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AusGAF 2.0 - Twice the price, a year late but still moving forward

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B

BanShunsaku

Member
Agyar said:
Is she going to be taking it to Uni, because the type of laptops you're suggesting are big and heavy. 15" are barely portable if you want to walk anywhere or use them on transport, 13" models are usually a lot lighter and slimmer.
Click to expand...

No she won't be taking it to uni, she's doing the course through open universities. It just makes sense for her to have a laptop so she can move into different rooms in our apartment (so I can play videogames without disturbing her etc :D )

Fredescu said:
These guys have a pretty good selection: http://onlinecomputer.com.au/
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll check out what they have.


Aside from HP, what is generally regarded as a quality laptop these days?
 
M

markot

Banned
squaretrade.bmp
 
B

BanShunsaku

Member
Thanks for the feedback guys!

Looks like prices have come down a lot in the last couple of years, I should be able to get something decent in that budget.
 
A

Agyar

Member
In terms of build quality, reliability and support, I like Dell laptops, do not like Toshiba or Asus. This is anecdotal of course, so make it of it what you will.

Oh, and Apple trump them all but all the nerds here will get their knickers in a twist if I tell you to buy a Macbook.
 
K

Kritz

Banned
While we're playing bad purchasing decisions: the game, here's a question:

I'm debating on if I should buy myself a little netbook (of unknown make and model, haven't decided yet), or an ipad at a similar price. I've had a play with a few ipads at work, and they seem really sweet, but I'm not sure if I'd simply prefer carrying around a nice little laptop.

I'm heading to uni next year, and the ability to note-take would probably be pretty important, and I kinda see a netbook doing word processing a little beter. I also have way more familiarity with Windows OSs. Battery life would also be an important consideration.

But it seems like it'd be easier to internet from an ipad with 3G or whatever, and it'd be a fun little distraction outside of classes and at home. I don't think I'd ever really use a netbook in my home, because I have a PC and a gaming laptop that I can use instead.

I'm still leaning towards the netbook, but the ipad does look really slick after I've had time to play with it for a few hours. The school I'm at today is apparently getting 10 ipads in later this arvo, so I'll likely get to set them up and fiddle around with the OS and tools a little bit more.

Decisions, decisions!

Also, note, that I also kind of want an iphone. Maybe I should get an iphone and a netbook? That may be the best way to go about it.
 
R

rass

Member
Agyar said:
In terms of build quality, reliability and support, I like Dell laptops, do not like Toshiba or Asus. This is anecdotal of course, so make it of it what you will.

Oh, and Apple trump them all but all the nerds here will get their knickers in a twist if I tell you to buy a Macbook.
Click to expand...
I was going to suggest a second hand 13" macbook :)
Even if I do quite like windows 7, I thoroughly dislike windows laptops, they all seem so... clunky? I suppose I'm a 'design snob' though, ymmv.

My gf is happy with her Dell… thing? But I hate it. The track pad is powered by hopes and dreams. I didn't mind the HPs that I checked out when we were looking, this is nearly 2 years ago though.


Cookie - do you remember I asked for troubleshooting ages ago about my mum's 4yo MacBook powering down at random all the time? We moved it into another room to copy stuff from her harddrive onto the iMac and bam, no more problem. Fucking weird. It was plugged in through a beast ass surge protector (which hasn't been tripped). It boggles my mind.


Kritz said:
Also, note, that I also kind of want an iphone. Maybe I should get an iphone and a netbook? That may be the best way to go about it.
Click to expand...
this.
If you have an iPhone 4 the iPad is kind of redundant (unless you have a boner for huge screens).

edit 2: editor
vv Choc raises a good point, I forgot you can get an external keyboard. I don't know what I would do tbh. The netbook my friend took to Japan was useful as hell but we had free wifi in all the hostels we stayed at.
 
