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About LinkBacksRead more.The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon features up to an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U, optional MX450 GPU.
Read more.The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon features up to an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U, optional MX450 GPU.
£1200 is a price I'd pay for a laptop lasting 7-10 years. I've done this twice now. But the big question for a long term purchase is that OLED screen. It's a selling point but I need to know burn in has been resolved and is warrantied if it does happpen.
LPDDR4X means soldered RAM, so by they time the screen gets totally burnt-in the machine probably has no little RAM to run anything!
That's exactly my issue. Or rathdr, almost exactly. It's more than the screen for me. I've been looking at an Asus G15 (32GB, 3080 version) but .... I am looking for a system to last like 7-10 years and at more like £2500, there's a LOT in such a laptop that can die and render it either junk, or expremely expensive to repair. The G15 isn't quite as bad as a Razor Blade in that regard. but even with the G15, a lot is baked in. It makes me very nervous. Every time I make the decision to buy, I immediately think "Yeah, but what if ...". I don't need a laptop. It'd be mainly about convenience, and availability, especially of 30xx GPU (*) bits.Originally Posted by philehidiot
(*) Yes, I know many (or virtually all) laptop 30xx GPUs are power-limited and not offering the same graphical grunt as desktop variants. The G15 3080 has a max of about 100w draw, which is way under a full-blooded desktop 3080. Less than half, IIRC.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
In 7 - 10 years EVERYTHING in this laptop will be next to useless. For $1200 it isn't a bad buy, if you don't want to play AAA games. Always remember...the next new, must-have tech, is only ever 6 months away. That way there can never be buyers remorse. Get what you can TODAY.
Depends on the buyer's circumstances, and wants/needs. For me, nothing that will happen in the next 6 months, or for that matter 36 months, is "must have". It might be "want", or even "badly want" but not "need". Any PC that does what I want today will do what I actually need in several years time. Also, not having to go through the faff of buying again several times in the next decade is pretty high on my priority list.
To me, a PC is a tool to do a job. Anything that'll do9 today's job will do mit acceptably for several years, at least. Gaming? Yup, if the PC will do it I will do some but it isn't what I buy a PC to do. Hence the above position.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
Pleiades (09-09-2021)
What you do or not do is immaterial to me. I was posting a reply to Philehidiot.
Yes ... and making sweeping statements about everything in that type of laptop being "next to useless" in 7 to 10 years, despite him pointing out he's done it twice already. So have I. Whether what I do is immaterial to you is immaterial to me. My post was a response in a forum thread, not to a private message. That's what forums are for.
You apparently think a 7-10 year old laptop is next to useless. Maybe it is to you, but not to me and judging by him having done it twice, not to him. Hence my point - it depends on what the owner expects of it and in his case, that depends on the longevity of a somewhat unknown quantity, the screen. If buying for a 2 or 3 year period then changing, it's much less of an issue. If intending it to last 7 to 10 years, it's a negative not a positive if it doesn't last, and probably a killer negative for that model.
Buying what's available today is fine for a quick turnover user, but a more cautious considered approach to an unknown factor makes more sense for a long-term bet, i.e. to take a chance on that screen, or not. Buy right, not quickly ... unless there's a need to buy right now.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
Fight, fight, fight!
Hopefully the cooling on the REALLY light machine is up to scratch.
Well I shall respond.
I have owned two laptops in this price range. One lasted around 5 years, was shelved for a year and brought back into service for another couple before it died from heat related issues. The second one is still in use. It's a 2011 Macbook Air and it's declared obsolete by Apple. I use it nearly daily and it still does *everything* it did when I bought it aside from connect to Apple services properly... which it never did because I don't want them.
There is one component next to useless and that is the left shift key, which I rarely try to use.
For anything where I think there's a security risk, I boot from a live USB. Interestingly, this is something that modern Macs are "next to useless" at doing.
Depending on your use case and how you select your components to fit the longevity requirements, a laptop can absolutely still be perfectly usable in another few years.
As for gaming use - well that depends on your demands, doesn't it? Personally, I tried and didn't like laptop gaming. But I also found that for a lot of the games I've played, graphics aren't the main issue. One of the games I've played repeatedly over many years is Freelancer, which never had huge graphical requirements and is gameplay focussed. But it woudn't run acceptably on IGP of the time. Same for many RTS games and so on.
There are also other things I use a GPU for, such as cryptography / GPGPU. Anything that uses this in a laptop package isn't looking for extreme, top of the range, performance because the thermal envelope won't allow it. As a result, you're looking to exponentially improve over CPU only performance to enable some local, on the fly compute to occur in a reasonable timeframe, not get the fastest thing you possibly can. This is especially true with cloud services which may make it quicker / cheaper to upload your dataset and crunch it there (you can get a relatively potent AWS instance on their free tier) if it's going to take a significant time to chooch.
So yes, if I want to play AAA games it'll be next to useless for that purpose. But I never said I did wnt to use it for that and PCs have many purposes for different people. As for getting what I can "TODAY" - why? What's the hurry? Why should I spend a load of money on something that I don't expect to last as long as possible? Who in their right mind would go "well I could have a computer that lasts 5 or 6 years with a little consideration and thought, but I'd rather buy NOW NOW NOW and it'll last maybe 2 or 3"?
