serpro69

Just ordered G15 ( RTX 3060, Ryzen 7 6800HS, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD ) for my lady. Is there anything that is a "must do" for Asus laptops before you start settings things up? E.g., on Dell I usually take a backup image of all partitions that come from factory before doing anything else; and then I do a full wipe and a clean dual-boot installation of Win10/Linux. Should I take backups of factory partitions on Asus as well? Or can I just do a wipe right off the bat? Anything else that's a absolute "must do"?

Thanks @Tenoroon ! I've just ordered a G15 (2022 version with 6800HS) a couple hours ago and expecting delivery later today. Pretty excided about it actually :) I've read a bit about it, and most of the feedback looks pretty OK. The single RAM slot is indeed very annoying, I don't get why they wouldn't just make them both replaceable. But better one than none I guess. But overall I think having a total of 40 GB will be more than enough, once I replace the 8GB stick with 32 GB. I've tried to just get a Dell XPS15 at first since I just know what to expect with it and because it has 2 RAM slots. Even made an order on Amazon for it yesterday. But then they decided that the purchase was suspicious, canceled the order and blocked my account lol. By the time they unblocked me, the deal on the XPS was gone, so I just went back on the original plan and ordered an Asus instead , but a G15 instead of the G14 as initially planned :)

OK, first off I'm not filling out a template because for now the question isn't about "What laptop to buy", but rather "Is this a good laptop to replace the old one". So, I'm looking for a new laptop for my lady, and she currently uses Dell XPS 15 9550 (i7, 16 RAM , 512 storage, 4k display). She's been asking for a lighter replacement, and it's black deals now, so seems like a good time to look for something. (Unfortunately I don't find many good options on discounts here in Norway... and this year's black deals don't look very enticing overall) Main requirement is it shouldn't be bigger/heavier than current one. And of course having something snappier is also natural in line with "upgrading". Her studies/work are related to statistics/data science (using R mostly), so having something that will compile code faster than the current one is good. I've found a deal (-28% off) on Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (GA401QE-HZ055T) , and it seems like a nice machine overall. - CPU is definitely an upgrade - RAM is faster, but same capacity with only 1 slot being being upgradable ( ? ) and the other is soldered, from what I can see. So max mem can go up to 24 ? (16 + 8 soldered? ) Or does it support 32 GB in the non-soldered slot? - same storage (can it be upgraded ?) - better GPU (esp. since it's positioned as a gaming laptop), but this doesn't really matter much. She doesn't play games, and for code compilation this doesn't matter much. - weighs a bit less, which is also a benefit for her Are there any downsides to considering this laptop? I've also never owned Asus. How is their support? What is their software updates lifetime? All in all, is this worth it as an upgrade (with usage time horizon of 3-4 years at least) or should I keep looking for something else? Edit: I'm also now looking at Razer Blade Base 15 (2022) (Core i7 16GB 512GB SSD 144Hz 15.6" RTX 3060). Some specs definitely look better: - both RAM slots are upgradable, for instance - cpu is slightly faster - has a webcam (not a big deal, but still nice to have) But - worse battery life (?) - slightly heavier (although almost same as XPS 15 9550, so shouldn't be a deal-breaker) - and more importantly it's ~30% more expensive ( $1.25k for G14 vs $1.8k for Blade Base 15). So the question here I suppose is whether the price difference really worth it vs the cheaper G14 model. Edit2: I've read a bit about Razer laptops, and have come to a conclusion it's best to stay away from them. Swollen batteries, defective screens, horrible support... thanks, but no thanks. Can't really find any other good options for around 1.5k here where I live. Darn it, why can't there be just good affordable laptops that you don't need to compromise with... Anyways, I'm now also considering getting a newer model of XPS 15 (9510). More expensive than Asus but at least I know what to expect from it.

Wow, that's really amazing website. I can see why @Eban would like as well :D Thanks for sharing @Ishayin !

He seems to have forgotten about the fake accounts altogether lol. He's even bragging (?) about the poll getting 1m votes / hour, hah. Very true about about individuals (or even a company) having the power to block accounts on such platforms. I think any such platform should somehow be regulated by external parties (FCC , FTC, or some other authority ? ), especially when it comes to bans and maybe even content moderation. I also don't see decentralized blockchain-based something-something as solution; and besides blockchain has its own issues. There's already Mastodon, for example, which is more or less a "decentralized twitter". I don't really see it being a solution to the problem though. The difference is, instead of "twitter banning Trump", you have an admin of one mastodon instance blocking another instance/user. Doesn't really help, and in some cases makes things worse, because it only affects users of the first instance that did the blocking. So if say, anyone wants to still follow Trump - they will still be able to do so; and those who don't, well why would they be following him in the first place? Has it ever been possible to tell if his tweets are serious or not... and to think so many people blindly accept everything he tweets for truth... THIS! I can see how it might very easy become a challenge for him to find good people who would want to work for him, even if he stops demanding "only hardcore". I've actually put a lot of overtime hours around 2017-2019 myself. But not because someone was making me do so (they actually have very strict laws about this stuff here). Rather because I had the time, didn't have anything better to do, and really believed that I could bring extra value with my spare time that I would have most likely wasted otherwise. But if I were to work for a person like Musk, who demands insane working conditions without giving anything back, and treats everyone as sh*t on top of that. I'm pretty sure overtime work is not going to help bring a lot of extra value anyways.

Wow. Not surprising, but still unbelievably insane. Unfortunately it's very true that a lot of people are easily manipulated by social media. On a more "positive" (just being sarcastic of course, I don't really care one way or the other) note, it seems that Musk has started a Twitter poll on whether to reinstate Trump.

Big-tech cuts were pretty predictable, weren't they? They rode on a lot of free money and extremely high demand during pandemic, had to basically over-hire to support that demand. Now demand is dwindling, with inflation being high and all, so they're looking to cut costs. I think I read somewhere that half (or more?) of these BigTech-cuts are also operational (marketing, customer support, etc). And software engineers are still in high demand it would seem (which isn't really surprising). Also, it looks like these cuts haven't seriously affected the US job market overall (link one, and another one). I also read sometime ago about how a lot of startups were able to hire a bunch of software engineers that they would otherwise have a very hard time getting. IMO, as @Aaron44126 says, it's within the normal flow of business for the most part, considering current state of things. The problem is, in tech you often loose your best people during mass-layoffs, so good luck to "FAANGs and friends" getting those people back when they're going to need them again a year or two from now.

Yeah, Truth Social is a mess. Maybe Musk should take it over as well. Although, looks like he's now more of a "how to make a small fortune out of a big one" kind of guy, than the other way around.

Didn't Trump say he's not coming back even if he got his account reinstated?

Wasn't he bringing in software engineers from Tesla to review Twitter code at some point? And after that why would anyone be worried he spends too much time on Twitter? ( https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musks-all-nighters-twitter-raise-concern-tesla-investors-2022-11-15/ ). "Go play with your new toy and let people at Tesla do their job" Who would ever want to work in an environment like this?

Never really held Musk in high regard, but this is some new level. Oh, what the hell, I don't have Twitter, so I don't care if it goes down tomorrow or not. The employees who are on work visas are in a bad situation definitely, which is quite unfortunate, the rest of them will be fine I think. I wouldn't be surprised that he already realized he has screwed up some time ago, and now intentionally tries to bring it down because there's no way out. It's hard to come up with any sensible explanation at the decisions being made these days...

Imagine the world we'd live in if everyone behaved like this. Nothing but respect bro. I think I saw this thread when it was just made, but decided to pass it since import taxes here make me cry. Better leave it for someone else who can actually benefit from such sweet offer. Congrats @1610ftw! Will be looking forward to the thread with your new build :)

That would be my thought as well. But I've read a number of posts where people say "ignore them unless something else critical shows abnormal", especially on Seagate drives. The reason I'm asking is I'm considering buying some used drives to use for backups, but these error counts are kind of making we wary. EDIT: here are some interesting reads for anyone interested in this topic: - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-smart-stats/ - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-smart-stats-indicate-hard-drive-failures/ - https://www.backblaze.com/blog-smart-stats-2014-8.html#S1N EDIT 2: here several members of /r/datahoarder suggest that read/seek error counts don't mean much generally: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/61pmsb/just_got_a_seagate_ironwolf_are_these_smart/

Wanted to ask if someone can help me understand how to read these reports. It says "good health" on all of them, but still would like to understand if there are any potential issues with these drives, and what to look for in these reports overall. Particularly, 'read error rate', 'spin up time', 'seek error rate' . Do they look OK? Some say to only look at '* Sector Count' items (05, C5, C6 ? ), others mention the above three as "critical" attributes as well. I'm confused whom to believe and whether any of these reports should raise some red flags for me.

Lenovo presence here isn't as big as that of Precision, at least so far, but you're in good hands nevertheless. Welcome to the forums!

Ok, this doesn't answer your query, but maybe worth considering something like this? I haven't really researched into the whole "lightest laptop with a numpad", but I would assume that a "dedicated numpad" requirement would limit your options, whereas a separate usb numpad won't add any noticeable weight while carrying it around. The only way I could see this not being a very good option is if you're working on the lap most of the time. But good luck with your search anyways.

There's already a thread for it here on NBT:

Yeah, "one step forward, five back" seems to be the trend... Not like anyone would need a well performing laptop, that's just boring. So we have to continue playing "find the best out of worst" game, which is really annoying if you can't do without a laptop.

Watched Edgerunners - quite good (haven't played the game though, so...) And now finishing season 1 of The legend of Vox Machina , which turned out to also be very nice series - fantasy, humor, just great stuff all over the place.

18"... huh? It looks like at least someone listened

True that. Speaking of tapes, they're still very much actively used and cloud providers offer "tape-based storage" solutions for "cold storage", which costs pennies compared to other cloud storage options. Exactly. I think the "keeping the data at a relative's" is one of the most popular options (for individuals) for the off-site backup storage. That is, if your relatives live nearby :) If you need to fly to another country - things get a bit more complicated, heh. But still, offsite backups for me personally contain data that I never want to loose, and whatever the circumstances I probably won't ever need it immediately. Not having an OS backup is painful, but manageable, so I'll probably never bother storing a backup of this kind of data off-site.

The rule actually states that 1 copy has to be off-site, not that it (the copy) should be in the cloud. Generally I can't say I'm too fond of cloud backups, there are more disadvantages than benefits to it IMO. You are essentially dependent on the cloud provider, internet connection, etc etc. And your data is in someone else's hands, albeit encrypted, so that means you do not own your own data. Plus the cost of cloud storage is higher than a physical drive.

Thanks, that makes sense, mine is 5000. Tried to get a service tag from him, but he's kind of reluctant to give it. I guess I'll have to check the warranty when I go to see the laptop. It does sound weird that he says it's ended.

AFAIK they sell them with a minimum warranty of 1 year here where I live. My current work laptop that I got 3+ years ago had only 1 year of warranty initially.

You mean that even if the original warranty has ended, it's possible to renew it for another 18 months for additional cost? The seller is saying that the original warranty is gone now.