PC Trouble, Laptop Charger is Suspect

[NiHaoMike]

Grab an ITX computer and plop it in bag. Might not be the lightest and most secure thing in the world, but you can then have a small monitor and keyboard/mouse setup that hooks in through thunderbolt.

Hell, if you want super compact get a NUC, but I have a feeling he'd have an issue with that as well, but that's the sort of thing you really wouldn't ever bother upgrading, except for ram and maybe the hard drive.

edit: fixed where my text went.

The NUC, being more or less laptop hardware in a mini desktop box, defeats the whole point. Mini ITX with a desktop GPU would be the way to go. A surplus Leaf battery module or two should easily run it for a few hours and a hacked server PSU for a quick charge. Seems like a fun project although I currently have no use for something like that.

[System Error Message]

the problem with laptops is that they're doing away with gigabit ethernet port. To me that is a must and usb ethernet adapters arent always great compared to onboard/PCIe ones. A decent laptop with gigabit ethernet port is very very helpful with the portability when you need to configure things all over the place.

You cant compare laptops to desktops, they are different things. You can customise laptop hardware as high end laptops use MxM modules for the GPU and some like the really big alienwares have 2 MxM slots. The alienware m17 or m18 with core2quad had 2MxM slots + PCI equivalent for physx card. battery life may suck but they are portable. Newer alienwares and the like use both IGP and dedicated GPU so you get a portable desktop with decent or good battery life and you can use the computing power when you need it by plugging in.

you might want to google the thinkpad frankenstein as an example of how a laptop may be customised. older thinkpad docks had PCIe slots in them you could use a GPU or any other card you want. much smaller than desktop for the things you need at that time. I also have used various desktop GPUs with laptops for fun and they do work with an external PSU.

you can customise laptops especially high end in various ways. Screens, keyboards can be replaced. A lot of the components can be replaced too and unlike phones many screens are compatible with them so you have cheap replacement parts. CPU, storage, ram on many can be replaced too. GPU is tricky as you can replaced one embedded onto board (this is an EEE forum, shame on you to suggest otherwise), even battery can be replaced. Sure you dont get many ports like on a desktop but if you are the kind of person to use micro or mini atx than what difference does it make? You arent making a portable file/disk/raid server. For high end laptops the GPUs are modular so theres an upgrade you can get.

True laptops are more expensive but you are paying for compactness and portabilty.

[Ampera]

the problem with laptops is that they're doing away with gigabit ethernet port. To me that is a must and usb ethernet adapters arent always great compared to onboard/PCIe ones. A decent laptop with gigabit ethernet port is very very helpful with the portability when you need to configure things all over the place.

You cant compare laptops to desktops, they are different things. You can customise laptop hardware as high end laptops use MxM modules for the GPU and some like the really big alienwares have 2 MxM slots. The alienware m17 or m18 with core2quad had 2MxM slots + PCI equivalent for physx card. battery life may suck but they are portable. Newer alienwares and the like use both IGP and dedicated GPU so you get a portable desktop with decent or good battery life and you can use the computing power when you need it by plugging in.

you might want to google the thinkpad frankenstein as an example of how a laptop may be customised. older thinkpad docks had PCIe slots in them you could use a GPU or any other card you want. much smaller than desktop for the things you need at that time. I also have used various desktop GPUs with laptops for fun and they do work with an external PSU.

you can customise laptops especially high end in various ways. Screens, keyboards can be replaced. A lot of the components can be replaced too and unlike phones many screens are compatible with them so you have cheap replacement parts. CPU, storage, ram on many can be replaced too. GPU is tricky as you can replaced one embedded onto board (this is an EEE forum, shame on you to suggest otherwise), even battery can be replaced. Sure you dont get many ports like on a desktop but if you are the kind of person to use micro or mini atx than what difference does it make? You arent making a portable file/disk/raid server. For high end laptops the GPUs are modular so theres an upgrade you can get.

True laptops are more expensive but you are paying for compactness and portabilty.

"They" seems like a bit of a generic point.

The reason some companies might be doing away with Gigabit ethernet is that Gigabit 802.11AC has taken the spot and there is no need for it. I am sure there will be laptops with an Ethernet port, but it's not really needed that much anymore.