C

Choc

Banned
Netbook is much easier to do typing yes, UNLESS you buy the little ipad dock thing you can get

Ipad battery life is PHENOMENAL. Unless you are hardcore using it all day playing games etc

a lot easier to interwebs from ipad.

you may say you'd like to carry a little laptop around but it gets old fast. I take my ipad to all my external meetings now instead of a laptop and i've noticed tons of my business associates do so as well.

the other thing about the ipad is the boot time. Hit the circle and you are ready to rock, open the netbook wait a few minutes, login and bam
 
A

Agyar

Member
rass said:
I was going to suggest a second hand 13" macbook :)
Even if I do quite like windows 7, I thoroughly dislike windows laptops, they all seem so... clunky? I suppose I'm a 'design snob' though, ymmv.

My gf is happy with her Dell… thing? But I hate it. The track pad is powered by hopes and dreams. I didn't mind the HPs that I checked out when we were looking, this is nearly 2 years ago though.
Click to expand...

Apple trackpads are so far ahead of everything else is isn't funny, reason enough to get a Macbook in my opinion.

For uni stuff I reckon a laptop is the way to go, because if it gives you a lot of flexibility to prepare assignments etc on campus without having to be tied to the computer labs. An iPad would be good but you'd still need to get on a "real" computer for those larger tasks. Unis generally have wifi coverage everywhere now and if you've got a bluetooth smart phone for tethering you can fill in the gaps on transport easily enough.

I reckon the ideal Uni computer would be one of the new Macbook Airs but I guess it really comes down to budget. Personally I had a 13" Macbook during my last year of Uni and found it really good productivity-wise and the size was good, anything larger would have been an annoying burden to lug around every day (not mention fitting it on lecture theatre desks, using it on the bus/train/ferry etc).
 
E

evlcookie

but ever so delicious
Get a laptop / netbook if you want to have access to your files.

Get a iPad and keyboard extension if you want to use the cloud.
 
U

untoldhero

Member
HP and Compaq = do not buy.

You guys have no idea, see the chart above for proof.

:lol @ thinking HP are good. LOL!

I LAUGH IN YOUR FACE!
 
E

evlcookie

but ever so delicious
They all pretty much use the same parts anyway. For the most part you are paying for support and added extras. Build quality is also one of the only differences you could look at but that would also be pretty darn small. The bullshit you get with the laptop though, some will do it worse than others but since you're a nerd just format and reinstall a clean windows 7.
 
B

BanShunsaku

Member
My local JB has the Toshiba one I posted earlier in stock so I'm gonna go and grab it this afternoon.

Only 2GB ram but I can always put some more in, and it won't be used for games so I don't need anything very powerful.
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
HP are fucking terrible, anyone who says any differently owns one and doesn't want to admit they bought a stupid HP.
 
M

markot

Banned
jambo said:
That study used 30,000 laptops.

Something like over 30 million laptops are sold a year.

<0.1% population sample.
Click to expand...
>.< thats a decent sample size... how do you think opinion polls work?!

And dont expect great battery life from that, AMD kinda is behind ze ball in that regard currently laptop wise.

I like Toshiba, nice build quality, and my current one is an Asus >.> no complaints!

My brother had a HP and had to return it cause there was some serious faults with the whole line, ended up getting a toshiba instead after returning it.
 
K

Kritz

Banned
Cheers for the advice. God, if I had infinite money I'd buy them all.

Agyar said:
I reckon the ideal Uni computer would be one of the new Macbook Airs but I guess it really comes down to budget. Personally I had a 13" Macbook during my last year of Uni and found it really good productivity-wise and the size was good, anything larger would have been an annoying burden to lug around every day (not mention fitting it on lecture theatre desks, using it on the bus/train/ferry etc).
Click to expand...

I used a 15.1" mac through most of highschool and all of college, and it was pretty good. But I always found OSX to be a little more annoying to use than even XP. Probably just a case of me using XP more.

I really want the ipad, but I'm kind of realising that I want to do a fair bit of programming (python, c++ or whatever they teach us I guess) as well as standard word processing and what have you.

Well, while I'm at it, what would someone recommend as a fairly cheap ($600 or so), but decent enough 13" netbook?

And anyone know what I should look for in an iphone? This will be my first smartphone, and my first phone made after the year 1990, and my first phone costing more than $60 (for the actual unit).
 
