I'm not taking notes on a phone - it's possible, but I'm not doing it.

90% of 15" laptops have 1366*768 resolution. Exactly the same as my 14" Acer, the 13.3" I had before that, and the 11.6" I've just bought.

Video editing is possible on a slower laptop, yes, but when I *do* use my laptops CPU, I use it *hard*

I've used a lot of laptops over the last few years (and hundreds at work) and i'm just as comfortable typing on my ultramobiles as I am on my desktop.

Quote from dadge :

ultra-portable is only 1" bigger than a netbook and double the price

It has a higher resolution screen, a bigger keyboard, 2 DIMM slots, a much much *MUCH* better CPU (come on, the i3 pisses all over the Atom, 2-3x faste...)

Quote from dadge :

and who ever needed a smaller laptop but not a netbook?

Netbook is too small. 14" laptop is too bulky. Perfect size (from my experience) is a 13.3", but I prefer 11.6" to 14".

Quote from dadge :

the battery life on the laptop i posted is good enough to give you plenty of time to plug the thing into a wall socket. how many essays can a person write while walking to their next class?

I use my laptop in all of my lectures, and instead of the PC's at Uni 90% of the time.

I can't plug my laptop in during lectures - and sometimes I will have 3+ hours of lectures in a row (by which time the laptop you've linked to will of died). Plus, it's nice not to have to take the charger with you and just know you can grab it and use it.

Quote from dadge :

and lets be honest, in the day of the smartphone, you do not need 5h web browsing when you can do it on your phone. and if you want to watch a movie on the move, just feckin wait til you get home and watch it on a bigger screen in the comfort of your own home.

Can I take notes using a decent keyboard on my phone? No.

Can I run any of the tools I need at Uni (SQL, Java / C++ IDE's etc) on my phone? No.

Does that make a phone useless for what I want a laptop for then? Yes.

Quote from dadge :

what exactly are your needs (in terms of laptop usage)? what can the laptop you ordered do that the laptop i posted can't do? the laptop i posted has a screen that is nearly 50% bigger. i think it also has more ram. with an 11" screen the only thing you're going to do more of on that laptop is scroll up/down.

I don't care about RAM - I have 8GB of DDR3 to put in my new laptop. I also have a 500GB HDD as well - I don't care about the specs I can upgrade.

I would say a screen thats bigger is a disadvantage... 15" is far too bulky to use, especially on the move.

I've used 11" laptops in the past... remember that the one I've just bought has exactly the same resolution as the laptop you've just linked to, so I can see exactly the same on the screen.







I use my laptop for taking notes (notepad, nothing special), programming (C++ using Visual Studio, Java in Eclipse / Netbeans), a little web developing (Notepad / Dreamweaver), essays (LaTeX, again nothing heavy). It's also used for surfing the web, Photoshop (editing pictures from my camera), and some other random tasks. To be honest, I don't need anything that powerful - but it's nice to have a semi-powerful laptop with me so if I decide I want to do some video editing at Uni / friends house etc it can do that.

The most important thing, though, is the battery life / form factor. 15" is not good enough, irrespective of what you say... I've tried it but it's just not for me. It also *needs* to have a 6+ hour battery life - while I can charge it, it's a pain the arse, it's much nicer to know it'll go the whole day without charging.

Quote from Shotglass :

in what world is 5h of web surfing battery life excellent?

Considering the spec & price I would call that excellent...

Quote from dadge :

instead of buying a shit laptop at a stupid price. buy something worth £363. is that a netbook you bought? seriously.

EDIT: if you're going through laptops like it's cock, then get something like this: http://www.electricalsoutlet.c ... -15-6-laptop-black-p74821

lol hate.





It's not a shit laptop... it's more than powerful enough for my needs with an excellent battery life.

It's not a netbook, it's an ultraportable.

I "get through" laptops in the sense that I get bored, buy another laptop and sell my old one. This will be my 6th laptop in the 2 years I've been at Uni, but overall I've only lost about £50 changing each time (in total).


And that Acer is shit... far too big, rubbish battery life.

EDIT - If you think it's shit for £363, find something better. Needs to be same sort of price (max of £400), minimum of an i3, RAM / HDD unimportant, 11-13.3" screen, 6+ hours battery life. If you can find something better I'll cancel it and order it instead.

Lenovo X121e

Core i3-2357m (1.3 GHz),
11.6" Screen,
Red Case,
6-Cell Battery,
Fingerprint Reader,
2GB RAM (got 8GB spare)
320GB HDD (got a 500GB HDD spare),
Bluetooth,
WiFi N (got a Intel 5300 WiFi card spare).

Also, LOL at the rate I get through laptops. Bought my first Acer 8371 in December last year, that broke at the start of January, so got a replacement. That broke in May, so got a refund and bought my 4820T in May, and 3 months later I'm already replacing it with something else...

Last edited by Jakg, Sun 11 Mar 2012, 23:00.

As long as the engine is up to temperature (the oil, not the coolant), you should have no problems exploring the rev range (it's what it's designed to do, after all) - thats not to say you should always drive at the redline, but a healthy engine needs the odd boot every now and again.

Couple of things to mention.

It's not called the "emergency lane", it's the hard shoulder.

