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Which laptop should I go with?

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Oppo

Member
Alienware 13r3 1440p oled > than xps 15 imo. Over 200% srgb coverage, and a 1060, for the same price as xps 15. Got mine on sale for $1600. Dell always running Sales on everything though.

that's kind of a neat laptop, but your own link says:

Then there is the color gamut, which also beats most of the rivals. 97% sRGB and 78% AdobeRGB are not only interesting for gamers, but also professional users (picture editing).

(of course "200% coverage" is nonsensical.) the XPS has 99% sRGB and Adobe RGB.

nice laptop but I wasn't ready to go up to the bigger 80W GPU part, you pay too much in weight and fan noise for those, in my opinion. it's only worth it for gaming, nothing else. that 13" laptop with the 12" screen weighs as much as my XPS 15. Still though, if games was my #1, that is a sweet pick.
 

ZOONAMI

Junior Member
that's kind of a neat laptop, but your own link says:



(of course "200% coverage" is nonsensical.) the XPS has 99% sRGB and Adobe RGB.

nice laptop but I wasn't ready to go up to the bigger 80W GPU part, you pay too much in weight and fan noise for those, in my opinion. it's only worth it for gaming, nothing else. that 13" laptop with the 12" screen weighs as much as my XPS 15. Still though, if games was my #1, that is a sweet pick.

I didn't link anything but this says 220% srgb coverage. http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/alienware-13-r3-oled

But yeah accuracy is an issue as oled panels vary quite a bit.

And it isn't a 12 inch screen. 13.3. At 1440p more than enough real estate imo.

It's silent outside of gaming use and if you prefer the igpu you get 7hrs battery life. More like 4-5 using nvidia preferred for lighter use. Black themes and wallpapers also help a lot with the oled as far as battery goes. Even when gaming it's surprisingly quiet unless you engage the performance fan profile if you want your temps to be well below what's necessary.

It is a bit hefty but it's very maneuverable and surprisingly small.

The oled is legit mind blowing, and my next tv down the line will for sure be an oled panel.

The xps 15 is awesome too but for the same money I couldn't pass on the 1060 and oled.
 

commedieu

Banned
Going by my experience with half a dozen HP Pro- and EliteBooks, HP has shit batteries. Expect that already poor battery life to halve every year.

And the socket for the battery seems to suck and get shitty. I've always had that problem with hp laptops. To where I have to do some weird prop up against wall or something to get it to charge...

Id get a equally specd pc with higher resolution than 1080.
 

K.Jack

Knowledge is power, guard it well
MacBook

-macOS
-Intel Core i7 7Y75 (1.3 GHz, up to 3.6 GHz w/ Intel HD 615)
-8GB Memory
-256GB SSD
-12" (2304 x 1440) Screen
-Battery Life of 10 Hours

Price: $1549.99/QUOTE]

Man, these are some shit ass specs, for the price.
 
Dark horse candidate entirely overlooked by virtually everyone.

vaio-s-back-angle.jpg


VAIO S

- Windows 10 Pro
- Intel I7 6500U
- 8GB RAM
- 256GB SSD PCIe
- 13" (1920x1800) Screen
- Battery life 9 hours
- 2.34lb
- Full sized ports for all connections
- $1399
 

Spy

Member
Dark horse candidate entirely overlooked by virtually everyone.

vaio-s-back-angle.jpg


VAIO S

- Windows 10 Pro
- Intel I7 6500U
- 8GB RAM
- 256GB SSD PCIe
- 13" (1920x1800) Screen
- Battery life 9 hours
- 2.34lb
- Full sized ports for all connections
- $1399
If I'm going this route, I would stick with the Spectre x360.

-Windows 10 Home
-Intel Core i7 7500U (2.7 GHz, up to 3.5 GHz w/ Intel HD 620)
-16GB Memory
-256GB SSD
-13" (1920 x 1080) Touch Screen
-Battery Life of 10 Hours

Price: $1269.99

Which I might just do. I keep flip flopping but I'm probably going to wait for Microsoft's event on May 2nd (which I don't think will have what I want) then make my decision. I really want something that's portable with great battery life.
 
