Be Excellent To Each Other

@Jem hook em up with he model of the beast you have.

That'll be a GazChap v1.0 but they broke the mould unfortunately.

"unfortunately"

My laptop is a Dell XPS 15. Dis one:
https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops ... 60-laptop/

It's pretty awesome.

I may be on the wrong track, but I expect that is a bit higher spec than Warhead is looking for

Tell us what you need it to do Warhead, we'll tell you what to buy!

We've got a pile of them at work. They're pretty nifty, but they weigh a fair bit. Also describing the screen as "virtually borderless" is a flat-out lie.

I need it for school work and homework, obviously.

Macbook air.

They're not borderline virtual.

Now then.

I did think about Apple, considering that my experience of Windows 10 to date (which is not a lot, tbh) has given me the feeling that it’s visual design was created by a 5 year old and it’s underlying objective is to make it do what Microsoft want it do do, not what the lusers want. But in terms of bang-per-buck, I’m not convinced it’s a step I want to take, but I haven’t completely ruled it out.

I wouldn’t be buying one at all, if my ancient Acer wasn’t now so slow that if Mrs. W started cooking Sunday dinner when I boot it up, she’d have finished and got it on the table by the time the desktop settled down.

360s look interesting, but I could be paying for gimmicks I wouldn’t really use. I’ve got an iPad that I use a hellovalot, but I can’t use that to add choons to my iPod, and it’s not as user friendly for editing docs and spreadsheets as the old lappy. As you’ve surmised, I’m not much of a game player, so I don’t a games machine spec ....

Me tea’s ready. I’ll continue l8r.

Yu can stick office on it.

Do you have a restore disc for the Acer?

No. In fact I’m not sure it came with one. I rarely get a chance to use it, as my son has monopolised it since he moved back in. It generates enough heat to warm the house, the battery’s knackered and as I’ve had it since 2011, I think it’s time to treat myself to a new ‘un.

I did look at the MacBook Air as a possible, but also the HP Pavilion x360 and the Dell XPS range. Different prices and specs, obviously, and I’d really like not to pay more than £1k, including MS Office cheap version, but I’ve got a bit of flexibility on the budget.

As to what I’ll use it for; a bit of word processing and spreadsheets, audio recording and editing with Audacity, i.e. I’m gradually recording my old vinyl prog rock library to import to iTunes and on to my iPod. Printing the odd doc (I have an old HP Inkjet that works perfectly well, but I can only print from the Acer, as it’s not wireless, but I could just buy a wireless one, I guess). Also, just the other usual stuff, web surfing, watching Rubbish on Youtube. Nothing very demanding, really, but as the new machine will be used until it’s screwed like the Acer, or I pop me cloggs, I don’t want to go really cheapo.

I've also heard really good things about the Dell XPS 13 and was something I considered before picking the 15 if that helps.

It does, thanks.

XPS 13 is about the best Windows/Ubuntu* laptop for that sort of purpose now. Obviously Macbooks are OK if you want to run OSX.

* it requires some effort and a little brute force.

Oh fuck off giphy

It kinda works, my Air runs windows and osx

Voting is closed and the results have been verified by an independent adjudicator.

And the winner is .......

Booooo!

Do you demand a recount?

Are you saying Boo or Boo-urns?

I’m not going to post a video of me unpacking it (I’m not going to unbox it because THAT’S NOT A WORD AND I AM NOT A FUCKING AMERICAN) but I’m doing it right now. If I don’t spend the rest of the day swearing at it, it will already be ahead of where I’d be with a Windows machine.

Did you buy all the necessary adaptor dongles so you can actually use it?

The Air has normal ports.

Thank goodness. The Pro that one of the Deans got recently had one thunderbolt port in a USB C shape. He was most perplexed

That’s a USB-C port that also supports Thunderbolt then. And it’s not one port, it’s all two or four of them. Why was there confusion?

Three words: Elderly Theology Academic.

Most of these people have only just stopped using overhead projectors in their lectures and now I'm explaing why they need to spend more money to plug their usb sticks in.

I checked all that kind of stuff as part of this project, and that's one of the reasons this is posted in the 'Nay' thread, i.e. I need to check a whole load of things before committing to buying new kit so as not to be surprised/annoyed by what's missing and not having to buy tons of extra adapters, etc. and also to be able to run the few apps that I actually DO use, or acceptable alternatives. Mrs W gets quite frustrated when I buy any new kit as she knows I'll be mulling over the pros and cons for days (sometimes weeks or months) before I actually buy anything. In some cases, I just give up because it's too much messing with my head and/or more than I'm willing to pay.