[Ampera]

Grab an ITX computer and plop it in bag. Might not be the lightest and most secure thing in the world, but you can then have a small monitor and keyboard/mouse setup that hooks in through thunderbolt.

Hell, if you want super compact get a NUC, but I have a feeling he'd have an issue with that as well, but that's the sort of thing you really wouldn't ever bother upgrading, except for ram and maybe the hard drive.

edit: fixed where my text went.

The NUC, being more or less laptop hardware in a mini desktop box, defeats the whole point. Mini ITX with a desktop GPU would be the way to go. A surplus Leaf battery module or two should easily run it for a few hours and a hacked server PSU for a quick charge. Seems like a fun project although I currently have no use for something like that.

It seems like a Ben Heck thing to do. The main problem in my eyes is to have it so a jerk of the backpack won't cause everything to snap and detach. The NUC is like a Raspi without the GPIO and using x86 architecture.

[System Error Message]

"They" seems like a bit of a generic point.

The reason some companies might be doing away with Gigabit ethernet is that Gigabit 802.11AC has taken the spot and there is no need for it. I am sure there will be laptops with an Ethernet port, but it's not really needed that much anymore.

The reason isnt because of wifi AC, its because people rarely use ethernet. However even in the face of 4x4 wifi ac gigabit ethernet is still superior because of less interference and better consistent performance. Very easily i fill up a full gigabit ethernet port transferring to my file server which has SFP+. windows says 99% NIC use but the cool thing i can do with ethernet that you cant do with wifi is that i can upload at link speeds to my file server and at the same time get all the stats and info from my file server (like task manager, remote desktop) and also watch a video at the same time while uploading thanks to the full duplex nature of gigabit ethernet. wifi is only half duplex, try this on wifi and you will run into issues, packet drops and other problems.

[Monkeh]

Ethernet ports are only going away on slim machines (ultrabooks/latest trendy name). Proper workhorses still have them.

USB 3 NICs seem to be much better than the old ones, also.

The reason some companies might be doing away with Gigabit ethernet is that Gigabit 802.11AC has taken the spot and there is no need for it. I am sure there will be laptops with an Ethernet port, but it's not really needed that much anymore.

They've done away with it on some machines because non-workers don't need reliable networking. That and space restrictions.

Again, many of those of us who need to use a PC somewhere other than our desk have regular use of wired networking, and wifi is not a substitute for us.

[Ampera]

"They" seems like a bit of a generic point.

The reason some companies might be doing away with Gigabit ethernet is that Gigabit 802.11AC has taken the spot and there is no need for it. I am sure there will be laptops with an Ethernet port, but it's not really needed that much anymore.

The reason isnt because of wifi AC, its because people rarely use ethernet. However even in the face of 4x4 wifi ac gigabit ethernet is still superior because of less interference and better consistent performance. Very easily i fill up a full gigabit ethernet port transferring to my file server which has SFP+. windows says 99% NIC use but the cool thing i can do with ethernet that you cant do with wifi is that i can upload at link speeds to my file server and at the same time get all the stats and info from my file server (like task manager, remote desktop) and also watch a video at the same time while uploading thanks to the full duplex nature of gigabit ethernet. wifi is only half duplex, try this on wifi and you will run into issues, packet drops and other problems.

802.11 AC is on the 5 Ghz band which has WAY more channels than 2.4 and has less interference due to the fact that few devices use 5Ghz RF. But your points still stand.

[eugenenine]

Well this thread went wayyy off topic.

The oldest laptop I have in use currently is a Dell Latitude C400 that I paid $1200 for in 2002.  I upgraded the hdd once every 2-3 years and had to replace the backlight bulb for $10 a few years ago.
After that I bought a netbook for $300 and after that I have only bought < $200 'refurbished' laptops.  I have to upgrade every couple years now since we have a family of 4 and the kids always want something newer.

as far as miniitx, I have one of those hooked to the tv, runs kodi, but I can't use that when the wife is watching a movie.  Up in my closet in the space of a minitower I have 4 raspberry Pi's and a beaglebone black.

[Ampera]

Well this thread went wayyy off topic.

