Since some people might want a Mac, I'll offer a Mac equivalent of your laptop guide from the perspective of a Mac/Linux person.
Even the cheapest Macs cost more than Windows laptops, but part of that is Apple not making anything for the low end of the tech spectrum. There is no equivalent Mac to an Intel i3 with 4 gigabytes of RAM. This makes it a lot easier to find the laptop you need.
That said, it is possible to buy the wrong Mac for you, and the wrong Mac for you is the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar. Get literally anything else. If it has an M2 chip in it, it's the most recent model and will serve you well for several years. Any new MacBook Air is a good pick.
(You could wait for new Macs with M3, but I wouldn't bother. If you are reading these guides the M3 isn't going to do anything you need done that a M2 couldn't.)
Macs now have integrated storage and memory, so you should be aware that whatever internal storage and RAM you get, you'll be stuck with. But if you would be willing to get a 256 gig SSD in a Windows laptop, the Mac laptop with 256 gigs of storage will be just as good, and if you'd be willing to get 8 gigs of RAM in a Windows laptop the Mac will perform slightly better with the same amount of memory.
Buy a small external hard drive and hook it up so Time Machine can make daily backups of your laptop. Turn on iCloud Drive so your documents are available anywhere you can use a web browser. And get AppleCare because it will almost certainly be a waste of money but wooooooow will you be glad it's there if you need it.
I get that you are trying to help and I am not trying to be mean to you specifically, but people shouldn't buy apple computers. That's why I didn't provide specs for them. Apple is a company that is absolutely terrible to its customers and its customers deserve better than what apple is willing to offer.
Apple charges $800 to upgrade the onboard storage from a 256GB SSD to a 2TB SSD.
A 2TB SSD costs between $75-100.
I maintain that any company that would charge you more than half the cost of a new device to install a $100 part on day one is a company making the wrong computer for you.
The point of being willing to tolerate a 256GB SSD or 8GB RAM in a Windows laptop is that you're deferring some of the cost to save money at the time of purchase so that you can spend a little bit in three years instead of having to replace the entire computer. Because, you see, many people cannot afford to pay $1000 for a computer and need to buy a computer that costs $650 and will add $200 worth of hardware at a later date.
My minimum specs recommendations for a mac would be to configure one with the max possible RAM and SSD, look at the cost, and choose to go buy three i7 windows laptops with the same storage and RAM for less than the sticker price of the macs.
So let's say you want to get a 14" Macbook pro with the lowest-level processor. That's $2000. Now let's bump that from 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD to 32GB and 2TB. That gets you to $3000. (The SSD is $200 less than on the lower model, and they'll let you put in an 8TB SSD for $1800 on this model; that's not available on the 13" because apple's product development team is entirely staffed by assholes who think you deserve a shitty computer if you can't afford to pay the cost of two 1991 Jeep Cherokee Laredos for a single laptop).
For $3000 you can get 3 Lenovo Workstation laptops with i7 processors, 32GB RAM, and a 2TB SSD.
And look, for just $200 more I could go up to 48GB RAM and get a 4TB SSD - it costs $600 to upgrade the 14" mac from a 2TB SSD to a 4TB SSD so you could still get three laptops with more ram and the same amount of storage for the cost of one macbook.
I get that some people need to use Final Cut and Logic Pro, but hoo boy they sure are charging you through the nose to use products that have become industry standard. The words "capture" and "monopoly" come to mind even though they don't quite apply here.
"Hostile" does, though, especially since Mac users end up locked into the ecosystem through software and cloud services and become uncertain how to leave it behind if they ever decide that a computer should cost less than a month's rent on a shitty studio apartment in LA.
There's a very good reason I didn't give mac advice and that's because my mac advice is "DON'T."
HP Envy x360 13 inch (2020), and Envy is right because my sister in law saw this thing and immediately asked if they had others in stock. Very handy device.
2-in-1 running the hex-core AMD 4500u with a rechargeable pen for about USD 630 equivalent, not bad. Windows battery health report says it's at 94% of it's rated battery capacity.
This is replacing two things,
1) my 2012 iPad 3 that I used to take notes through high school, which is now so old that its SSL certs are expiring and it can't even surf the web properly, and
2) the Dell Vostro 5568 I won in 2018 that is getting old, but also. Look, the Dell Vostro 5568 is a baked potato with salt. No one would be actively disgusted by this, but almost anything you change would improve it. Everything about it is fine, but I'd never have bought it for myself. Lately with the ever-worsening power outages I've been using it to do computer stuff while lying on couches or sitting in bed and it's just got a number of limitations inherent in a laptop designed for office use.