I was initially slightly alarmed to see that the Macbook didn't have a DVD drive, but neither did the Dell, and I rarely use the one in the Acer, so it's not a big deal really, although I will have to buy an external drive at some stage.

I have no doubt that I'll discover stuff that I didn't know or forgot to investigate, and that there may be minus points. Time will tell.


In the meantime ......... shiny!!!!

I feel your pain. I used to get all kinds of questions from users when I was in IT support (a long time ago, obv) that I'd just think, 'where do I begin to explain this stuff in words that they'll understand, that we can't do what they want?' Like staff arranging a meeting in the office, with an invited guest speaker who brought their own presentation on a stick that the Government Secure Intranet just wouldn't allow to be read by any of our kit. I'd suggest that they emailed it in, but they'd say 'he's just plugged it in to the PC in the conference room, which won't read it, and he hasn't brought his laptop with him so he can't mail it in.' To which the reply was basically, 'You're fucked then. Sorry. Has he got notes on paper?'

About 3 hours and 49 minutes remaining to transfer my data from the Acer to the MacBook. When I kicked it off, it said 19 hours, so that’s an improvement. I can spend the time looking at MacBook tutorials on my iPad.

If you're new to Mac, look into keyboard shortcuts. Can save you a whole lot of clicking.

Ooh, also the touchpad gestures. Makes you feel like a wizard

Oh, I’ve always favoured KB shortcuts. I used to have races with the non-tech IT manager I worked with, to see who could carry out tasks faster in Windows with her using her mouse, and I’d win most of the time. And I bought Mrs. W a Chromebook a couple of years ago, so we've both got used to using gestures and I sometimes find myself trying to use them on my Windows machines, so it should be a doddle on the Mac. She initially demanded a mouse, but soon stopped using it.

File migration is bothering me now. It's been hovering alround 3 hours and 5 mins for ages. Pity it doesn't show files names as they migrate across as I suspect it may have hung. Or it may suddenly say, ‘Migration complete.’

Probably doing one large compressed file.

The FBI have found something especially interesting to read, it's being passed around the office before they move onto the next file.

It was moving music files, which are obviously bigger, and the boy has just stopped using Netflix on his Firestick, so it’s chugging a bit faster now and has moved on to photos. Dropped to 1:37 now. How exciting.

The disc drive on my PS4 Pro has just fucking packed in! It made a weird noise as I was sliding a film disc into it so I pulled the disc back out and it's now totally unresponsive. Fuck sake.

Must still be under warranty, right?

Not sure, I bought it January 2017? There's a Sony support site for warranty stuff which I'll need to plug the serial number into when I'm back at home this evening.

There is a secret screw you can use to eject stuck discs which I might try fiddling with in case that 'resets' the mechanism somehow but I don't have a Phillips head screwdriver slim enough to get into it so I'll need to try and pick one of those up at lunchtime.

I really wish people wouldn't put slot-loading drives into consumer electronics because I just don't trust them, and this incident hasn't helped.

Sony warranty is normally only 1 year mate

Would the EU 2 years for electric goods thing work?

Good thinking; may be worth pursuing that if your PS4 isn't working.

E: From my quick googling I believe the sale of good act trumps the EU directive which gives you the warranty, I'll have a read through the act and let you know what it says.

E2: You still have rights under the Consumer Rights Act or Sale of Goods Act, even if your manufacturer's warranty or guarantee has expired, and retailers can't ignore this; contact the people you bought it off and explain the fault they may repair or replace for free?

I bought it from a physical store and, somewhat stupidly, didn't keep the receipt so I'm probably fucked here.

It wasn't by some amazing stretch of luck Argos was it?

Yeah depending where you purchased it from stores keep receipts (they have to by law) for this sort of thing they may be able to dig it out?

Lawyer note: Sale of Goods Act only applies to goods purchased before 2015. TSOGA was effectively replaced by the Consumer Rights Act 2015 for all goods purchased after 2015.

Nah, it was Game I believe. I'm still holding out hope the new screwdriver I bought will help with it but, if not, I'll probably just take it to the local repair shop for a quote.

So many bloody acts and laws. Noted for future reference then.

You'll probably need to know the exact date and time. This is what Sainsbury's told me when I needed a reprint anyway.

Surely a bank statement would provide this information? And possibly count as a proof of purchase.

But until the warranty situation is clarified, it's all academic.