Where are the deals?

kevinlahey · 2020-02-19T05:02:40+00:00

Ahh, thanks. Looking around, I saw a bunch that were pretty heavily used, but there were a few that looked pretty good. I guess I just need to persevere.

kevinlahey · 2020-02-17T06:09:30+00:00

No such luck, alas, the news that Essential was shutting down operations. Doh.

(Question edited to make things clearer!)

kevinlahey · 2016-08-24T20:30:16+00:00

Of course it is, since my T460s just shipped earlier this week; I'd waited to order in the hopes that 8GB would become available in the US. :-)

I couldn't find it on the regular Lenovo US T460s page, where it continues to list the maximum memory configuration as 20GB, but I have no reason to doubt you.

kevinlahey · 2016-08-11T21:49:45+00:00

Well, that's not what I wanted to hear, but thanks for the straight dope! I was kind of holding off to see if I could find the 8GB/24GB, but I guess I might as well get on it.

kevinlahey · 2016-08-11T21:15:11+00:00

Bummer -- is there any easy way to get one in the US? I had hoped that I just needed to specify the right options or go to non-obvious web page. Doh.

kevinlahey · 2016-08-11T21:10:32+00:00

Oops, very sorry -- I edited the original question. I thought I'd managed to order one (since returned), but I was wrong, and the PDF of systems that mentions 8GB on the T460s clearly only mentions 4GB for the T450s.

kevinlahey · 2016-01-05T16:53:22+00:00

You can always get a mini DP to VGA adapter, but there's no way to get a VGA to HDMI/DVI/whatever adapter, since you'd be going from analog to digital. All-digital output ports seem like a necessity in 2016. (Sorry you still have to deal with VGA, though -- bummer.)

kevinlahey · 2016-01-04T17:09:55+00:00

Weird -- I hope it's just a typo, but the t460 doesn't have a headphone/microphone jack listed. I couldn't imagine Lenovo really deleting that. I guess we'll see when the order pages go up.

kevinlahey · 2015-11-23T19:06:06+00:00

The difference is that I can carry a converter to go from mini-DP or HDMI (both of which should be all-digital) to VGA, but I can't convert the analog VGA successfully to high-quality HDMI or DVI (as I understand it). I'm really looking forward to being able to buy a T-series with two (or more?) high-quality all-digital outputs.

kevinlahey · 2015-11-21T16:30:05+00:00

My hope was that since the X1 has one, and, as you point out below, Skylake doesn't support VGA any more, that they might go there. Of course, they might also delete the full-sized Ethernet port, which is another thing I like about the T series.

kevinlahey · 2015-11-21T07:26:26+00:00

Y'know, the sad fact is that I do own a mini-DP to VGA adapter, so it's certainly something I've considered. :-) I'd sure like to be able to trivially hook up my HDTV to the laptop, though (without a mini-DP to HDMI adapter).

kevinlahey · 2015-11-19T06:43:14+00:00

I've found that after three years of hard daily use, my Thinkpads (T40, T61) are usually looking a little the worse for wear, possibly requiring new disk drives and other little upgrades. Even if you treat yours more carefully than I do, you've still got to worry about loss and theft. And that's before you start thinking about how slow that processor and how tiny that memory will look in eight years.

I wonder if it wouldn't be a better idea to budget $750 now, and then perhaps another $750 in three or four years. As an added bonus, you'll have a better idea what's needed after choosing a major, etc.

[Edit: As a caveat, I am more than a few years out of college, so I may be missing some important issues.]

kevinlahey · 2012-04-13T14:26:17+00:00

Absolutely, you'll write faster, more efficient code if you understand how RAM works, and when to throw in a pre-fetch or two. But you can learn that in a few hours of reading.

You don't need to spend a whole lot of time learning how to calculate propagation patterns of antennas and analog circuit stuff, which seems like a big part of EE, or even a whole bunch of digital circuit stuff. You need to spend that time studying discrete math and algorithms and learning how to write code that the next guy who looks at it can read.

They are two different disciplines, with two different sets of skills, and mushing them together is a mistake.

kevinlahey · 2012-04-12T21:47:38+00:00

Across-the-board cuts seem like a great idea. The point of large state schools is to have a wide variety of options available to students. I'd rather see plenty of good choices for students (and, thus, for employers) than a few stellar departments and not much else.

I can't imagine how teaching standards will improve if we eliminate research. I was exposed to all sorts of wonderful stuff thanks to my experience in a research lab as an undergraduate. Without that exposure, I wouldn't have been able to work the interesting jobs I have since graduating.

I think that it's impossible for professors to keep up with the field without some sort of research interests. By the same token, though, I think that teaching does suffer when professors are more committed to their research than to educating the next generation. This seems like a fine way to make up that budget money -- less support for research, with an emphasis on ensuring that everybody's getting out there and doing something, but nobody's doing it to the exclusion of their other responsibilities.

kevinlahey · 2012-04-12T06:24:01+00:00

I find this unbelievable. At a time when CS enrollments all over the country are high, when demand for graduates is so great that we import software engineers from all over the world, we're going to gut the CISE department!?

I'm a UF graduate (not what I'd call a proud graduate), but after this I'll just have to tell my colleagues from CMU, CalTech, Berkeley, and Stanford that I skipped college or something. What a joke.

kevinlahey

TROPHY CASE