Tech I got a Windows 10 laptop

[Denny Crane]

A review of my new laptop.

Ugh. I finally broke down and got a Windows 10 laptop. It's the only thing I have that runs Windows. I haven't had a Windows computer since Windows 7, about 5 years ago (maybe even longer). I typically install Ubuntu on a Windows computer and actually enjoy using the computer. If I needed Windows to run some proprietary app, it'd be Windows in a virtual machine, like VirtualBox, under Ubuntu.

The machine I got is a Lenovo 2-in-1, 720, with 4K screen and i7 7700hq processor, and Nvidia 1050 (2G) graphics card, 16G RAM, 512G SSD. The technical specs are superior to my 2015 MacBook Pro.

Yet...

I had to use the Nvidia confuration/settings app to tell it to use the 1050 for rendering ALL applications, otherwise the machine crawled. Chrome barely scrolled WWW pages, often stopping for seconds at a time.

Even with the system using the GPU for rendering everything, the machine feels about 40% slower than my old MacBook pro. Even though it has a much faster GPU and SSD and processor.

My first experience with the computer was bringing it home and powering it up, only to spend several hours with blue screens while it installed updates. Nice! You'd think a person would want to actually play with their new toy right away...

I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro for some of the developer features that I require. That upgrade actually took just a few minutes.

During the updates, the computer rebooted maybe dozens of times. I lost count. It's Windows, how it works when updating.

Windows is still Windows, sadly. The awful NTFS filesystem, the clunky operating system, icky API, system registry, lettered drives, and so on. The machine probably feels so slow because it's running the windows built-in virus software all the time, leaving less resources for the rest of the apps.

The display is gorgeous. The GPU does play games really fast. Like 4K Diablo III with everything set at MAX with high frame rates.

But I still have to download, manually, software like winzip that is built in with the superior OSes. And I have to manually keep that software up to date when new versions come out. I rarely have to manually intervene on the Mac to keep software up to date. And when I do, I'm prompted by the software automatically. I don't have dozens of background programs running just to check for updates (on Windows: one background program to check for Adobe products, one to check for whatever, and so on).

MacOS comes with great productivity software: Numbers, Pages, etc. I'd have to pay for Micro$oft's versions (Excel, Word, etc.). Nickel and dime for every little thing. I've installed very little software and my 500G drive has less than 400G free.

A lot of what I do is command line oriented. On Mac and Ubuntu, I use zsh or bash, which are a delight to use from a user experience standpoint. Command.exe is extremely limited and uses backslashes which are ugly and clunky. PowerShell may be better, and has what looks like the ability to install plugins to enhance it. It's not at all as great an experience to use. An example of why I like bash better: I can "sudo whatever_command" and the command runs as administrator. If I want to do the same on Windows, I have to open a new Command.com (or PowerShell) by right clicking on the icon and choosing "run as administrator" from the context menu.

Windows 10 does have an experimental bash shell/Ubuntu environment. It's decent, but it's a hack. Every Linux syscall is glue that calls Windows syscalls. This extra layer, even a thin veneer, makes all the software running in the bash environment slower.

I will keep Windows 10 on the machine for the foreseeable future. I have enough Ubuntu and Mac that I don't need yet another system. At some point, I may dual boot.

For the price, this laptop is competitive with the old MacBook pro (15"). Better at games, better at running Ubuntu. More screen resolution.

It's not a religious thing for me, it's technical. I've seen better OSes with better user experience. If you want the best, go Mac. Windows is my last choice.

 

[MarAzul]

A review of my new laptop.

Ugh. I finally broke down and got a Windows 10 laptop. It's the only thing I have that runs Windows. I haven't had a Windows computer since Windows 7, about 5 years ago (maybe even longer). I typically install Ubuntu on a Windows computer and actually enjoy using the computer. If I needed Windows to run some proprietary app, it'd be Windows in a virtual machine, like VirtualBox, under Ubuntu.

The machine I got is a Lenovo 2-in-1, 720, with 4K screen and i7 7700hq processor, and Nvidia 1050 (2G) graphics card, 16G RAM, 512G SSD. The technical specs are superior to my 2015 MacBook Pro.

Yet...


>>> A Laptop with a graphics card, rather than using the onboard Graphics? For a laptop screen? Why?
Geez this processor is way bigger than the 3450 Ivybridge Quad I have in the boat. It is not short on horse So something is wrong!!!
I still use XP on the Little Ivy but all the back ground shit is stopped. No Anti virus except Spybot on paranoid and no updates for anything.

One thing I notice these days is the browsers are pigs. I use Maxthon for S2 and and regulars stuff, Slimjim for searches. Chrome when I need the Cloud, and hardly ever Firefox.
Use a Ram drive for cache on the browsers.

Way too much dependent on Windows to contemplate Apple or Ubuntu. Can't even imagine I could get it all to Win 10 without dual boot and then can't answer why, except IF I decide I need something build for Win 10 that I can't do without.
********************************************************************************************

I had to use the Nvidia confuration/settings app to tell it to use the 1050 for rendering ALL applications, otherwise the machine crawled. Chrome barely scrolled WWW pages, often stopping for seconds at a time.

Even with the system using the GPU for rendering everything, the machine feels about 40% slower than my old MacBook pro. Even though it has a much faster GPU and SSD and processor.

>>> My home system Uses two screen driven by a Nvidia Graphics plugged in a Xeon processor board. Nvidia defaluts to the Card? Is the onboard 630 graphics better than you Nvidia plug in?
**********************************************************************************************

My first experience with the computer was bringing it home and powering it up, only to spend several hours with blue screens while it installed updates. Nice! You'd think a person would want to actually play with their new toy right away...

I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro for some of the developer features that I require. That upgrade actually took just a few minutes.

During the updates, the computer rebooted maybe dozens of times. I lost count. It's Windows, how it works when updating.

Windows is still Windows, sadly. The awful NTFS filesystem, the clunky operating system, icky API, system registry, lettered drives, and so on. The machine probably feels so slow because it's running the windows built-in virus software all the time, leaving less resources for the rest of the apps.

The display is gorgeous. The GPU does play games really fast. Like 4K Diablo III with everything set at MAX with high frame rates.

But I still have to download, manually, software like winzip that is built in with the superior OSes. And I have to manually keep that software up to date when new versions come out. I rarely have to manually intervene on the Mac to keep software up to date. And when I do, I'm prompted by the software automatically. I don't have dozens of background programs running just to check for updates (on Windows: one background program to check for Adobe products, one to check for whatever, and so on).

MacOS comes with great productivity software: Numbers, Pages, etc. I'd have to pay for Micro$oft's versions (Excel, Word, etc.). Nickel and dime for every little thing. I've installed very little software and my 500G drive has less than 400G free.

A lot of what I do is command line oriented. On Mac and Ubuntu, I use zsh or bash, which are a delight to use from a user experience standpoint. Command.exe is extremely limited and uses backslashes which are ugly and clunky. PowerShell may be better, and has what looks like the ability to install plugins to enhance it. It's not at all as great an experience to use. An example of why I like bash better: I can "sudo whatever_command" and the command runs as administrator. If I want to do the same on Windows, I have to open a new Command.com (or PowerShell) by right clicking on the icon and choosing "run as administrator" from the context menu.

Windows 10 does have an experimental bash shell/Ubuntu environment. It's decent, but it's a hack. Every Linux syscall is glue that calls Windows syscalls. This extra layer, even a thin veneer, makes all the software running in the bash environment slower.

I will keep Windows 10 on the machine for the foreseeable future. I have enough Ubuntu and Mac that I don't need yet another system. At some point, I may dual boot.

For the price, this laptop is competitive with the old MacBook pro (15"). Better at games, better at running Ubuntu. More screen resolution.

It's not a religious thing for me, it's technical. I've seen better OSes with better user experience. If you want the best, go Mac. Windows is my last choice.

 

[Denny Crane]

With either, a 4K Tv or monitor works fine as a 2nd screen.

 

[Sinobas]

Open the task manager when it's crawling and see which processes are taking up all your juice ram.cpu.disk. A background virus scan can really slow a system. I personally like windows 10 and have no problems with it. It's the UI of 8 that I hated. 10 actually uses less power, and uses hardware resources more efficiently, so it should be more responsive than 7.

That said, for home laptop use, I"ll now only ever get a chromebook.

 

[Denny Crane]

Surprisingly, the system came with no bloat ware, aside from an App Store to download free stuff from Lenovo.

I use TaskManager constantly. There's no trivial way to get an accounting of CPU, RAM, and disk I/O without it.

It's easy to compare One Windows laptop with an older one and notice the speed. I notice it's slower. The OS is slower atenough things that it literally feels at least 20% slower than the Macs. One obvious thing is when loading a WWW page, the screen is white longer than on the Mac. The browser clears the window to white initially when loading a WWW page. It's not network bound or DNS lookup bound - all are on Ethernet and use a local DNS server.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

Wait, why would you subject yourself to Windows 10 after becoming proficient in Linux / Mac?

Also, when I think of bash, the last thing I think of is "a delight to use from a user experience standpoint." I've never had the displeasure of learning a language as arbitrary and non-intuitive and downright baffling as bash.