F

Fredescu

Member
VOOK said:
HP are fucking terrible, anyone who says any differently owns one and doesn't want to admit they bought a stupid HP.
Click to expand...
I don't personally own anything made by HP. They are fine. They are also a huge company that is bound to have variation in their product lines as far as reliability goes. This happens in manfacturing. Anyone who says "X huge company is shit" drinks the branding Kool Aid a little too much.
 
Y

Ydahs

Member
I have an MSI laptop... two actually and both were gifted to me. Pretty sweet laptops but the MSI brand is nonexistent in AU to my understand.

Besides that, we have several Dell laptops in my household. Very good laptops and we've only had a real issue with one, where the screen died after a few years. But the charger? Yeah, they die off quick.


FAKE EDIT: THUNDEEEER!
 
C

codswallop

Member
jambo said:
It's not like I've used HP hardware at work for the last 3 and a half years and had hardly any issues.
Click to expand...
You're not comparing HP servers against low-end consumer gear though I hope? Their consumer great truly is dreadful IMO. Servers are as you'd expect for that sort of money.

If you're planning on taking a lot of notes I'd think a low-end netbook is still the way to go vs. an iPad. I have used iPads though not extensively and it feels more like a content consumption device to me than one where you do a lot of content creation. Having to carry around the dock and keyboard would be madness.

Edit: I just noticed that there is a roof leak and it was directly on top of a server we have on a bench while setting it up. Nice.
 
K

Kritz

Banned
I own a HP Pavillion and despite the battery life being measured in minutes, it isn't that bad. It's less a laptop and more a portable desktop. Good for LANs and podcasting outside in the rain.
 
J

jambo

Member
codswallop said:
You're not comparing HP servers against low-end consumer gear though I hope? Their consumer great truly is dreadful IMO. Servers are as you'd expect for that sort of money.
Click to expand...
We use HP server hardware, desktop hardware and laptop hardware.

The most issues we've had was with 1 model of desktop hardware that often had blown transistors on the motherboard after 12 months or so use.

The laptops have always been great. We have a few around the office and for travel and presentation use.

The main issue we have with laptops is people leaving the charger bricks in other cities -_-
 
K

Kritz

Banned
rass said:
Kritz what are you studying next year?
Click to expand...

After a good game of Bad Decision Time, I've partly decided on the following:

Major in Game Design
Minor in Computing

Resulting in a Bac of Computing

Yeah, I know. Game Design is such a bad decision. :p
 
R

rass

Member
Kritz said:
After a good game of Bad Decision Time, I've partly decided on the following:

Major in Game Design
Minor in Computing

Resulting in a Bac of Computing

Yeah, I know. Game Design is such a bad decision. :p
Click to expand...
don't worry, my study shortlist includes digital art at RMIT, I think it's a fancy name for "game design" judging by the curriculum. I just want a degree so I can work overseas easier haha

so it sounds like a good decision to me
 
K

Kritz

Banned
rass said:
don't worry, my study shortlist includes digital art at RMIT, I think it's a fancy name for "game design" judging by the curriculum. I just want a degree so I can work overseas easier haha

so it sounds like a good decision to me
Click to expand...

But games aren't art!
 
D

Dead Man

Member
Frawdder said:
Yeah, there are some strange design choices, the car delivery is really unnecessary and takes way too long to just put the car into your garage. Another is the amount of time it takes to retry a license test or special event. How hard is it to have Continue - Retry immediately after an event?

On the other hand, the driving is great. Playing with a G25 and I'm :D all the time.

Graphics, I can't notice half the stuff people complain about. Yes, there is some aliasing going on and the shadows are bit average, but once I'm concentrating on the road I can't notice that stuff anyway.

Anyways, anyone down for an AusGAF session tomorr--er, tonight (Friday night)? My PSN is the same as GAF if you want to add me.
Click to expand...
I'd be up for some but I'm shaped until next week, so I can't download whatever is in that patch it wants me too. So no online for me until then. :(
 
C

Choc

Banned
to those just starting Uni in computer game courses


download

Visual Studio Express 2010 (free student versions of C#, VB etc) and get learning. The tutorials in there are very good and if yous pend time now putting effort into the learn the basics, it will be a lot easier as Universities tend to travel VERY quickly through lessons and programming and get complex quick.

