The official tablet (and other useless electronics) thread!

[WRXtranceformed]

Lee, is your's a touch screen? My main work one is a E7440, i7, ssd, 16gb of ram, etc, it has the carbon fiber case and is touch.
It's been a work horse for me, but the battery life is less than ideal. (to be fair, I don't let it manage itself and leave it cranked to 11 all the time)

Jake, I'll dig around and see if i can find the slides from our last Dell hardware roadmap meeting, they had a couple of cool things in the works.

edit - never mind, Dell never sent us that deck, some NDA whateverwhatever. I think it was an XPS 15 that they had as a demo, it was really slick, but spendy.

Yeah mine is a touch screen. I have an older XPS Studio and that thing was a graphics powerhouse but it started to fall apart fast. The entire top / screen was replaced under warranty due to dead pixels, then the replacement died for good and we have to use an external monitor if we ever need to boot it up. And when we do it runs like garbage. Not sure why that one sucked so bad, but this current latitude has been solid.

[Evan]

Starting to think about buying a new laptop. The one I have is ancient, the trackpad sucks, the battery is wearing out, it's huge and clunky, the screen is dim and oh yeah the trackpad sucks.

I've been a Mac guy for ever and ever but gave 'em up when my last job gave me a MacBook Pro to use. When I changed companies, the MBP went back and I have a work-issued Dell that is so locked down I can't use it for much personal stuff (unlike the Mac). So, I'm rocking an ancient Windows machine that was given to me and has been a good stopgap for the past couple of years...

I love a good user experience and Apple has traditionally provided that for me. But, I'm not wedded to my iPhone anymore (have a 6, when contract runs up I may go Android if they continue to suck less). I do like my iPad and AppleTV but they are both pretty standalone.

So IF I were to get a Windows laptop... ugh, so many options. Hoping some of you can help narrow it down. I have not had great experiences with Dell in the professional world (my current Latitude is a great size, with awful battery life and poor build quality) and that's kind of all I know.

Wants:

• Large, high quality, precision, no bullshit trackpad. This is my #1, seriously. Apple has been the king of trackpads for years. Every Windows machine I've used has had some too-small, too-insensitive, bullshit trackpad and it drives me nuts. If the rest of the machine is amazing and the trackpad sucks, I don't want it.
  
• Thin and light
  
• Large SSD (256 GB would be ideal)
  
• Tons of RAM (8 GB)
  
• 13" screen is ideal, given how many pixels are packed onto 'em now
  
• Good battery life
  
• Backlit keyboard

A touchscreen could be cool, but isn't a requirement. The above stuff matters more.

Any ideas? Not looking to spend a ton of money if I do this, so... I'd say between $500-900 is ideal.

Yoga.
End search.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/yoga-laptop-series/">http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/le ... op-series/</a><!-- m -->

[.RJ]

Starting to think about buying a new laptop. The one I have is ancient, the trackpad sucks, the battery is wearing out, it's huge and clunky, the screen is dim and oh yeah the trackpad sucks.

I've been a Mac guy for ever and ever but gave 'em up when my last job gave me a MacBook Pro to use. When I changed companies, the MBP went back and I have a work-issued Dell that is so locked down I can't use it for much personal stuff (unlike the Mac). So, I'm rocking an ancient Windows machine that was given to me and has been a good stopgap for the past couple of years...

I love a good user experience and Apple has traditionally provided that for me. But, I'm not wedded to my iPhone anymore (have a 6, when contract runs up I may go Android if they continue to suck less). I do like my iPad and AppleTV but they are both pretty standalone.

So IF I were to get a Windows laptop... ugh, so many options. Hoping some of you can help narrow it down. I have not had great experiences with Dell in the professional world (my current Latitude is a great size, with awful battery life and poor build quality) and that's kind of all I know.

Wants:

• Large, high quality, precision, no bullshit trackpad. This is my #1, seriously. Apple has been the king of trackpads for years. Every Windows machine I've used has had some too-small, too-insensitive, bullshit trackpad and it drives me nuts. If the rest of the machine is amazing and the trackpad sucks, I don't want it.
  
• Thin and light
  
• Large SSD (256 GB would be ideal)
  
• Tons of RAM (8 GB)
  
• 13" screen is ideal, given how many pixels are packed onto 'em now
  
• Good battery life
  
• Backlit keyboard

A touchscreen could be cool, but isn't a requirement. The above stuff matters more.

