Re: [PLUG] new laptop / MicroCenter

[Adam Schaible via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

Congrats on the new laptop Jeff! 

Since you mentioned ThinkPads and MicroCenter I had to chime in... yes new ones are a bit spendy but refurbished ones are much more affordable. I got a 3 year-old (at the time) Thinkpad X1 Carbon there with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and 8th Gen Intel "Coffee Lake" for $499 last year. Immediately wiped SSD and went right to Fedora 37 (which is their "factory" Linux these days in the Lenovo online store) and it's been running like a dream for months. Yes I know you can get these cheaper online but I like brick & mortar for warranty/returns, and yes I also know this CPU has Spectre/Meltdown mitigations eating up precious clock cycles but this is the last Intel gen for that nonsense so hopefully next year's refurbs will be in the clear there. 

You are right about MicroCenter being Disneyland for geeks... I also picked up some educational toys for the kids in the back by the Raspberry Pis and also a hard copy of our good friend JP Vossen's Bash Cookbook 2nd Edition, in case we ever get back to in-person PLUG meetings one of these years and JP is willing to sign autographs ;-) Also I noticed GPUs are back in stock, crypto miners are too busy dealing with lawyers, loan sharks and the tax man to upgrade so looks like desktop PC gaming is back in style this year ^_^

Lastly, when at MicroCenter always keep an eye out for what I call the "semi disposable fanless" tier of laptops. These $100 pipsqueaks are the spiritual successors to the netbooks that were all the rage 10-15 years ago. Jonathan Simpson did a PLUG talk on the Evolve III Maestro last year, those are long gone but last time I was at MicroCenter they had an entire pallet of the vastly superior Asus equivalent with the newest Intel Jasper Lake (10nm!) Celeron, "ruggedized" chassis, USB-C charging and a whopping 128GB of onboard flash storage. Just like the Maestro it can easily be cracked open for installing a proper M.2 SSD to boot Linux and best of all, this time around Ubuntu supports the wifi right out of the box (no wonky modprobes like on the Maestro). 

Happy computing,
-- 
  Adam Schaible
  plug@schibes.com

On Mon, Mar 20, 2023, at 10:45, jeffv via plug wrote:
> After no end of grief from the Sys76, I made a trip to Micro Center for 
> a new laptop. That place is like Disneyland for geeks. I found GUITAR 
> cords. Looking for a 17" limited my selections, as did non-integrated 
> graphics. The winner was an HP Omen (a 'gaming' laptop).
>
> The power button is cleverly hidden next to the F12 key. Judging by the 
> online questions, I'm not the only one who had trouble finding it. The 
> BIOS is unfindable. Turns out you have to trick Windows into allowing 
> you access (before you enter Windows). What kind of crap is that? 
> Hopefully I won't have to get back in there (which I did to get it to 
> boot from USB). Xubuntu installs usually run under 20min. This was 
> closer to 15.
>
> I completely missed the lack of number pad (no Adderall that day?). It 
> has a few user-defined keys. The install found just about everything, 
> giving me a choice of video drivers (xorg, proprietary, tested). So far 
> the only thing I can't do is control the keyboard backlighting, which 
> modulates through the colors. It's very good backlighting and the colors 
> don't bother me. The only hangup is the lack of number pad (I miss the 
> bottom right Enter key). If I find one, it will have specs that don't 
> match up with this one. There was a 16" Thinkpad but 16 < 17. There 
> exists a 17" Thinkpad, but it's something like $4k.
>
> Looking forward to loading data and getting on with it.
>
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