Laptop Misconceptions

I am by no means a computer expert. Sure I can build my own desktop (and have) but when it comes down to testing the differences between hardware and how much better/worse something is, I leave that to others. I am, however, a realist, and as such I try to be reasonable and not jump on any bandwagons. Having said all this...

Misconception #1: laptops suck for gaming as compared to a desktop. This is entirely false. The technology is there that can push a laptop to do an EXCELLENT job of gaming with superb graphics, great audio, not overheating, and a high quality screen to view it all on. My best friend has the Asus G73SW and playing Crysis 2 on it for hours is simply beautiful, and have yet to have a problem. At the end of the day, he sticks it in his backpack and takes it wherever he needs to go. Try that with a desktop.

Misconception #2: buy the biggest, best and most expensive upgrades you can afford so that you make your laptop "future proof." Technology is constantly changing and getting better. Components are getting smaller, running faster, cooler and have a longer life than previous generations. This also means that NOTHING is future proof. Some people will go all out and drop $3-4k on a laptop, "future proofing" it with over-the-top components that are really far beyond what they need. Two years down the road their "future proof" laptop is middle of the road and you can buy something better from a major retailer for LESS.

Misconception #3: brand X sucks, don't buy from them! I see this all the time and for every horror story about brand X, I see another story where someone loves the exact same computer and has had no problems with it. Do lemons exist? Absolutely! I am also firmly convinced that some of the people who hate brand X never actually owned brand X and are just repeating what they heard elsewhere. You also have to take into account how INDIVIDUALS use and treat their laptops. The person who leaves it running 24/7, eats and drinks around it (crumbs and spills), and doesn't do preventative maintenance on it like using a can of compresed air and cleaning it out every few months, is probably going to have a negative review of that laptop even though their own actions actually killed it.

Misconception #4: dual core sucks, buy a quad core! You need to look at this logically. What are you going to be doing with your laptop? Internet, email, open office, watching DVDs or Blu-rays? Dual core is more than enough for you and a quad core is a waste of money. Heavy gaming with the latest and greatest games on the market? Dual core may still be fine for you, it just depends on whether the game is coded to benefit from multicore processors.

Misconception #5: a quad core is twice as fast as a dual core, all else being equal. WRONG. You'll find that a QC may be 10-30% faster than a DC, but even that is subjective to what the actual program(s) is doing. For the average user, only nominal gains will be recorded. This also leads to another question: how fast do you really need your laptop to be? There comes a point where the human eye/brain can't detect any differences in computer performance, whether it be CPU or GPU.

Edit: left this one out...
Misconception #6: you must have a 1920x1080 (1080p) screen! This is entirely based on your needs with the laptop. Need smaller icons and more screen room to work with? Sure, go 1080p. Gaming? Might want to go with 1600x900 (900p) to get better fps. Is your laptop for watching Blu-rays? Both 1080p and 900p are 16:9 aspect ratio and your eyes won't notice any visible difference, especially beyond 2 feet. Your brain may "trick" your eyes into thinking the 1080p looks better, but that's because you know you spent more for it and you EXPECT it to be better. The human eye sees what it wants to. Screen quality (and color gamut) also plays a major role in perceived Blu-ray quality.

I say all this to illustrate that you don't need to spend a ton of money on something that isn't going to benefit you. Buy a laptop based on your current needs and two years down the road you can get another laptop if you need an upgrade at that time. $1,000 now and another $1,000 two years from now beats a $3,000 system any day of the week. There is a big difference between WANT and NEED.

 

very good writeup and so very true on most points. 1 is rather off as a $900 desktop will even kill a 3K Laptop

 

1.- I don't think anyone will say laptops can't be competent gamers. But realistically, you can feasibly build an extremely powerful desktop that will outperform any laptop, while you can't get a similarly powerful laptop for a reasonable amount of money. For instance, I don't think any laptop can pack a top-of-the-line 6-core processor, three GPUs, and a large array of multi-TB hard drives while still having space for an SSD boot-drive.

Generally, my advice for people who don't specifically need to game on-the-go is to get a nice netbook/thin-and-light plus a well-equipped gaming desktop, rather than splurge on a powerful and massive gaming laptop.

2.- Definitely true. Sometimes, it's even less than 2 years.

3.- Sort of true. I agree that you cannot generalize across brands (ie: consumer-grade Dells aren't all that great, but their Latitude machines are very well-built), but some laptops are simply shoddily built while others are constructed to last.

4.- Agreed. For 98% of people out there, I'm sure a basic Core i3 or at most the lowest-tier Core i5 CPU would provide much more processing power than they need. It's a credit to Intel's marketing that everyone seems to "need" a Core i7 quad-core processor.

5.- Definitely. That also highly depends on the specific application; some are better-threaded than others.

