New Laptop - what spec?

[amcdonald]

Lenovo thinkpads usually have a drain mechanism that routes spillages out the bottom. I've tested it with water (not intentionally) and it does work.

I quite like the look of the X1 Carbon.

And free rootkit for the Chinese government to spy on you (allegedly)

[doodab]

And free rootkit for the Chinese government to spy on you (allegedly)

Perhaps. