Did I Make A Good Choice With This New LAPTOP Purchase?

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Partitioned drives on gaming computers

<span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">This had me a little curious so I asked one of my guys who is really into gaming.  A couple of things he told me:</span>

<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">He has an ASUS computer that is considered a gaming computer and is very happy with it and this is a guy that buys a computer, keeps it for a few days and then if he doesn't like the slightest thing he sends them back.  I have seen a few Dell desktop computers come and go pretty quickly.  He suspects you'll be happy with that laptop.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">About the partitioned drive - he said it's very common for gamers to want to keep all of the normal windows programs separate from all of their gaming stuff which is likely why the two partitions on the drive.  He said if you're not going to be gaming or if you prefer everything on one there is no reason why you couldn't redo the drive in one partition.  However, if you're not that familiar with the process, it's like more trouble that in it's worth for you.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">He suspects your computer may even have another bay for a second drive if you find you need one.  He'd have to see the specs on it to be sure but he says many of the laptops configured for "gaming" typical have the second bay.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana, geneva;">Sounds like you made a good purchase and got a good price on it.</span>
 
Thanks!

Yes, I've been messing around with a few things. For example. Asus has a touchpad program called smart gesture. I opened that program and unchecked EVERYTHING. Now the touchpad is much more precise than it was, and with the touchfreeze program, it keeps the touchpad from going crazy while I type. Another thing I notice is this laptop stays really cool, and I keep it plugged in all the time because I usually use it on one place, and the charger says "plugged in, not charging" so I guess it understands that keeping it plugged in constantly can cause battery issues, so it keeps this from happening? That's my guess.

I did a malwarebytes scan on this computer, it took 5 min's. On my old laptop, it took 45 minutes. I did a windows defender full scan, that took 52 min's. On my old laptop, it took over 90 min's. Keep in mind, I moved everything on my old laptop to this laptop, so it has pretty much the same amount of storage so far.

Multitasking doesn't seem to be an issue. I tested by ripping a dvd to my drive, converting in to an mp4 using handbrake, which is very CPU intensive. While it was converting, I opened a browser and did a bunch of stuff, which I could not DREAM of doing on my old laptop. If I was converting something, it took all that laptops power and then some. You couldn't really do ANYTHING. But everything flowed smoothly while it was converting. I didn't even notice it.

It has a back lit keyboard which is cool.

One small problem I ran into was the volume icon in the task bar. When you mouse over it and left click, it brings up a small window showing the volume slider. It went into sleep mode and when you moused over the volume, the slider didn't appear, no matter what you did, until I rebooted. It hasn't happened since, but I suspect it has something to do with going into sleep. I forgot to disable that in the power plan so I did that...

One thing is kind of weird though. The boot up time on this laptop is a little longer (not much) than my older laptop that has 8.1. I would think it would be much faster, but it's not. But once it's booted up, everything is blazing fast.

but yea, so far this is the best laptop I have EVER had. I haven't ran into anything I don't like about it (once I changed the settings in some things that were annoying me)
 
I was also in IT before Windows arrived, although I fortunately missed the eight inch floppy era.

 

My rule of thumb for home computers has been: don't be on the bleeding edge. You'll pay significantly more for the latest and greatest processor and OS, whereas if you wait a year of so, the price will come down dramatically. Although that does seem to be changing... got a nice Dell i7 6th gen XPS 8900 a couple months ago for work, and the price was, for a high power desktop, reasonable ($800). 16 GB of ram and a 4 GB Nvidia/GEForce graphics card. Windows 10, unfortunately but that's hard to escape these days. It's not too bad if you turn off all the ads and stuff. And it does stuff that the existing Celeron XP desktop still at work fails to do... and not just 64 bit high end software. Even email attachments and web browsing go better with the XPS8900.

 

Personally I'd avoid computers with Celeron processors. These have the math unit disabled; they are sort of brain dead Pentiums. Not good for advanced calculations/software. Probably one of the reasons why the work desktop unit tends to suck at certain things... it was there when I got there....

 

 
 
Yea

celerons are OK for people who just want to web surf, and you can do video editing, but it's just so much slower, so in the past, I always used my Lenovo desktop for that. I think the processor in that is an AMD A-10 with 8 gigs memory. It's a great desktop for me, but I like using a laptop better.

I found this REALLY cool tool online called SD Anti Beacon. It's free and it disables any privacy issues in windows 10 (which this new laptop has) including telemetry. Did you know that windows 10 can use your bandwidth to send windows updates you have already downloaded to other people on the internet! You can turn it off though. It's in PC settings. Go there and choose "update & security/windows update/advanced options/choose how updates are delivered/and turn that setting to off!

I chose express settings when I loaded everything up on this laptop and I spent a while going through and disabling a lot of the things that default to ON like Microsoft logging keystrokes, cortana. It wasn't until after I spent all that time that I found this utility that does it all for you. I like it because it's reversible, you simply hit immunize and it fixes the privacy issues, but if you need to undo anything, you can easily reverse it to off.
 
Option to Share Updates

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">That was actually introduced with Windows 8 and you're right, it's something you want to turn off ASAP.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">I wanted to comment on what Rich said about being an early adopter.  I am also one who waits and does not jump on the bandwagon the second something is introduced.  If one wants to do that it's OK but there really is a cost to it.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">My sister bought a Surface Pro 3 i7 processor, 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD.  Basically top of the line at the time and she paid about $2,100 for it.  I bought an identical one when the Surface Pro 4 was released and paid about $800 for it.  So if you can wait a little bit you can save some $$.  It's perfect for my personal computing needs.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;">Of course for work that's a different story.  Part of what we do is try to stay ahead of the curve so we're prepared when the calls come in.  I have a Surface Book coming fully loaded and I can't wait to get my hands on that.  Let work pay for it, right??</span>
 
Ya

I'm sure this laptop would have been well on 1000 dollars with these specs first were introduced.

Another thing - this has touch screen, but I don't use the touch screen. But the display is awesome

I had NO idea windows 8 and 8.1 also sent other people on the internet your updates.
 
Sudsmaster, backlit keyboard is a great feature. The keys are still identifiable after a few months. With my wife and her nails it only takes a couple of months and the keys are blank. With backlit there is nothing to chip off. Believe me we have many keyboards and laptops with no e,i,l,s etc. lol

Jon
 
I can touch type

VERY fast. I go to typeracer.com and play type races all the time. My best is 154 wpm, but that was short EASY quote. Usually I can do 90 to 120 wpm pretty easily, depending on how complex the quote is. Even as fast as I can type, some people on there are much faster than me. But this backlit keyboard is still cool! Even though I can touch type, I don't have the keys I don't use often memorized, like the function keys or all those other keys like print screen, windows key, etc.
 
gosh,

I just clicked the original link to the computer I bought, and the price went down to 699 and it is OUT OF STOCK! UGH! Oh well, I still feel like I got it for a good price at 799. But it would have been nice to catch it at 699!
 
I will third (or forth) the positive sentiments of the backlit keyboard. I can touch type as well, but on a laptop there are scads of other infrequently used keys (and 2nd level functions) that I never would remember. The backlight is amazingly useful in low light. I'd never buy another laptop without it.
 
 

 

It looks nice enough.

At least it's not running Windows 8.

 

I bought a computer from Newegg, about a year ago with that.  Plugged it in, after 15 minutes decided it was going back.  It also did not have a removable battery which I thought was standard fair, never thought anything of it.

 

It went out the door as fast as it came in.

 

I was-

 

delaneymeegan++3-15-2016-23-09-38.jpg.png
 
Speaking of wearing keys out

where you use them so much that the letter on the key completely or mostly disappears. The letter C on past keyboards has done this mostly for me.

I've never had a backlit keyboard until now, so I have never thought much about them. I'm guessing the actual letter is etched underneath the keys themselves so the light can penetrate from underneath showing the letter, essentially meaning they can't ever wear out? or a least fade away?

Frankly, this is NOT one of the things I even noticed in the stats of this laptop until I got it. I was more concerned with processor, screen size, ram, sound, etc - but I'm so glad I ended up getting a backlit keyboard without even realizing I was getting one. LOL
 
I've been in IT for 11 years if you count a year at the Geek Squad. Anyway, I've run through Dell, HP, Lenovo, and whitebox at work, and Dell, Lenovo, Micron, Asus, and whitebox/self built at home. Gaming on the PC is kind of overrated IMHO - most games are console / mobile now, with ports or limited Steam releases on PC. Many Steam games are indies and so cross platform. Anyway, unless you're looking for a bit of a spendy hobby, game on consoles.

Gaming laptops are IMHO an oxymoron - you want opposite things for gaming and a laptop. And towers will pretty much always kill a laptop at any pricepoint. Plus you can really specifically specify parts in a custom build tower.

Anyway, ASUS is pretty middle of the road. My experiance is they're cheap priced in the laptop area, and the build quality matches that. However, if you're replacing them every 1.5 years or less for gaming purposes, you don't care much that they tend to die by 3 years.

Of the major vendors, I cannot recommend going business line enough. If you've always wondered why there are no PCs that are built as well as Apples's - the reason is you're not looking at similarly priced hardware in a segment that actually values build quality. I'd stack up a Thinkpad P50 against a Macbook most any day, and a Thinkstation P500 against a Mac Pro. After the Think branded Lenovos - which are about as good as you can get IMHO, there are the Dell Precision towers or Lattitude notebooks. And then there's everything else. It's not a small difference though, on a 10 point scale, I might rate Thinkpads and MacBooks a 9, the Dell Precisions are around a 6 and then everything else is... a short term purchase that I hope works when I get it.

One of the main reasons I'm moving gaming off to consoles is I have a real problem with how Microsoft is treating users with Windows 10, and I don't especially like the Apple ecosystem. That said, Apple is currently more respectful of its customers - and boy is that a change from just a couple years ago back to forever. The bar is that low. I like to own and control my computer, but it seems most commercial companies want to make our computers ever more like our mobile phones.

Gaming is now mostly GPU limited from my understanding - so really any reasonable CPU is fine. Of course it's nice to have a Xeon in a workstation though. RAM and mass storage are going to count for more in day to day use - if you can afford a M.2 SSD main drive, they are far and away the fastest mass storage you can get. I've tested out P500s with an M.2 at 2x a standard SATA SSD, which was 4x a 7200RPM SATA spinning disk. It easily approaches SAN device speeds - around 900 MB/sec for medium data transfers. Testing Xilinx on an M.2 vs a RAM Disk - the RAM Disk was only 30% faster than the M.2, which is pretty amazing.
 
@ JP

Thanks for all of that info. If it lasts 3 years, I'll be happy. So far the ONLY problem I'm running into is recording sound!

I will explain: I've always used Audacity for sound recording and hypercam 2 for screen recording with sound. Both I set to use stereo mix. But the recordings on this laptop using stereo mix sound very tinny! Almost as if someone plugged their mic in and held the mic up to speakers playing sound, instead of sound recorded directly from speakers. It's a very hollow sound.

I've done a lot of googling and discovered a few things, but my expertise is limited where this is concerned.

This laptop comes with realtek HD audio manager. I've tried disabling any enhancements, turning mic completely off, etc. I posted this in the audacity forum and they told me to change the recording settings to use windows WASAPI and loopback, which helped for recording sound with audacity, but the hypercam screen recording, which also uses stereo mix, sounds hollow and awful..

ON some google searching, someone on another forum posted a similar problem. They said when they plugged in their headset and mic, and then recorded audio from speakers while the headset and mic was plugged in, it sounded like a great full recording...but if they try to record just listening while it's recording without mic,headset plugged in, it went back to that hollow total lack of bass sound. Someone also said they uninstalled the realtek drivers and are just using windows drivers and that solved their problem. But I have no idea as I don't usually mess with drivers. I know you can uninstall drivers from the device manager and windows will re download the driver...that's the only thing I've ever done.

Since you are in IT ..Do you have any ideas? Thanks
 
It does sound driver related. Realtek isn't really high end sound. I might go out on a limb and get a USB sound card and try using that - get a better one... I always used to use Creative Sound Blaster, looking on Amazon, they're still used by audiophiles:
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Perf...id=1458391268&sr=8-13&keywords=usb+sound+card

for instance. Or maybe:
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Blas...id=1458391268&sr=8-10&keywords=usb+sound+card

Then again, your problem might just be the physical interference from the traces - I'm not an audio engineer, but I have followed some open hardware like the Open Pandora where I've seen people discuss this, and you might just try grabbing ANY USB sound adapter, like one of the $5 ones on Amazon to see if it's just a bad physical placement of the on board stuff.
 
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@ JP

Thanks. Aside from this, this laptop is super cool. It is just so strange to me that all other computers in the past have been able to record audio through stereo mix that sounded perfect, almost exactly the same as the audio coming out of the speakers and I never messed with drivers....yet this one, it's FUNKY.

Out of curiosity, I called ASUS and they were absolutely of NO help at all. I think they must do India call centers but the people I spoke to spoke English really well, but as I suspected before I called, none of them wanted to be bothered. I hate to by cynical but I wasn't surprised at all. He told me to uninstall and reinstall the programs that I use to record audio. Brilliant!

So I decided to post on the ASUS forum, and I posted under audio cards, and there was a required dropdown (see pic) to choose your audio card model name. There was like a list of 30, and NONE of them said realtek, so I did not know which one to choose, so I called ASUS back and he said he could NOT give me that information?? I asked him what was so freaking secretive about it? He said we're just not allowed to give out that info........MMMMKKKKK?

So for now I will just deal with it, because I have a bluetooth speaker paired to my laptop that I can record from that and it seems to sound fine.

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