Advice on laptops, couple major conditions

[green.pixel]

One oldish one, 2013 or so and up, that I can find 2nd hand and that meets these reqs:

15" or 14" matte screen
User controllable fan speed

And the other newish one, same as above but with 1 more condition that it has multiple working modes, especially the one where the keyboard faces down surface it stands on.

 

[orangpelupa]

User controllable fan speed

AFAIK, if you want to officially do it, your only choice is "gaming" lines like Asus ROG that have those feature. Non-gaming lines usually have no official software for that or it have a few "tiers" on UEFI.

unofficially, you maybe can use https://github.com/hirschmann/nbfc or http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

 

[green.pixel]

I read that those with PWM fans are only controllable? My current Lenovo G line doesn't have it, but the Thinkpads allegedly do so you can use for example tfpfancontrol app.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

One oldish one, 2013 or so and up, that I can find 2nd hand and that meets these reqs:

15" or 14" matte screen
User controllable fan speed

And the other newish one, same as above but with 1 more condition that it has multiple working modes, especially the one where the keyboard faces down surface it stands on.

What is your price constraint? Hard to make recommendations without knowing that. Then again I haven't looked at most laptops in a while. But if you can afford it, I can very highly recommend the Surface Book 2 lineup WRT multiple ways to use the display.

I also really REALLY prefer the 3:2 aspect ratio of the screen for doing any sort of work compared to the 16:9 screens of most other laptops. That said, 3:2 ratio screens do exist on some OEM setups as well. I have an Acer Surface clone that has one, for instance.

Regards,
SB

 

[Davros]

3:2 what res is that ?

 

[BRiT]

3:2 what res is that ?

600x400.
1200x800

 

[Davros]

Thanks...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

3:2 what res is that ?

In the case of the Surface Book 2...

• 3000x2000 for the 13" model
• 3240x2160 for the 15" model

Basically, a bit more widescreen than the old 4:3 and 5:4 aspect ratios but with more usable vertical space than 16:9 or 16:10.

If I could get a desktop display in 3:2, I would do it in a heartbeat.

SB
Regards,

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Every single request for advice on hardware must have a budget.


For the new one I suggest the HP Spectre X360 15", which I recommend equipping with a 4K AMOLED screen, 16GB RAM and 2TB NVMe:
https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-spectre-x360-laptop-15t-touch-5kc45av-1

Should go for about 2200€.

 

[green.pixel]

200-400eur for the first one and around 1000 for the second one. Or I could get a seperate tablet instead of the convertible and combine it with the first one.

I've been told to avoid HP due to their quality control issues.

Which Acer Surface clone is that SB?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

200-400eur for the first one and around 1000 for the second one. Or I could get a seperate tablet instead of the convertible and combine it with the first one.

I've been told to avoid HP due to their quality control issues.

Which Acer Surface clone is that SB?

It was the Acer Switch Alpha 12. It came with a Core-i5 w/128 GB SSD for about 600 USD. Really affordable but battery life wasn't that great. This was back in 2017. I don't think Acer makes it anymore.

Regards,
SB

 

[green.pixel]

I found Surface Pro 1 for 150e and Surface Pro 4 with Core m3-6Y30 for 300e.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I'm looking at getting a laptop mainly for work when I'm travelling. I need Windows 10 & Office and a largish display and it's a plus if it's good for gaming (I have an XSX console, but it might not be realistic for me to match those capabilities). I'd also like it to be as light and thin as possible. Any advice? Impossible request? Thanks in advance.

 

[orangpelupa]

How many inches is "largish" display?

If you are looking for a powerful laptop with high portability, there's asus flow 13.

It have various specs and price point to choose. From gtx gpu to rtx. Bundled with no ext gpu and with ext gpu bundle. Various ram configuration.

But it seems each options are region dependant

https://rog.asus.com/us/laptops/rog-series/2021-rog-flow-x13-series/

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Something 15+ inches display wise would be better.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I did a little more research.

What do you guys think of the Surface Book 3 ? I like that you can detach the screen so that it's a tablet as well. Seems roughly on par with a Xbox Series S for the occasional time I want to game on it while travelling...

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I'm revisiting this topic.

Are there any new developments?

I'm looking for a highly portable PC laptop with 15" + screen that I hook up to a real mouse/keyboard/monitor when I'm at home so that I can play RTS games like AoE 4 and also Lord of the Rings Online (a 10+ year old game). That game has scaling issues so I'd like to be able to lower my resolution sometimes (is that possible on modern laptops to downscale to say 1080p or something?)

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[homerdog]

I'm revisiting this topic.

Are there any new developments?

I'm looking for a highly portable PC laptop with 15" + screen that I hook up to a real mouse/keyboard/monitor when I'm at home so that I can play RTS games like AoE 4 and also Lord of the Rings Online (a 10+ year old game). That game has scaling issues so I'd like to be able to lower my resolution sometimes (is that possible on modern laptops to downscale to say 1080p or something?)

Any advice would be much appreciated.

What do you mean downscale to 1080p? Just set the resolution to 1080p?

Getting a laptop with a decent >8GB GPU is brutally expensive. It used to be the case that you didn't lose too much on performance going with a laptop vs a desktop. That is no longer the case. Even the laptop RTX4080 is much slower than a desktop RTX4070. I think this is because the power budget on desktop cards has gone through the roof in the last few years, while laptops obviously can't do that. Also there is truly no competition in the laptop GPU market. It's hard find any AMD options at all.