What are kids usin' these days for class laptops?

[Mike]

dunno if they ever made 8gb. 20gb maybe? i had that on my last one. it was painful at times, but manageable.

[WRXtranceformed]

Pulled the trigger on the Asus. $377ish shipped from Best Buy online (after a gift card I had) because they seemed to be the only place that actually had them in stock for the next few weeks.

May need your guys advice on how to prepare a PC for sale (memory erasing, etc.). Never done it before...probably going to be putting my XPS studio up for sale here shortly.

[CaptainHenreh]

May need your guys advice on how to prepare a PC for sale (memory erasing, etc.).

If you have the reinstall disks, this is what you're looking for:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dban.org/">http://www.dban.org/</a><!-- m -->

[WRXtranceformed]

Rexipedia wins again! ty sir

[Apoc]

Most computers won't boot from USB by default. You can enable this in the BIOS if you want to use dban from USB.

[WRXtranceformed]

Wait what, what does that mean

[Apoc]

Wait what, what does that mean

You have to create a dban boot disk, so it boots to that instead of Windows (so it can wipe Windows). The easiest way is to use a USB stick, so you don't have to burn a CD. Most computers are set to boot from CD first and if it doesn't find one, then the hard drive. You have to go into the system BIOS to enable USB and move it up the priority order to before the hard drive. To enter the BIOS, you hit F2 or F10 or whatever it says when you boot your machine to "enter setup". If you do it right, you'll get a blue DOS looking screen where you can set boot order.

Or you could just burn a boot CD. :lol:

[WRXtranceformed]

Or you could just burn a boot CD. :lol:

I am a computer retard for the most part so this is probably the route that I will go :lol:

[WRXtranceformed]

Extremely extremely impressed with the new Asus Eee Pad Transformer. Android 3.1 is sick, the pad is super fast. Build quality on the whole piece is very very nice, especially for the price. HDMI, USB, Micro SD and front and rear facing cameras for $400? (I actually paid $377 shipped). I was very happy with the battery life so far too, I was TRYING to kill it so I could cycle the battery and I flat out couldn't do it. I was up until 1am after playing with it nonstop after work and the day before. I even left the damn thing on running Pandora overnight and it still had 5% when I woke up.

9.5 hours is such a night and day difference from this laptop's battery...if I pick up the optional detachable keyboard it increases it to 16 hours. Crazy how far technology advances in such a short time.

highly recommend the tablet for the price, you really can't beat it. Great call G!

[Sully]

Selling my netbook if anyone is interested, used it maybe twice. Topic and ebay link over in the classifieds.

[CaptainHenreh]

So in related news, I decided to buy a Nook Color and root it yesterday. Turns out since B&N left the SD card slot in the boot order, that you don't even have to root the motherfucker, just build a boot image on an sd card and slap 'er in there. It's really that easy. There's not a "stable" Honeycomb (3.x) Nook Color build out there because Google hasn't released the source. No doubt as soon as that happens (in the form of Ice Cream Sammich) that they'll be an update there as well.

So until then, I'm perfectly happy with my 250 dollar (plus Free barnes and noble club membership, yay discounts!) Gingerbread (ok, CM7) 7" tablet. I think I might be able to squeeze a little more performance with a different SD card, as I'm only getting a 7mb/s write speed on it, but if I stick with this I might as well just install it on the "core" memory and write over the Barnes and Noble OS, since there is literally NO reason to use it.

It moves pretty fast. I can surf the web and play pandora at the same time, which is pretty much the whole of what I'd use a tablet for anyway. It doesn't have any cameras, and no GPS either, but I'm honestly trying to think of something that I would do with this that I can't actually do. With my CPU overclocked to 950MHz (courtesy of a "select max processor speed" option in this version of the kernel I'm using) I netted a 1471 score in Quadrant. Nothing to call CNN over, but certainly nothing to shake a stick at.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

[Mike]

Coolio. I've yet to see a hacked Nook Color in the flesh... just heard 5443645 great things on the net. I need to see it if I ever see you again

[Kaan]

I see myself slowly becoming an apple person. basically because i have an iphone thats been way more reliable then any of the blackberry phones i've owned... AND my microsoft xbox and PC took a shit at the same time.

with my company laptop, i dont think i really need to replace my PC right away. but i'm almost wishing apple would just come out with a console or badass controler/interface set up for apple tv... which i looked at getting to take the netflicks stress off my xbox

Rex, how are the numbers you are pulling with your nook hack compare to claimed performance on ipads?

Mikey... where is your ipad for sale thread?

[Mike]

i gave it to the gf

also, who gives an eff about performance numbers? that's much of the reason nobody is beating apple... too little effort into making an amazing user experience, too much into cramming numbers.

[Kaan]

i am a computer nerd. i know nothing so i asked a question about something i can quantify! :-P

[CaptainHenreh]

Coolio. I've yet to see a hacked Nook Color in the flesh... just heard 5443645 great things on the net. I need to see it if I ever see you again

I don't want to pretend this thing is the second coming of Vishnu or anything, but for 250 bucks it's pretty sweet.

