Tech

Laptop Search Begins – Gigabyte

To understand what is going on with all the laptop information, please go back to this post where I speak all about it here.

My current gaming laptop is a Gigabyte, so it made sense (to me at least) to start looking there for my Ultrabook purchase. I bopped over to their site, and what do I see under products?

 

They even have an Ultrabook category! I was excited. So, I started to peruse further. The Ultrabook series for Gigabyte is called AERO. They have a ton of different options. I am opting to look at the 14-inch models because as I said in my previous entry, I am looking for something slightly smaller. The model I am looking at specifically is AERO 14 (GTX 1050 Ti).

Right off the bat, the first thing I am noticing when it comes to these specs is that it feels as if these are gaming specs. I’ve not been in the room with many Ultrabooks that could take on gaming, but these are looking as if they might be able to. They have the SSD that I am looking for, storage is 512GB, comes with Windows 10 Home. It has a 14-inch display. I have no perception of measurement in my head, so I busted out a tape measure and measured my display on my work laptop. From corner to corner it is about 15 inches or so (always remember that displays are measured diagonally) and my work laptop is a full-size laptop. The laptop is gorgeous and comes in three different colors.


However, I have a history of seeing something pretty in technology and blindly purchasing and dooming myself. See: My HP Garden Dreams laptop purchase from back in the day.

In other interesting facts, it is only 4 lbs, 1.9cm slim (whatever that means), the charging adapter is light, and has an additional USB charging port on it, so you can charge additional equipment. It has an intel core i7 processor. It has something called Thunderbolt 3 port technology which I had to look up. Thunderbolt is the hardware interface for ports. Thunderbolt 3 is the newest and has USB- C. I can go further in depth, but all you really need to know is that it seems like most of the USB ports on this laptop are USB- C. It also one of the things that allows this Ultrabook the ability to Output its display at 4K on 3 external displays. It allows you to tweak the fans, which I think is kind of awesome. It goes quiet, normal, gaming, or you can customize it. If you are a game streamer, it lets you adjust the background of your streaming without a green screen.
All of these things sound amazing. It is a gorgeous laptop. I have spent hours on the site looking at it. But does it meet the qualifications that I need? Let’s see:
1. It must be small. No full sized laptops This is a little smaller than my work laptop, which leads me to think it is a full size laptop. I think it gets away with being called an ultrabook because it is so light.
2. No HP Laptops. √
3. No Lenovo laptops√
4. I need a solid state hard drive√
5. No less than 128GB of drive space√
6. I would prefer a Windows machine, but would do Linux if everything else was there√
7. My price point is $500 dollars. So we need to talk about this one for a minute. Gigabyte only sells refurbished items on their website, so I had to Google to see a price. That is when it became clearly evident that this was an Ultrabook in weight only (UIWO?). This is a gaming laptop, and as such it has a gaming laptop price. It is about 1100 dollars over my budget. I may be able to fudge my numbers a bit and get a little more money for the right laptop, but I cannot fudge 1100 for a laptop that has a lot of bells and whistles that I do not need. No matter how pretty it may be.

So there you have it. Gigabyte has amazing laptops. I know, I own one, I’ve had it for a good little while and the product is good. It stands up over time. I’m able to play my games on it and have not seen a degradation of the quality. While I would love for my newest laptop to be with them, and they met a lot of what I need, they did not meet the two most important factors. So, the hunt is still on. As always, if you have any notebooks you want to recommend, or any thoughts on laptops in general, feel free to reach out. Leslie@geekygirlguide.com


Update: I was back on Gigabyte’s website when I noticed something:

They have an Ultrabook series, but if you look a little bit lower, they have a mainstream series. I clicked over to there:

And what do we have here?

Gigabyte does have some smaller less powerful computers! Let’s check it out.
*Starts Reading*
*Tries to find a price*
*Reads how old these are*
*Throws everything away*
So, after doing some reading, these laptops are from 4 years ago. Why are they still on your site Gigabyte!? We will not be diving in to the other laptops. My original opinion still stands. Gigabyte is too powerful and too expensive for what I need it to do.
On to the Next one!

New Phone Blues

I need a new phone. This sucks.

For those of you not in the know I am currently rocking a Nexus 4. It is getting older so, it is becoming less and less compatible with programs, and updates that come out. Plus, the past couple of years I have gotten used to listening to  a lot of podcasts. I do not have a lot of space on this thing. With all my apps, pictures, and podcasts I am frequently running out of space. I have like 15 gigs. The majority of my time is spent on my phone (as opposed to my laptop) so I tend to run out of space fairly quickly. I am sitting here researching phones and I have a list of things I want. So far here is what we got:

  1. Android platform
  2. At least 32 gigs of space (prefer 64 or even higher)
  3. Fast processing speeds
  4. One of the more popular ones, so that I have a distinct choice in cases

Typically I leave phone decisions to my husband. He is a better researcher than I am. However I am learning that we value different things in phones. I use a lot of different game apps, and he has no interest in them. I take a lot of pictures, he does not. So what in the world does it look like handing off the choice of phones to someone who doesn’t do any of the things that I do?!

