I need a crappy laptop or two
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Needs:
- Windows 10 (I can supply my own license) or OSX
- A REAL 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD. No XMMC shit.
- Enough CPU to encode 4 MP3 streams in real-time.
- Battery life that isn't embarrassing, preferably with a swappable battery.
- As cheap as humanly possible.
- USB 3.0
As best as I can find, the best I can do on this is to order refurb units of the same laptop I have at work (which says volumes about WtfCorp and how we think of developers) for $300.
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
Windows 10
Oh, well shit, that leaves all my units right out...
@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
A REAL 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD. No XMMC shit.
They use IDE. ;)
@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
Enough CPU to encode 4 MP3 streams in real-time.
Never tried, assuming that a single-core 1.6 GHz processor probably won't cut it though...
@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
Battery life that isn't embarrassing, preferably with a swappable battery
Swappable, yes. But most only last about an hour or so...
@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
As cheap as humanly possible.
I can let go of them for $30, but it's probably not worth it...
@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
USB 3.0
These things wish they knew what USB 3.0 was....
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
No XMMC shit.
Extreme Motorsports of California?
... seriously though, what is "XMMC shit"? I've been in computers a long time and I've never heard the term "XMMC" used, definitely not in the context of hard drives and SSDs.
(Do you guys even try Googling these terms before tossing them towards the general public? Because Google's got nothing on "XMMC".)
@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
As best as I can find, the best I can do on this is to order refurb units of the same laptop I have at work (which says volumes about WtfCorp and how we think of developers) for $300.
You're not going to find what you need for less than $300, buddy. Especially USB3, that's really modern for laptops.
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@blakeyrat said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
... seriously though, what is "XMMC shit"? I've been in computers a long time and I've never heard the term "XMMC" used, definitely not in the context of hard drives and SSDs.
I've seen it described as eMMC. Basically, instead of a proper harddrive or SSD, you get a Flash card.
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@Rhywden said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
I've seen it described as eMMC.
You and apparently 99.999% of the rest of the population. THAT term I can Google:
An eMMC is essentially a SD card chip soldered onto a motherboard.
Anyway I have an old HP tx1000z that (I believe) meets all your requirements except the USB3 one. And once we paid all the shipping fees, it'd be $300 to send it to you anyway. I haven't turned it on in 2 years, so I can't guarantee the battery life is "non-embarrassing". EDIT: I think it only has 2 GB of RAM, so Windows 10 would chug. It'd probably run, but it'd chug.
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Yeah, I'm an drunken idiot. eMMC. Which wouldn't be that bad if they were of measurable capacity.
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XMMC
eMMC
One's for extended memory and the other is for expanded memory, duh.
Anyway, is that just for regular use, or some specific task and nothing else?
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@Maciejasjmj Specifically, it's life is being plugged into an 8-channel ASIO audio recording interface and dumping a WAV stream and MP3 stream to disk in realtime. Maybe some light post-production.
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
@Maciejasjmj Specifically, it's life is being plugged into an 8-channel ASIO audio recording interface and dumping a WAV stream and MP3 stream to disk in realtime. Maybe some light post-production.
Are there not cheap devices that can do that already? Or is this what you were hoping @blakeyrat & friend's idea would solve?
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
@Maciejasjmj Specifically, it's life is being plugged into an 8-channel ASIO audio recording interface and dumping a WAV stream and MP3 stream to disk in realtime. Maybe some light post-production.
That sounds like the kind of thing a rPi would be perfect for.....................................................................OMG stuck key
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@Tsaukpaetra In the field. lugging a monitor around is blech.
The externally powered recording interface is bad enough (though it takes 5v 1A so I'm going to fix that)
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@Dreikin said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
@Maciejasjmj Specifically, it's life is being plugged into an 8-channel ASIO audio recording interface and dumping a WAV stream and MP3 stream to disk in realtime. Maybe some light post-production.
Are there not cheap devices that can do that already? Or is this what you were hoping @blakeyrat & friend's idea would solve?
There are devices that do this, yes. They are NOT cheap. Not even close to cheap.