The US typically has lots of wide open flat freeways - if you broke down you could easily pull off onto the grass.

The UK's motorways are typically bordered by steep sides - if it wasn't for the hard shoulder there would be nowhere for broken cars etc to stop except for live lanes.

Example:


The hard shoulder can also be used for the emergency services to get through in the event of a large traffic jam - the UK's motorway network is a lot more congested than US Freeways, so jams build up a lot quicker if theres an accident.

The i5 2410m is a dual core CPU (no idea why the video says Quad).

Not being a daily driver doesn't have to mean it's trailer only - you could have it road legal (in fact some rallies will require it is) but not your "getting you to work" car, while still being able to drive it to the venue (although if you bend it, your not getting home...)

Quote from [Audi TT] :

Recently test patches, which I have shown that on the highway WE1 have extra shadows on the Scawen said that these shadows from the other objects outside of the track. And that is in the s3 with this matter will be much better. link.

=/=

Quote from Scawen :

I hope to make a new rendering system one day, that can make accurate shadows under objects, unlike this system we use now, which often misses shadows where there should be, and puts shadows where there shouldn't be one

No mention of "it will be in S3" just "one day it would be nice to fix it".

Quote from [Audi TT] :

By the way the graphics in the s3 will be enhanced. The shadow of 100% will be better.

And you know this how...?

Quote from franky500 :

I dont know about that Scrabby.. all the cars that i watched go straight on instead of making the corners this weekend were FWD, When they made a mistake and locked up, they could not turn, Where as alot of the RWD's that were making mistakes, i noticed just scandinavian flicked their way around the corners out of trouble. When it comes to rally's its not as simple as front or rear, Very different to track racing.

In my (very limited) experience of gravel stuff, FWD cars are a lot more "throwable" - RWD cars are probably the better choice, but I'm struggling to think of many small, cheap, light AWD / RWD cars...

With FWD you can really chuck the car round the corners without having to constantly worry about the risk of oversteer... in fact it's probably the only surface I've found FWD actually "fun" on.

I really *really* wouldn't recommend the car being your daily driver, though. You WILL kill it (stone in the rad? broke a driveshaft? clipped a tree? smashed a windscreen? rolled it? bent a wheel? nuked the suspension? Your not getting to work tomorrow) in some way unless you go really really easy on it.

Haters gon' hate...





(the big black one - Vibe Monobox IV)

Quote from Becky Rose :

You are going to see an add, would you rather have:
A) An add for purple butt plugs.
B) An add for something relevant to you.

In my case I think i'd get the same ads either way.

Quote from donalde :

I mean, it would not matter getting that hardware acceleration if you cannot surf securely.

What does your toolbar to do thats so important?

I would honestly doubt that it's possible to embed a virus in a setup file - it's just a few bytes of information.

Quote from Scrabby :

What happened to the mirrors? Did you hit someone while cutting a corner?

Quote from hrtburnout :

Must've been a roadside hedge

I wasn't going to fall for the bait but...

I fitted powerfold mirrors, these are the older "bullet" style ones instead of the newer "skullcap" ones. I one without a cover (as it was brand new), the other was second hand from a wedgewood blue Rover 75.

I've had all the powerfold parts ready to fit for ~3 months, but I just couldn't source the blue covers for them - a guy on the owners club had some, and when he said he posted them I fitted them. Unfortunately 2 weeks on they haven't arrived

Quote from ColeusRattus :

Wow, that's a nice philosophy there.

While highly utopic, I personally am rather fond of the notion that parents should go back to parenting their children and teaching them what's wrong or right, rather than outsourcing that to institutoins like schools or the police... Not to mention that fear is never a good means to achieve anything in long terms.

While unleashing the army on the capital is not what I ever hoped we'd need - what can you do now to stop this?

I'm not sure we need the army - but we need something more than the "normal" met. There aren't enough of them, and they aren't really prepared for riots like this.

What we could do with is something like the NI police force & their vehicles.

Quote from mamoru :

Is that last sticker legal?

No - public order offence

(although it'd take a really really anal copper to pull you for it).

Quote from lukelfs :

Hmm, can only see one change? The strip at the bottom of the doors.

Yeah - the rest of the stuff is all internal (and incredibly boring, like changing door reflectors).

Just a little thing I've been meaning to do for a while

Did loads more mods today, but the one I'll get the least hate for:

Before:


After:


(and yes, I know my mirrors look like arse)

Sphincter Tightening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4kEyEKeTAE

Quote from [RCG]Boosted :

u know that stuff has gotten better yes?
a 1 ghz cpu from today is faster than a 2 ghz cpu from like 8 years back.

Yes - but the Atom is not a fast modern architecture.

EDIT - Not saying the Atom is terrible, it's a brilliant CPU considering the cost & applications...

Forgive me if i'm out of my depth here but...

Can anyone explain the idea of these "atoms" and unlimited detail?

I could get the idea of "unlimited detail" using vector graphics (i.e. a mathematical formula that scales well)

It just seems like they've made a ridiculously high-poly environment... impressive if realtime, but I don't think it is. Certainly not running purely in software!

EDIT - If theres one thing that Uni has taught me - it's that i'm out of my depth a lot more than I thought.