I wanted something small, with decent battery, USB-C charging, and a touchscreen. This hits all those points, and comes with what is technically the fastest processor I own, although for you regular viewers you know that's not saying much because the second place is held by a mid-range performance desktop chip from 2017. This is my first foray into AMD CPU's, actually.
It's a nice size, way more portable than the Vostro and a lot slimmer than the iPad. It's a little wider than the iPad, so it sticks out of the satchel I used to carry that in, but it's a good start. Yes my iPad lives in a gigantic pleather folio. There's a keyboard in there, I took school notes with it and I needed keyboard speed.
It's heavier than the iPad and the lack of bezels makes it a little finicky to hold, but it is a huge improvement in actual function, it's a pretty competent webcomic reader for one thing:
I was browsing some blogs and news articles with it too and that's a great experience, much more natural, this will hopefully be the kick in the pants I need to migrate my server and set up RSS on it.
It'll get a Linux on it in the near future, probably OpenSUSE. My friend Multi got OpenBSD on an S10m Slate tablet a couple years back and blogged about it a little, so I might hit her up for some notes on UI setup.
Obvious choices are GNOME and KDE, GNOME has a lot of touch-centric development and KDE is primed for it and can be stretched to do basically anything with minimal effort. There's also more esoteric window managers well suited for lightpen UI's, but that's a whole bucket of worms.
One of the things I'm interested in looking at is light games to pass the time, stuff like Stardew, a bunch of platformers, and especially the new Dwarf Fortress will probably run well on here.
The audio solution in here is not tuned for low impedance earphones and attempts to destroy my very very sensitive IEM's on any volume higher than 2% but it's also pretty good SNR for a commercial device, best among all the laptops I've used and that includes the monster workstation I got from my employer.
I intend to undervolt the snot out of this processor and I have no idea how well it will take to that, but it'll be a fun experiment. This machine has not yet been named but I'll figure that out as I go.
Computer buying guides are easy to find, but the results often lead you guides geared towards gamers, or towards small-to-medium sized business owners. I am here to provide some tips for the ordinary residential computer buyer. This is simply an overview of what to look for, not a drilled-down analysis of specific market items, as markets change in the blink of an eye.
The first thing to ask yourself is what do you use your computer for? Word processing, email and general web browsing have different requirements than video creation, special effects, animation, and editing. In other words, you do not need the latest gaming computer for school or work; but graphics and video creators are likely to need even more than the gamers that use their creations.
Portability is another consideration. Will you be using this computer in one place, do you expect to take it out and about with you? Desktop computers are still the biggest bang for your buck, and the all-in-one computers where the computer components are integrated behind the screen means they no longer take up the entirety of your desk. Still, for computing on the run; a laptop is still the better option. These days there are even laptops with touchscreens that can convert to tablet type forms.
After you have thought about what you will use the computer for, then we can look at specifications. The main one to consider in an off the shelf computer is the central processing unit, or CPU. this is the "brain" of the computer, that controls how the rest of the machine operates. A simplified explanation of CPUs. CPUs generally come in low end (Intel Core i3 and AMD A-Series, Athlon, Ryzen 3), mid range (Intel Core i5,i7 and AMD Ryzen 5,7) and high end (Intel Core i9, Xeon and AMD Ryzen 9, Ryzen Threadripper) Click here for a comprehensive list of CPUs The low end processors are good if you want to limit what can be done on the computer, such as the one you get for your school-age child. Mid range processors will suite most people and have a great range. As well as light computing, mid range processors can handle video streaming and most popular games on the market. High end processors are best for people who play the newest video-rich games and the people that create the content for those games. The next thing to consider is memory (RAM) and drive storage.
Simplified RAM explanation While 4GB RAM is still considered minimum qualifications for popular operating systems, I will recommend a minimum of 8GB RAM even for a light duty machine. 16Gb RAM is what I would recommend for a mid range computer, and for the high end heavy use, 32G minimum. Drive storage is not as important now as it has been. With removable USB drives and cloud storage becoming so ubiquitous, you now longer need to store every file in your life on your computer's hard drive. They come in two general types, A hard disk drive (HDD) that has a spinning platter and solid state drives (SSD) that are chip-based. Drive storage explained One note I will make here is that Windows 10 (and presumably Windows 11) do not like HDDs. I have personally replaced HDDs with SSDs in four computers to alleviate drive thrashing and slow performance in Win 10 and Win 11.
The final thing to consider is graphics. High end graphics may be detrimental to a productivity only low end machine, you will want good graphics for mid-range multipurpose machines and high end graphics intensive machines. In desktops, this component can be easily added after purchase, in laptops you will need to buy it as part of the computer. Here is a list of graphics cards available at this time. In general, laptop manufacturers will have a graphics card equitable to the CPU and may have several options available per CPU type.