 

[barfo]

Would have been cheaper to just go to the hardware store, purchase a ball peen hammer, and whack yourself in the temple a few times.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

Wait, why would you subject yourself to Windows 10 after becoming proficient in Linux / Mac?

Also, when I think of bash, the last thing I think of is "a delight to use from a user experience standpoint." I've never had the displeasure of learning a language as arbitrary and non-intuitive and downright baffling as bash.

I use bash much of the time. I have several windows open at a time.

If you have to type commands to get things done, bash (or zsh, etc.) is a delight to use, period. Command history that you can search, alone, is a big win over Command.com. The ability to have an automatic startup script run that binds aliases and customizes your command set is a win. Command line editing in bash is also far superior. Copy and paste with the mouse is also superior in bash. And on and on, it's absurd how awful command.com is.

Command.com has barely evolved since the CP/M days. Bash and other Unix shells have constantly evolved and started from a much better starting point.

I found this, which says it all:

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-assumed-that-Bash-is-better-than-the-command-prompt

Because quite simply, BASH is miles ahead of the Windows CMD.exe batch processor.

For reference, I do advanced cmd “programming”, getting it to to do things most experienced Windows admins would never consider, doing much of what Bash or even PowerShell can do.

Almost everything is POSSIBLE in CMD, but it’s many deficiencies make quite a few things awkward or tedious.

The main deficiencies:

• Very poor variable support — environment variables (%path%), “for loop” variables (%%a %%b), and even call ‘parameters’ (%1 %2) work, but sending output TO a variable while possible is not well supported and fairly unnatural.
• Lack of (convenient) math and string functions — math is possible, so are string operations, and with the built in features, but they are very tedious at best.
• Looping and other control structures — if then else works well (these days), but the “for VARIABLE in (fileORstringsORcommands) do SOMETHING construct is tedious as well (note, I am REALLY good at doing these today but it took a long time to learn and is error prone.)
• Inconsistent return codes — most commands do this correctly but there are enough that don’t to make things unpredictable at times.
• etc (there are more)

Very little is insurmountable and external utilities can easily fix almost any problem (Perl, Python, and even Bash can run under CMD) but these don’t help much for admins with THOUSANDS of machines that don’t allow for installing 3rd party software without a great deal of politics, bureaucracy or other issues.

An incredibly annoying features of “for loop variables” is that they must use ONE percent sign (%a) when executed on the cmd line directly, AND MUST USE 2 percent signs (%%a) when the same variable is used within a batch file — the makes cmd testing much more tedious and error prone.

CMD has procedure calls and it is possible to fake a function call of sorts but this is again very, very tedious and unknown to most Windows users, even advanced practitioners.

PowerShell is much, much better (for most things) and easily arguably much better even than BASH but PowerShell wasn’t present on Windows until after XP/2003 by default and even then scripting was (stupidly*) disabled by default until 2012-R2/8.1. Also, remoting was disabled.

If you can’t depend on PowerShell (or other tools) to be present by default AND enabled then most scripts will need to avoid depending on these.

* Disabling “scripting” by default in PowerShell was some foolish idea of “security” but a CMD batch file CAN be written to turn that scripting on so it just presents an annoying hindrance to admins new to PowerShell and slows the adoption of this tool

So why CMD? There are only 2 “languages” always on all Windows systems in current use: CMD and VBScript.

So, as much as I dislike these (VBScript more than CMD) they are necessary evils if we are to automate across all systems still in use by our customers (including NT4, XP, 2000/2003, or even 2008-R2 where PowerShell isn’t enabled etc.)

 

[Denny Crane]

Would have been cheaper to just go to the hardware store, purchase a ball peen hammer, and whack yourself in the temple a few times.

barfo

That's how I feel reading many of your posts.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

I mean, yeah, you don't have to convince me of bash's superiority and power. I'm referring to the language itself (or, perhaps, how the language is used and talked about online.) To a filthy casual coming from languages like javascript or python, bash is fucking nightmare.

 

[riverman]

I was unsure about Windows 10 when I first changed over...it seemed to download updates daily and be slow but after a short period of that it seemed to speed up and stabilize...much better than any other versions of Windows I've had....it works pretty well now......I started with Macs and they are indestructible but hard to get software for or get serviced if you live in asia.....everything is PC geared there...Macs are too expensive over there

 

[Denny Crane]

I mean, yeah, you don't have to convince me of bash's superiority and power. I'm referring to the language itself (or, perhaps, how the language is used and talked about online.) To a filthy casual coming from languages like javascript or python, bash is fucking nightmare.