If I'm going this route, I would stick with the Spectre x360.

-Windows 10 Home
-Intel Core i7 7500U (2.7 GHz, up to 3.5 GHz w/ Intel HD 620)
-16GB Memory
-256GB SSD
-13" (1920 x 1080) Touch Screen
-Battery Life of 10 Hours

Price: $1269.99

Which I might just do. I keep flip flopping but I'm probably going to wait for Microsoft's event on May 2nd (which I don't think will have what I want) then make my decision. I really want something that's portable with great battery life.

I agree but two big things the VAIO S has going for it (depending on how often you travel) is that it has full ports for everything (no dongles needed) and it's about 1/2 pound lighter than the x360.
 

SwolBro

Banned
OP, you never answered me. What makes you think the macbooks are getting a refresh next month? I have heard nothing but the contrary.
 

Spy

Member
OP, you never answered me. What makes you think the macbooks are getting a refresh next month? I have heard nothing but the contrary.
April is when the MacBook line is typically refreshed and Best Buy just had a big sale on their MacBook's this past week ($350) off. MacBook Pro refresh is usually in the Fall.
 
If you have any desire to use macOS and don't plan on doing much gaming, then just go for the MacBook and stop thinking about it. You can run Windows on it too and have both. Hell you could also get an eGPU for a few houndred and now it plays games too if you don't mind the additional cost.

And comparing raw specs between Apple products and others is never the right idea. They optimize their shit so much they often run as fast or better than comparably priced competition anyways, not to mention you're also paying for better construction quality and customer service. Other laptops may seem far superior on paper but in real life performance outside gaming any difference is largely negligible. It's really only gaming that makes any significant difference, but like I said, dualboot windows and hook up an eGPU and now you have a computer than can do everything.
 
Not sure what you're talking about here. I agree the XPS is a nice computer but Windows still sucks. lol and this whole "unification" thing hasn't materialized yet. Everyone, even linux, has tried to do the unification of mobile and laptop/desktop with no avail. Apple is very hesitant to converge and for good reason. No one has done it successfully and it doesn't look like anyone will for a long time.

If you're a programmer, developer, content creator, hands down Mac is the choice (unless you prefer linux). The fact that it's underbelly is Unix is HUGE. Oh, and bloated? Da fuck? You really have the nerve to say MacOS is bloated compared to WINDOWS???? Come on dude.

Windows dominates business and gaming, that's it. Outside of that everything else is better on a Mac and since you can dual boot into Windows from a Mac, well... outside of pure hardware bang for the buck (and if you really want to game out of a laptop) there is NO other reason to get a windows machine in my opinion.

???

Everything I said was true. Windows 10 is a much more lean and stable OS than the current version of OSX. Frankly, your post reads like some meme shit. I'd argue it was true in 2006 in the days of Snow Leopard, and certainly true when we had Tiger, which might have been the most kickass version of OSX to date in terms of stability.

In the latest iderations of OSX, Apple has added a lot of extra layers of baked in iOS functionality, but these come at the expense of stability. Is a result, a lot of uni productivity apps (the Adobe CC Suite is what I use daily on both OSX and Windows 10) are more stable on the Windows side. This particularly also goes for scripts, actions and plug-ins, but I'd wager, than just merging and handling my Cloud storage is more of a hassle and pain in the ass on OSX.
Meanwhile, Windows 10 has actually stripped away a lot of its features. You don't sound like someone who knows a lot of Windows ("windows sucks lol" is the sort of meme shit you'd find on a youtube comment) but Windows 10 has a lot of great customizeable features, and it made big leaps forwards putting Metro style UI elements into the older models. It's like a great mix of XP and Windows 8, and I really really like Windows 10.
I like how little resources it takes, I like the improvements to scaling, I like all the base features and bloat you can remove.



