Laptop/Chromebook Advice

[Davkaus]

Probably a good bet, but it might be a good idea to force your mum to get a bit more info.

It's like going up to your local petrolhead and saying "pick a car for me. No idea of the mileage I'll do, how many people will be in it, or what luggage I'll have. Just get me a car". It's ridiculous. 

To be fair, if it's knackered, and he's happy going 2 months without a replacement, I can't imagine he's using it for anything that a Chromebook can't do.

[Guest av1]

On 18/07/2017 at 21:12, limpid said:

I'd recommend getting carpet, unless you want to replace the laptop 

Do you have a desktop (or windows work machine) to stream steam from? If so then a Chromebook is probably the way to go. I just took delivery of this:

Amazing bit of kit so far. A lot of friends have gone for the little brother and seem very happy with it:

I'm going to recommend this (the cheaper one) for my moms husband. I've actually been looking at this myself, so I'm going to say to my mom get this and if he doesn't like it I'll buy it off him and then he can buy a windows machine in the January sales.

Its a kind of try before you buy guarantee.  

[Guest av1]

Mother is doing my nut it. She didn't want to pay £280 so I'm now considering this

Acer Chromebook 14.

It looks nice enough and £229 is a price she's happy with. 

[villakram]

47 minutes ago, av1 said:

Mother is doing my nut it. She didn't want to pay £280 so I'm now considering this

Acer Chromebook 14.

It looks nice enough and £229 is a price she's happy with. 

That's a little light on RAM, 4Gb should be the minimum given the way modern applications manage memory. 

[Guest av1]

3 minutes ago, villakram said:

That's a little light on RAM, 4Gb should be the minimum given the way modern applications manage memory. 

Her budget isn't leaving much room for manoeuvre sadly. 

[limpid]

3 minutes ago, villakram said:

That's a little light on RAM, 4Gb should be the minimum given the way modern applications manage memory. 

I tend to agree, but maybe it's okay for the use case we were discussing.

[Guest av1]

The company i work for covers the facilities management at currys so i get a 8% discount. So I'll get that for about £211. I'll offer my mom the same 'I've have it if he don't like it' deal that i mentioned above. 

Edited October 23, 2017 by av1

[Tegis]

2 hours ago, av1 said:

The company i work for covers the facilities management at currys so i get a 8% discount. So I'll get that for about £211. I'll offer my mom the same 'I've have it if he don't like it' deal that i mentioned above. 

Heres a search for acer laptops with 4 gigs of ram. See if you can find your model at a good price. Ignore the windows ones as they will be dog slow

https://pricespy.co.uk/category.php?b=s321282242&o=produkt_pris_inkmoms#rparams=b=s321282251

 

 

Edited October 23, 2017 by Tegis
non mobile link

[Stevo985]

On 9/5/2017 at 16:50, Stevo985 said:

 

I bought a macbook

The charger is broken already, in fact it broke 2 weeks ago but I managed to jiggle it about and get it to work for the past 10 days - 2 weeks but now it's broke again.

And I thought the jokes about Apple chargers were an exaggeration  

[lapal_fan]

Looking to get a decent family laptop (only me and my wife would use it).  Mostly to store photos/videos as we have all of our photos on snapfish etc at the moment, but uploading as many photos as we do it really cumbersome on a phone.  

It would be cool if I could run a game like FM on it, as I haven't had any form of personal PC/laptop for about 7 years now.  

There's just so many options online though, I can't get my head around what I need, what I want or what I might need in the near future. 

Thinking there may be a good deal to and over the weekend. 

[Stevo985]

2 hours ago, lapal_fan said:

Looking to get a decent family laptop (only me and my wife would use it).  Mostly to store photos/videos as we have all of our photos on snapfish etc at the moment, but uploading as many photos as we do it really cumbersome on a phone.  

It would be cool if I could run a game like FM on it, as I haven't had any form of personal PC/laptop for about 7 years now.  

There's just so many options online though, I can't get my head around what I need, what I want or what I might need in the near future. 

Thinking there may be a good deal to and over the weekend. 

Use Google Photos on your phone. Photos you take will automatically get uploaded and you can access them from any device, including your laptop.

[lapal_fan]

6 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Use Google Photos on your phone. Photos you take will automatically get uploaded and you can access them from any device, including your laptop.

I might already have that happen, I get notifications saying "we've made a new movie/animation" for you!"

How would I go about accessing this magical thing? 

[limpid]

17 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

I might already have that happen, I get notifications saying "we've made a new movie/animation" for you!"

How would I go about accessing this magical thing? 

Tap on the google photos app.

[lapal_fan]

1 minute ago, limpid said:

Tap on the google photos app.

spank you!  

But seriously, what would you recommend?  

[limpid]

Just now, lapal_fan said:

spank you!  

But seriously, what would you recommend?  

