Question for all you Tech "savvy" O/O's

I bought the one above because I used it for 2 years in Land Survey/Civil Eng program.

We used AutoCAD Civil 3D.

Is it overkill? Oh yeah.

But it's also got Win7Pro 64bit on it and allows me to do so much more than just Win7 Home edition.

That basis now is allowing me to use it in the house as a "server" allowing us both (wife and me) to have access to the accounting and the trucking paperwork.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/help/videos/remote-desktop-connection

we opted to go this route because it pretty much uses "screen shots" across the internet and that will save bandwidth when you are accessing the program on the server computer. Images are a lot less intensive than programming data transfers.

 

I'm glad RDP is working for you. Every time I've tried it out it's so lagged over cellular it's too tedious to bother with. Even in commercial data environments its a pita. But then, in a commercial environment they'll usually not use RDP in favor of a more robust method like Citrix application server or the like.

On the other hand, it's been a few years, so maybe MS has incorporated some similar features in their single user platform and the Office apps?

My "server" at the home office is a dual Xeon MacPro with 32GB ram. When I purchased it in '09, the rationalization was for video editing and compiling Flash files. Or ripping DVD's should I need a backup now and then. Now it is the desktop machine that can run every app that's installed on it at once without ever running low on resources.

Yes, I are a geek. I'll call your overkill and double down LOL.

 

it don't matter how expensive you buy. they're ALL made of cheap quality parts. sorry to say.

by buying more expensive. your buying something that the manufacturer makes more profit off of.

considering that laptops take heavy abuse being on a truck. and anything can happen that will ruin them. a $1000 laptop was last as long as a $300 laptop. and in my situation. i've spent $1200 on five laptops. the one i'm using now has been the longest lasting. the first 2 fried probably becuase of the voltage on the truck. thrid one got dropped accidentally. fourth got rained on in florida. as i left the windows down. on a sunny day. to go inside to eat only to come back out to torential rains.

there is a program i use. called logmein.com. i use the free versioon. very easy to setup. and no configuring when the home pc is turned on. all i do is call home to turn my pc on. wait a couple of minutes and i'm logged in.

 

Very much an apples an oranges comparison. I tuned my engine from MBN to 6NZ because it performed poorly and wasn't up to the task. High temps, low power, poor economy. Those things were fixed. For 99% of the truck owners out here who aren't gamers and don't use cad, auto cad or whatever a bare bones laptop performs needed tasks exceptionally well cause like I said, I've never wished for a faster processor or more memory. Email, surfing, spreadsheets don't require much. Now, if OP plays graphics intensive multiplayer games all the time cheapest laptop will be as disappointing as an MBN pulling a load.

Sent from my droid using Tapatalk 2

 

It's very much a valid comparison.

Just using terminology that all will understand.

I could have started explaining the differences on cache, front side bus and what they mean and how even with a pig software like office and even open office the benefits of it.

Especially when running excel. While you may not realise it, the celeron processors in those elcheapo machines doesn't have the math processor that a duo core or better chip does. So when that spreadsheet starys to grow in size, your performance will suffer.

Step up to a solid state drive and see your reliability improve 4-fold. After making hard drive components for Hutchinson technology for 4 years, you learn a bit about the quality of hard drives in the industry. There's a reason you get cheap drives in cheap computers. We specifically made the suspension assembly that held the read/write head to the hard disk.

 

I have one of those previously mentioned 5 year old 10.1" Acers with the big battery. I use it everyday. Recently dropped it off the top lip of a 6' ladder. While it won't close perfectly closed anymore, it still works, great lil machines. I've also managed to not kill the original sata hard drive, but when I do it'll get an SSD.

Just for kicks I checked power on time of the Acer hard drive, 2631 hrs. My home PC has 15K something hours on the hdd. I should install the new one I've had sitting here for 3 months :/

 

another thing you guys don't realize is that one motherboard can fit a wide range of processors and speed. provided the processors are the right socket type.

example. one person has a 1 gig 3 core amd processor. for 300 bucks while the other person has a 1.5 gig 4 core processor for 1500 bucks. both machines have the same board.

i only use amd processors. i know people with faster intel processors that can't even keep up with my machines. i have no need to spend the big bucks just to have the intel name. and i'm not talking celeron either.

you don't need a ton of ram unless your running windows 8. you don't need bus speeds or processor speeds unless your big into gaming.

and i doubt any of us will have a spreadsheet so full that it slows us down. we'll all be long dead before our spreadsheet gets that full.

 

Really depends on what kind of games you want to play. Modern fps. Looking at a large investment. Solitare. Not so much. Anything built within the last 3-5 years would more than cover you.