Posts by darkowl72

G's gonna get banned soon anyway, so he'll just handle it then...

I saw some review somewhere claiming the 1250s are basically "something you'd want in your room when you were thirteen." 😬

Besides that, that 38W output for a 2.1 system is honestly unimpressive, and according to test results, distortion starts kicking in once you hit 50% volume.

The 2.1 2000 hits 45W, with 8W satellites which I think is about the bare minimum, but you won't run into distortion until you're at 90% volume. If you're looking for heavy bass, they'll probably do the job. Just keep in mind they're plastic.

But look, if massive bass isn't a "must-have" for you and you actually know how to listen to music, the wooden 2.0 1800A with 50W RMS is a better bet.

Anyway, I doubt you'll regret either choice and you'll be happy with them. They're definitely worth the price jump over the 1250. Just one thing: watch where you place the speakers, because since the headphone jack on the 1800A is on one of the satellites, make sure the cable length doesn't give you any trouble.

It's a shame the 2.1 1800 doesn't have a headphone jack; honestly, its power distribution was my favorite setup.

And what’s that support guy saying about finding the right drivers?

If you look right here, they're all laid out pretty clearly:

Prices range anywhere from $3,000 up to $20,000. You can get them with macOS pre-installed or without. Honestly, you need to give me at least a ballpark budget. If your goal is just to spend the absolute minimum, you can grab the cheapest model that ticks your boxes, but don't expect much—it'll be basic and built with cheap materials.

If you actually want a solid, rugged laptop, go for something with a lightweight metal chassis (like magnesium or aluminum). It'll handle some accidental pressure better and won't crack the screen the moment you look at it wrong, but yeah, that costs extra.

For the best deals on a specific model, check Best Buy. As for warranties, stay away from anything that only offers a single year. Generally speaking (with exceptions), HP usually has the best manufacturer warranty at 3 years, followed by Acer and IBM, which offer two years plus some special perks (IBM - no Matter What and Acer promotions). After that, it's just everyone else...

The cheapest HP would be this one:

An aluminum Acer would be this:

And this Acer is decent if you're into that sort of thing, since the screen detaches from the keyboard so you can use it like a tablet:

If you had bothered to read the master thread for anyone buying a laptop, you'd see there's a whole lot more to consider: screen quality and resolution, touch capabilities, SSD speed, battery life, backlit keyboards, etc. All of that drives the price up, obviously...

I won't even get started on Windows, but yeah, it’s possible. Honestly, you've probably already botched the installation by forcing those heavy drivers in, so my advice? Just wipe the drive and do a clean install of Windows. Once that's done, go straight to this site:

http://support.hp.com/hr-en/drivers

Let their own software scan everything and find what it needs. That usually works fine. Plus, they actually list warnings for certain OS versions over there.

You’re just saying it lags, but you aren't saying when. Does it stutter specifically on macOS when nothing else is open, or does it happen in things like Notepad or Word... or just in the browser? By the way, which browser are you using, and have you tried a different one?

It’s possible Norton and Windows Defender are clashing, or maybe it's your virus scanner doing real-time file scanning that's causing the hitching. Try temporarily disabling the real-time protection and virus scans for both programs and see if the lag persists. Your PC is older and pretty weak; you don't have much RAM, so anything is on the table.

It’s possible everything you’ve loaded up and everything you're running won't fit in your RAM, so the poor thing is constantly swapping to the pagefile and pulling it back into memory. On top of that, your drive is small and slow. It’s probably fragmented as hell, so all that reading and writing to the disk can cause delays. Check how much free space you actually have, clean up the drive, and run a test with some freeware tools to make sure your disk isn't failing you. If everything looks fine, then go ahead and defragment it.

Those are just the preliminary steps you need to take to rule out possibilities one by one. Also, if you have any resident programs running, kill them all to free up some RAM.

EDIT:

I see you fixed the issue, but regardless, take a look at my post and do those things so you can get back to hanging out here sooner. 😬

It's a desktop, not a laptop.

The stuttering and lagging you're seeing isn't the monitor's fault. Your screen is fine. Most likely, you had a Generic driver installed before, and Windows just pulled an update in the background without you noticing. You're probably only linking it to your current issues because you finally noticed the driver name.

Seriously, the monitor isn't the culprit here. What software have you installed lately? Roughly when did this start happening? It could be a messed up graphics driver, or more likely, some malware crawled in and is currently eating up your CPU cycles. You probably picked it up while downloading something or just browsing.

You need to keep an eye on your CPU usage in a hardware monitor and run a deep scan to hunt down any infections. The guys here will point you toward the best tools for the job...

Once that's done, we can go from there...

Looks like people already jumped in to help. Larry Ortiz5 pretty much covered everything...

Try switching back to your old handle now; they’re saying the glitch is fixed. Just some stupid forum nonsense—you weren't the only one dealing with this 😬

It won't work, you've got a boundary 😬 clearly visible...

