Considering Lappy as main computer.

P

Private_Ops

[H]ard|Gawd
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I have a decent desktop but, I'm finding myself gaming less and less.... I'm not sure why, I suppose I'm loosing interest.

I've also found myself using my laptop more and more since I use it at school.


Lately I've been considering takeing my desktop and turning it into a server (probably file/something else). Its pretty quiet so I wouldn't have a problem with leaving it on and I can cut the Power usage down by taking out the VC and SC.


So I'm asking, to those of you who use their laptop as a main computer. Was it a hard transition? I'm thinking if I actually convert my desktop I'll run into a situation where I need it and I'll be SOL.
 
.... but I already have the laptop?

I don't need high end stuff. I'm more interested in battery life with a laptop anyway.


I'm basically just asking, after being used to having a desktop is it that hard to switch over to a laptop and basically re-issue the desktop to something else?
 
Actually, I switched. The biggest issue - having this big "laptop" on my lap. After finding a box that was the right size and able to hold the weight of the laptop, no major issues.

As long as you have a decent laptop (dual core cpu, 2gb ram, separate graphics with its own memory, decent size hard drive) you will be ok.

You seem to be off of gaming. Your laptop would not game well. If you ever get the itch for gaming again, expect (duh) that paying for a gaming laptop will get you lot less money and much less performance than a desktop.

Now, as you said, you have a laptop/notebook. Portability is the wonderfulness of it. (Move it to the den, move it to the kitchen, move it to the family room, move it to the bedroom, and go on trips, or work.)
It is not a separate graphics with its own memory - you may want to upgrade - you have 1 gb ram - upgrade the memory as costs are low, and the performance boost noticeable.

For battery life, look at the website of the manufacturer and get the biggest battery that fits the laptop. - It may add or up to 3 pounds or more - but it should be worth the extra life. Remember, miracles will not happen, the 6+ hour life on battery, well, ...
 
I am loving my XPS M1210. As a matter of fact, since I bought it off Craigslist about a month ago, I have decided to go ahead and part out my main rig, to switch over to sff. This is a quick capable little laptop, that doesn't get too hot and runs WoW, HGL and GW fine. :cool:
 
I dunno man, do the [H] thing and keep them both.

I use my PC and 37" westinghouse at home
and my 12" Lenovo X61s elsewhere.

Actualy I set them both up at home. I tend to use my PC way more. In fact I'm even using the 12" lenovo as an extra monitor using www.maxivista.com. And I watch TV on it when doing other stuff on the PC and thats about it... But if I take it with me it's nice for internet, small tasks etc. At home, It's quite nice to type and mouse around using my MX1000 and Giant G15 keyboard rather than using the laptop stuff.

Battery life is nice on it Up to 8 hours, but nothing compares to the brute force of the PC paired with 37" monitor plugged into a wall socket. Most compact $2000 laptops are probably not as powerful as my 2-3 year old PC, there are some exceptions perhaps but these are typicaly not compact laptops in which case you may as well have purchased a PC IMO.... I got my lenovo with 1.8ghz C2D Low Voltage with all low voltage components screen etc. It's nice a fast for laptop type tasks, but still just not the same as the PC with my TB's of space, High end video card and 37" monitor with screaming Raptor OS drives.

PC will continue to get up's while the laptop is well in it's grave and another one will need to be purchased. By the time laptops have low voltage low power Quad Cores, PC's will already be way ahead. If your getting out of the hobby then a laptop may work fine for you, but there are of course limitations to them.
 
I made the transition, and it's actually far more convenient than switching between my laptop and desktop. Since I use my laptop as my main PC, I have most of my files, apps, bookmarks, etc. on it and it's easy for me to start doing something at home, hibernate, and continue at school or the other way around. When I'm at home I also keep the laptop hooked up to my 19" LCD and my mouse, so It's just like using my desktop. Your laptop specs look pretty similar to mine, so it should be plenty fast for you, although you should consider upgrading your RAM since prices are dirt cheap nowadays.