The oldest laptop I have in use currently is a Dell Latitude C400 that I paid $1200 for in 2002.  I upgraded the hdd once every 2-3 years and had to replace the backlight bulb for $10 a few years ago.
After that I bought a netbook for $300 and after that I have only bought < $200 'refurbished' laptops.  I have to upgrade every couple years now since we have a family of 4 and the kids always want something newer.

as far as miniits, I have one of those hooked to the tv, runs kodi, but I can't use that when the wife is watching a movie.  Up in my closet in the space of a minitower I have 4 raspberry Pi's and a beaglebone black.

It's the curse of the home computer geek. You can spend days working on the perfect file sharing, web hosting, and media playing system, and have it make any UHD Blu Ray leave brown skidmarks, but nobody will use it because the simplest method is what they use. I bet all anybody, but you uses is just a DVD or Blu-Ray for movies.

EDIT: And yea, sorry to the OP for ruining your thread there. Oh well.
Don't feel bad, my dad has a computer in the living room that nobody ever uses. I always just use the chromecast with an Android tab.

[System Error Message]

"They" seems like a bit of a generic point.

The reason some companies might be doing away with Gigabit ethernet is that Gigabit 802.11AC has taken the spot and there is no need for it. I am sure there will be laptops with an Ethernet port, but it's not really needed that much anymore.

The reason isnt because of wifi AC, its because people rarely use ethernet. However even in the face of 4x4 wifi ac gigabit ethernet is still superior because of less interference and better consistent performance. Very easily i fill up a full gigabit ethernet port transferring to my file server which has SFP+. windows says 99% NIC use but the cool thing i can do with ethernet that you cant do with wifi is that i can upload at link speeds to my file server and at the same time get all the stats and info from my file server (like task manager, remote desktop) and also watch a video at the same time while uploading thanks to the full duplex nature of gigabit ethernet. wifi is only half duplex, try this on wifi and you will run into issues, packet drops and other problems.

802.11 AC is on the 5 Ghz band which has WAY more channels than 2.4 and has less interference due to the fact that few devices use 5Ghz RF. But your points still stand.

Say all you like about wifi but wifi will never be a substitute for gigabit ethernet or even SFP+. Those gigabits worth of bandwidth and full duplex is better than wifi half duplex. Sure 5Ghz has more channels and less interference but i've seen many devices on auto act weird like shadowing the channel my AP uses even though there are many other channels free. If you were in the UK and you checked your wifi at home the number of 5Ghz is already huge. Every ISP here gives out a crappy wifi AC router and the general design of consumer wifi isnt great.

But lets compare proper things. I tested the capability of wifi AC and it is far from ethernet. In my test i used intel 2x2 adapter with an asus AC68U and a server on gigabit ethernet not using realtek. I crammed as many packets as the CPU would allow and the maximum i got was 90% link utilisation with many dropped packets. If this were gigabit ethernet i could do the same with no dropped packets and stream a 4k movie at source at the same time while spamming the bandwidth tester as much as the CPU allows. This is where ethernet differs from wifi. Sure wifi AC shows impressive numbers but i had to be within a few meters of the AP for that 5Ghz and gigabit ethernet has a range spec of 100meters using cat5e which even with 4x4 wifi you will not get at that range. So despite how awesome they market wifi to be wifi is a convenience not something that will ever be able to replace the performance and reliability ethernet or wire. Practical wifi rates for wireless AC is 60% of the link rate so if you wish to use that fancy 4x4 wifi AC bandwidth you would be tethered to within a few meters of the AP and thats if it is a good one on a good day whereas for gigabit ethernet as long as the system isnt fully utilised in resource getting 99% of the link utilised is no problem whatsoever and the full duplex nature allows you to do even more without running into collisions and inconsistent performance.

[Ampera]

"They" seems like a bit of a generic point.

The reason some companies might be doing away with Gigabit ethernet is that Gigabit 802.11AC has taken the spot and there is no need for it. I am sure there will be laptops with an Ethernet port, but it's not really needed that much anymore.