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@Tsaukpaetra It's only small until you add a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Because you can't just turn it on and have it work headless.
Plus the external HDD to make it useful.
While you can probably fit all that shit into the physical space of a laptop, it's more cables, moving parts, etc.
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
Because you can't just turn it on and have it work headless.
Why not? Heck, if need be add a button for start/stop and a light for "Is recording". Do you really need much more than that?
Why add all the cruft of a keyboard, mouse, and monitor?
It sounds equivalent of you asking for a full-blown media center solution to watch an internet meme video.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
Because you can't just turn it on and have it work headless.
Why not? Heck, if need be add a button for start/stop and a light for "Is recording". Do you really need much more than that?
Why add all the cruft of a keyboard, mouse, and monitor?
It sounds equivalent of you asking for a full-blown media center solution to watch an internet meme video.
The software to support multichannel recording is complex and has many UI knobs that must be twiddled and meters that need to be looked at to:
- Work properly
- Be sure it's working properly and not faithfully recording nothing
- Not sound like arse
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
software to support multichannel recording is complex and has many UI knobs that must be twiddled and meters that need to be looked at
Then it sounds like you're not really looking for a crappy laptop then, natch.
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So there's "Raspberry pi" and then there's "$2000 portable workstation"?
The word laptop implies a keyboard, mouse, and screen. None of which a RPi has.
The word crappy implies "Not good". My CPU needs are midspec from a decade ago. At best. Today's shittiest x64 chip will do the job.One of my requirements is literally "Has a real hard drive, not a piece of shit SD card" - which does not in any way describe an Rpi.
It just seems like nobody wants to manufacture an actual laptop that fits in the market gap between "2gb of RAM and a 32gb hardwired SD card pretending to be a hard drive, $150" and $500+.
I know that cutesy adorable baby computers are all the rage, but they aren't useful everywhere.
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
just seems like nobody wants to manufacture an actual laptop that fits in the market gap between "2gb of RAM and a 32gb hardwired SD card pretending to be a hard drive, $150" and $500+.
Yeah. Why do you think I'm holding on to my $100 equivalent units? Nobody wants to make them (unless, I guess, if you're a child?).
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I had a look on Amazon, and the best I could find for the proposed budget were all refurbs, so that does look like your best option
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@RaceProUK I may grab this:
About double what I really want to spend (so only one unit instead of two), but only a few bucks more than a refurb of my work unit, and markedly superior. Only downmark is the hardwired battery.
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
Not sound like arse
Every $300 laptop is going to sound like arse unless you add a $300 external USB soundcard to it. (Which I suppose is what your USB3 requirement is for?)
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@blakeyrat An multichannel capture box is vaguely like an input oriented USB sound card, yes. They're also way the hell cheaper. The ones I've got are under a hundred bucks and fully serviceable. I don't know I'd use them to record classical music, but other than that.
Also, I'm pretty sure every laptop at every price point sounds like crap.
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
@RaceProUK I may grab this:
About double what I really want to spend (so only one unit instead of two), but only a few bucks more than a refurb of my work unit, and markedly superior. Only downmark is the hardwired battery.
I would be a bit concerned about how that harddrive is going to perform, and it is possible to get refurbs near to that price with SSDs.
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@Weng said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
It just seems like nobody wants to manufacture an actual laptop that fits in the market gap between "2gb of RAM and a 32gb hardwired SD card pretending to be a hard drive, $150" and $500+.
That space has been swallowed by the iPad and phones.
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I wanted to make a cheap hackintosh to run a few mac programs... but I decided it's too costly.
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@Weng Weird, over here there are loads of companies selling laptops in that range.
HP do a bunch, along with Acer/Asus/etc.This maybe? A bit more basic than that Acer but $100 cheaper. The only person I know with one of these really basic HPs was happy with it but they don't do anything demanding with it.
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@Yamikuronue said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
cheap
@Yamikuronue said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
mac
These two things don't go together ;)
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Though, to be fair, cheap Windows PCs are often crocks of shit anyway.
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@RaceProUK said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
These two things don't go together
@Yamikuronue said in I need a crappy laptop or two:
hackintosh