Of course it can. Dell's F series laptops are solid machines and they'll serve you well. Sure, the processor isn't the fastest, but the GPU has enough CUDA cores to help out, so the overall performance won't be half bad... Just don't forget to register it within 15 days of purchase on the Dell website to snag those Dell promotions, then you're good to go. 👍

Right now, you can actually snag some seriously decent rigs for that kind of money—machines that’ll handle both heavy work and gaming without breaking a sweat. For example:

Where on earth were you even looking for laptops? Usually, people just hit up Best Buy or Newegg to see what's out there in the US. Besides, you’ve got us to help you out. 😬

Two months is a long time in this industry; tech specs and prices shift constantly. Just come back when you're actually ready to pull the trigger. We keep an eye on the market, so we'll find you something.

And honestly, it wouldn't hurt if you actually read the stickied threads. There's one specifically for laptop buyers and another about gaming on notebooks. There's some useful stuff in there—like how gaming performance really boils down to your GPU and resolution. You can even check Notebookcheck.net to see how specific graphics cards perform in different games; those guys track FPS for everything 😬 and so on...

Look, if you’re actually using Adobe Illustrator—and I mean *actually* working, not just messing around when you feel like it—and you’re handling heavy-duty projects, the rules are the same for you as anyone else: you need a faster, multi-core processor, a GPU with plenty of CUDA cores, more RAM, and 4K resolution because that extra screen real estate is vital. And if you have the cash, don't skimp on the SSD.

The problem is cramming all that power into a 17" chassis without hitting a $5,000 price tag.

The perfect setups are probably way out of your budget, like:

Beyond having high-end HQ processors, these machines come loaded with massive amounts of RAM, beefy graphics cards, and lightning-fast drives. A slightly more affordable option might be this:

It hits almost every requirement, except the processor isn't an HQ model; it’s an undervolted U-series, but even then, it’s a solid 4-core chip.

For professional work, I wouldn't recommend anything less than that. Unfortunately, you won't find 17" laptops equipped with i5 H-series processors; those would be much more reasonably priced, but it seems like (at least here in the States) they only ship in 15.6" models.

If that's still too much of a financial hit, it might be smarter to go with a 15.6" 4K model to stay closer to your budget. If you spend any part of your workday at a desk, you can always just grab a 24" monitor to plug into the laptop so you aren't squinting at a tiny screen all day:

Your account looks fine to me. I don't see any reason why you're getting that error, so I passed it along to the admins...

I didn't do a secondary install on an SSD myself, so I can't give you a definitive answer. Someone else will likely chime in and let you know. In my opinion, the logical move would be to run a recovery on the SSD, set it as your primary boot drive, and it should work just fine. 🤷 Legally speaking, that shouldn't be an issue either since Windows licenses are tied to the machine, not the hardware itself.

Regarding the dilemma, that’s exactly what I was struggling with too. 😬 Personally, I lean toward Dell more, but then again, when you look at Asus, you get that VGA included and a complete solution right out of the box for a lower price... Plus, the two-year Asus warranty and those promos aren't bad at all...

You're really going to have to handle that one yourself. 😬 🤷

The Asus k seems like the most sensible choice financially. It doesn't have an overkill graphics card like those other two, and it comes with Windows pre-installed. At $660, there's enough left in the budget to swap out the DVD drive for an SSD right away without breaking the bank:

Asus gives you a two-year warranty, and if you go with them, make sure you actually register it for the Asus promotions on their website. Don't forget.

Then there's the latest Dell Inspiron. It's newer and comes with a three-year warranty, but if you want to swap the DVD drive for an SSD on that one, you'll have to wait until you've saved up more cash...

That's pretty much it. Other brands have options too, but I think this is your best value for the money...

Oh, one more thing—don't expect to find more than three USB ports on any laptop these days. Also, the Asus has both HDMI and VGA, whereas the Dell only has a single HDMI port.

There are a few other models out there, depends on what size and shape you're looking for...

Splitting a drive into partitions isn't exactly smart. Those partitions don't actually change how the physical hardware is laid out; they're just logical divisions, which means something—or someone—has to manage them, adding extra work to the mix. You didn't mess up by partitioning, but you have to be careful to actually install your programs onto that second partition. If you just mash the Enter key during installation, everything defaults back to C:\Program Files.

Also, every once in a while, take whatever junk accumulates in the subfolders of your User folder and move it over to the other partition (and I mean *move* it, not just copy it). That way, your C: drive doesn't run out of breathing room. It’s basic logic. Physically, you're creating a bit of a mess (but that's an OS issue, not yours) because when you move things this way, you're really just updating pointers in the Partition table to point to D: instead of C:. This makes the disk a bit more fragmented... nothing major if you just run a defrag every six months or so. Look, you haven't done anything catastrophic; you've just given yourself more chores to deal with later...

Back in the day, computers worked differently. Hard drives were tiny, but honestly, what people were doing on them wasn't nearly as demanding or space-hungry as it is now. Nowadays, since drives are dirt cheap, it’s just bad practice to leave your boot disk (C: 🙂) struggling with less than 50 GB or 100 GB of free space. That kind of thing leads to unexpected headaches.

