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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2232 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 20, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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About three weeks ago my laptop got stolen so I need to buy a new computer. I was thinking of building a desktop, but I'm about to move into a small apartment with my girlfriend and I don't think we'll have the floor space to spare, so it'll have to be a laptop.

What I need it for, in descending order of importance/time spent:

  1. Music production: I'll be using Propellerhead Reason and the shareware version of Reaper a lot. Obviously this means that a good integrated sound card is a must. With my old laptop, Reason would sometimes stop playing the track, I presume because my laptop couldn't keep up with the number of concurrent MIDI tracks. I presume this is caused by insufficient RAM, so it'd be nice if that was less of an issue with my new laptop.
  2. Photo editing/graphic design: Using Photoshop.
  3. Video editing: Using Premiere Pro. I'll be making short music videos which will require a great deal of colour correction. 1080p is fine, I don't need a 4k monitor, and I expect most of my editing will be 24fps.
  4. Gaming: Admittedly I've kind of gone off gaming a bit and don't spend nearly as much of my free time playing video games as I used to, but it'd be nice to have the option should the mood strike. I don't know if it makes a difference but I'm exclusively a single-player gamer. I own several games that I bought on a whim and only realised after the fact that my old laptop wasn't powerful enough to run them (e.g. Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Metro), so it'd be a plus if the laptop I get for the three tasks above is also powerful enough to run at least some of the aforementioned games. I rarely buy games on release, so a laptop which could reliably play games from 5-6 years ago at 60fps 1600x900 would be fine for me.

Budget, let's say somewhere between €1000-1500.

May the PCMR gods forgive me, but you sound like you'd be best served with a Mac (🤢)

That's what's hip for music production, but in terms of actual differences, you need to consider your work flow or software compatibility, and I can't specifically comment on that.

An M1 MacBook is perfectly sufficient, though you can get an M2 or higher if you really feel like it.

In terms of games, it's still a mixed bag, but since it's not a real priority you can probably get away with using a compatibility layer or dual booting.

If not, your needs aren't particularly demanding, and most laptops of any description in your price range should more than suffice.

If you don't mind a somewhat unrelated question:

I have a 2015 MacBook Pro. Is it possible to manually control the battery charge, so it doesn't charge all the way when plugged in all the time, or is that functionality only available on newer models?

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