 

While I do agree with many points

1) I spend at least 2-4 hours everyday gaming. I can tell you, unless you buy the most expensive gaming laptop out there, there is no way it can compare to a dedicated gaming desktop. All in all, just for my i7 gaming desktop, I spent about 1400. With my Samsung monitor, Logitech G11 keyboard, Razer Lachesis mouse and speakers, around an extra 300 dollars. So for 1700, it still beats down 6 thousand dollar DTR gaming laptops. True it isn't portable, but in terms of raw performance, it's a turkey shoot.

However if gaming isn't your primary concern or it is something you'll do once in awhile, then yes gaming laptops such as the ASUS G series definitely offer great value for the 1200-1400 dollar mark.

Also as MidnightSun has stated, laptops are limited by their size. You won't get quad SLI video cards, 10 TB storage space.

2) While mostly true, I argue that you have to spend more upfront for video cards. Unfortunately 99% of laptops can't upgrade theirs so if you don't buy a high end discreet GPU up front, you will find yourself buying another laptop because you are already handcuffed. Sure buying the 16 GB RAM and the extreme processors at Alienware prices is definitely a waste of money, but those are something the end user can upgrade themselves and find the best deal. I swear everytime someone orders a 8 thousand dollar Alienware, an alarm goes off at the Sales department and everyone gets free pizza lunch.

3) This I completely agree. Though not a scientific study, the latest Consumer Reports puts almost all brands within 5 percentage points of repairs needed INCLUDING Apple computers. What ends up being the deciding factor is warranty, and how much extra you pony up for it.

4/5) I've merged 4/5 together as they are similar. It all boils down to the end user needs. Sure it's nice to have an i7 processor, but it is a tad overkill just doing Word documents and watching Youtube.

6) I partially agree with this one. Unfortunately not all people just watch movies or play video games on laptops. I do work on mine, and I want as much vertical real estate as I can get, and going from WUXGA's 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 results in a loss of 120 pixels or about 6 entries in Excel.

Sure if you are average joe schmoe who doesn't do much, then 1368x768 and cheap and cheerful is for you. It's just sad to see that such a low resolution ends up on 16" notebooks.

 

Sneaky ninja-edit!

6.- I partially agree. For some people, 1366x768 on a 15.6" screen is actually preferred, since they like larger icons and text, don't want to fiddle with still-imperfect DPI settings, and don't really need the screen space for a lot of work.

But, many higher-resolution displays also have higher quality--better color gamut, contrast, brightness, etc. than lower-resolution options. So, in many ways, if you want a high-quality screen, you're probably going to also have to go with a high-resolution panel.

 

I like this posting. Its all about the person. If you got the money to spend then spend it and get the best. But if you dont then dont. There are plenty budget laptops that perform good and do a little gaming. I spent 600 on mines and I am happy as can be. Just look for the deal thats what I did. You will be buying another laptop in a year or 2 anyways or maybe 2 or 3 laptops in a year like some of the NBR people do. Main thing is get what u like and dont believe the hype and RESEARCH before you buy.

 

I agree with many of your points, although I do object to some of them being misconceptions. A lot of your points are inituitive that most people should be aware of. Then again, I could just fall into the category of computer snob who frequents these boards and is surprised when people don't knwo these things.

 

1366x768 screens also have worse brightness, colour reproduction and viewing angles.

 

Pretty nice points overall ^^

I do have one misconception (or simply more like misdirection) to add regarding mostly people who recommend laptops. I'm tired of seeing people yell "quad core and 8GB of RAM!" whenever someone mentions Photoshop and Video Editing in their reqs. While yes, both those things can be hogs, it'd be far more appropriate to ask what level they're doing it rather than just shooting them whatever. I know this because I first started doing Photoshop CS3 on a desktop single core AMD chip. It was for basic tasks and it worked. All this to say that before immediately associating tasks with hardware, be sure to ask what level/kind of that task they will be doing.

An easy example is "gaming". There's a reason why one of the FAQ questions asks WHICH games will be played because there's a difference between wanting to only run L4D and wanting to run Crysis 2 on a laptop and so the recommended laptops will also be different

Same situation really. "Photoshop" or "Photo editing" sometimes doesn't go farther past simply adjusting red eyes on the computer or just tacking a few images together in a basic fashion.

 

The biggest misconception for most people is their entire process for buying a laptop is wrong. People instantly look at laptops and think, "What gives me the most fps?". When in reality it should be which gives the best performance per dollar. The more you spend, the performance per dollar value decreases. Similar to basic Microeconomics Marginal Utility. If all you are going to be doing is using Office and watching movies then there is no need for anything over $1,000. If you want to play old or dx9 games then there is no need to spend over $2,000. But if you see yourself playing Crysis or Metro2033 at full resolution maxed out then you will need a machine above $2,000.

