I never planned to spend quite this much on computers in the first two months of the year. The laptop was in dire need of an upgrade, so I had budgeted for it. After getting it, I was impressed, but thought that the desktop PC, which dates from 2012 and upgraded with a Crucial 525 Gbyte SSD just over two years ago, was holding its own. The processor might have been slow, but then, Iām a middle-aged man with reflexes slower than that of a 20-year-old, so I hardly noticed. I thought, best-case scenario, Iād look at an upgrade at the end of 2019.
Last Wednesday, the PC wouldnāt start properly. I was incredibly lucky as I had backed up all pertinent directories the night before, and only lost a bunch of frequently used scans (which can be re-created) and some text files where I wrote down some drafts. In the grand scheme, this was the least amount of data I had ever lost, and Iām very old-school: I still download emails with a client and burn mailbox archives on to DVD.
The original diagnosis was a faulty SSD, where the operating system lived. The computer kept booting on to the secondary hard drive, which I used prior to the SSD. The hard drive was cloned in 2016 and became a storage drive, but I never deleted the old OS from it. The plan: get a new SSD and clone it again.
I took the computer to Atech, where I was a regular visitor anyway. I had even discussed the possibility of buying a PC from them. The boss, Kidd Liang, began cloning the hard drive on to a fresh Samsung SSD, which he believed would be more reliable than the Crucial. But after attempting the process twice, he said there were too many bad sectors on the hard drive for the cloning to be successful. Based on the noise, he deduced something else would bite the dust: either the power supply or the graphicsā card. Nevertheless, he plugged the SSD into the PCāand it was at this point the power supply failed.
Iāve seen multiple faults like this beforeāI had one machine in the 2000s die with a motherboard failure, then a CPU one, within 24 hours. Kidd said I was incredibly lucky as someone who had done a major back-up, because I then faced the very real prospect of needing a new desktop PC. I was able to continue working on Wednesday night thanks to my laptop, and when it was plugged in to my big monitor, I finally noticed the speed difference of a modern machine versus my old one. And I liked it.
Therefore, it was with some excitement I collected my desktop PC from Atech on Saturday morning. I didnāt want to go overboard but at the same time needed to do some future-proofing. Kidd calls it the āvintage gaming seriesā, as he reused my old Cooler Master case and DVD-ROM drive, along with the top fan, but everything else was replaced. It’s like one of those Singer Porsches: old on the outside, new on the inside. My existing Windows licence worked on the new machine. Inside was the Samsung along with a new 2 Tbyte hard drive; the 1 Tbyte I had was also installed, even if it has bad sectors. Itāll be the back-up of the back-up.
Going with a six-core Ryzen 5 2600 isnāt as impressive as the laptopās i7-8750H, but once the programs are running I donāt notice much difference (middle age again). Thereās an Aorus X470 motherboard, 16 Gbyte of RAM, and instead of going with Geforce, I decided to see how a Sapphire Nitro Plus Radeon RX 580 with 8 Gbyte on the video would be like.
While everything is more stable and faster, I donāt get a sense of a major leap, probably because of the 2016 SSD upgrade. Nevertheless, itās given me a fresh start for 2019, with some old software (e.g. Gammadyne Mailer) not having made it on to the new machine. More time-consuming was getting the fonts right: Windows 10 now selects a user directory for some of your fonts and these do not appear in the registry (the trick is to change the permissions of the fontsā folder, and make sure the fonts are installed for all users). And, once again, the reliability index has gone from 10 to 1 because Windows seems to be allergic to either software or usage. Thereās still the odd program that needs to be installed, but as the weekend draws to a close, weāre almost there. The coming weekās going to be a busy one and itās nice facing it with new tech.
I have to give Atech public praise, too. When I bought this computerās predecessor at PB, you could still do a deal with the local manager, and you had the sense you werenāt just a number. Drew and Mark really looked after me. PB has deservedly grown because of its keen pricing and marketing, but as it has done so, you now get the feeling that itās no longer the friendly, small retailer that it once was, with all of the promo coordinated in Auckland. Kidd at Atech on Cuba Street brings me back to that one-on-one feel: you could talk to the boss and do a deal. Matt, who usually served me at Atech since the Wakefield Street days, did the same. You arenāt just a number here, and it was a pleasure to be able to chat through my exact requirements and have a rig built to my specifications and (meagre, post-laptop-buying) budget.
I’ve had a great week with my new laptop, though it exhibits some of the same traits I’ve frequently seen with Windows 10: settings’ windows vanishing when attempting to load. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, demo PCs I’ve seen at the store have terrible reliability history scores, and mine is no exception. It ranked a 10 when it left Just Laptops in Auckland, but dropped to 1 when I began installing software on it. The lesson here is this: Windows 10 is allergic to software and usage. Never install a thing on it, and never touch it, and it might continue being a 10. It’s that simple.
Of course, there is the issue of updating it, and even a PC on absolutely stock settings has trouble with that ā¦
Top: The new laptop, just unboxed. Centre: Publicity shots at strange angles. Above: The specs, as told by Windows.
