, the speed that they've developed and advancements are amazing.