Here’s a stupid example from a month ago: I record shows on my PC—movies or whatever else looks interesting. I noticed a movie from the night before didn't save, even though I was positive I set it to record. Usually, recording works fine, whether it's live or on a timer. But there was no movie. After wasting an hour digging into it, I realized I had left the target folder (where recordings go) at the default setting on the C: drive. In the meantime, a bunch of downloads had piled up (I wasn't using the PC myself, and others had been using it too), so the free space dropped below 10%. The recording software I use has a built-in limit where it won't save content if the drive has less than 10% free space. The stupid program records the entire movie into a temp folder, then "smartly" realizes there isn't enough space to move it to the final destination and just deletes the whole recording...

I've been working with computers for a long time. I know all this stuff, I stay on top of it, and I'm careful, yet... even this happens to me. Imagine what happens to someone who just sees a computer as a tool for work...

Regarding the processor, like I said, they're basically the same kid. One might be slightly faster at certain tasks, the other at different ones. If we're talking single-core tasks, the Intel Core i3 is a bit faster. But if we're looking at multitasking—which is most people's setup, running an antivirus, listening to music, browsing, etc.—then yeah, the seller was right: the AMD should be a little more responsive ... But those differences are...

It’s like when some guy in a hardware thread claims he measured program speeds on one machine with slower memory versus another with faster memory and didn't notice a damn difference. 🤦

Don't stress about it. The dumbest thing you can do is stress after you've already bought the machine. You bought it, it's yours now. Take care of it and enjoy it. And don't be a whiner; you bought a low-end machine, and it’s going to act like one if you push it too hard. Honestly, it wouldn't have mattered much even if you'd bought the other one. Trust me...

This is easily one of the dumbest things you can do. First off, partitioning a drive just slows it down. Second, most users don't give a damn about where stuff gets downloaded or installed; they just mash the Enter key whenever a prompt pops up. Everything ends up on the C: drive—all the music, movies, cache files, documents, emails, system restore points, backups... and of course, Windows itself along with every single program installation.

And don't even get me started on fragmentation on such a tiny space where everyone is constantly writing data. Pretty soon, even the swap file won't be contiguous.

And leaving 100-150GB for that? Within six months, that user will be knocking on your door whining about how their computer is lagging because they're out of space, even though they have a whole terabyte drive!

Sure, you could avoid this by being careful and manually moving files around—but why bother? Most people don't care. They aren't studying how Windows operates or where it stores its junk; they just want their PC to work as a tool for some other task and want zero contact with this kind of technical nonsense.

What's wrong with using folders? You can organize things however you want inside them.

As for processor speeds, I'm not looking for a debate over which one is better or faster (since honestly, both are pathetic), but I'll say this: Benchmark tests are pure synthetic garbage. They're lab measurements—and that's when a lab actually does them, not like this case where they're just scraping samples from random users. Just because someone drew a two-colored diagram doesn't mean those results reflect real-world usage or common daily workloads.

Given that the Celeron is newer, built on a more advanced process, uses half the power, and hits up to 2.6 GHz via turbo—go ahead, draw your own conclusion about who's actually faster in single-core tasks and who's leaving who in the dust.

Batteries naturally lose their capacity over time. Every single battery has a limited lifespan, and honestly, the quality of what was on the market a decade ago doesn't even compare to what we have now. I highly doubt any of those old NiMh cells would even hold a charge today.

Bottom line: you need to test them. I wouldn't even dream of turning that UPS on until a pro checks the batteries—they might be dead, or worse, leaking all over your gear...

The first and third options are Full HD resolution. Honestly, that 2GB RAM difference isn't a dealbreaker; whether you have 6GB or 8GB doesn't matter much here. 😬Also, neither comes with Windows pre-installed. While Full HD looks better, if your main goal is just gaming and you want this thing to actually handle newer titles decently for a while, the middle one with the 1366x768 resolution might be your best bet. Since all three laptops use the exact same graphics card, it absolutely shreds at that lower resolution and delivers great performance. Plus, that one actually includes Windows in the price.

The common thread with all of them is that they aren't $800—they're all closer to $900 and they're pricey. Check Best Buy; you'll find them much cheaper there, so you could probably pick up the last one for even less than $233, which is actually a significant saving. If you're eyeing that 60-month warranty, don't get it twisted: that isn't the manufacturer's warranty. Like I mentioned in the stickied thread you really should have read, Asus provides a 2-year manufacturer warranty, plus "Asus promotions" extra coverage if you register on their site. Everything else is just a local service center warranty or an insurance policy you sign for at checkout. It’s not a bad thing, but realize it’s not the factory warranty and the terms are different. You can even set that up yourself regardless of where you buy the laptop, and it costs about roughly $133 for those extra two years .

If you're looking to blow more cash, head back to Best Buy:

Or look at the excellent Asus N series with the aluminum chassis, IPS screen, and backlit keyboard:

Or an Acer:

I don't really follow what's on Sesame Street, but you're probably just missing some video codec to get the content to play. Check their website to see if they offer a specific video player or a codec download...