SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 17 submissions in the queue.
SoylentNews
Which would you be more likely to buy in the next year?
| 32% | 75 votes |
| 7% | 18 votes |
| 6% | 16 votes |
| 53% | 125 votes |
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Which would you be more likely to buy in the next year?
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 40 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.
-- Charles Curtis, "A Commonplace Book"
(Score: 4, Informative) by dublet on Tuesday July 22 2014, @03:44PM
I've already purchased a laptop this year, so I'm unlikely to need another, or a tablet.
Having said that, the ThinkPad S540 I bought is quite woeful. The ThinkPad brand is no longer sticking to the values it had in the IBM era. There's a dual GPU thing, which wasn't advertised and works absolutely woefully under Windows and not at all under Linux. The control keys for volume and brightness that were once done by hardware are now ACPI software keys, meaning they only work for OSes that have drivers on for that. There's a longer list but I shan't detail it for fear of the veins in my head popping out of anger.
For those that want to buy a laptop, please stay clear of ThinkPads, I know I won't buy another.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 1) by ah.clem on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:36PM
Interesting that you have had a bad experience with the S540 - I have owned 2 non-touchscreen Carbon X1 machines (the latest is Gen 2 with the kludgy ACPI keys) and I have been extremely happy with both units. I did have to set the default "top row" to the "F" keys as I need them for programming and it is a pain to toggle through for the volume, but I use that a lot less than the F keys and I also generally just open volume in the tool tray - everything's a compromise. I agree that some of the ThinkPads have been less than optimal (my wife has had 2 in the last 5 years that she was not happy with, but I think they got the Carbon series right). I did have to pay to "downgrade" to Win 7, but was worth it, IMO. I do wish I had the Gen 1 keyboard, though.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Wednesday July 23 2014, @10:35AM
The Carbon machines are nice but twice the price of the S series. At the very least the S540 has the "Function Lock" to make the function keys into actual function keys again and the ability to swap the Fn and Ctrl keys to their rightful positions.
The R51 I have is much nicer all round, if only it weren't so slow by comparison. :(
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by Rune of Doom on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:00PM
I'm currently on a ThinkPad X200T, which is still in quite good shape and more than adequate for all my needs. (Not a high-end gamer or graphic artist. Plus, that's what the desktop is for.) My tablet is a couple years old, but still has good battery life and is seldom used. The device I'm almost certain to buy in the next year is a new smartphone - mine is now almost 4 years old.
(Score: 1) by khedoros on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:31PM
Odd. Going to the "tech specs" tab on Lenovo's S540 page lists both GPUs as being present in the machine.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Wednesday July 23 2014, @10:29AM
So in the tech specs they have the two GPUs listed, yes. Then if you go the the page of the selection of models, it lists a "lesser" model with the Intel GPU, and another the the AMD GPU. If you select that model to customize, it specifically states that it has an AMD GPU. It does not state that it in fact has both in some sort of half arsed GPU sharing mechanism.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 1) by khedoros on Wednesday July 23 2014, @05:15PM
So, you're right. They should've made the dual-GPU configuration clearer (although I'd still argue that it's implied by the machine's stats anyhow). Whoever put the page together seems to be assuming that the customer is fairly well acquainted with the current trends in mobile computing, which isn't a fair assumption.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Thursday July 24 2014, @10:51AM
You are also right in that I should've done a bit more research into the integrated Intel GPU. If the NVidia solution is bad, imagine how much worse the AMD variant is!
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by nightsky30 on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:29AM
They started supporting Optimus on their Linux drivers a little over a year ago. Perhaps the Linux drivers function better than the Windows equivalent. I've not used or needed Optimus, but I can say their plain drivers have worked really well for me gaming under Linux. Although in your case, perhaps you require Windows for the games you play. YMMV. Sorry to hear you've had such a rough time with the thinkpads. My employer bought a bunch of thinkpad E545 for events we host. They're ok, but I don't like the keyboard and trackpad. They feel cheap.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:26PM
There are no proper Linux drivers for the dual Intel/AMD setup. The only Linux option is to disable the Intel GPU and run the AMD one all of the time.
While it's my work laptop and at the moment runs Windows, ironically games are very hard to play due to graphical glitches with the AMD GPU. It leaves a large rectangle at some point on the screen that doesn't update. Running OpenTTD for instance, leaves a large black rect right in the middle of the screen. Similarly with other games and even with some desktop applications that use hardware acceleration like Visual Studio.