I'm a big Apple and Mac fan. My daily laptop driver is a 15-inch Retina Macbook Pro (late 2013) and its a fucking amazing model. Better than the 2012 model, and in some ways, even comparable to the 2015 model, or even the controversial new model. And I like OSX. I don't hate the operating system at all, but as others have said in this thread- It has gotten bloated. It has gotten heavy around the edges, and could use a step forward.
In terms of Design language, I think a lot of people feel like that it is actually Microsoft (hardware wise) that has begun to be the innovator with it's Surface products, although it has not perfected or materialized the concept yet. It is still a big step forward in innovation in the hardware design, and I'd defend their 2-in-1 approach over Apple trying to draw out the clock, because they know, that if they embrace a 2-in-1 they'll cannibalize their Macbook and Ipad sales into one. From a business standpoint it makes sense, but from every other standpoint it is indefensible what Apple is doing. It's fighting to keep the current climate going, but it's only a matter of time before they have to change things up, significantly.

And on the operating side, I'd argue that it is Google that has innovated a lot with their Design. The Material Design doctrine they've released, has been one of the most awesome forward thinking progressions of design language we've seen. This is Google taking over a spot of Apples glory, who used to be the ones who were known for excellent design.

Apple has stumpled recently, and I say that as a fan. On the software side you see them trying to add features, but it often comes at the expense of other elements, while at the same time introducing iOS style UI interface navigation in parts of the operating system that doesn't fit the desktop space, and you also have archiac apps like Itunes and Iphoto and the app store itself, which are just painful to use. I really, really fucking hate the navigational menus of these and the bloated mess they are.



I suspect that Apple, will eventually make one OS that works across its platform. As energy demands on their OSX devices decline, and the power increases on the iOS side, it makes increasingly less sense to run two separate operating systems, and cohesion and seamless continual productivity between them would be vastly improved under one. And I really hope they will do a formal death funeral for OSX like they did for OS9.
And frankly, I think a lot of other people who also love Apple like I do, are kind of hoping that Apple will eventually snap out of this sort of slough they are in, where they are tremendously succesful, and thus have really lost the desire to be the forward driver they used to be. And in a way, you cannot really blame them for that. I think it's understandable after the journey they've had, but regardless, it is flat out wrong to say that "windows sucks lol". Windows 10 - mandatory security update bullshit and microsoft store are of course spots on the journey, but in general Win 10 is a fucking beast. And not just for gaming. Particularly due to affordable very fast and stable SSDs you can get now, you can really truly make Windows 10 feel like a great experience for a really good price.
And I feel weird being the guy with a 3000 dollars Mac, advising other people to get a XPS at around half the price, but I cannot in good faith recommend Apples products with the same velocity. This idea that creators and content creators have a better experience on OSX. It's a big fat lie. And it deserves to be called out wherever it is being said. Not as a slant against Apple, but because it's a farce that people actually believe that using photoshop on a PC is somehow of a deminished or tainted experience.

Adobes Creative Cloud apps have a lot of problems, and we can piss blood over how much shit is wrong with them in another thread, but they are not worse or more buggy on Windows. At work I have a iMac and that gives me a lot of problems day to day. A part of me thinks the Fusion drive is a part of what taints the experience. Once you're accustomed to SSD, mechanical drives feel like torture ingrained.
I don't know if programmers have a better experience on Mac, but I've not heard such things in my bubble.
 

Kyoufu

Member
As a Macbook Pro owner, I say get the Dell XPS 15. Best bang for your buck and it's one of the best if not the best windows laptops on the market.
 

ZOONAMI

Junior Member
Dark horse candidate entirely overlooked by virtually everyone.

vaio-s-back-angle.jpg


VAIO S

- Windows 10 Pro
- Intel I7 6500U
- 8GB RAM
- 256GB SSD PCIe
- 13" (1920x1800) Screen
- Battery life 9 hours
- 2.34lb
- Full sized ports for all connections
- $1399

Wish they would put a 1050 ti in that puppy and it would be perfect (and refresh the processor).
 

Oppo

Member
???

Everything I said was true. Windows 10 is a much more lean and stable OS than the current version of OSX. Frankly, your post reads like some meme shit. I'd argue it was true in 2006 in the days of Snow Leopard, and certainly true when we had Tiger, which might have been the most kickass version of OSX to date in terms of stability.