Sure, but if you're not writing shell scripts all day, who cares?

I've had no problem either just writing the scripts I need or writing functions. Anything that stumps me is a google search away.

Anyhow, writing functions in zsh is trivial. No harder than writing command lines:



(ssh to host, with X forwarding, an start or attach to a tmux session on the remote side)

tmux crushes windblows.

 

[Natebishop3]

Why would you game on a laptop?

I build my gaming PC usually every 3-4 years. I use my work laptop for surfing the web and that's about it. I had a gaming laptop back in like 2004-2006 but I would never do that again.

I have an iphone. I see the appeal. It never has any problems. That's nice. But I also don't pay MSRP on that bitch. I wait until they're getting ready to release the next iteration and then I buy the next best thing for like $100. So right now I have a 6S. I like it fine.

To me, Apple isn't worth the cost. I still have an old Dell from like 2009 that surfs the web just fine

If I was going to buy an Apple laptop, I'd buy an older one at a discount. I don't see the appeal of spending a bunch of cash on a laptop.

 

[barfo]

I use my work laptop for surfing the web and that's about it.

Your employer says "oh, that's interesting".

barfo

 

[MarAzul]

I have a difficult time understanding why people profess to prefer Apple, or Linux over Windows since most of the developers of software that I use, produce Window application.
So I guess it has more to do with, what you use a system to do, rather than your preference of the provider. It is hard to like Apple when you can not use it to do your work.

I just googled some design (Cad) stuff to see if this is still correct. Damned if that didn't take me on a trip of seeking ways to spread out the process of taking design to productions using vender's along the way to execute the steps involve. Make specialists of steps rather that every small shop be equipped for all steps. Now I don't care why Apple is not my choice.

 

[Natebishop3]

I have a difficult time understanding why people profess to prefer Apple, or Linux over Windows since most of the developers of software that I use, produce Window application.
So I guess it has more to do with, what you use a system to do, rather than your preference of the provider. It is hard to like Apple when you can not use it to do your work.

I just googled some design (Cad) stuff to see if this is still correct. Damned if that didn't take me on a trip of seeking ways to spread out the process of taking design to productions using vender's along the way to execute the steps involve. Make specialists of steps rather that every small shop be equipped for all steps. Now I don't care why Apple is not my choice.

They don't really break or have issues... which is great, but not worth the price, in my opinion. The issue that I see is when you buy a laptop from Dell or a similar company, their version of windows is completely jacked up. The last laptop I bought was a Dell in 2009. It came with the Dell version of Windows Vista. That computer had a TON of problems. I eventually installed the bare bones Windows 7 operating system and the computer was fine. No more problems. To me, it's the shitty versions that you get from the manufacturers that have the issues.

 

[MarAzul]

They don't really break or have issues... which is great, but not worth the price, in my opinion. The issue that I see is when you buy a laptop from Dell or a similar company, their version of windows is completely jacked up. The last laptop I bought was a Dell in 2009. It came with the Dell version of Windows Vista. That computer had a TON of problems. I eventually installed the bare bones Windows 7 operating system and the computer was fine. No more problems. To me, it's the shitty versions that you get from the manufacturers that have the issues.

I quit buying computers off the shelf more than 15 years ago. Build my own since then to serve the functions needed.

 

[Denny Crane]

Why would you game on a laptop?

I build my gaming PC usually every 3-4 years. I use my work laptop for surfing the web and that's about it. I had a gaming laptop back in like 2004-2006 but I would never do that again.

I have an iphone. I see the appeal. It never has any problems. That's nice. But I also don't pay MSRP on that bitch. I wait until they're getting ready to release the next iteration and then I buy the next best thing for like $100. So right now I have a 6S. I like it fine.

To me, Apple isn't worth the cost. I still have an old Dell from like 2009 that surfs the web just fine

If I was going to buy an Apple laptop, I'd buy an older one at a discount. I don't see the appeal of spending a bunch of cash on a laptop.

I don't have the space to set up a full sized rig. With the laptop, I can set it up on the kitchen table and work. Or take it in my home office and HDMI plug it into my 4K monitor.

If you want the best UI, it's Apple macOS, and you have to pay to get it legitimately.

The MacBook I have cost at least 2x what the Windows one did, but it is significantly better. If I had to just browse the WWW, a chrome book would do.

When shopping for a new laptop, it was obvious that few laptops come close to being as good as the older MacBook pro. I think last year's model was a step down from the one I have, but the new one is quite good. The new laptop lasts maybe 2-3 hours on battery, while the old MacBook pro runs all day on battery.