Personally, I became one of those $3,700 Alienware fanboys that was stated earlier. The thing is that gaming isn't my only use. Certainly I used my AGP desktop from 2004 with an Nvidia 7800gs and single core AMD Sempron at 1.8ghz and was able to create a perfect representation of our VEX Robot that is 18"x18"x18" in Autodesk Inventor. But simply, it was painful and creating IDWs nearly crashed my computer. I spent hours working on it and due to my slow computer I fell I at least lost 2-3 hours waiting for constraints to take place.

To sum it up, there is no reason to spend crazy money on something just for gaming. But if you need a mobile workstation that will last at least 2-3 years, then you have to spend the money. Remember that the 920xm/940xm in the m17x r2 using TS with overclocked 5870m can reach the same as the stock m18x in 3dmark11. And you have to remember now that TS is no longer an option for 2630-2820qm so if you want to overclock your system, you have to get an extreme cpu.

 

Very few games are built to use more than 2 cores, so I don't see how you can say that getting a quad core for heavy gaming is worth it. It's actually the opposite way around (kind of). If you're going to be doing a lot at the same time (I often have photoshop, two different windows of Opera with 7 tabs each, msn, winamp etc running at the same time, and it runs perfectly, because it's a quad core).

That's the reason I went Quad core instead of Dual core.

 

You can throw in another misconseption in that list: People that think Dual cores work better than Quad cores on software that is only coded for 2 cores...

 

Certain games like Civ 5, StarCraft 2, GTA 4 benefit from more cores than faster dual cores.

 

Another thing that annoys me most about this, its hard to tell when people know anything or not. The word 'build quality' get tossed around too lightly sometimes.

And then you hear someone saying that Dell is better than Clevo.

This simply makes NO sense whatsoever because Dell and HP are manufactured by both Wistron, invenetec and compal.

To say that a company that contracts multiple manufacturers for their products is better than a single manufacturer is ridiculous.

The only companies you can actually compare like that is Asus, Clevo, maybe MSI. Everything else, you MUST compare specific lines. Dell business, home, and alienwares are all obviously EXTREMELY different.

Funny you'd bring that up...
In fact, there are very few computers that are designed to react quick enough for the human eye and ear. Of course they are usually very good at designing games so it is unnoticeable.
However even with the best processor on the market today, these problems will still exist because computers were not designed for 'real time' use, there is stutter and delay for many audio programs, etc. Its simply something no one will care about until it really matters to them E. G. games interfaces become physically sensitive and advanced enough that its noticeable.

 

We are no where near to be at the point where all applications are as fast as humans can react.

When I can run modern games at 1920x1080 at 4xAA, 8xAF at 120fps on a 120hz panel then I will just about be starting to get happy.

 

Yup. And I can't really use ableton live at all. Niches, niches

 

#1 is legit. Sorry, but 1000 dollar laptop will probably not even perform as well as a 600 dollar (Self built) desktop. It won't perform close to a 1000 dollar prebuilt desktop either.

When you buy a laptop you pay a premium for portability and that's it.

edit: And as for not picking brands... normally I agree. Don't judge a company judge an individual line of computers. That said I will never recommend an HP computer because I've dealt with far too many and it had nothing to do with the user.

 

not quite true, it has to do with the panel itself and not the resolution. lets take my x220 with its 768 resolution but an IPS screen which in all honesty even beats my 17" mbp and my husbands M17xR2 for viewing angles. its just that MOST lower respanels are rather cheapily made. but even many high resolution panels can be pure garbage as well.

 

There will be exceptions. Its a better tech screen and not representative of 99% of the rubbish 1366 screens out there.

 

spending $1000 + $1000 might not be the best deal. imo the key to pricewise is upgradability. Of course upgradability in a notebook is kind of a problem.
Giving my example, I bought a budget $1500 alienware M17. It was not the best of the best but sure it was great and it would beat anykind of $1000 notebook. 2years passed and I made some upgrades where I spent around $1000, adding SSD's, a second GFX in crossfire and a QS QX3000.
I always had a top performance notebook without spending that much. My solution was sure much better and cheapper then just buying new notebooks.
Also the problem is on the graphic cards. no $1000 will have a top performance gfx, though it can have a great cpu.

Also about the #1 missconception, pricewise notebooks suck for gaming as compared to a desktop. it's called the price of portability, also note that when you buy a desktop usually you don't had the lcd price, there are no notebooks without a lcd's.
Buying a notebook + a desktop is a better solution is also a common missconception, even pricewise. the cost of a notebook + desktop is more then enough to buy an high end notebook.

 

Except that notebooks aren't anywhere near as upgrade-able as a desktop. You can't change out the mobo or GPU. So in terms of gaming you'll never actually see improvements unless you had a serious CPU bottleneck.

So netbook + desktop (self built) will end up costing you less than a gaming notebook while also giving you better performance and it's more "future proof" because you can upgrade it in the future.