In the latest iderations of OSX, Apple has added a lot of extra layers of baked in iOS functionality, but these come at the expense of stability. Is a result, a lot of uni productivity apps (the Adobe CC Suite is what I use daily on both OSX and Windows 10) are more stable on the Windows side. This particularly also goes for scripts, actions and plug-ins, but I'd wager, than just merging and handling my Cloud storage is more of a hassle and pain in the ass on OSX.
Meanwhile, Windows 10 has actually stripped away a lot of its features. You don't sound like someone who knows a lot of Windows ("windows sucks lol" is the sort of meme shit you'd find on a youtube comment) but Windows 10 has a lot of great customizeable features, and it made big leaps forwards putting Metro style UI elements into the older models. It's like a great mix of XP and Windows 8, and I really really like Windows 10.
I like how little resources it takes, I like the improvements to scaling, I like all the base features and bloat you can remove.



I'm a big Apple and Mac fan. My daily laptop driver is a 15-inch Retina Macbook Pro (late 2013) and its a fucking amazing model. Better than the 2012 model, and in some ways, even comparable to the 2015 model, or even the controversial new model. And I like OSX. I don't hate the operating system at all, but as others have said in this thread- It has gotten bloated. It has gotten heavy around the edges, and could use a step forward.
In terms of Design language, I think a lot of people feel like that it is actually Microsoft (hardware wise) that has begun to be the innovator with it's Surface products, although it has not perfected or materialized the concept yet. It is still a big step forward in innovation in the hardware design, and I'd defend their 2-in-1 approach over Apple trying to draw out the clock, because they know, that if they embrace a 2-in-1 they'll cannibalize their Macbook and Ipad sales into one. From a business standpoint it makes sense, but from every other standpoint it is indefensible what Apple is doing. It's fighting to keep the current climate going, but it's only a matter of time before they have to change things up, significantly.

And on the operating side, I'd argue that it is Google that has innovated a lot with their Design. The Material Design doctrine they've released, has been one of the most awesome forward thinking progressions of design language we've seen. This is Google taking over a spot of Apples glory, who used to be the ones who were known for excellent design.

Apple has stumpled recently, and I say that as a fan. On the software side you see them trying to add features, but it often comes at the expense of other elements, while at the same time introducing iOS style UI interface navigation in parts of the operating system that doesn't fit the desktop space, and you also have archiac apps like Itunes and Iphoto and the app store itself, which are just painful to use. I really, really fucking hate the navigational menus of these and the bloated mess they are.



I suspect that Apple, will eventually make one OS that works across its platform. As energy demands on their OSX devices decline, and the power increases on the iOS side, it makes increasingly less sense to run two separate operating systems, and cohesion and seamless continual productivity between them would be vastly improved under one. And I really hope they will do a formal death funeral for OSX like they did for OS9.
And frankly, I think a lot of other people who also love Apple like I do, are kind of hoping that Apple will eventually snap out of this sort of slough they are in, where they are tremendously succesful, and thus have really lost the desire to be the forward driver they used to be. And in a way, you cannot really blame them for that. I think it's understandable after the journey they've had, but regardless, it is flat out wrong to say that "windows sucks lol". Windows 10 - mandatory security update bullshit and microsoft store are of course spots on the journey, but in general Win 10 is a fucking beast. And not just for gaming. Particularly due to affordable very fast and stable SSDs you can get now, you can really truly make Windows 10 feel like a great experience for a really good price.
And I feel weird being the guy with a 3000 dollars Mac, advising other people to get a XPS at around half the price, but I cannot in good faith recommend Apples products with the same velocity. This idea that creators and content creators have a better experience on OSX. It's a big fat lie. And it deserves to be called out wherever it is being said. Not as a slant against Apple, but because it's a farce that people actually believe that using photoshop on a PC is somehow of a deminished or tainted experience.

Adobes Creative Cloud apps have a lot of problems, and we can piss blood over how much shit is wrong with them in another thread, but they are not worse or more buggy on Windows. At work I have a iMac and that gives me a lot of problems day to day. A part of me thinks the Fusion drive is a part of what taints the experience. Once you're accustomed to SSD, mechanical drives feel like torture ingrained.
I don't know if programmers have a better experience on Mac, but I've not heard such things in my bubble.