The reason isnt because of wifi AC, its because people rarely use ethernet. However even in the face of 4x4 wifi ac gigabit ethernet is still superior because of less interference and better consistent performance. Very easily i fill up a full gigabit ethernet port transferring to my file server which has SFP+. windows says 99% NIC use but the cool thing i can do with ethernet that you cant do with wifi is that i can upload at link speeds to my file server and at the same time get all the stats and info from my file server (like task manager, remote desktop) and also watch a video at the same time while uploading thanks to the full duplex nature of gigabit ethernet. wifi is only half duplex, try this on wifi and you will run into issues, packet drops and other problems.

802.11 AC is on the 5 Ghz band which has WAY more channels than 2.4 and has less interference due to the fact that few devices use 5Ghz RF. But your points still stand.

Say all you like about wifi but wifi will never be a substitute for gigabit ethernet or even SFP+. Those gigabits worth of bandwidth and full duplex is better than wifi half duplex. Sure 5Ghz has more channels and less interference but i've seen many devices on auto act weird like shadowing the channel my AP uses even though there are many other channels free. If you were in the UK and you checked your wifi at home the number of 5Ghz is already huge. Every ISP here gives out a crappy wifi AC router and the general design of consumer wifi isnt great.

But lets compare proper things. I tested the capability of wifi AC and it is far from ethernet. In my test i used intel 2x2 adapter with an asus AC68U and a server on gigabit ethernet not using realtek. I crammed as many packets as the CPU would allow and the maximum i got was 90% link utilisation with many dropped packets. If this were gigabit ethernet i could do the same with no dropped packets and stream a 4k movie at source at the same time while spamming the bandwidth tester as much as the CPU allows. This is where ethernet differs from wifi. Sure wifi AC shows impressive numbers but i had to be within a few meters of the AP for that 5Ghz and gigabit ethernet has a range spec of 100meters using cat5e which even with 4x4 wifi you will not get at that range. So despite how awesome they market wifi to be wifi is a convenience not something that will ever be able to replace the performance and reliability ethernet or wire. Practical wifi rates for wireless AC is 60% of the link rate so if you wish to use that fancy 4x4 wifi AC bandwidth you would be tethered to within a few meters of the AP and thats if it is a good one on a good day whereas for gigabit ethernet as long as the system isnt fully utilised in resource getting 99% of the link utilised is no problem whatsoever and the full duplex nature allows you to do even more without running into collisions and inconsistent performance.

Your telling me. I've never used 802.11AC. I am stuck with 2.4Ghz 802.11N until I can manage a more impressive AP. NOBODY uses the 5Ghz band here. MAYBE some wireless home phones, but you can't hold 2.4 Ghz anything here. I have a 2.4 Ghz headset, three 2.4Ghz access points, all our phone handsets use 2.4 Ghz comms, along with bluetooth devices one or two, and probably more stuff I forgot. Even with a 150 - 300 Mbps link speed on a router with nothing else on it on a direct ethernet link to a 90/90 internet link, a speed test gives a third of the speed. About 35/45 or so, I forgot by now. But that is from a network speed of 300 Mbps to 30-40 in lost packets alone. I mean I could do better with sneakernet. In my situation, and the situation along most of the US, a 5Ghz link would drop very little even with it's reduced range.

Either way you are right, and I am not claiming ethernet should be replaced. I was just giving my two cents on why it might be. Thing is while a few laptops might be removing this, I don't see it happening in the future. Anyways with USB 3/3.1 speeds you could also put a fast NIC on a USB port.

Either way, AC is pretty cool, though I have never tried it.

[System Error Message]

If wifi was all that great why arent datacenters using them for all their servers and stuff? Despite the marketing hype wifi is not that great.

You're in the US where the density is much lower. In the UK everything is tightly packed, space is a premium so people build houses upwards rather than outwards. Many houses dont even have a garage and a tiny front garden. All the main ISPs here come with routers that also use AC1900. So if you were in the UK and upgraded/ordered some internet you will get an AC1900 router with it. This means that even in the UK now 5 ghz is also a bit packed and lets not forget the bad behaving wifi devices as well that dont make the best use of wifi channels.