 

I agree with just about everything you said, but I especially agree with the paragraph below. The Thinkpad Edge e220s I ordered two days ago will be plenty fine for my needs in the next couple of years, and this approach to purchases takes the sting out of having a lot of money "invested" in soon-to-be old tech. By that time, SSDs will be higher capacity and less expensive, 8GB RAM sticks less expensive, USB 3.0 will be in the southbridge chip, etc. Who knows... display and battery techs may even improve someday.

Oh, I would adore having higher resolution displays in the < 13" range. I so loved my Vaio P's 1600x768 on 8" screen, though the vertical pixel count was a bit of a drag.

 

Here's another misconception: Never get an Intel GPU. Unless you're going to play games, Intel GPU's will work just fine and accelerate video and flash playback just like AMD and NVidia GPUs. If you're not going to be playing 3D games, Intel will be enough.

 

Misconception: you need massive amounts of RAM to multitask.

The word "multitask" itself is an overrated term. Most people who will say "multitask" usually mean multiple instances of basic tasks and that usually doesn't require any more than the standard 4GB of RAM that most machines come with these days.

For the desktop vs laptop debate...it's always a case-by-case decision. There's a reason the "gaming laptop" segment is still surviving and that's because there's a need, not just because thousands of people "are too dumb to buy a desktop".

 

*cough* say what? *stares at 6770M*

 

IRRC the nvida GTX580 is similar in price...



your argument is invalid...

 

My Sager is very user upgradeable. I can change out the gpu, cpu, and anything else, and it doesn't void the warranty iirc. There are no stickers that can be ripped, no restrictions, and user upgrading is one of the big selling points. I would guess there are other manufacturers that allow and promote the same.

 

Sager isn't exactly the best example.

Alienware, ASUS, Clevo/rebrands, MSI, and older Acers are very readily upgradable.

 

And netbook + desktop only give you better performance if you only need performance in the office. What about if you need it in the field, at several offices, or while traveling. I can't do much of anything on a netbook. But I can do everything I need on my lappys. I need to be able to produce on the fly, anywhere and everywhere I am.

The ability to game (and there is not much I can't with my GTX 485, certainly nothing I have tried) gives me, as other users have said, mobility. I realize I could pay less for a desktop. But to be able to go anywhere I need (and I do) and do anything I need (and I do) is worth the $ I paid. And my lappy can be upgraded at any point I want. What more could I ask for.

But as I said, I thought there were others, I just didn;t know them. But I certainly didn't think Sager was the only one. But those are some pretty good names that can compete with upgradeability re: desktops.

And Sager IS a Clevo rebrand.

 

An informative thread, but most of the information should be obvious to most of the regular posters on this forum and to anyone else who keeps an eye on the industry.

The gap between portability and raw performance has narrowed with each year and each new release, however there's no escaping the fact that reduced size and dimensions for notebooks will always see them become obsolete long before their desktop brethren, even taking into account user upgradeability. It all comes down to what the user needs the notebook for and how much they're willing to pay for the portability and performance features.

 

I'm not going to try to make you feel bad about your purchase.

 

Oh wow, where can I get a GTX580 for £140 delivered?

Yes I paid a premium for it being a mobile card but I expect that.

Oh this should be good, come on.

 

I agree with all your points! It was a nice read!

 

I'm not saying everything you say here is wrong, or that it's all correct.

Picking a laptop to last takes research, but it doesn't quite break down quite as easily as you describe it. Based on what you said, unless you are a gamer, you don't NEED anything more than a $300 notebook because realistically, there isn't much difference between a $300 one and a $900 one. Do you really want a $300 laptop?

I tell my customers there are basically 3 schools of thoughts on laptop buying (for general use, not gaming).
1. Buy cheap, buy often. You probably won't like it much, but it will work, and if you break it, you won't be too upset.
2. Buy decent. Expect it to last a bit longer, and be much nicer to use on a daily basis.
3. Invest in a laptop. Spend a small fortune and expect (hope) it lasts. With these you enjoy using it, and it can last quite a while, but expect to pay a little extra for the plushness.

The problem is that people will buy a $900 HP, with an Intel Video card and then try doing video editing or playing Crisys or Second life. If they manage to get it to work, then then wonder why it burns up in 6 months. You're comparing a gaming laptop, to what most people buy, which aren't the same. Most systems, regardless of price, are not built to do what your friend is doing, but people expect them to. On the other hand, your friends laptop is thicker, heavier and has less battery life for those same reasons. The Sony Z on the other hand could fulfill both roles, but, it costs twice as much.

The technology is there, but you better be prepared to pay for it and make the necessary compromises.

Which leads to #2...

Since laptops are generally less powerful, if you game, like you mention in #1, then, NO. You might get away with a new $1000 laptop every year. You might find yourself seriously behind the ball on the latest and greatest games by doing this though and that video card money came from something. So something else suffered to cram that video card in there for only $1000.