The keyboard on the S540 is ok, feels nice to type on with large keys and enough feedback, the new style track pad does feel cheap and nasty, unlike the one of old IBM ThinkPads.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by nightsky30 on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:53AM
Sorry, meant to link this:
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/04/nvidia-releases-linux-graphics-drivers.html [webupd8.org]
(Score: 2) by dublet on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:32PM
Buying a laptop with an AMD GPU was such a big mistake. :(
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:33AM
I know what you mean. I recently upgraded to a newer Thinkpad convertible laptop after being emotionally attached to its predecessor for 8 years. The old model was rugged and dependable. An awesome machine that did everything advertised. The new one feels cheap, as though Lenovo were determined to drive the brand into the ground. But what's the alternative? Is there anyone out there making something comparable to the quality of the old Thinkpads at that price point?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dublet on Wednesday July 23 2014, @10:38AM
Sadly, I think no one does.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:19AM
I came here to grumble a bit about the ThinkPad. Glad to see others beat me to it. :)
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 22 2014, @04:38PM
Most likely to get a computer... with a good graphics card. Bought Planetary Annihilation on Steam cause it was on sale, even though i knew i couldn't play it yet.
So yes, desktop, most likely (one that won't be old a year from then).
And, one that i can turn on and use with voice commands, like the one the boss got in the I.T. Crowd... that looked like it would be awesome (once you got the voice control down, of course).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Tuesday July 22 2014, @06:19PM
I'm also hoping to get a computer. I think its been too long without one set up in the house.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday July 22 2014, @06:22PM
Frankly if your current desktop is under 7 years old you probably don't need a new PC, just a new graphics card. If you DO decide to get a new PC I'd advise you to go DIY and look at either the AMD FM2 or the AMD FX, both are having some really killer prices. Nice thing about the APUs is if you are short on cash you can game on the APU with low to medium settings until you can get a discrete but as you can see you can get an unlocked quad APU for $300 [tigerdirect.com] or the unlocked quad CPU for $260 [tigerdirect.com], just add the OS of your choice.
I have built systems with both chips and they are quite nice, plenty of power, both have turbo for when you are running single threaded tasks, all in all they make a great base for a good gaming system. If you were my customer I'd suggest either the HD7770 or HD7790, just depending on your budget as both would work really well in this context. Both have zerotech to drop temps when you aren't gaming and in the case of the APU the system would use the APU for video acceleration leaving your GPU free for gaming. That said if you want this to have some upgrade options down the line I'd probably go for the FX as they don't currently make hexacore and octocore for the APUs and as an owner of a hexacore i have to say having those 2 extra cores? Niiice.
But if you are strictly gaming frankly you can't go wrong with either system and with an HD7770 and Win 7 HP X64 you could have the entire smash for probably less than $500 delivered.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:09PM
I was planning on building a new tower this year, but I'm going to have to put that and a few other things off; my car died in May and I emptied my bank account replacing it, and I'm going to have some high medical bills this year. Oh, well, both of the old ones still work.
I'd like a new notebook, too, but this one will do. If it gets much slower I'll slap kubuntu on it.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday July 22 2014, @04:57PM
Just got a new laptop maybe two months ago. Spared no expense on this one, went with a System76 Bonobo Extreme (yeah, basically the Apple of the Linux world -- highly overpriced -- but they're a good company and it saved me a couple days of screwing with the hardware.) But yeah, I'm hoping to get five years out of this, so I'm not buying a new laptop for a WHILE.
As for tablets...I *still* don't understand what the hell the point of those is. Too big to fit in my pocket and carry around with me; but too small to do any *real* work with it. My Galaxy S5 (also brand new -- both my old phone and my old laptop died within a month!) is damn near perfect as a mobile device. Hell, I find my phone easier to type long messages on than my tablet even, thanks to the Swype-style keyboards. Almost as good as a real keyboard, as long as what you're entering is actually words. Would really suck trying to write code on that thing, but that's what my Model M is for :)
I'm not buying another tech device for the next two years at this point. Well, maybe another Raspberry Pi in a couple months...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:37AM
The tablet is a niche player, not a one-size-fits-all device. My kids use them to watch netflix shows and play games. I might watch netflix on them if I'm on the go. I also like carrying them around for reading material, since one tablet can carry more books than I could ever carry dead tree copies of. It's also handy to display recipes when I'm cooking. Also, when I'm showing my work to potential clients or investors, it's handy to whip the Nexus 7 out of my pocket (yes, it fits) and show them; doing that on a smart phone just does not work.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @11:55AM
Yeah, I get that, but it still seems rather pointless to me personally. I could maybe see having a smartphone a bit larger than even my S5, but not as another dedicated device. I don't need yet another thing to carry around all day. I watch TV and read on my phone quite regularly and have no problems with that. And if I'm gonna be gone more than a day I'll be bringing my laptop along anyway so I can just use that if I ever want something bigger (though I usually don't). I've already got a 5" screen, a 17" screen, and a 101" screen, all quite portable...so that's enough choice for me. I don't need every screen size ever created :)
Then again, I didn't even have a smartphone until two years ago, so I do tend to pick these things up a bit late... :)
(Score: 2) by elf on Thursday July 24 2014, @01:56PM
Tablets are good to take on Holiday as a very light weight device for browsing. I also use it as Netflix device at home, great to watch shows in bed (Laptops seem to put all fans on at 100% when you watch a movie, sounds like its about to take off).