The next generation of "must have" tech is only an issue if you refuse to be objective. It's a consideration as there may be a significant generational leap that you need (such as an OLED screen that lasts more than 2 years without burn) but that's something that has always been the case and will never cease to be so. It certainly isn't an argument to impulse buy without regard for value for money, longevity (the two are interdependent) because you must have what you can get TODAY!
Buyer's remorse is your brain's way of teaching you that you made a really stupid decision to part with a large amount of resource for something not worthy of the investment. Trying to invalidate it on the grounds "there's always going to be something better within 6 months" prevents you from learning from poor decisions.
I would also second that if you post anything on a public forum, you're inviting replies from anyone with an interest in the topic. If you do not want replies from anyone but your target person, use private messages.
These things obsess on the thickness of the laptop, but honestly whilst nice I'm more interested in how wide/deep the thing is for ease of carrying it around. Any 15.6" laptop is way too big for me, my most used laptop ever was the HP Dm1 with an 11.6" 1366x768 screen. Helped a lot that the ram and storage could be upgraded, but the thing is just so portable.
My first gaming laptop was a desktop replacement with a desktop P4 in it... it was heavy. It's in the garage as I've removed and destroyed the HDDs (finally) but I can't bring myself to bin all that copper...
7-10 years is pushing it in my opinion. Definitely still usable but there'd be real benefits to upgrading like faster wifi, storage, RAM and single-threaded performance to make even basic web browsing snappier. Intel Sandybridge and Ivybridge also had iGPUs that might not be able to drive 4K+ resolutions at 60Hz.
Heck after 7-10 years even your LCD backlight will be getting dimmer and producing weird colours so they're not immune to time.
Pleiades (09-09-2021)
I'm still using a 7 year old £317 laptop... But that's more because I'm poor. The crazy thing is its still pretty powerful for light use - certainly better than a new £200 celeron laptop!
Still I'm finally thinking about replacing it as no hope it'll run Windows 11! (I also want to drop screen size from 15.6 to something more portable like this or smaller)
Indeed, it's the same with my i5 based laptop. Yes, if I replaced it with another grand worth of laptop after a few years I'd see a definite benefit but there are a few things people don't consider:
1) I would NOT spend that amount of money every 5 years on a laptop. I budget for things in price per year owned and, as a result, I'd likely replace it with a far cheaper laptop which would be a lateral move or markedly worse.
2) Things might be more responsive and a little faster. But I don't use a laptop in situations where snappiness and workflow are critical. A laptop is a stopgap for doing occasional things on holiday, typing the occasional email in front of the telly and watching pr0... Netflix whilst away or cooking.
3) There are always benefits to upgrading. There's always faster wifi (I don't saturate the current bandwidth), more RAM (4GB is getting potentially limiting but again, I do not exceed 4GB RAM use on that machine the way I use it), more storage (It has 128GB SSD which is small but still fine for the use case. I do not keep anything important on a machine that gets tossed around and used in the kitchen next to the hob - all documents are transferred off to main PC using a USB drive or email). Basic web browsing is snappy enough and the laptop interface does not allow me to work faster than the thing can process.
4) Why would I care about driving 4K@60Hz? It's a laptop with barely more than 720P. It has a DVI out through the thunderbolt port but I don't use it.
5) The screen has always been poor. It's a meh TN panel and so colour accuracy has never been a concern. If it was I'd never have bought that machine.
There's this obsession with faster this and better that. But no one asks what real world difference it'll make to someone's use case. A faster SSD would be nice because.... uhh..... dunno. Faster wifi would be good only for streaming 4K which it can not do and therefore has no reason to ever try.
I do hammer the poor thing when I'm running a couple of VMs on it but that's beyond what it was ever designed to do and an unfair assessment.
The real issues which nobody picked up on are:
1) I'm using a charger I made myself as decent ones aren't available (took the last 3rd party one apart to find a horror show inside and never plugged it in ever again).
2) The battery is a pig to replace and third party ones are expensive or dodgy. Still lasts a good couple of hours streaming video or >4 hours otherwise.
3) Apple's software is gradually breaking more and more. I now get repeated errors on boot and eventually I'm going to have to put Linux on it (I'm avoiding it as it's satisfying knowing they've declared it obselete and it's appearing on their telemetry as some bloody-minded sod making a point).
4) Potential for SSD failure due to wear - it was never designed to last this long (mitigated by taking off important stuff as it's created).
5) Software now refusing to update or work properly due to old OSX version.
6) It's a Mac, don't you know that they're supposed to break and require replacement every 18-36 months?
7) The rubber pads are wearing down.
My newest laptop is nearly 6 years old now. I bought it secondhand as an ex-business lease laptop(AFAIK). It will only get replaced when its broken or too slow to do basic tasks. It also has non-soldered RAM,an upgradeable disk,etc and is semi-ruggedised,so it has some degree of repairability. It still runs perfectly fine,and is much better built than many sub £700 laptops IMHO. I already have a decentish desktop,so I will hopefully get hold of a Zen2/Zen3 based equivalent in a few years time,when they are not too expensive secondhand.
Most people I know who own laptops are not changing them out every few years either.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 09-09-2021 at 04:44 PM.
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