Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff

The Barracks
#1182

Engineering students are old school. We use pen and paper for most things. Lect notes are impossible on a laptop. Hell, sometimes they’re impossible get down on time by hand. Most of our lab work is just taking results down on paper. If we’re doing simulations or other such things, almost nobody uses the provided computers. Those of us who are smart use the uni monitirs as an extension of our laptops lol.

I was doing a communications assignemnt earlier this year that required modelling a radio frequency transmission system in Matlab. You had to run the system as standard, take results and then make the changes they gave in the assignment document and run it again.

The stock simulation took 15 mins to run on the uni computers (the engineering lab ones are actually better than the rest of the uni). My laptop ate through it in just over 2 mins. The changes we had to make made the sim slower each time.

Had I been on a tablet, I wouldn’t even be able to do the assignemnt.

1 Like
#1183

Oh and btw: are your lectures offline this year? Ours are online

#1184

No clue, I’m done :joy:. I think some might be online, but I don’t know.

2 Likes
#1185

Any luck with the laptop, @turexidrosa?

1 Like
#1186

After a pretty long time I’ve installed the IOS14. What can I say - those widgets could’ve made any sense if there were none of the info on the main screen before. So this isn’t a new feature but a redesign of an old one. They’ve also massacred the music - there are no letters marked , the artist list is a mess now

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I like the new style of “for you” in Apple Music though

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#1187

Yeah…actually its just acting up and maybe requiring some updates… after i did all the updates, its actually behaved lol eventho just for a while or so lol sorry that i didnt follow your instructions but i will keep it saved for later :blush::ok_hand:
Anw, thx for asking! :hugs:

2 Likes
#1188

So, uh, I just caved and bought an XPS 17 9700 for a stupid amount of money. Dell’s business site had a 14% sale on (that’s the biggest one I’ve seen so far). I also paid extra for 3 years of pro support because I’ve read all the horror stories on Reddit. I intend to buy my own RAM and SSDs to upgrade once I’m sure I haven’t been sent a lemon.

Specs:

  • i9 10885H
  • RTX 2060 Max-Q
  • 16GB 2933MHz RAM
  • 1TB NVMe SSD
  • 3840x2400 UHD+ touch screen
    (UHD is what a lot of companies market as 4K despite not being true 4K, UHD+ is just has an extra 240px in the Y axis because it’s 16:10)
  • 97Wh battery
  • 130W charger
  • Windows 10 Pro

Price (after discount): £2954 :confounded: :sob:

With that being said, a Macbook Pro 16 with the same factory spec costs about £745 more and has a slightly older CPU, slower RAM and a worse screen. I also plan on upgrading to 64GB RAM and 4TB (2x2TB) SSDs because I legit need the storage. If I spec the Macbook to that level it will cost £1757 more than the upgraded XPS!

Delivery is estimated in about a month. @gatsie, I know you were looking at the XPS 17 so I’ll keep you posted on how it is.

4 Likes
My/her/his/your phone
#1189

Forgot to post this in the last post. I actually got in touch with Dell again to try and see if I can get a cheaper config. They told me “no.” With a smile (quite literally). I actually had a bit of a go at them right at the end. This was before I bought mine, also don’t know why the times are all wrong.

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2 Likes
#1190

Hehe, you caved and bought one? It happens to the best of us. :smirk:

Been eyeing the XPS 17 myself too. Keep us posted on your findings!

#1191

I’ve been wanting to get one since it was leaked and not even certain that the leak was legit, ideally was looking for when the prices dropped more and the issues got sorted.

#1192

The sales chat agent from Dell sure has a hard time trying to type properly. Very annoying to read.

Specs are quite impressive, I totally understand why you bought it. A better price is always nice, but sometimes one just don’t want to wait.

1 Like
#1193

I’ve had other interractions I’ve posted in this thread before with them. None of them are great. According to people, the chat is the least worst way to get in touch with them. People have phoned them up only to get put on hold for over 2h and then be hung up on. Their custormer service in general has fallen off a cliff. You know it’s bad when a client knows more about the product than the very people who make it.

Here are my other posts:

#1194

Unfortunately a lot of companies don’t really bother to invest in proper customer service support anymore. Dell is the same. Hilarious to read those chats back, though.

1 Like
#1195

Congratulations :slightly_smiling_face:

Why do you think you need that? :flushed:
I thought you of all people could solve trouble on its own

#1196

Because reliability on these new models is a shit storm, I don’t want to chance it. I’m hoping any real issues come about in the first week or so of owning it so that I can just return it and get it replaced if something happens. When you’re spending about 3K on a laptop, paying an extra 100 isn’t that much to have a backup plan. But then again, if you’re spending that much on a laptop, it bloody better cure cancer.

Issues people have had with the new range of XPSs (13,15 and 17):

  • Loose trackpads
  • Not drawing 130W from the charger at full load (15 and 17 mainly)
  • Audio DPC latency (An XPS problem dating back to when the orignal XPS was introduced).
  • Jack & Speaker crackling
  • Thermal throttling and overheating (all modern laptops suffer this one)
  • Backlight bleed on the 1080p screens
  • Coil whine
  • Lid not closing properly or opening slightly when carrying it sideways
  • Sleep issues (a problem plaguing XPSs since at least 2015, I seem to have gotten lucky with my current one)
  • New laptops coming dented or with stripped screws from the factory
  • Internal GPUs suddenly not being recognised (mainly a 17 problem)

The 2 big ones that the 17 had were the trackpad and power draw. Several people have complained about the GPU issue and having a dented bottom panel. Apparently the power draw issue (my biggest concern) has been fixed. The trackpads are still hit or miss. The other general problems seem to have been mostly cleared up. The 15s have had the most problems with the 13s not far behind. The 17s have been the least problematic, but also not many people buy 17s.

EDIT:

Some of this stuff requires entire board or part replacements that aren’t on the market. Imagine buying a car and being told that you have to replace the entire chassis because some vandal broke your windscreen.

#1197

Dude :open_mouth: :joy:

#1198

An equivalent desktop isn’t that much cheaper (maybe 200-300 quid). Getting something cheaper won’t be much of an upgrade over my current laptop.

#1199

Yeah I can see that, but still :smile: Personally, I’d never spend much more than 500 or so. That goes for laptops though, I don’t have experience with desktops.

#1200

These days 500 will get you less than half a potato. Hell, even my first crappy HP was 600 or so back in the day, and that thing was dreadful for anything other than Google.

#1201

So, I was bored and decided to do some calculations regarding the new laptop. Obviously I said I’ll be upgrading to 64GB. To show how big that is for an average consumer, I went and calculated all the RAM of all the devices I could think of that have passed through our house over the past 17 years. Not counting my current XPS, I counted 42 devices. Again, not counting my XPS, the total RAM of all of them adds up to about 65GB. :joy:

A summary list of included devices is below.

  • 7 laptops
  • 17 phones
  • 4 tablets
  • 5 game consoles
  • 6 programmable microcontrollers (all pretty negligible except the 4GB in my RPi).
  • 4 ‘other’ (TV, a Mk6 ipod nano and 2 loose RAM kits from upgraded machines)

Now there is a catch obviously, all the phones (about 10 of them) and other tech pre-dating the S3 minis we had have double figure ( low end triple in a couple of cases) MB RAM, so I can afford to include them. I’ve also made reasonable assumptions where I couldn’t find specs.