Any ideas? Not looking to spend a ton of money if I do this, so... I'd say between $500-900 is ideal.

Yoga.
End search.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/yoga-laptop-series/">http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/le ... op-series/</a><!-- m -->

Those look pretty nice.

[Apoc]

I seriously considered one... until I realized they screens were smaller than I wanted. :-(

[RawrImAMonster]

While were talking about laptops, does anyone have an old windows xp laptop they don't want? I don't care how bad the battery is. Apparently BMW software for coding tends to work best on 32 bit XP.

[davej]

While were talking about laptops, does anyone have an old windows xp laptop they don't want? I don't care how bad the battery is. Apparently BMW software for coding tends to work best on 32 bit XP.

run it in a vm. i had to do the same thing with vag-com.

[.RJ]

While were talking about laptops, does anyone have an old windows xp laptop they don't want? I don't care how bad the battery is. Apparently BMW software for coding tends to work best on 32 bit XP.

I do.

[RawrImAMonster]

run it in a vm. i had to do the same thing with vag-com.

Yeah I've thought about that, but a lot of people still have problems getting the cables working right for some reason. I think Windows 7 Professional and higher actually has a windows XP VM built into it. It might just be that people don't know what they are doing.

Also, I don't actually own a laptop so it's kind of a pain to try to hook my desktop up to it.

I do.

What do you want for it?

[.RJ]

What do you want for it?

6-pack?

[RawrImAMonster]

I'd be fine with that. You live in northern va though right? Might have to wait until someone on here goes to northern va or vice versa.

[.RJ]

Yep. Let me see if I'm making a trip out that way anytime soon.

[BLINGMW]

Anybody have an external USB Blu-ray drive they can recommend? Seems like a simple request but even sticking with brand names it seems people have trouble with them. I don't care if it burns Blu-ray, just plays them and plays/burns DVD/CD:

Samsung:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-External-Blu-ray-SE-506CB-RSBDE/dp/B00JJGFRIQ">http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-External- ... B00JJGFRIQ</a><!-- m -->
this one seems a little shady since it's not actually Samsung, it's made by TSST

LG:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/LG-Portable-Blu-ray-Playback-CP40NG10/dp/B00632RJJY">http://www.amazon.com/LG-Portable-Blu-r ... B00632RJJY</a><!-- m -->
Lots of comments about not including software and DOA ...?

[D_Eclipse9916]

Anybody have a spare old laptop? My tuning software unfortunately is malware according to Deloitte. I don't need anything fancy, just enough to pull code and runs this software.

[Kaan]

Anybody have a spare old laptop? My tuning software unfortunately is malware according to Deloitte. I don't need anything fancy, just enough to pull code and runs this software.

what inputs/outputs do you need ?

[SlimKlim]

Are you looking for one to borrow or buy/have?

I have a Dell circa 2009 that you can borrow, the battery is completely useless now but it still runs well if you keep it plugged in. I like holding onto it for a backup though because our only other PCs are work computers.

[.RJ]

Anybody have a spare old laptop? My tuning software unfortunately is malware according to Deloitte. I don't need anything fancy, just enough to pull code and runs this software.

I have an old Dell with XP. Its slower than fuck, but it works. You'd probably want to wipe it and re-image.

[D_Eclipse9916]

You'd probably want to wipe it and re-image.

I will leave the computer stuff to you guys. That's like me telling you "just have to time that bmw motor". :lol:

Just needs USB. Battery doesn't matter, just would like to check some codes.

[.RJ]

Let me see if I have a windows XP disc around, I can re-image it.

[JustinG]

I have a XP netbook laying downstairs, battery is dead, but still works when plugged in.

[BLINGMW]

Anyone have a QNAP NAS or other that they would recommend? There's more than 10 small models to choose from and I don't understand the capability differences. My #1 need is something that can easily, wired and wirelessly, receive family pictures and video from Android, iPhone, camera, allow for admin, catalog and display on PC or chromebook, and automate the backups to another USB device. #2 would be playing music and video files. Can they pull in Pandora too? Right now an 8yr old mac mini is doing all these things and be remotely admin'd, but it's far from ideal. I obviously have some user manuals to read, but maybe you can help narrow the search.