I do kind of feel like I'm neglecting my desktop, but my laptop is faster anyways aside from gaming, and it's much more convenient since I'm constantly moving back and forth between home and school.
 
Im currently in the process of selling my gaming desktop. It barely gets used, laptop is everything.
On the other hand, the games I play just plain *dont run* on the laptop (SupCom, WiC, and Crysis, probably the 3 most demanding games on the market) so Im dropping any chance of gaming for the forseeable future. I may leave the GPU in the server...Im debating putting together a cheap quad (B3 stepping perhaps) SFF that will live a quiet life. But it wouldnt be an extreme machine. Just enough to game comfortably at lower res. Im likely to wait for a cheap nehalem based system though. While great, yorkfield is just living in the shadow of nehalem. Which sucks for intel.

Its not a hard transition if you primarily use the laptop to begin with and have a decent external screen and KB/M setup.
 
i currently run 3 systems myself and for the most part i still mainly use the desktop rigs......for my lappy i just use it when i'm outside or away for the day

although currently my lcd is acting funny so the lappy is my only source of computing.....i'm damn glad to have one lol

anyways its a hard transistion if you're a high end user.....but if all you do is go online, shoot some emails.....and even play some moderate games you're bound to do alright even though its just a low end turion x2 lol

if you're a simple user there is no transition at all and life is sweet :)
 
I recently did the same because I decided to go back to school, and with my 360 I found myself gaming on the PC less and less. Although it was a little difficult at first (less PC for more money, slower to start etc.) I wouldn't trade it back now. Give it a shot and if you don't like it you could always sell the laptop and buy another desktop.
 
look into getting a laptop Dock station. They make life VERY easy, you can use your existing monitor, kb, mouse, etc....through the dock station. That way when you are mobile you have the laptop, but when you come home you can plug in your laptop to the dock and use it like a desktop. IMO is a very cool and a productive feature. I use one with my lappy--in tangent with my server and main gaming rig through a 4port usb kvm switch. I tried to get one for my wife but her laptop does not accommodate a good drop and go solution. I use a HP business class laptop and she has a Toshiba m-105. So depending on the model that you use there may or may not be a good drop-in solution



 
shyboi said:
look into getting a laptop Dock station. They make life VERY easy, you can use your existing monitor, kb, mouse, etc....through the dock station. That way when you are mobile you have the laptop, but when you come home you can plug in your laptop to the dock and use it like a desktop. IMO is a very cool and a productive feature. I use one with my lappy--in tangent with my server and main gaming rig through a 4port usb kvm switch. I tried to get one for my wife but her laptop does not accommodate a good drop and go solution. I use a HP business class laptop and she has a Toshiba m-105. So depending on the model that you use there may or may not be a good drop-in solution



Click to expand...

No need if you have a PC. All you need is Maxivista. I don't even have to plug my laptop in and I have access to share drives, CD roms mouse keyboard etc that stay plugged in to my PC (Cheap solutioon if you decide to keep your PC) docking stations are not cheap.... The only thing that I might need to plug in would be the monitor and power cable, but I have never felt the need to use my 37" on my new Lenovo laptop when my 3year old PC is faster. With Maxivista you can even copy and past from the clipboard on the laptop over to the PC send links open IM etc, dropping files onto the PC is typicaly fast unless I'm transfering large 8gb files.
 
HvyMtl said:
Actually, I switched. The biggest issue - having this big "laptop" on my lap. After finding a box that was the right size and able to hold the weight of the laptop, no major issues.

As long as you have a decent laptop (dual core cpu, 2gb ram, separate graphics with its own memory, decent size hard drive) you will be ok.

You seem to be off of gaming. Your laptop would not game well. If you ever get the itch for gaming again, expect (duh) that paying for a gaming laptop will get you lot less money and much less performance than a desktop.

Now, as you said, you have a laptop/notebook. Portability is the wonderfulness of it. (Move it to the den, move it to the kitchen, move it to the family room, move it to the bedroom, and go on trips, or work.)
It is not a separate graphics with its own memory - you may want to upgrade - you have 1 gb ram - upgrade the memory as costs are low, and the performance boost noticeable.

For battery life, look at the website of the manufacturer and get the biggest battery that fits the laptop. - It may add or up to 3 pounds or more - but it should be worth the extra life. Remember, miracles will not happen, the 6+ hour life on battery, well, ...
Click to expand...


Upgrading to 2GB's is on my list of to do things for the summer (might even jump to four and switch to 64-bit Ubuntu).

My battery life is fine for me (almost 3 hours), so no need for that, though I wish I had another 6 cell to keep around.
 
I made the transition some time last year, I don't game anymore, because I both lost interest in games, and really can't justify spending money on keeping a system up to date. I use a thinkpad T40, upgraded a few parts on it, and its fast enough for what I do. The most convenient thing about it is I can be doing something at home, close the lid and take whatever I was working on with me without having to transfer stuff or anything like that. I have a 21" LCD and kb/mouse for home, if I want a little more comfort.
 
why is a seperate graphics card so important if your not gaming? I have no problems with my integrated card, I took that as a trade off for size quaily and battery life over dells offerings.
 
Private_Ops said:
I'm basically just asking, after being used to having a desktop is it that hard to switch over to a laptop and basically re-issue the desktop to something else?
Click to expand...

Not that hard depending on what you use your PC for.

For gaming? Yeah it's a hard switch since laptop video cards are pretty weak compared to their desktop counterparts. There are gaming laptops out there but they're pretty expensive. It does suck sometimes not being able to play high-end games when you want to but meh.

For web browsing and word processing? No, not really. In fact, besides the slightly faster load time and large monitor, I really don't notice a difference between my laptop and gaming PC (both specs in sig) when doing web browsing and word processing.

So it really depends on what you're using your PC for.
 
Justintoxicated said:
why is a seperate graphics card so important if your not gaming? I have no problems with my integrated card, I took that as a trade off for size quaily and battery life over dells offerings.
Click to expand...

It provides you with better all-around performance. Also the GPU takes some of the load of the CPU for rendering tasks ect translating into better battery performance and a cooler running lappy.


 
shyboi said:
It provides you with better all-around performance. Also the GPU takes some of the load of the CPU for rendering tasks ect translating into better battery performance and a cooler running lappy.


Click to expand...

I run linux anyway, I don't like Vista and XP isn't supported on this laptop.

Not much gaming I can do anyway.
 
I switched from using a desktop to using a laptop as my main computer quite a few years ago. It's been one of the best decisions that I've ever made - I can take my computer wherever I go, and use my desktop just as a fileserver. The core downside of using a notebook as your primary computer follows:

(1) HDD space
(2) It's more likely that you'll have a notebook stolen, and potentially your valuable data with it. I recently attended and IT meeting and the officer who came in said that laptops are behind cars for the most commonly stolen items in North America.

(1) can be addressed by setting up a fileserver that you can access from a remote location. (2) can be resolved by encrypting your data.
 
i made the move a couple of years ago, i doubt ill go back to a desktop at any point unless (for whatever strange reason) my job requires it.
im too much a fan of the portability and i hardly ever game, maybe do a little CS:S here and there. im actually thinking of downgrading from this 17" and going to a 15".
 
shyboi said:
It provides you with better all-around performance. Also the GPU takes some of the load of the CPU for rendering tasks ect translating into better battery performance and a cooler running lappy.


Click to expand...

This is a very silly comment. Presuming that you're not doing any 3-d modelling and not much significant gaming, the only rendering you'll be doing is the Vista (or other OS) desktop. Seeing as the current Intel offering is more than enough for that task, the only reason to go with a discreet GPU is if you're paranoid about using all of your ram. Seeing as a 2x2GB kit of DDR2 667 is running $70-80 for laptops these days, there's no reason to worry about that either.
 