Mirrored my thoughts, Walrus, and well put. Like I said upthread... I've been on Macs pretty much my whole working life. They're in a baddish spot lately. I remember Beleaguered Apple of the 90s.

I will say, I'm happy for now to let Apple keep handling my "lifestyle computing", i.e. my iPhone and iPad, because they are pretty great at that stuff still. But my Adobe CC, Unity, and other creative work goes to Windows 10 for now. The gulf is just a little crazy. Especially render time differences on After Effects and Premiere, and the whole DX11/Unity thing.

I still probably have to figure out how to virtualize macOS just for proper Pro Res export though, razzumfrazzum
 

gamz

Member
???

Everything I said was true. Windows 10 is a much more lean and stable OS than the current version of OSX. Frankly, your post reads like some meme shit. I'd argue it was true in 2006 in the days of Snow Leopard, and certainly true when we had Tiger, which might have been the most kickass version of OSX to date in terms of stability.

In the latest iderations of OSX, Apple has added a lot of extra layers of baked in iOS functionality, but these come at the expense of stability. Is a result, a lot of uni productivity apps (the Adobe CC Suite is what I use daily on both OSX and Windows 10) are more stable on the Windows side. This particularly also goes for scripts, actions and plug-ins, but I'd wager, than just merging and handling my Cloud storage is more of a hassle and pain in the ass on OSX.
Meanwhile, Windows 10 has actually stripped away a lot of its features. You don't sound like someone who knows a lot of Windows ("windows sucks lol" is the sort of meme shit you'd find on a youtube comment) but Windows 10 has a lot of great customizeable features, and it made big leaps forwards putting Metro style UI elements into the older models. It's like a great mix of XP and Windows 8, and I really really like Windows 10.
I like how little resources it takes, I like the improvements to scaling, I like all the base features and bloat you can remove.



I'm a big Apple and Mac fan. My daily laptop driver is a 15-inch Retina Macbook Pro (late 2013) and its a fucking amazing model. Better than the 2012 model, and in some ways, even comparable to the 2015 model, or even the controversial new model. And I like OSX. I don't hate the operating system at all, but as others have said in this thread- It has gotten bloated. It has gotten heavy around the edges, and could use a step forward.
In terms of Design language, I think a lot of people feel like that it is actually Microsoft (hardware wise) that has begun to be the innovator with it's Surface products, although it has not perfected or materialized the concept yet. It is still a big step forward in innovation in the hardware design, and I'd defend their 2-in-1 approach over Apple trying to draw out the clock, because they know, that if they embrace a 2-in-1 they'll cannibalize their Macbook and Ipad sales into one. From a business standpoint it makes sense, but from every other standpoint it is indefensible what Apple is doing. It's fighting to keep the current climate going, but it's only a matter of time before they have to change things up, significantly.

And on the operating side, I'd argue that it is Google that has innovated a lot with their Design. The Material Design doctrine they've released, has been one of the most awesome forward thinking progressions of design language we've seen. This is Google taking over a spot of Apples glory, who used to be the ones who were known for excellent design.

Apple has stumpled recently, and I say that as a fan. On the software side you see them trying to add features, but it often comes at the expense of other elements, while at the same time introducing iOS style UI interface navigation in parts of the operating system that doesn't fit the desktop space, and you also have archiac apps like Itunes and Iphoto and the app store itself, which are just painful to use. I really, really fucking hate the navigational menus of these and the bloated mess they are.