I also disagree somewhat with over paying to future proof. HOWEVER, you have to know what to get.

Let's take my Sony SZ vs a cheap Compaq, and mid grade HP.
My SZ is now 3 years old, it was a $2000 laptop when new (I paid much less). You can buy new Compaq today for $300 and say a decent HP for 500-800, about the same as a used SZ750N/C.

The Compaq will flat out run slower, even being 3 years younger. The HP will actually run a bit slower as well, but that is likely because mine has had some tweaks done. Spend a week working with each and at the end, I will pretty much assure you that you will choose the SZ for your personal machine.

Does it have USB 3? no, but a card can fix that. HDMI? Nope, but neither will the Compaq, and probably not the HP and more importantly, do I need it? Battery life, my Sz will likely win even without my improvements. Most of all, how nice is it to use? The SZ has much better fit and finish, and after 3 years still looks and works like it's brand new. Do you honestly expect that from the $300 Compaq?

Yes, I spent more, but 3 years on, I STILL enjoy using my laptop. I work on brand new $300 Compaqs on occasion and despise even touching them. They look okay, but the feel cheap, and after a short time, start to look cheap as well. Sure, they can run right out and buy another, and still be far cheaper than my SZ, but that means starting over again with another cheap laptop you dislike to use. I have an 8 year old Sony V505 that works almost as well as a $300 laptop and even looks and works like new. It's not even bad to work on.

True, to a point, but only to a point.
There are a lot of factors that these reports don't take into account.
The recent Square Trade results people like to quote, I find a lot of trouble with.

First off, yes, they all may be similar if you average their lines, but one some companies, that means some of their lines are COMPLETE GARBAGE and what it doesn't tell you is that to get a quality system from vendor A means spending $2000, meanwhile you could get a good system from vendor B at $500.

Second.
Most of these reports are based on warranties or failures.
It doesn't take into account the minor issues people have along the way, or how dissatisfied they were with the computer all along.

If your 2 year old $300 laptop that is missing 3 keys, battery lasts 5 minutes, the screen has bad spot and that you never really liked finally has an HD failure, do you warranty it? or do you replace it? On the contrary, if your 2 year old $2000 Apple Mac which is in great shape except for an HD failure, do you send that in to be fixed or do you replace it?

Chances are the cheap laptop gets tossed. The Apple is sent in for repair. The cheap laptop does NOT get a bad mark, and no one complains because it's expected to fail after 2 years and no one cared enough about it. On the other hand the Apple, which looks and worked flawlessly up until then, gets a bad mark.

I deal with LOTS of laptops, certain brands DEFINITELY hold up better over the years.

This I agree with.

I agree, except that at this point, it's nearing the point that buying a dual core is pointless in terms of money.

This I completely agree with, however, pay attention to the actual quality. Quality should be measured independent of resolution as well.

Care to bet on that?
My SZ is 3 years old, care to put it against a 1 year old laptop that cost $1000 when new?

Putting back the normal drive, it compares almost directly to the new Toshiba R700/R705 Portege. Granted I did some upgrades, but the Toshiba is brand new compared to a 3 year old system. Better yet, my Sz is still fetching $800 on Ebay, refurb R700's are getting $500. Granted, these aren't gaming systems per se', but they do stack up quite well in terms of hardware compared to each other other than being the newer stuff.

 

Hello All, this is my first post and I have read a lot threads on this forum as I have in other forums. I chose this forum because it seems to get a lot more users than others. So I wanted to try and clear the air and help people out who really want and or need the help. I really haven't had a lot of time to post on sites like this, I will try to start doing more online stuff. I will do my best in giving the most accurate information possible that I can. I'm a technical Manager/Director for a large volume Component Level repair facility located in the heart of Silicone Valley. What we do is component level repair? What does that mean? It means on any motherboard we can replace or repair on apart soldered to the board, we can create traces, jump traces, replace SMD components, Caps, BGA chips, etc…What we do is a niche and there are less than 5 of these companies that do what we do in the entire US. However, less than two do exactly what we do with the success rate in which we do it in the US. We do most of our business (80%) for Laptop Repair Companies across the US. We are located in 2 areas in the Bay Area (Nor Cal). The first is located in South Bay (silicone Valley), and Also East Bay, Concord Ca.

I was reading on a post that is now closed, and couldn't obviously reply about some information that came out. The above post has accuracies, as well as some of the other posts. We currently have every single laptop brand you can think of in our shop for repair (so none are impervious to failing) and we do 30-40 repairs a day. I assure you that all laptops, even the most expensive Alienware or Sagers, and or high end dells (XPS series) will eventually die from a video chip failure when playing high end video games; there are numerous reasons that factor into this.