My tablet is the original Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, its a little slow now but still perfect for the uses I have
(Score: 3, Funny) by Subsentient on Tuesday July 22 2014, @05:12PM
It's not a fucking tablet.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday July 22 2014, @05:47PM
so http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/06/29/066206 [soylentnews.org] is out of the question?
Maybe you would change your mind if you could try before you buy.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday July 22 2014, @06:42PM
I already have a laptop and its an older HP/Compaq I inherited from my brother. Dual core Intel centrino 2GHz (32bit), 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD, and I think a 17" 16:10 screen or 15". Runs Debian and I have been using xmonad. Runs like a champ and I can do all of my work from my recliner if I want. But I dont use it that much, maybe only a few hours per week. Most of my work and play is still done in front of a PC. Its about 3 years old and has a core i7, 16GB RAM and an AMD graphics card.
I bought a Nexus 7 two years ago and it does what I need it to do: browse web, email and run a few apps. Mobile gaming appears to be a cesspool as every interesting game I have tried wants you to spend money on microtransactions in order to progress at a decent rate. The only mobile gaming that is genuinely fun is when you run an emulator and play classic console titles through a bluetooth gamepad. Also, anything productivity such as EDA, CAD and programming is not happening on a tablet. And sometimes even web browsing is a PITA on a tablet and I turn to my PC or laptop.
All in all I spend most of my time on a PC. I would like a new laptop but I don't use a laptop often enough to justify buying one.
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Tuesday July 22 2014, @06:53PM
I bought a second (maybe third) user fujitsu S752 Lifebook, i5 2.5Ghz sandybridge, 256 HD (swapped out for my 500 GB) 4 gig ram and built in intel 3000 for the princely sum of £100 (pounds sterling) runs sabayon, pclinuxos and elementary like a dream, all that was "missing" was the covers which i'll get shortly from ebay :) oh the machine came with win7 pro, got booted once. it was to replace my HP DV 9000 on which the graphics chip fried (common). i'm hoping next year for another laptop cheap and prolly second user.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday July 23 2014, @03:20AM
Have you made a Beowulf cluster of those laptops yet?
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:08PM
Not yet, but in my old house I did with a variety of old p4 machines I had :)
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2, Interesting) by number6 on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:57PM
I have a new idea for the Japanese camera manufacturers to take advantage of the world of tablets ....
Create a camera whose body is a tablet. This tablet contains a bare-bones custom operating system specifically designed for photographers and graphics editing tasks; all other features of the 'kitchen-sink' world of tablet computers are removed/redundant to proceedings, saving battery life and storage space and weight.
You may be saying "but why not just buy an 'iPad'?"
(Putting myself in the shoes of chief designer at Olympus for a moment):
That's all I can think of right at this moment, I hope someone here sees my drift!
I would LOVE to see the Japanese camera makers produce something like this! .....personally, I don't give a fuck about the world of mobile 'kitchen-sink-do-everything' smart-computers and their walled-garden appstore lifestyles. But, just like Steve Jobs, I'm looking at a crystal ball and I see a new market on the horizon for special products based on this style of hardware interface.
(Score: 1) by khedoros on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:43PM
Which components were you thinking, specifically? The screen, case, and battery are most of the weight of a tablet. You could save a couple of grams here and there by removing chips that provide extra functionality (wireless/bt/gps, acceleration/gyro), but then you lose wireless image transfer, a chip that would easily do wireless triggering and/or communication with external light sources, blur correction based on gyro readings, location tagging for pictures, etc. I don't see you gaining more than you'd lose.
...Plus, you'd look ridiculous carrying around a periscope-tablet with big, contoured hand grips on it.
(Score: 1) by number6 on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:21PM
As far as the weight goes, you have good points to make, but I would not be betting against the Japanese when it comes to miniaturizing and optimizing technologies when they go gung-ho into research efforts. The whole point here is that instead of having a conventional looking DSLR-style camera, we try a new design: a tablet body with a specially crafted lens to suit. To make the lens fit the design paradigm will take a quite bit of prototyping and brainstorming.