In conclusion, the computer you buy should be tailored to how you expect it to be used. After all, you probably don't want to give your school aged child the fastest and best machine to do their schoolwork on, or you're likely to find them playing games rather than doing schoolwork! Conversely, if you're looking at a new computer because you want to stream you game playing on Twitch, a low end computer will just be frustrating. The good thing is, it is easier than ever to find a computer to properly meet your individual need.
for all you beautiful writers or those who just wanna know about computers!
I’m tagging this as sasusaku because of the post I made earlier about helping writers with computer stuff. Hopefully that will help those lovely people find this post and save it as a reference. For your convenience, this long post is under a read more.
This post was made 9th July 2019 and will be updated with more information.
So first of all, we’ve got several major computer components: the Central Processing Unit (CPU),motherboard, main memory (RAM), secondary storage devices (such as an SSD or a hard drive), input and output devices (known as peripherals),and a Power Supply Unit (PSU).
Other important, but nonessential components include: the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) (a non-embedded GPU), a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), water coolers, wireless network adapters, and extra cooling fans.
The CPU:
The Central Processing Unit is the part of the computer that actually runs programs. It is the most important part of the computer, because without it, the computer cannot run software. When a computer is performing a task that a program tells it to do, we say that the computer is running or executing the program.
How the CPU works:
A computer’s CPU can only understand instructions that are written in machine language. Because it is very difficult to write entire programs in machine language, other programming languages have been invented.
The CPU is designed to perform simple operations on pieces of data. For example, reading data, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, relational operators, etc.,
The CPU understands instructions written in machine language and included in its instruction set. Each brand of CPU has its own instruction set.
In order to perform meaningful calculation, the CPU must perform many operations.
The CPU does nothing on its own, and must be told what to do. That’s why we have programs! A program is nothing more than a list of instructions that cause the CPU to perform operations!
Although a program can be stored on a secondary storage device, it has to be copied into the main memory, or RAM each time the CPU executes it.
The CPU executes a program in a cycle of 3 steps:
Fetch: read the next instruction from memory into CPU.
Decode: the CPU decodes the fetched instruction to determine which operation to perform.
Execute: the CPU performs the operation.
Here’s what my particular CPU looks like:
I have the intel i7-9700k processor, which has 8 physical cores. It’s a really good processor! It’s also quite cute. One of my favorite things is that inside my lighting software, iCUE (corsair utility engine) I can see the temperature of all my components, including all 8 cores inside my processor!
Motherboard:
The purpose of the motherboard is to have a central location for all the main components of the computer. Since they’re all mounted/inserted on this board, they can communicate with each other and work together! Sweet!
Here’s what my motherboard looks like, isn’t she cute?
The square in the top middle of the motherboard is the CPU socket! That’s where you mount your CPU. There are lots of different types of sockets for different brands of processors. The 4 channels to the right of that square are the ram channels. The L shaped covers at the top left contain the voltage regulator (my particular motherboard also has a small fan right there to cool it off), and the plates below the CPU are heatsinks. The solid state drives are beneath these heatsinks.
Main Memory (RAM):
The Main Memory, or RAM (which stands for Random Access Memory), is where the computer stores a program and the data used by the program while the program is running.
For example, suppose you’re using a word processor like Microsoft Word to write something. While you are writing, both the word processing program and the piece you’re writing are stored in the main memory.
We call the main memory RAM because the CPU is able to quickly access data stored at any random location in the RAM. RAM is a volatile memory used for temporary storage while the program is running, so the contents of your computer’s RAM will be erased when the computer is turned off. Inside your machine, RAM is stored in chips. It’s really cute!
Here’s my ram:
It’s the Corsair Vengeance RGB pro. My particular ram is 4x8, which means I have 4 sticks of RAM, each at 8GB. That means I have 32GB of RAM!
Secondary Storage Devices:
Secondary storage devices are used to hold data for long periods of time. Programs are stored here and then loaded to the main memory when needed.
So, we’ve got several types of secondary storage devices:
Disk Drive: Magnetically encodes data onto a spinning circular disk.
Solid State Drive (SSD): Faster than a disk drive. Has no moving parts, and stores data in solid state memory.
Flash Memory (flash drive, memory stick): Portable, no physical disk. Usually used by connecting it to a computer’s Universal Serial Bus (USB) communication port and appears to the computer as a disk drive, but does not contain a disk.
Optical devices (compact disk (CDs), digital versatile disk (DVDs)): Data is encoded optically as a series of pits on the disk surface. CD and DVD drives use a laser to detect the pits in order to read the encoded data. Optical disks hold large amounts of data, and for that reason, recordable CD and DVD drives are commonly used for creating backup copies of data.