1. If you don’t stay above the gaming curve: meaning buying the most recent “gaming” laptop (not a dell 1521 or HP G60, Toshiba P205, etc…) and making sure that the laptops add-in video card is well above the game requirements. If not it will get extremely hot and fail. Notice I said add-in video card: You should almost always have an add-in video card dedicated to handling the video on a laptop. If not the GPU will stress and fail. Very few laptops made have add-in video cards.
2. Why can’t a simple laptop ranging from $500-$1200+ handle my video games (Starcraft 2, Call of Duty 2, etc..), this is very simple. Most laptops have one GPU, which are responsible for multiple functions with-in a laptop, and those multiple functions vary depending on laptop and or brand. Also, video games aren’t the only things that cause video failures with laptops in the above price range. High end graphics, high video editing or playing of videos, high end photo editing, high end cad or design software, etc…are also responsible for video failure….

With the above said, if you stop and think about most laptops having a single GPU, that is in most cases the size of a Silver dollar or smaller (squared of course), and that the average desktop has a dedicated video card the size of 2/3 of most laptops dedicated to running video only you begin to understand why video chips fail. Simply put they can’t handle the job a dedicated desktop video card can and does do. You wouldn’t want to ask your little GPU do this either because it will fail. This doesn’t mean precautions can’t be taken to help prevent failures. If you don’t use your laptop in the following ways you are sure to guarantee a good survival rate for you laptop. The following smoothers they vary way all laptops extinguish heat, except for a few (like Mac’s).

• Don’t use it on your lap,
• Don’t use it on the carpet.
• Don’t use it on the bed.
• Don’t use it on a comforter or pillow.
• Don’t leave it running overnight.
• Keep your laptop internals clean & dust free(it builds up fast)

You can use it on a solid smooth surface with plenty of ventilation, ambient temperatures around the laptop will also affect the performance se be careful not to use it in 115 degree heat. While CPU, memory, HD, etc.. Certainly have a lot to do with performance. It is not the main factor for failures, heat is…Why do these GPU’s fail, some say its an Nvidia problem, and I assure you replace all video chips Nvidia, ATI, AMD, Intel chips on all these laptops. Nvidia just happens to sell a 100 times more units to everyone else’s one unit.

Video Failure doesn’t mean it can’t be brought back: It can through a process of re-balling the video chip and or replacing the video chip if it is bad due to heat. Reflows don’t work it is a band-aid fix. If you have heard this term disregard it, if you need reasons I can provide it in another post.

In closing some of people are left to believe that the laptop came out to replace the desktop, which is just not true it will never do that. Every laptop brand and make will have problems, it’s just a fact and we repair them every day. Most laptops are used improperly as well, they do not provide good ventilation and in most cases are smothered by their users.

We test and work on everything we report; we do not read Laptop company’s sites and give information based on what they say, or what we here. In most cases there information is wrong and speculation based on what they have heard at best from someone else. Most of these people don’t repair laptops, we do and certainly they don’t repair on the same level as we do. Most people they have this work sub out and it’s up coming to us anyway. I hope for the moderators I stayed on point, for this topic and didn’t get off topic. Mostly laptops, to produce what there larger counterparts do, will generate a lot more heat; thus rendering its uses limited. There is plenty more on this subject of Laptop repair as obviously just in this case I have said a lot, some of this is very hard to explain in short paragraph it can be very complex.

Thanks very much to the Forum owners for the opportunity to have a place to give this information and to give some many people the ability to here accurate information, because there is so much bad information out there. I’m sure there will be questions or comments, and I can answer them if needed. I just want to note also that none of this is meant to be offensive; if I have I apologize in advance.

Sincerely,
Don

 

The whole heat issue is bull.

Nvidia's cards failed where ATI's did not.

This was down to their poor BGA solder. Why do you think baking helps?

Chips kept at perfectly reasonable temperatures died.

 

A lot of Second Life users report burned up laptops using a variety of video systems. They see this in desktops as well. This happened before and after the whole Nvidia failure.

Many are just not built to take that kind of continuous heat.

 

Thought it was the subpar substrate material used? The constant heating and cooling caused it to expand and contract causing the solder joints to fail.

 

that too...

 

interesting information don, especially the part where you say that the constant cycle of cooling and heating can lead to an eventual failing of video cards, maybe even more so than exceeding heat limits.
although i agree with most your points, i also see a lot of guys on nbr gaming on their 5 year old 8800gtx gpu's and older. i think the gpu failures are more common with the common laptop owner who is not aware of the precautions you mentioned. but as you may have surmised, a lot of nbr members are not your typical users, and know of this precautions aside from other ways of keeping heat in check.
and although a desktop is still much more powerful, the truth is most performance laptops today have a lot of power to run games and other high end programs. the advent of consoles and their 720p games is actually kinda a boon to pc gaming, as pc gaming graphics has not moved forward in such a pace that mobile hardware has not been able to keep up. as long as youre not looking at full HD, most upper tier mobule gpu's can max most games at 720p or 900p which is a standard laptop screen resolution.
maybe the only things that a laptop cant do are hd and hd plus multi layer video editing, complex match simulations, cgi, database warehousing. but for these you would need at the very least a workstation class desktop.