I suspect that Apple, will eventually make one OS that works across its platform. As energy demands on their OSX devices decline, and the power increases on the iOS side, it makes increasingly less sense to run two separate operating systems, and cohesion and seamless continual productivity between them would be vastly improved under one. And I really hope they will do a formal death funeral for OSX like they did for OS9.
And frankly, I think a lot of other people who also love Apple like I do, are kind of hoping that Apple will eventually snap out of this sort of slough they are in, where they are tremendously succesful, and thus have really lost the desire to be the forward driver they used to be. And in a way, you cannot really blame them for that. I think it's understandable after the journey they've had, but regardless, it is flat out wrong to say that "windows sucks lol". Windows 10 - mandatory security update bullshit and microsoft store are of course spots on the journey, but in general Win 10 is a fucking beast. And not just for gaming. Particularly due to affordable very fast and stable SSDs you can get now, you can really truly make Windows 10 feel like a great experience for a really good price.
And I feel weird being the guy with a 3000 dollars Mac, advising other people to get a XPS at around half the price, but I cannot in good faith recommend Apples products with the same velocity. This idea that creators and content creators have a better experience on OSX. It's a big fat lie. And it deserves to be called out wherever it is being said. Not as a slant against Apple, but because it's a farce that people actually believe that using photoshop on a PC is somehow of a deminished or tainted experience.

Adobes Creative Cloud apps have a lot of problems, and we can piss blood over how much shit is wrong with them in another thread, but they are not worse or more buggy on Windows. At work I have a iMac and that gives me a lot of problems day to day. A part of me thinks the Fusion drive is a part of what taints the experience. Once you're accustomed to SSD, mechanical drives feel like torture ingrained.
I don't know if programmers have a better experience on Mac, but I've not heard such things in my bubble.

I was recently on a interview with a billion dollar company who are 70% Windows 10 and 30% Mac and he basically said the exact same thing. He is a huge Mac fan and said that Windows 10 is just too good, and is fazing out Mac entirely. I found it interesting because 2-3 years ago I would have never heard that.
 

Furyous

Member
Donate plasma for two months to add an extra $200 on the cost of the rMBP in order to get the 1tb upgrade. 8 gigs of memory looks good until you start working with memory hogging applications like Xcode. God forbid you try your hand at Android development and watch your resources just drain.

If you are dead set on rMBP buy a refurb from last year and save some money. Apple has a refurb store so check it out on their site.

The Apple tax is a thing in year one so be prepared but it ends by year three at worst. Get AppleCare because your computer will need repair by year four.
 

K.Jack

Knowledge is power, guard it well
The one major issue Dell has, with the XPS 15, is that the screens (both 1080p and 4K), have some of the worst response times I've ever seen, in a laptop, and they suffer from noticeable ghosting.

1080p = 54 grey to grey and 52.4 black to white

4K = 57.2 grey to grey / 39.2 black to white

MacBooks are just as bad, though, as the Pro 15 2016 measured 46 GtG and 56 BtW.

May not affect some as much as others, but these numbers are freaking bad.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Dark horse candidate entirely overlooked by virtually everyone.

vaio-s-back-angle.jpg


VAIO S

- Windows 10 Pro
- Intel I7 6500U
- 8GB RAM
- 256GB SSD PCIe
- 13" (1920x1800) Screen
- Battery life 9 hours
- 2.34lb
- Full sized ports for all connections
- $1399


Is...That a VGA port on a 2017 laptop? Is there a full sized DVI on the other side?


Not that it marrs the dimensions or weight clearly, but I don't think I've seen that on at least a thin and light in a while (my 8 pound mobile workstation chunkster has that and more)


Really, if you really like MacOS, just hackitosh it.

On a desktop where you choose all your own parts, very possible. On most of these suggested laptops, rarely possible. Many have pieces of hardware with no macOS kext, i.e wireless, graphics, etc.
 

Spy

Member
Donate plasma for two months to add an extra $200 on the cost of the rMBP in order to get the 1tb upgrade. 8 gigs of memory looks good until you start working with memory hogging applications like Xcode. God forbid you try your hand at Android development and watch your resources just drain.

If you are dead set on rMBP buy a refurb from last year and save some money. Apple has a refurb store so check it out on their site.

The Apple tax is a thing in year one so be prepared but it ends by year three at worst. Get AppleCare because your computer will need repair by year four.
I'm willing to spend up to $2,000 but I don't think I need to. Like I've said before, I'm looking for portability and great battery life. I'm flying to Canada for the weekend in a couple weeks and would ideally like something by then.

I know this shouldn't be a big deal but I wish the aesthetic of the XPS series was a bit nicer.
 
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