Here are my SSDs, (solid state drives):
I have 2 of these Samsung 970 pros under the heatsinks of my motherboard, both 1 TB each. They’re a lot faster than a hard drive because they don’t have any physical moving parts. They’re also a lot smaller and cuter!
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU):
The GPU is designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in order to accelerate the creation of images. They can either be embedded in the motherboard (like most laptops or low-tier desktops) or be on a video card.
So pretty much, your GPU does a lot of arithmetic! It’s very powerful and necessary for playing heavy games or editing videos.
Here’s my GPU:
This is the ASUS GTX 1080 ROG STIX RGB GPU. Lots of acronyms there, but she’s really cute! She has 3 fans to keep her cool while I’m playing Skyrim and Ultimate Ninja Storm 4. She’s also got some HDMI ports and stuff on the back there. That’s how you connect your monitor or VR to her!
So a lot of you have heard of the GPU hype lately, I’m sure. So, there’s a couple types of GPUs.
TI: stands for titanium, and just means that it’s more powerful than the graphics card without it. So the ASUS GTX 1080 TI ROG STRIX RGB is more powerful than my GPU, the ASUS GTX 1080 ROG STRIX RGB. The TI versions of graphics cards have more shader processors (cores and shit) that are able to carry out specialized processing and rendering tasks that are required for your computer to display stuff on your monitor.
RTX: Ray Tracing! Ray tracing is a rendering technique that can produce incredibly realistic lighting effects. Basically, an algorithm can trace the path of light, and then simulate the way that the light would react with the virtual objects it hits in the generated world.
Cooling Systems:
So, there’s a lot to unpack here. You can do mineral oil (submerge your entire computer in a fish tank of mineral oil! No thanks, that sounds really inconvenient for maintenance.) regular fans, water cooled, and I’m sure there’s much more shit I haven’t even heard of. Today we’ll be talking about fans and water cooling.
Fans: lots of different kinds. They spin to cool your computer down!
Tip: When cleaning your fans on your computer, you need to hold your fans still. When they spin, they generate power to the motherboard (think of it like a computer windmill) and can cause it to overheat and get messed up. A lot of people like to clean their fans using compressed air for convenience, but if you let the blades spin freely while you’re blowing air at them, they will generate too much electricity for the motherboard to handle.
There’s many kinds of fans, like SP (static pressure), AF (airflow), and ML (magnetic levitation). There’s a lot more that I haven’t really studied. I personally like my ML fans because they’re pretty and super quiet!
Water Coolers:
Water coolers take advantage of the basic principle of thermodynamics- heat moves warmer objects to cooler objects. As the cooler object gets warming, the warmer object gets cooler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ1lNwCKs-c
This wonderful youtube video bu Tao of Tech does a really fantastic job of explaining. I feel that the visuals he produces are much more effective than my typing.
This is my water cooler, the Corsair H150i Pro.
The block with the Corsair logo is referred to as the water block or the CPU block. This sits directly on the CPU on top of the motherboard. The fans sit on top of the radiator at the front of my case, although it’s possible to mount your radiator and fans in the top of the case as well.
There are two types of water coolers: AIO and Custom.
AIO stands for all in one. The water cooler above is an AIO loop. The water inside does not need to be changed because it’s a closed loop! I love my water cooler because there’s a lot less maintenance on it than using a custom loop!
A Custom loop consists of larger tubes, a reservoir, and a pump. You need to replace the water inside it every so often (I’d say like 6-8 months but I have friends who have left it in there for years). The tubes and all have to be cleaned out, and the custom loops are quite bulky. However, it makes it very easy to liquid cool both your GPU and CPU simultaneously and can in some cases be more efficient than an AIO loop. You really need to know what you’re doing when you build a custom water cooling loop, but they can look super cool and perform really really well.
One popular brand of cooling fluid (my computer science friends and I lovingly call it computer water, the forbidden drink) is thermaltake. There’s lots of different colors for you to customize your system!
Here’s an interesting video from JayzTwoCents on his custom loop with 2 year old fluid! He drains his system in this video. It’s pretty sweet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8wwxGPGApU
I HIGHLY recommend JayzTwoCents if you want to know more about building PCs!
Input Devices:
Input is data that the computer collects from devices. An input device is a component that collects data, usually from the end user (you!) For example, keyboards, mice, touchscreens, and cameras are all input devices.
Disk drives can be considered input devices because programs and devices are retrieved from them and then loaded into the computer’s main memory.
Output Devices:
Output is data produced by the computer for people or devices. This data can be text, image, audio, or bit stream. An output device formats and presents output. This may be a video display (your monitor, or screen), or a printer.
Disk drives and USB drives can be considered output devices because data is sent to them to be saved.
Here’s my machine. Try to identify which parts are which!
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