What do I do if I suspect someone has been hacking into my computer while I sleep, turning it on and deleting stuff, then turning it back off before I wake up?
I'd recommend locking your door before going to sleep at night. And if you have any roommates, maybe set up a well-disguised security camera focused on the computer while they're at work?
So I've been shopping around for a new laptop and while I've narrowed down the field a little bit, I'm also looking for recommendations.
I'm looking for a decent 15" all-purpose-type laptop; netbooks and those other tiny ones won't cut it, and I don't want some massive 10 pound machine to lug around all the time. As far as gaming goes, I only need something that will run Civ4, Paradox games, and stuff like that--no FPS or anything that will be extremely taxing. Last machine was a Dell I got through my department, and I'm not too satisfied with them from a reliability perspective, and I've heard several people with HPs have similar problems. I've heard good things about Sony, Toshiba, Lenovo, and Asus (but Asus' website sucks and I can't figure out how to narrow down or search for a good machine).
I'm looking for something in the $1,200-$1,800 sticker range, but that's a little flexible (especially if I can get a good discount--I have time so I'm waiting for a good sale).
Currently, I'm leaning towards this Sony 15.5" Vaio with an Intel i7 quad core, 8 or 12 GB RAM, 640 GB (7200 rpm) hard drive, and a GeForce® GT 640M LE (2 GB) graphics card. 12 GB seems like more than I need on RAM, but I figure if its still in my price range, then I might as well get it. Does this sound like a machine that fits the above specs? Is there anything else on the market that comes close to these specs and is reliable?
I think that'd meet the specs quite well. It's certainly well above what Civ4 requires, although I'm not sure by how many orders of magnitude. 12 GB probably is well more than what you need, and certainly is well more than you need for those games. I'd say, if it's cheap to get 12 GB (which seems unlikely), do it, but if it isn't cheap, it's probably a cash cow upgrade for Sony, and you'd save a bunch of money upgrading it later on your own if you actually need it (both due to it not being a profit machine and due to likely falling prices in the future).
Good to know. I've just heard a horror story about Sony, so now I've officially heard an unexpected computer failure story about every major brand I was looking into.
You're pretty much come around to what I was going to say - you can find someone with horror stories about any manufacturer. The top stories from people I know about deal with Apple, HP, Toshiba, and Dell. Does that mean all those manufacturers are terrible? No. But it means they aren't perfect.
My general outlook is Lenovo is pretty good (preferably ThinkPads, of those preferably T or W series - of course it's not as good as when it was IBM, but it was also a lot pricier then), Sony is pretty good, Asus is average to above average, Dell is good in the business line and their consumer line quality varies over time (I don't know if it's in a good or bad cycle right now, previous good cycle was about '06 - '07, in '08-'09 it went down a bit again). HP is okay in their higher-end lines (business/HDX), but I probably wouldn't go with their main line. Toshiba IMO is usually overpriced, and not great quality. Apple
is overpriced, though above average quality. Fujitsu probably doesn't have anything you're interested in. But, Acer is the only one I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. I hear they aren't as bad as they used to be. But they used to be rubbish, so it's not too hard to improve to not-total-rubbish-but-still-the-worst-in-general.
So, outside of ruling out the worst few, I'd base the search more on the features, come down with a few favorite models, and then read up on the reliability of that model or, if it's new, its predecessor(s). And don't put too much trust in long-term ratings, since quality can vary quite a bit by model.
Is SSD worth the cash? The hard drives are significantly smaller than the traditional drives, and I've read there is a hard limit on the number of writes/re-writes before the drives cease functioning. Given that I am fairly aggressive on the autosave for all documents and a gamer, I figure I burn up several of these transactions a day, probably more than the average user, and I don't know how long an SSD would hold out before needing replaced.
I wouldn't worry too much about the write limits on SSDs, unless you don't back up your files, in which case you should probably be more concerned to start with. However, IMO, SSDs aren't worth the cash. Yes, they are usually faster, especially for lots of small files, where they're much faster. Your computer will boot fast, and it's nice and faster to search for files or build pretty charts of what folders your files are located in. Your programs will start a little bit faster.
However... I don't think it's enough of a difference to be worth it. They are still expensive, for starters. And, unless you pay a fortune, you'll have noticeably less space. Once you're started up a program, you probably aren't going to notice a difference. Playing Civ4? Great. The CPU determines IBT times, the GPU determines how pretty the graphics are and how smooth the scrolling is. If the hard drive matters, it's because you're out of memory and using the hard disk as additional memory - and you won't be out of memory with 8 GB. Playing a Paradox game? Same story. Surfing the web? The limit's going to be the network connection, and maybe IE8 if you use it. Doing something in Word or Excel? Unless it's a gigantic spreadsheet, you probably won't notice the difference. Word will start 40% quicker. But if you used Word 2000 instead of 2010, it'd start 95% quicker even with the hard drive. If you're playing Medieval II Total War, battles will probably load quicker, which is nice. But IMO, not nice enough to be worth the extra cash. Assuming you don't have a beastly hard drive currently, they'll still load noticeably quicker even if you get the hard drive, so you'll still be happy.
And if fast booting sounds good, what you really want is Sleep (Standby in XP and earlier), not an SSD. Set up your laptop to sleep most of the time and hibernate when it's almost out of battery, and use those most of the time instead of rebooting, and you'll get 90% of the boot time benefit of an SSD without spending a penny.
I don't regret trying out an SSD since they were supposed to be all the rage, but if I had it to do over again, I probably would have saved my money.
tl;dr? Most of the time, you probably won't notice a difference, so save your money.
I was just curious: Do SSDs run lower temperature than actual hard drives, considering you dont have mechanical parts moving around all the time?
I think they do in theory, but for the most part hard drives don't contribute much to the heat factor to begin with.
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