 

Interesting topic, I will be adding to it myself with personal experience.

Regarding the Cores/RAM:
I sometimes do HDR photography via Photoshop CS5, and having lots of ram, fast HDD's and solid strong cores really does help. When I photoshop and process a series of RAW images from SLR cam into HDR, it eats away about every available resource even on my Asus G73JH or Rock CTX Ext. Pro.

Also if you are mad for multitasking like me, such as watching HD movie, having 12 tabs of chrome, playing World of Warcrack and tidying up external HDD's, expensive laptops prove their worth for the "buck". And definitely if you have games such as Supreme Commander 1/2 and have dual screen setup, more cores the better! These games take advantage of 2-4 and heck even octo-core machines (using external application thou)!

Regarding Desktop/Netbook combo:
Being international SW consultant myself, having a laptop with I5-core 2 with HT technology and dedicated GPU is like a blessing. Its embarrassing to be waiting for Microsoft Visual studio or some other application to start run and work in front of client when you are dealing in multi-million industry deals.. Netbooks are awesome, got one myself and love it to bits but its only for personal use, no go for business. On a side note, I'm typing this on my business Dell Latitude E4310 and I'vent seen crappier design of a laptop - it has 1 USB, 1 combo Firewire and 1! combo mic/headphone jack.. so you need special gear if you want to keep privacy of conversation and solid microphone performance. Rubbish!

Regarding the heat issue..
Quote: "Dont leave laptop running over night" - thats a big-time BS, sorry. If you keep laptop running on, the components are keeping STABLE temperature, avoiding degradation of now lead-free solder (Health and Safety regulations demanded no lead). What happens when lead-free solder goes cold and warm, from turning ON and OFF computer/laptop? It cracks.

This point goes towards the graphics cards especially - due to being lead-free solder, they will be cracks from over the time and GPU will fail. But that is not the end of the world. Take out the GPU and BAKE it in the oven, 200 Degrees Celsia, 8-10 minutes pre-heated oven, non-fan assisted. Turn off oven and let it slowly cool down for several hours (12-24), so the solder sets down. Replace thermal conduit/paste/gel/grease/ and you are good to go. Brand New Graphics card. I didnt have any issue of chip-damage as I believe chips are being made in temps at over 2000 degrees of Celsia heat but the solder melts at about 240-260 Celsia, making this repair feasible. GPU's are made by passing through 300C speed oven for 1-3 minutes (I dont know tbh..) for chips to settle on the solder and the main board. Dont exceed the 200 C btw as that is the sweet spot - the solder is stable but the small cracks are filling in. Also always bake with chips up or you end up loosing em like few pioneers of this repair process =)

This is also how technicians in hospitals keep the damn-expensive gear working without dashing out millions of "quids/bucks/euros.." for new stuff - they re-bake the gear. This technique is applicable for all types of boards - GPU's, Motherboards even LCD control back panels (got no experience there thou).

There are other crazy "repair" options out there, such as baking manually as Xbox360 1st generation users do - wrap their Xbox in blankets/towels and play game. It will burn it oh yes and it will do the exact same job as the baking technique and fix RRoD, however, this is very bad technique as you are damaging those components which should not be hitting those temps. But if you have faulty Xbox360 and no warranty / way to fix, its good to go =)

Again, this is just personal experience, so for others, it may wary!

-Mel

 

LOL, don't leave laptop running. Mine is on 24/7, granted it sleeps when not in use, but still, I reboot maybe once or twice a month (or as demanded by updates), and turn off maybe only a few times a month like if I go away for the weekend.

 

The current notebook where I am typing this is on since 24days ago without any kind of problem whatsoever. sometimes on battery sometimes connected, but always ON. It's rarely on hibernation since I'm always running a folding@home project. I've using over a couch or on the bed and sometimes I even forget and leave it there. Never had any heating problem.
Actually the only heat problems I had on a computer was on my desktop.

 

Sorry for taking so long to get back...

You are correct but this was prior to companies being forced to use Lead free solder in manufacturing, those machines you are talking about were all made with lead solder, and made very different than today's laptops.