As far as the looks issue goes, I don't think I would be calling anything ridiculous until I saw a prototype of something. My previous rant was just on-the-spot brainstorming, but if I was actually the 'Steve Jobs' of Olympus with access to their Engineers and Designers, I'm sure we would come up with something super-cool--no problem with the looks department--and if necessary, I may even send the final design over to our friends in Italy for a second opinion about 'the look and feel'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:09AM
So you mean like the Samsung Camera or the Samsung S4 Zoom or maybe the venerable Nokia 808 Pureview? I have a Zoom, as chef, I need to take pictures of decent quality of food for the master plating instructions. I had an 808 and it was great, just not very easy to tranfer 32mp pics via email. Everything else lie extra lens and light sensors is not needed for aim and shoot. What you want is already here, just not popular.
(Score: 1) by number6 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:12AM
Those phone-cameras you mentioned are not tablets, they are photographic toys and are too small to perform professional viewing, editing, drawing or annotation functions on a screen in a frame of view as big as the front cover of Vogue magazine (for example) or something the size of an A4 piece of paper.
I was getting my cues and inspirations from the world of serious big format photography and legendary camera design solutions from the past, such as the Linhoff large format cameras, and the Sinar view cameras, and the Horseman press cameras, and the Zeiss Super Ikonta folding cameras, and the Rolleiflex twin lens reflex cameras.
Thinking about this tablet-camera design a bit more, If I could choose the lens, I would prefer a fixed focal length prime (standard angle of view) lens with 1:1 Macro focusing capabilities....or if it must be a zoom lens, then a short zoom range starting at standard angle of view and going down to wide angle with 1:1 Macro capability. As you can see, I have no burning desire for telephoto capabilities, and neither did the camera designers from the past!
(Score: 1) by Mad_Chef_Red on Wednesday July 23 2014, @07:30AM
I'll tell my editor and publisher that my pics are not to be used as they from a toy! The best camera is the one you have with you. You want to make a demented hybrid of a tablet, which isn't powerful enough to run decent editing software, and turn it into an all in one suit.
Just stop and think about it.
People who are much smarter than you and me are paid large piles of money and given the finest pizza money can buy to come up with this type of thing. And they haven't made one, commercially availible. That means every company involved in tablets and camera has at least one prototype in a basement somewhere, that will never come to market becuase of cost/profit. You idea is cute but it is a hard sell for a smartphone with a a decent camera on it. Because as soon as something is slightly harder to carry than a smartphone or slightly harder to use than a disposable camera the all bets are off.
Dude it is a cool idea, but the phones above are the closest we will get for a couple of generations.
Disclosure I am the Anonymous Coward above.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Thursday July 24 2014, @02:57AM
OT, but since you mentioned it at least twice: Steve Jobs was hugely influential in *selling* the company's products, not in their creation. (That's the ultra-short version since I'm too tired to go into specifics.)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday July 25 2014, @06:39AM
I think the main reason people make photos with their tablet is that they already happen to have it. I cannot imagine any form factor worse for making photos than a tablet (OK, I can: a pin cushion-shaped camera with lots of needles sticking from it would be much worse, for example). Now a combination of a separate camera and a tablet with automatic transmission of the photo to the tablet for working on it, and the possibility to remote-control the camera with the tablet, and the ability to view the camera image on the tablet (so the tablet also works as a viewfinder while not being where the camera is placed, so you can e.g. make a selfie and see on your tablet whether the image will be as you want it, or e.g. your hair is cut off, and then remote-trigger the camera from the tablet if everything is right), that's something I can imagine to be useful. Of course the camera would need to be able to work also without the tablet (as there are situations where you'd not want to carry an additional tablet with you). OTOH, since the tablet probably has room for larger batteries, it might be a good idea if you can also power the camera from the tablet in addition to the camera's own battery. Indeed, the tablet might also double as charger for the camera's battery.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday July 23 2014, @04:40AM
I upgraded my devices last year, spent a pretty penny and won't be doing that again anytime soon. But I might get another Raspberry Pi B+ or another Arduino.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:33AM
I bought a laptop for myself just last year to replace one I'd been using for the past four years. Along with it I got a Nexus 7 Flo to replace the 1st gen Asus Transformer I got three years ago. I think this all ought to be top gear for some time yet, the laptop probably for at least three years, the tablet maybe two years. I'm planning to replace my phone around late this year or early next.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday July 24 2014, @07:08PM
Mostly so I can read comics without having to squint at my phone or sit at my computer. I'll likely pick one up once they release Hearthstone for android.