Thing is, I hate researching. I tend to get overwhelmed very easily. But I am going to suck it up and do it. Because I need a new phone.

Xfinity, no one likes you

So, my honey and I were out at breakfast this past weekend when we tried to connect to the wifi. We have been going to this place for years and they have always had unsecured internet access for people to use. Recently they have made a few upgrades and locking down the wifi was one of them. Not a huge deal, but as I am looking at the list of available SSID's available to connect to, I noticed an unsecured "xfinitiywifi". I showed it to my husband and he informed me that this was a common thing now. Comcast is using your modem to broadcast a signal so subscribers can sign in and use wifi where ever they are at.

This doesn't seem safe, or legal. When I got home, I googled a bit of information on it and came across this year old article on Ars Technica. The article states the good it could be doing, but it doesn't talk about the possibility for hacking. Also, when people connect they are using a piece of equipment on your network. Which means they are using your electricity. Will this increase your electricity bill?! Is Comcast going to put some money on your electric bill? Since they don't want to credit your bill when they have outages for days  (*cough polar vortex cough*) I am going to go with no.

I am going to set this on my porch

http://sprudge.com/20-tip-jars.html

This whole debacle fortunately does not apply to me and mine. We do not rent Comcast's shitty equipment, we purchased our own. But it is still truly concerning.

 

Do you have Comcast? Do you take advantage of the wifi access points from them around your town? How do you feel about it?

When a geek really, really really loves a product.

 

Yes, I am channeling Bryan Adams, so what?

I am stuck in the 90s. This is a known fact to my family and friends. When I found out the Theme song to Portlandia included the lyrics “The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland,” I started looking for jobs and a house in Portland. They are my peeps!

Sadly though, I never made it to Portland, though I plan on visiting someday. My husband keeps asking me “Why on earth do you want to visit Portland?” I just scream “THE DREAM OF THE 90s IS THERE, DO YOU NEED ANY OTHER REASON!?” He goes back to his computer and rolls his eyes. Hater.

As part of my 90s loving, I tend to listen to a lot of music from my teenagedom/young adulthood. A lot of Nsync, and R&B, back when it was great. All of my music is on my phone, and nowadays, ear buds come standard with phones. Here is a little secret. I can’t stand ear buds. No offence to them, but my ear holes are tiny or something, and they just fall out. My husband, noticing my sad predicament got me some bigger headphones. While I do love these things, I can’t really wear them in the office. Could you imagine me looking like this showing up to fix your computer?

Plus I spend roughly 80% of my day on the phone. So no, headphones would not work.

My husband to the rescue again.

2013-10-22 20.40.53

While this thing may look like a Pokeball (which is what I call it), It is in fact a Bluetooth speaker by DBest of London.

This little thing is great. It fits in the palm of my hand, so it is unobtrusive. I sit it on my desk, hear a little *blorp* noise, and know my phone is connected. I am enjoying tunes and podcasts all day with this thing. It charges by USB, so If I am worried that it is going to die, I charge it the night before I go to work. This thing has a lot of battery power however. The most I used it without charging was two weeks straight for 8 hour days.

It does have it’s drawbacks. If I pause whatever I am listening to, leave the range of the speaker, and then come back, it does not automatically connect. I either have to turn it off and turn it back on or turn off the Bluetooth on my phone and turn it back on. It also have little crevices that are hard to keep clean. I am not the tidiest person in the world (read: Messy Marvin), but I do take a Q-tip around it every once in a while.

It comes with it’s own little velvet pouch (LIKE A MINI CROWN ROYAL BAG Y’ALL!) and a USB/audio plug in adapter, just in case you don’t want to use the Bluetooth. I keep the adapter in the pouch along with the speaker when not in use and stick it in my purse. It takes up hardly any space. I love the fact that I can take it anywhere.

I loved it and raved about it so much that my husband asked for one for Christmas, and ended up getting a non Bluetooth one on accident. Oops. He’s still quite pleased with it.

So, tell me, what little gadget do you rave about to people? Is it something I would like?

 

**This is totally not a paid advertisement. DBest of London has no clue who I am. If they did I may fan girl out, and they would pelt me with speakers to make me go away. This was a gift from my husband. WE share the same bank account, so you know, I paid for it too. There you go FTC.**