Here's Rex's Handy Guide to knowing if a haxxord Nook Color is Right for You:

"I love the taste of Steve Job's iPeen and I have a zillion songs in iTunes and have an ipod and ipod touch and an iphone and a Mac." (AKA: Jake)
This is probably not for you.

"I need the newest and shiniest and fastest thing out there." (AKA: Lee)
Probably not for you either.

"I like to tinker, but I'm not hardcore enough to risk throwing away 250 bucks on bricking a device. I also think Objective C is fucking retarded." (AKA: College CS/IS Student)
NC is perfect.

"I am a cheap fuckin' bastard who needs something to read PDF's in the garage and recipes in the kitchen, that I can still surf porn with." (AKA, Rex, RJ)
NC is perfect.

I see myself slowly becoming an apple person. basically because i have an iphone thats been way more reliable then any of the blackberry phones i've owned... AND my microsoft xbox and PC took a shit at the same time.

Well have fun playing call of duty on your mac...OH WAIT. I mean, Imma be honest. I'm not an apple guy. I never have been. Apple has always been very good at SELLING things. And yes, their design (both physical and UI) team deserves accolades. But I've always felt that there were always better alternatives out there, and apple's "closed source attitude" will always put them in the trash bin as far as I'm concerned. The only apple product *I* own was free and I hacked the shit out of it the day I got it to make it MORE useful (stopwatch with laptimer and downloadable stats? Cool.) and less gay (I can load any music I want any way I want without itunes? Sweet.).

And it's not really fair to be all "My JesusPhone is rock solid but my 5 year old XBox took a shit at the same time as my shitty dell laptop." My motorola Q9c was a rock solid phone the entire time I owned it, and I only got rid of it because I wanted access to a faster network...but do a google search on that shit and you'll see that I clearly must be a liar, because the Moto Q was the worst phone ever made.

Hate on the XBox dev team for not addressing their shitty hardware issues all you want, but if you'd had a playstation your personal information would be in the hands of Rajumhargilar Tandjeek right now. So everybody's got their problems.

Rex, how are the numbers you are pulling with your nook hack compare to claimed performance on ipads?

I have no idea. I can tell you it's probably on par with a Galaxy S, and that if you go to the timing and scoring building at hyperfest you can see an original iPad and Nook Color back to back. It's hard to compare it to an iPad, honestly. An iPad is 400 bucks. A nook color is half that, if you shop around. (B&N was selling them on ebay for 199 for a while) So do you get double the performance out of an ipad? Absolutely not. Is it worth the extra money? I dunno man. I don't think so, but that's just, like, my opinion. But like I said, apples and oranges. For example, Part of the big appeal of the NC to me was the 7" screen. I feel like if I'm going to have a 10" screen, I might as well have a goddamn laptop/netbook then a tablet. I think "hardback novel" footprint is a sweet spot for what I need this device to accomplish (i.e. Surf MM while I'm on the shitter.). When I see the commercials where they are all "ZOMG PLUG IT IN TO A KEYBOARD AND YOU HAVE A LAPTOP" then that just means "Rex should probably just buy a laptop, they're cheaper." So a 7" screen (i.e. a SMALLER screen than an iPad) was actually a pro for me. It's easier to work with, like "holding it in one hand like a book" where i find the iPad to be a little unwieldy when using it like that. Your mileage may vary.

So....yeah.

[BLINGMW]

Rajumhargilar Tandjeek

:lol:

[Apoc]

I'm with Rex, mostly. Whenever I think I want a tablet, I realize I have no real need for one. I don't want to keep a tablet in my lap on the couch and most applications I can think of where'd I'd use one, I'm pretty sure I'd rather have a full on laptop. For times when I don't want to carry a laptop, I use my phone (an experience that will be much improved when I upgrade to Galaxy SII). I actually see them having greater value in enterprise where people are bouncing from meeting to meeting all day, but I'm just not sure I can justify one as useful.

[Kaan]

see i find myself using my phone more then the laptops. i'd just like a bigger screen

[Jake]

see i find myself using my phone more then the laptops. i'd just like a bigger screen

I like the 10" screen on the iPad. It's great for reading PDFs of shop manuals for the cars, way easier than a traditional laptop to zoom in for detail and the like. The UI is great... I played around with a Xoom and was very unimpressed. Although I've heard the new stuff (Galaxy w/Gingerbread?) is more tablet-y, versus the Xoom's version of Android being more or less scaled up from the phones.

Coming from a job where I stare at computer screens all day, it's nice to get away from a laptop and have a tablet for quick news checking, Facebooking, MMing, etc.

My iPad has no music on it, or photos really. The integration with iStuffs on my computer is a pretty moot point. It's stupid as a music player.

Would I have bought an iPad? Ehh. Maybe. Mine was won in a contest so I saved the $500 or whatever. I'd say it's worth the investment if you can find a used/refurb'd iPad 1 for a decent deal. The 2's are a bit faster but they didn't improve screen resolution so IMO there's no reason to upgrade based on my admittedly limited usage.

I still don't think the Android OS is polished compared to iOS. It works well, mostly, but as an overall package (of hardware + software) I haven't found an Android combo that's made me say "wow" yet.