When I think about it, Iāve gone through quite a lot of laptops over the years. The first this century (as there was an Apple II-compatible that I used for some months in the 1980s, though I think we called them portable computers back then) was a Dell, ordered online, costing over NZ$3,000 in 2001. That laptop, which is still alive (at least when plugged into the mains), ran Windows Me and I was surprised to see just how small a screen I was prepared to put up with. This was back in the day when I was the only person at the airport lounge with a device; now the opposite is true as I donāt always wish to be glued to a screen.
There was a HPāCompaq in 2004 that was used by one of my team, and I later inherited it, running it into the ground with a motherboard failure by 2009. I took delivery of an Asus after that (that unitās still with us, too, now running Ubuntu and plugged into the television), and was impressed by Windows Vista. In my opinion, it didnāt deserve the bad rap that it got. A Lenovo G570 bought off a charity was next, a friend having installed a 250 Gbyte SSD within, so it wasnāt as clunky as you might have expected.
The laptops I disliked were the Compaq and the Lenovo, since they werenāt bought for me at the outset, and never really suited my requirements. Today I took delivery of an Asus FX504GD from Just Laptops, with a 240 Gbyte SSD within coupled to a 1 Tbyte conventional hard drive for data. Itās running an Intel Core i7-8750H with six cores, 16 Gbyte of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX1050 with 4 Gbyte, and a full HD IPS display. It wasnāt my first choice but Just Laptops discovered a fault while testing that laptop, and recommended this one. I could have had a refund if I chose. The service, I should note, was excellent, especially since I was buying the computer sight unseen, and Des at Just Laptops made sure I was posted about every single stage of the transaction, from the work he had to do and when the laptop got to the courier.
Of course the review is positive so far, since itās only hours out of the box. I havenāt trialled it without the laptop being plugged in to the mains, so I canāt give a report on the supposedly poor battery life. But I have definitely noticed more positives than reviewers have let on, though admittedly the FX504s many of them tested werenāt as highly specced. It seems there are some real budget models overseas.
For a start, the SSD gives decent speeds. Iāve had no issues with the viewing angles on the display; in fact, the type renders beautifully, and while itās not a match for 4K, itās still respectable in 2019. In fact, the GTX1050 does a very good job and ClearType works even better here than on my desktop machine (though this could well be down to the smaller 15Ā·6-inch screen). I haven’t even changed the Microsoft default font, Segoe UI, because it actually looks pleasant here. The plastic chassis is fine, since Iāve put up with that on the majority of my laptops. One negative, and this is where I concur with reviewers, is the fan noise, which can be loud when the computer is under a heavier load. I donāt play games but it handles the layout, font editing and photo-editing work that I do, and the fast processor makes life so much more tolerable when Iām on the go away from the office. Iāve found that buying machines destined for gamers helps considerably with the type of work I do.
The lit keyboard is reasonably good to type on, though generally I dislike chiclet keys. (I had once hoped that the chiclet trend would vanish by the time I had to replace the first Asus; it still hasnāt happened.) The lights turned out to be quite handy in less than ideal conditions in my lounge as opposed to my office. Even though I have long owned a gaming keyboard (a Cooler Master Quickfire TK) where I can turn on the lights, Iāve never seen the need to. I bought that because I make fewer errors with mechanical keyboards; and yes, typing on the FX504 isnāt as much of a joy. Still, it isnāt as bad as typing on many other laptops.
Finally, I get a decent numeric keypad on a laptop, and the key layout is superior to that on the Quickfire. My other gripe is that I canāt tell when num lock is on.
The unit feels robust (hence Asusās TUF moniker, apparently standing for The Ultimate Force, which sounds like a science film narrated by Prof Stephen Hawkingāpoints for those who know the origin of this joke). For someone like me who will use this laptop on the go, itās good to know that it will stand up to a few knocks, even if I do look after it in a nice case. It doesnāt have the red lines on the case (which might appeal to younger gamers, but not to a middle-aged man).
Annoyingly, though you canāt have everything, there is no optical drive, something which had once been a non-negotiable. But when I saw the specs and the deal Des was willing to do, that seemed secondary. I could always pick up a separate DVD drive which my partner and I could share, since she found herself sans drive in 2017 when she bought her Asus. If I have to be honest with myself, I only needed that drive a couple of times a year.
Asus also put every port on the left apart from a Kensington lock on the right: not necessarily the decision I would have made if I were designing, since it would make sense to me to have some things plugged in to the right as well. Once I add, say, a Vodafone USB stick when Iām somewhere without readily available internet, having all the USB ports on a single side could get old really quickly.
It didnāt take long to install the software that I had licences for, and, importantly, the fonts now match my desktop computerās. The exercise that did take long tonight was taking everything off the Lenovo, since it didnāt come with installation discs (neither did this Asus, incidentally, which could be problematic five or six years down the line as I had to reinstall the OS on the previous one). I make so many changes to my computers that undoing them, and returning the font menu to stock, donāt bring me much joy. Itās the customizing thatās fun, not taking off the alloys and leather seats.
Come February thereāll be two laptops for sale as the old Asus and Lenovo will head on to Trade Me. The latter is still acceptable as a workhorse thanks to its SSD, though you may need to be a masochist to buy the former. I feel Iāve future-proofed for a few years now, with a laptop that should suit my working needs.
