= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
maia comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (371)
I think I want to buy a new laptop computer. Can anyone here provide advice, or suggestions on where to look?
The laptop I want to replace is a Dell Latitude D620. Its main issues are weight, heat production, slowness (though probably in part from software issues), inability to sleep or hibernate (buying and installing a new copy of XP might fix this), lack of an HDMI port, and deteriorated battery life. I briefly tried an Inspiron i14z-4000sLV, but it was still kind of slow, and trying to use Windows 8 without a touchscreen was annoying.
I remember reading that it's unsafe to move or jostle a laptop with a magnetic hard drive while it's running, because of the moving parts. Based on that, it seems like it's best to get one with only a solid-state drive and no magnetic drive. Is that accurate?
I'm somewhat ambivalent about how to trade off power against heat and weight, or against cost of replacement if it's lost or damaged.
(Edit: I eventually ordered a Dell XPS 13.)
Check out /r/suggestalaptop?
General comments: SSDs are generally faster than magnetic drives, but often fail much sooner.
If you're not positive you want to replace it altogether: You might be able to fix your heat/slowness issues just by taking a can of compressed air to it. And you could probably buy a new battery. Replacing it might still be a better proposition overall, though...
Source on SSDs failing sooner? I thought (or assumed) it was the opposite. A quick Google search turns up the headline "SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5%".
Looking further, though, I also see: "An SSD failure typically goes like this: One minute it's working, the next second it's bricked.". The page goes on to say that there's a service that can reliably recover the data from a dead drive, but that seems like a privacy concern (if everything on the drive weren't logged by the NSA to begin with).
On the pro-SSD side, though, I try to keep anything important online or on an external drive anyway (for easier moving between devices). And I really like the idea of a laptop I can casually carry around without worrying about platters and heads.
Thanks for the suggestions; I may try the Reddit link later. (Edit: posted a thread here.)
If you are backing up your data responsibly, the SSD failure isn't as much of an issue. And if you aren't backing up your data, then you need to take care of that before worrying about storage failure.