Also, as part of VSE 2010 you can get XNA. Most if not all game courses use XNA to teach their students how to program games now (as its so easy) and as such again you would have a jump :)

It's actually quite fun to start playing around with these things to.
 
J

jambo

Member
Popped in to the boardroom upstairs to see Hussey knock some impressive 4's around. More of that Mike, thank you very much!
 
R

rass

Member
Kritz said:
But games aren't art!
Click to expand...
haha touche
I basically want to learn to animate well and enough programming to write plugins for the programs I already use. Digital Art seems to cover both and gives me my coveted Degree.

Choc - that's good advice for anyone going to study in a field where you can teach yourself beforehand (photography, animation, fine art etc). There's no point sitting around waiting to learn when you can start on your own and get a head start.
 
K

Kritz

Banned
Choc said:
to those just starting Uni in computer game courses


download

Visual Studio Express 2010 (free student versions of C#, VB etc) and get learning. The tutorials in there are very good and if yous pend time now putting effort into the learn the basics, it will be a lot easier as Universities tend to travel VERY quickly through lessons and programming and get complex quick.

Also, as part of VSE 2010 you can get XNA. Most if not all game courses use XNA to teach their students how to program games now (as its so easy) and as such again you would have a jump :)

It's actually quite fun to start playing around with these things to.
Click to expand...

I already have enough C++ knowledge to do super basic stuff (guess the number games, tic tac toe... basically anything that involves a whole lot of if / else statements.), and I've always wanted to stick my thumb deeper into a language, and I've always felt that game design is the fun way to go, and I'd be best to learn it in a place dedicated to learning (as opposed to, y'know, google)

But I'd love to learn some C# and a whole range of other object-oriented languages.

What languages would an iphone game be built on? They look almost flash / actionscript based, if it wasn't for that whole adobe / apple thing. Something similar maybe?
 
R

rass

Member
Kritz said:
What languages would an iphone game be built on? They look almost flash / actionscript based, if it wasn't for that whole adobe / apple thing. Something similar maybe?
Click to expand...

Objective C
 
A

Agyar

Member
Choc said:
to those just starting Uni in computer game courses


download

Visual Studio Express 2010 (free student versions of C#, VB etc) and get learning. The tutorials in there are very good and if yous pend time now putting effort into the learn the basics, it will be a lot easier as Universities tend to travel VERY quickly through lessons and programming and get complex quick.

Also, as part of VSE 2010 you can get XNA. Most if not all game courses use XNA to teach their students how to program games now (as its so easy) and as such again you would have a jump :)

It's actually quite fun to start playing around with these things to.
Click to expand...

Don't go out and buy any software though, as most Unis have software available free or cheaply through big Microsoft licensing deals (MSDNAA for students I think) and studying in the IT faculties usually gets you access to everything, including versions of Windows.
 
C

Choc

Banned
absolutely do not buy software, Uni licences are awesome :)

also to develop for iphone you need a mac, apple being apple has not done a windows dev environment
 
K

Kritz

Banned
rass said:
Objective C
Click to expand...

I had the suspicion!

Yeah, object oriented languages I find are way harder to get ahold of than scripting languages. Currently I'm fiddling around in Python, which is probably the easiest language to learn ever, but I do find it's not as versitile as I'd like it to be.

Main reason for wanting to do the course is because, yo, I can teach myself to a certain level. But I'll rather actually be given proper guidance (and more importantly, restrictions) that a class enviroment and teacher would hopefully allow.

It's going to be maddening going from my current job (IT support in schools) to being a student again. I'll miss the staff room beers and calling everyone by their given name. And the free cake. And being able to walk around schools without the police being called (after they gave us our badges, at least).
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
I'm transferring to Monash next year for Info Tech (Majoring in Game Design)/Music (Classical Piano Performance/Composition) double degree (Clayton for Music, Caulfield for IT), so say hi, anyone starting there next year.

It's a shame Melb Uni doesn't do double degrees, it would have made my life a whole lot easier. Luckily my music credit this year is transferable.
 
J

jambo

Member
Bit random, but does anyone know some good software for drawing and animation with a Bamboo Pen & Touch. Boss bought his daughter one and wants me to find software for it -_-
 
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