So what im saying is that dont believe the numbers you see on wifi. Wifi overheads are bigger than ethernet being half duplex and having to tolerate interference and collisions. Try yourself even with wifi N the best speed you can get. 5Ghz goes down much faster with range than 2.4Ghz so if you want those speeds, theres no substitute for gigabit ethernet or SFP+

5Ghz may have just enough space here but it requires getting your own router and using a channel that none of these ISP provided routers use. FCC on locking down firmwares makes it even worse as the US actually has the highest allowed channels of 5ghz in the world (see wikipedia).

But spectrum usage aside, the practical rates and usage of wifi just cannot compare to gigabit ethernet even if you are using 4x4 with a link speed of 1.7Gb/s because when you start multi tasking thats where wifi badly copes. Try distributing files on wifi and doing other things at the same time and connections will drop, speeds will be slow for some and other issues. Gaming routers have QoS for this sort of stuff and so do enterprise solutions for something that wont achieve the performance that you can get with gigabit ethernet even if you can transfer a file faster than gigabit ethernet but the overheads prevent proper multi tasking so when you start multi tasking the speeds drop way down. So just for some better performance on wifi it costs so much more than just snaking a cat5e/cat6 cable around, not to mention at the range gigabit ethernet does better.

People design products for theoretical and not practical. So wifi will always remain a convenience, with newer protocols like AC bringing better performance and range but will never replace wire. I always advice people to wire what devices they can as this improves performance for both those devices and other devices on wifi. On wifi with high traffic latency greatly increases, but on gigabit ethernet with lots of traffic the latency is still low.

[Ampera]

If wifi was all that great why arent datacenters using them for all their servers and stuff? Despite the marketing hype wifi is not that great.

You're in the US where the density is much lower. In the UK everything is tightly packed, space is a premium so people build houses upwards rather than outwards. Many houses dont even have a garage and a tiny front garden. All the main ISPs here come with routers that also use AC1900. So if you were in the UK and upgraded/ordered some internet you will get an AC1900 router with it. This means that even in the UK now 5 ghz is also a bit packed and lets not forget the bad behaving wifi devices as well that dont make the best use of wifi channels.

So what im saying is that dont believe the numbers you see on wifi. Wifi overheads are bigger than ethernet being half duplex and having to tolerate interference and collisions. Try yourself even with wifi N the best speed you can get. 5Ghz goes down much faster with range than 2.4Ghz so if you want those speeds, theres no substitute for gigabit ethernet or SFP+

5Ghz may have just enough space here but it requires getting your own router and using a channel that none of these ISP provided routers use. FCC on locking down firmwares makes it even worse as the US actually has the highest allowed channels of 5ghz in the world (see wikipedia).

But spectrum usage aside, the practical rates and usage of wifi just cannot compare to gigabit ethernet even if you are using 4x4 with a link speed of 1.7Gb/s because when you start multi tasking thats where wifi badly copes. Try distributing files on wifi and doing other things at the same time and connections will drop, speeds will be slow for some and other issues. Gaming routers have QoS for this sort of stuff and so do enterprise solutions for something that wont achieve the performance that you can get with gigabit ethernet even if you can transfer a file faster than gigabit ethernet but the overheads prevent proper multi tasking so when you start multi tasking the speeds drop way down. So just for some better performance on wifi it costs so much more than just snaking a cat5e/cat6 cable around, not to mention at the range gigabit ethernet does better.

People design products for theoretical and not practical. So wifi will always remain a convenience, with newer protocols like AC bringing better performance and range but will never replace wire. I always advice people to wire what devices they can as this improves performance for both those devices and other devices on wifi. On wifi with high traffic latency greatly increases, but on gigabit ethernet with lots of traffic the latency is still low.

Datacenters use thing like 10 Gigabit ethernet or Infiniband solutions for networking. Gigabit interfaces wireless or wired are WAY too slow. And wireless coms do not work great with a ton of devices. 802.11 is not the cure all for every need, but it's capable of a lot. And in my spot of the US we are packed in like sardines. Look up Schenectady, the houses are tight, and we also build up. Yet everyone uses 802.11N @2.4 Ghz since it's a damn cheap standard and our ISPs give you something that works, and only works.

Then again I am sure I could reach gigabit speeds on an 802.11 AC connection with a proper android tablet that supports it since there is nothing to interfere with it.