DamienThorn said:
I switched from using a desktop to using a laptop as my main computer quite a few years ago. It's been one of the best decisions that I've ever made - I can take my computer wherever I go, and use my desktop just as a fileserver. The core downside of using a notebook as your primary computer follows:

(1) HDD space
(2) It's more likely that you'll have a notebook stolen, and potentially your valuable data with it. I recently attended and IT meeting and the officer who came in said that laptops are behind cars for the most commonly stolen items in North America.

(1) can be addressed by setting up a fileserver that you can access from a remote location. (2) can be resolved by encrypting your data.
Click to expand...



(1) can also be fixed with a 2.5" portable drive (working on that, need a case for it)
 
I use to have a desktop rig until I sold most of my parts over Fall/Winter.

That left me with my Dell E1705. Once school started I needed something more mobile, so I turned to the Eee PC. Great little device. :)

A few weeks later, I was offered a trade for my Dell for an HP notebook (see sig). Best trade I've ever made. I didn't need a 'gaming' laptop and wanted something that was still up-to-date. There was no way I was about to turn this deal down. :)

So, I have two notebooks. One for school and the other for light gaming and running more CPU intensive applications.

When the newer 9" Eee PC comes out, I'll sell the one I have and get that. Hopefully it won't be too expensive when it comes out. :eek:
 
shyboi said:
It provides you with better all-around performance. Also the GPU takes some of the load of the CPU for rendering tasks ect translating into better battery performance and a cooler running lappy.


Click to expand...

But I have that special low voltage C2D in my laptop, battery life already exceeds most other laptops anyways 6+ hours (up to 8+). My Vista score is taking a hit with only a 3.5 due to onboard video, but I have 4Gb of ram in the thing and the screen size is only 12" 1024x768 so I don't need a ton of power for that resolution anyways.

I still like to keep both because I can't upgrade my laptop or change components like (like the keyboard that is built into it, or the screen) Sure you can buy externals but that defeats the point in laptop. To upgrade a latptop you just buy a new one, and this tends to csot several times more than any PC. So I plan to use my laptop for laptop type tasks, but keep my PC for my main rig. Since I overclock and upgrade everything every year or so the performance / price ratio keeps the PC around...

If I want my Surround Sound, Better sound card, high end graphics, nice keyboard and mouse I use my PC.

if i want to take notes in a class, or bring a computer to the desert, or with me out of town, i take the laptop.

Workstation3.jpg


The laptop works great for watching HDTV wirelessly throughout the house though through network tuner and a repeater, but I still prefer to watch TV on my 37" monitor when possible.
 
Just making a note about the upgrading.


I usually don't upgrade for atleast a year or two. I'm not nor can't be on the bleeding edge to technology (money doesn't grow on trees).

I could make my desktop last another two years as a gaming rig but, I've a lot of interest in gaming as I said earlier. And even if I do get an itch for gaming I have COD2 running under wine.
 
Light portable+ Docking station should be a good fit. Then get a Xbox 360 or PS3 to fill your gaming needs. Much cheaper and will last longer.
 
I have a X61T. I have been using it a lot more lately. 80% laptop and 20% for the desktop.

the only thing i find frustrating when i need to get things done is the small screen of the lappy. If i am researching stuff and i need to write a paper, i tend to use my desktop which has dual screens or i have to sit down and crank out work for 8+ hours then the desktop it is... But the lappy is used more because i am away from home a lot.
 
i got rid of my desktop and now have a asus a8js (14" laptop with a nvidia 7700) and a thinkpad z60 (14") the asus sits on my desktop with a 21" lcd and the ibm goes with me everywhere because i don't care too much about it. the asus is great when i go home or want to game at a friends house. It handles almost all the games out there so no biggie. laptop ftw
 
The transition from desktop to laptop wasn't too dramatic. I quickly realized how convenient it was to have a portable computer, plus I don't game too much also, so yeah.
 
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