 

[Denny Crane]

I quit buying computers off the shelf more than 15 years ago. Build my own since then to serve the functions needed.

I do a lot of that, too. Tiny dedicated systems for specific use. Raspberry Pi for $35 can do a lot of useful things. But I wouldn't want to use it as a development host.

 

[Natebishop3]

I don't have the space to set up a full sized rig. With the laptop, I can set it up on the kitchen table and work. Or take it in my home office and HDMI plug it into my 4K monitor.

If you want the best UI, it's Apple macOS, and you have to pay to get it legitimately.

The MacBook I have cost at least 2x what the Windows one did, but it is significantly better. If I had to just browse the WWW, a chrome book would do.

When shopping for a new laptop, it was obvious that few laptops come close to being as good as the older MacBook pro. I think last year's model was a step down from the one I have, but the new one is quite good. The new laptop lasts maybe 2-3 hours on battery, while the old MacBook pro runs all day on battery.

I looked at the Chromebook.... might as well just get a tablet. It doesn't have a hard drive.

 

[Denny Crane]

I looked at the Chromebook.... might as well just get a tablet. It doesn't have a hard drive.

It has a real keyboard and trackpad.

 

[Denny Crane]

I build this Gigabyte Brix for about $120. It has a Celeron CPU, 4G of RAM, and a 60G SSD I had laying around. It's about 5"x5"x3". Tiny.

It runs my home automation system

 

[Denny Crane]

Raspberry PI:

 

[Denny Crane]

This is a super nice tiny system. It's got an I7 7700, 32G of RAM, 450G NVME super fast boot drive, 960G SSD, and an external 4TB drive I use as a time machine backup for my Macs. This system is mostly for pure computing. About 90% of my work is done on it, since program builds, etc., are faster on it than on my Macs. It's 5"x5"x4". It's hooked up to a $299 40" 4K TV as monitor. I use the Ubuntu (Cinnamon) desktop on it most of the day.

 

[MarAzul]

The new laptop lasts maybe 2-3 hours on battery

I do a lot of that, too. Tiny dedicated systems for specific use. Raspberry Pi for $35 can do a lot of useful things. But I wouldn't want to use it as a development host.

The power efficiency is a big driver for me with the boat computer. While I need it to run special software, Radio control, Weather, Navigation, and sensor integration, I also want it to do all the stuff I do on the home desktop. It needs serial port to interface with other hardware, so it has to be a special setup.

All that is working now and loath to mess with it. But if I can cut the power requirements down with 7 or 10 nm architecture, I will go for it. That will force me to Win 10 I suppose.
Damn! I bet it will be a bitch to get all that serial port stuff running on 10.

 

[Denny Crane]

This one is a WWW server. I have 150/150 internet so I have plenty of outbound bandwidth to serve fast sites.

It's 5x5x4" as well. Has an I5 6400t, 16G of RAM, NVME boot drive, 400G SSD.

 

[Denny Crane]

The power efficiency is a big driver for me with the boat computer. While I need it to run special software, Radio control, Weather, Navigation, and sensor integration, I also want it to do all the stuff I do on the home desktop. It needs serial port to interface with other hardware, so it has to be a special setup.

All that is working now and loath to mess with it. But if I can cut the power requirements down with 7 or 10 nm architecture, I will go for it. That will force me to Win 10 I suppose.
Damn! I bet it will be a bitch to get all that serial port stuff running on 10.

Of these, only the I7 system uses a lot of power. The others use very low power (15 to 35 Watt) CPUs and efficient components. They all have laptop power supplies, something like this:

 

[Denny Crane]

All those systems fit on the shelf behind the TV:

 

[MarAzul]

MarAzul's primary computer. Older backup on the backside of this one.

Ivy Bridge 3450T 35W processor 2 SSDs, 2 32G SD cards, and 500G Western Digital.
Looking to step the power requirements down to about 15W , then we move.

 

[rasheedfan2005]

my favorite part about windows 10 is a recent update that completely froze my computer. I had to google why my computer is freezing and turn off some program that installed. then i had to change some setting in the bios because windows 10 was fucking up the process. the windows crashed while booting and went back to a previous version. only to start demanding i install the new update. then i had to google how to turn off windows update in windows 10 because they made it more confusing on purpose. apparently i cant update windows now until im sure they've fixed what ever problem they cause with the previous update. and sadly i still prefer it to shitty fucking mac products simply because mac marks their shit up for no reason other than they are mac. And dont get me started on mac's technical support, they charge you $50 to ask a question and they look up the answer in their database that you have access to. it's like paying someone $50 to let me google that for you. it's a fucking scam to rip off old people that can't use the internet.