I don't play FM, so I have a ChromeBook. I've linked it in this thread previously.

You can also view your photos using a ChromeCast on any TV.

[lapal_fan]

3 minutes ago, limpid said:

I don't play FM, so I have a ChromeBook. I've linked it in this thread previously.

You can also view your photos using a ChromeCast on any TV.

got 2 chromecasts  

 

[Rob182]

I need a new laptop / PC / Mac for music production. Would anyone have any recommendations for what I should be looking for?

 

I've been looking at MacBook Pros for a while, but also iMacs. (Are iMacs the ones that are just a screen on a stand? If so, that's what I've been looking at).

 

I'm not exclusively looking at Apple, by the way, but that's what I've been led towards when looking at the different music production tools and their capatability.

 

I've been looking at the £1500-£2000 price range.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Rob182 said:

I need a new laptop / PC / Mac for music production. Would anyone have any recommendations for what I should be looking for?

I've been looking at MacBook Pros for a while, but also iMacs. (Are iMacs the ones that are just a screen on a stand? If so, that's what I've been looking at).

I'm not exclusively looking at Apple, by the way, but that's what I've been led towards when looking at the different music production tools and their capatability.

I've been looking at the £1500-£2000 price range.

In terms of Macs, the Macbook pros are very expensive (I've got an old one I got off e bay for £500 quid a few years back), but the new modern ones are ridiculously expensive, if rather lovely. The iMacs (yeah, look like a screen on a stand) are costly, too but not to quite the same degree.

S'pose it depends what you're used to, whether it needs to be portable, what tools you want to run, what connectivity - the newest Macbook pros have ony USB C connectors, so you'd have to disk about with adaptors if you want to plug in older kit, though they stil lsell the 2015 version with all the different i/o connectors. Apple refurb store (link is to shop) is cheaper too.

[Rob182]

Thanks @blandy

 

In terms of portability (that's a word, right?), I'm on the fence. I like the idea of it being portable, but to be honest, I don't think it needs to be. If an iMac will be as powerful as a MacBook, but cheaper, then I'll happily go for one of them. If I had a MacBook, I think I'd just be tempted to keep taking it out of my studio and using it in the living room for playing games on - which I can just do on my current slowwwww laptop.

 

I've never had an Apple computer before, so this would be my first, but I've got an iPhone, and I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult for me to get to grips with.

 

Regarding what I need to connect to it; I will need to connect speakers, an audio interface and then maybe a few other toys, such as a Midi Keyboard. I'll be using some music production software like Logic, Fruity Loops, Cubase or Pro Tools. My audio interface and Keyboard are both at least 3 years old, maybe more, so I'm guessing their connectors will be too old for a brand new MacBook Pro. Then again, if the only requirement is to get a few 'converters?', then I'd be up for that, if it meant getting a better overall product.

 

I've been looking at MacBook Pros for a few years now, but I always worry that getting a 2015 model will result in it dying a slow death after a few iOS updates. Do you find that your 2015 one works fine still?

 

My work have an internal 'Marketplace' where we can sell things to each other. Someone has just put up a sealed, boxed MacBook on there today for £1250 with the following spec:

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch notebook with Retina Display

- Sealed in an original  box..
- 15-inch notebook with Retina Display.
- 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Corei7 with 6MB L3 Cache  (Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz)
- 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
- 256GB of flash storage
- Warranty up to 10Jan2019.
- Model Number = A1398

More info, see attached specs.

£1250 (RRP £1500)

But when I looked at the pictures, the box says '(C) Apple 2016', so I turned my attention away when I figured it would be a 2016 version or earlier.

[blandy]

2 hours ago, Rob182 said:

Do you find that your 2015 one works fine still

Mine's a 2009 one, Rob, nearly 9 years old and yes it still works fine. It's basically still like a new computer in terms of condition. I put an SSD in it to replace the Hard Drive and it's all top notch. Not quite as fast as modern computers, but still pretty quick.

The 2015 model I mentioned available on the refurb store - it's the year that on was first introduced, not "the only year" they were/are made.

The  "A1398" model you saw the advert for is a design first introduced in 2012, but year of manufacture could be/is later  - so 3 years newer than mine. Details here if you want to nerd out. It looks over-priced, for me, even if it is effectively new.

I think my view on macs is that personally I prefer them, I've always used them (as well as using Windows and Linux machines at work), I think they're better suited for the way I use computers and I think their design, build quality and reliability is better. I also think they're expensive and that for a while (maybe 2013-2016) Apple's software QA was notably poor. It's fine again now, though.

You probably know this, but if you've got Windows or Linux software you currently use, you'd have to install windows / linux onto the Mac to carry on using  it. It's not cross compatible, without an emulator or just dobbing the other OS onto the Mac (which is pretty easy to do). Obviously if you are happy to use what comes with the Mac (there's a lot pre-loaded) then you don't need to worry about that.