As for Meaker's comment, we replace just as many Intel, ATI, AMD video chips as any other video chip manufacture and from all levels of laptop Quality such as Apple, Dell, Toshiba, Alienware, Sager, HP, Asus, Sony, IBM, etc... So when you are talking about probably the most common video chip maker on the market such as Nvidia, there are naturally going to be more problems because they control a huge part of the market in laptops.Then your comment about video cards doesn't make sense because you don't reference what you are talking about, whether a laptop or desktop. There are very few laptops that have video cards in them, most have chips which are soldered directly to the mainboard (BGA), however if you are referring to the laptop add-in video cards they are the same we still remove the chips from them in order to complete the repair. If you are referring to desktop cards ATI has a huge foot hold in this area, and at one time Nvidia was the largest video chip maker, and had a larger market penetration then any other video company. I personally have never had a video card with an Nvidia chip-set die for a desktop, but I have always had the best video card in my experience made by EVGA. A lot of inferior companies produce very poor quality, which is the majority of what most consumers buy at the store. So naturally you were going to see a higher failure rate. However a lot of the failure rate has to do with the design or poor design if you will from the manufacture of the laptop. They need the best cooling because they generate a lot of heat. As we(consumers) demand smaller, faster, convenience in a desktop, hence the laptop or notebook. There will be overheating issues always.

No matter what as long as a video chip hasn't been touched by anyone(heated or an inferior method), we can and will repair all video issues with a 99% success rate . We can tell prior to the repair if the video chip has been removed, re-balled, heated directly, or tampered with in any way..

It is because of this as well, there are numerous factors that cause the issues, in most cases a video chip can take quiet a bit of punishment before it actually fails. The comment that you made and heard of, is most likely form another person or forum where I had mentioned several years ago; that the failure was due to solder balls(lead free) failing. Prior to that it was not known that this was the problem in fact everyone just blamed it mostly on Nvidia and HP, which was not the case.

Hello Mel,

While I understand what you said, most people who use laptops, do not know how to use them and set the system to sleep, including HDD, LCD, etc.. (to put the system to sleep) which helps reduce heat because there is less running, and like I stated above it all depends on how you use your system and how old it is. Some older laptops dont fail and are very durable. you are not the norm in consumers based on what you said you did, and that is what I was addressing in my post.

Regarding the heat issue.. I would hope most people dont attempt repairs on stuff they have paid hundreds or thousands for. Especially when you consider that most Laptop repair companies dont do nor provide the types or repairs we do everyday, and that we are a source for them for repairs. Because someone gets lucky and heats up at home a board and has success, tells me that you dont understand what you are doing to the board. The chips are made at a certain temperature, but the traces that are on and in the chip burn very easily, it is made of a very fragile material. this is in a lot of cases what cause a chip to burn internally because these small pathways for continuity to travel burn up. It is unfortunate that you dont understand you are talking about, before you speak on it. I didn't attack anyone I gave an opinion as a professional in what I do everyday, you however do not do this for a living. I'm simply educating people so they have the information to make good decisions as I have been requested by numerous customers to do. this is why guys like me dont talk about what we do because they enjoy watching people fumble around like you trying to figure it out.

Furthermore I hope my post has helped the people that are just reading, gathering info, and to help them find a fix. People exist to provide professional, quality repairs (not replacing motherboards) so seek them out.

Thank in advance..

Don

 

Two 3-Ghz cores are always better than four 1.5 Ghz cores. More cores is good but it's only a stopgap because they can't raise the clocks higher without running into heat/power problems. The ideal CPU would be a single 10Ghz core instead of 2.5 Ghz quad core, if they could make such a thing.

 

Not true, see here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...er-np8662-comparision-core-2-duo-vs-quad.html

Not quite double, but core 2 quad 2.0GHz vs Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz. Quad wins or breaks even with most games.

Parallel computing will always beat series unless the single CPU is like four times the speed of the quad core, even then the parallel (multicore) has the advantage of pushing multiple solutions simultaneously.

 

Well that and certain games benefit from more cores, Starcraft 2, Civ 5, GTA4 than faster dual cores. There's also going to be a point where the dual core will be the bottleneck (that's why you don't see too many extreme gaming laptops with 485M and a Pentium dual core).

 

You must have not read my statement correctly. 1.5x4 has the same flops as 3x2. In your example, you're comparing a 2.8 Ghz dual with 2 Ghz quad, which has way more flops. If you compared the 2.0 Quad with 3.5+ Ghz dual, results would be different.

8 Ghz single core would be faster than 2 Ghz Quad core, if it could be achieved. For proper quad vs dual core comparison, you need to pick dual cores that are at least 75% faster than quad, such as a i7-720QM vs. i7-640M, where the dual core is faster.

 

That may depends on task. Quad would have 4x the registers than a single. If you have something that multitask heavily, the registers got flushed out repeatedly, context switching.

If you run one single task thing, sure 8x1 beats 2x4.

 

Take audio conversion, for example. iTunes, when I used it, could only compress/convert 1 song at a time on my i7-720qm, whereas MediaMonkey can multitask and actually convert 8 tracks simultaneously. So, iTunes takes forever on a 1.7ish single core.

Sooo... the question is... would a 8ghz single core processer convert 1,000 songs sequentially faster than a 2ghz quad core that can do up to 8 tracks at the same time, but each one takes longer to process? Hmmmm...

Wish I had the hardware to compare quad i7 vs duo i7/i5.