And you thought getting ammunition and guns was difficult....

[Dougw1515]

My iPad Air 2 has the dreaded pink/blue screen. BestBuy will take my iPad and $300.00 and give me a different one - but not necessarily a new one. Soooo.. I think not.

As stated if you think finding ammunition or guns was the most difficult that's only because you haven't had to look for a laptop or notebook PC. They don't exist in the brick and mortar stores. Yeah... the over priced stuff is there but the mainstream items are not to be had. I can order one from Amazon and I might get it the first part of September. Deciding which whore to jump in bed with is the problem. Go back to Apple? No longer have an Apple phone so there's no compelling reason to. I kinna like the notepad/tablet convertibles but want nothing to do with anything that start with CHROME. Soooo... that leaves O'l bill gates(lower case no accident). Gotta do something as I moved my PC operations to my shop years ago and my iPad was my link to the outside world while at home. Anyone have any suggestions for a notebook/tablet convertible?

 

[majormadmax]

Yeah, had to get a new laptop as the only one took a dump right before I had a weekend online course. Spent several hours on Friday driving around and finally found one at Best Buy that was about $200 more than I wanted to spend and had about 1/5th of the memory I hoped for.

These days you gotta grab what you can find, or order online and wait...

 

[SQLGeek]

The back to school rush is a big contributing factor I imagine. We picked up a Chromebook for my daughter a few weeks ago but the pickings were getting slim.

 

[lonestardiver]

The Samsung tablets are not bad, Android operating system.

Advantage with the Samsungs is that you can use a memory card to add storage.

 

[jordanmills]

Yep, you wanted the apple tax.

 

[deemus]

Academy, in Plano has zilch

Yeah, had to get a new laptop as the only one took a dump right before I had a weekend online course. Spent several hours on Friday driving around and finally found one at Best Buy that was about $200 more than I wanted to spend and had about 1/5th of the memory I hoped for.

These days you gotta grab what you can find, or order online and wait...

Mine was moving slow, and I realized I had bought my last three laptops on clearance. They were all slow. So I ordered a new one from Dell that was the latest / greatest / fastest. My DL went from 39 to 360. Its amazing how fast that new laptop is. Trying to not put much on it so it does not get cluttered up and slow.

 

[Dougw1515]

Mine was moving slow, and I realized I had bought my last three laptops on clearance. They were all slow. So I ordered a new one from Dell that was the latest / greatest / fastest. My DL went from 39 to 360. Its amazing how fast that new laptop is. Trying to not put much on it so it does not get cluttered up and slow.

Good luck with that! LOL!!!

 

[hooper]

Look into a Surface Book.

 

[TXP]

I've had to buy a Chromebook and a Windows notebook in the past 3 months. The notebook purchase was 3 weeks ago and supply wasn't bad. All the good deals were sold out. Ended up buying both from Costco. Wallet aches a little now.

Chromebooks for my local school district are back ordered from Dell till November for an order placed in June.

I prefer HP or MSI or ASUS. Dell is okay along with Lenovo. Chromebook wise, Samsung is the best with ASUS being damn near as good.

When you go shopping, keep in mind the upgrade possibilities for the computer. You can save 10 to 20% if you buy under spec'ed computer and upgrade parts yourself. Assuming you are knowledgable and comfortable doing that type of work. I got a computer with a beefy processor, adequate RAM, but a large slow (painfully so) hard drive. Got a M.2 NVMe hard drive off of Newegg. Now the computer has 150% more storage and boots fully in about 10s (down from a minute and a half).

Some notebooks and convertibles have the RAM soldered on to the motherboard or don't have space/ connections for additional harddrive types.

 

[Southpaw]

Noticed it with printers a couple months ago when I needed a new one. Seemed that since everyone was locked down anything computer related was flying off the shelves.

 

[Dougw1515]

Asus is on my list. May do a Surface though as there's a lot there to like but there's the price to go with it. HP is always a solid choice. I want nothing to do, at all, with google/chrome anything. Samsung is a leading contender simple because a I have an S10+ already. They'd play nice together. I don't want a big laptop style computer I'm looking for something to replace the iPad excepts comes with a keyboard and can accept a bluetooth mouse.

Thanks to all for the info and suggestions!

 

[SQLGeek]

You can save 10 to 20% if you buy under spec'ed computer and upgrade parts yourself.

