[RndTbl] Advice on finally buying my first laptop

Tue Sep 29 01:43:53 CDT 2020

Thanks Adam, Alberto, Glen, Tim, Trevor, and John, for all your sapient 
replies!

TL;DR: I ended up getting an ASUS ROG Strix G17 from Best Buy (for easy 
return if I really can't stand it).

I am test driving it right now.

Here is the one I purchased: 
https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/asus-rog-strix-g17-17-3-gaming-laptop-blk-intel-i7-10750h-512gb-ssd-16gb-ram-geforce-rtx-2060-win10/14583636

And here are my takes on some of the Perls of wisdom I received from all 
of you:

> /On 2020-09-26 7:48 p.m., Adam Thompson wrote://
> /
> //
>> /Thunderbolt 3 (actually USB-C, but both, really) can die in a fire. 
>> Preferably a very painful one.//
>> //Great in theory but a giant PITA in practice./

Okay, I will give up dreaming that someday there will be a easy to use, 
single cable connection, to charge, connect to Ethernet, connect to an 
external keyboard, mouse, scanner, drive 4 external monitors, and cook 
supper. Well at least one that just works all the time of course. :)

> I think you should pick your laptop based on the case/product series 
> (e.g. do you need a titanium-reinforced unit?), then screen, then 
> keyboard, then GPU (if it matters to you). CPU differences are minimal 
> unless you're doing something unusual... and you're not getting a 
> mobile GPU to run 4k games at 120Hz anyway.
I used your priority picking order. Slightly modified along with 
Trevor's suggestions.

However, I do plan on playing some modern tow truck driving games at 
1080p at > 60Hz using Ultra High settings on this mobile GPU - while 
sitting by the pool! So :P

> /I would never buy another HP, even if it was half the price of 
> everything else. Multiple negative experiences with several HP product 
> lines over the last 10yrs. ASUS and Acer make better laptops than HP 
> does, both physically and driver-wise./
Noted. Along with the advice from most others to stay away from HP.

> /If you want a docking station for multi-monitor or PCIe or serial or 
> whatever, plan your entire purchase around that./
Thanks for this. It really got me thinking. I will probably never dock 
this laptop. I realized I didn't need a desktop replacement. I just 
wanted a portable/lug-gable potentially gaming computer to use outside 
that has as much screen real estate that was easily movable. The 
furthest I will probably ever transport this laptop will be to a MUUG 
meeting once or twice a year if/when we ever start meeting again in person.

For good or for bad, I still have fully usable, still upgrade-able, 
still really decent, 7+ year old Tecnopolis (Trevor) desktops that just 
never die and will for sure outlive this laptop!

> /On 2020-09-2=7 Trevor Coredes wrote: /
>> /Adam's right, sort of, you need to decide your must-have features in 
>> order of priority, and list them out. Brad's email started out making 
>> it sound like screen was top, but then meandered. If it's truly 
>> real-estate and pixels and size you need put that at the top of your 
>> list as that will narrow the field considerably. /
Done. I really wanted the easily portable 2 screen set-up of the Asus 
duo's, but I just could not justify the price. So a 17" laptop was the 
next best alternative. Heck, I will probably just leave a second monitor 
easily accessible to the backyard and keep moving it in and out when I 
need too. External monitors are cheap enough to just replace when they 
get destroyed by the bugs and humidity. Right?
>> /It also might be very hard to determine "matte" in many units 
>> without seeing them physically first./
Most review sites do a really good job of telling you what the screens 
of various laptops are. Part of the reason I chose the ROG G17 is that 
even though it has a glossy screen with "specs" that say it only has 250 
nits of brightness, their tests (from multiple sites) all said it was 
pushing 290 to 350 on almost all the panels they tested. I will find out 
tomorrow if my individual unit will work okay outdoors in the sun (if we 
get any sun that is).
>> /I would suggest, for a typer/programmer like you, that you 
>> //*need*//a normal US keyboard and must eliminate all the bilingual 
>> keyboards many brands force on you. If you've never typed with the 
>> enter key 1.5cm further to the right, try it before you dare buy a 
>> bilingual. For me keyboard is top priority. Also, for accounting you 
>> might prefer a big laptop with a numeric keypad./
Wow. I remember you telling me about this before, so I researched, 
researched, and researched and found the G17 has *almost* a full normal 
keyboard with a fairly good numeric keypad. And you are right. I use the 
numeric keypad ALL THE TIME. Only the pageup/down, home/end, and 
delete/insert keys were rearranged and combined on the G17, so I thought 
I could live with that. But once I got it, whoa - tons of the "keycaps" 
have been replaced with bilingual character ones - which are not at all 
in the product photos on the Best Buy website. Bah! What a stupid way to 
clutter up the look of a perfectly good keyboard.

Why are bilingual keyboards being forced upon us? If you want a 
bilingual keyboard, buy one. Go ahead and charge more for all Canadian 
laptops with the extra cost of stocking another SKU to keep the 
Franco-phones happy if you need to, but don't make all of us use 
keyboards we can't even understand.

Are we changing the ABC song to accommodate French characters next?

Some of my keys are just nuts! Many have 5 different symbols on them 
like: "{^[[^" all one key!?! I have no idea how to access or use any of 
them.

Alt+numpad and/or the windows character map app (which has been around 
since XP days) work great for entering special characters. I don't need 
a dedicated key that constantly shows me characters I will never ever use.

*** Sorry for the bilingual rant Gilbert! ***

> /On 2020-09-27 12:02 p.m., John Lange wrote://
> /
> //
>> /Everything is a cost/performance trade off but no matter what else 
>> you do just make sure it has a solid state drive (SSD). I'm pretty 
>> sure those are standard now in laptops but worth double checking. The 
>> low-power traditional hard drives they put in laptops trade 
>> performance for battery and are so slow you'll think you've gone back 
>> to the 90s.../
Check. 3 NVMe expansion slots on this G17! Lots of room for more fast 
storage going forward.

So far so good. Keyboard learning curve almost done. I've now come to 
realize that I use Home and End a lot more often than I thought!

Thanks again everyone!

-- 
Bradford C. Vokey

Treasurer
Manitoba Unix User Group

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