For notebooks, maybe. Depends really on the device as manufacturers seem to be going to soldering on memory and other components.

Edit: I should have read your whole post before responding.

 

[toddnjoyce]

...You can save 10 to 20% if you buy under spec'ed computer and upgrade parts yourself. Assuming you are knowledgable and comfortable doing that type of work.

I generally agree and have stretched most of my machines to 10+ years useful life.

Where I get lost is video cards. One BATD/AATD software suite calls for the following hardware for a recommended setup:
- CPU: Intel Core i5 6600K at 3.5 ghz or faster
- Memory: 16-24 GB RAM or more
- Video Card: a DirectX 12-capable video card from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel with at least 4 GB VRAM (GeForce GTX 1070 or better or similar from AMD)

I have no idea where to start looking for a budget system with that (or similarly old) hardware.

 

[deemus]

HP is crap these days. ASUS is ok. But Dell will build you a racehorse to your specs. What I got cost more, but it was superior to everything out there.

 

[flgfish]

I abhor Windows and Linux on a tablet. I tried to use a Windows Surface and wanted to scream at it for being stupid pretty often. I have an iPad for when I’m laying in bed, and a clamshell for everything else.

The Dell XPS 13 is a little spendy but it’s the nicest machine I have used lately. Lenovo Carbon series is probably the runner up. Asus makes nice looking stuff but no personal experience.

 

[Dougw1515]

I abhor Windows and Linux on a tablet. I tried to use a Windows Surface and wanted to scream at it for being stupid pretty often. I have an iPad for when I’m laying in bed, and a clamshell for everything else.

The Dell XPS 13 is a little spendy but it’s the nicest machine I have used lately. Lenovo Carbon series is probably the runner up. Asus makes nice looking stuff but no personal experience.

I'm just up to "here" with Apple and the whole iTunes experience. I've spent 3 days trying to install a functioning copy of iTunes on my 8.1 windows machine so I can backup my iPad. I can get it installed but for whatever reason I can not see my iPad in iTunes. I can see it on the "This PC" screen but that doesn't help. I had iTunes on this PC once before but removed it because I could not stop the automatic updates and some other intrusive BS that Apple, and everyone else, was pulling at the time. It's only gotten worse now with Windows 10 S mode. Which for now can be over-ridden but once they get some of the bugs worked out you can bet your bottom dollar that's yet another personal information give away we will be forced to endue if we want to use the product.

In another life I was a senior network engineer for BellSouth. I'm not as good as I was getting around the O/S as I used to be. I have a clue I just have no desire to get back on the learning curve to get decent at understanding/resolving "problems" on PC. Now I'm like my end users of yesterday I JUST WANT IT TO WORK!

 

[Younggun]

All these people working from home, and now kids doing the distance learning thing will have the computer market stressed for a while.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[flgfish]

I'm just up to "here" with Apple and the whole iTunes experience. I've spent 3 days trying to install a functioning copy of iTunes on my 8.1 windows machine so I can backup my iPad. I can get it installed but for whatever reason I can not see my iPad in iTunes. I can see it on the "This PC" screen but that doesn't help. I had iTunes on this PC once before but removed it because I could not stop the automatic updates and some other intrusive BS that Apple, and everyone else, was pulling at the time. It's only gotten worse now with Windows 10 S mode. Which for now can be over-ridden but once they get some of the bugs worked out you can bet your bottom dollar that's yet another personal information give away we will be forced to endue if we want to use the product.

In another life I was a senior network engineer for BellSouth. I'm not as good as I was getting around the O/S as I used to be. I have a clue I just have no desire to get back on the learning curve to get decent at understanding/resolving "problems" on PC. Now I'm like my end users of yesterday I JUST WANT IT TO WORK!

re: iTunes. You don't need it anymore. Apple devices will backup to iCloud and restore from iCloud. I can't even remember the last I've used iTunes with my iPhone or iPad. I know my kids never have, ever.

 

[HKSig]

Costco had Windows laptops a few days ago; not sure how much selection, but the buyer was able to walk in and get the one he'd picked out online (and didn't order online).

 

[cvgunman]

re: iTunes. You don't need it anymore. Apple devices will backup to iCloud and restore from iCloud. I can't even remember the last I've used iTunes with my iPhone or iPad. I know my kids never have, ever.

I need iTunes about now. Found my old iPod and want to get more music on it. Anyone know how?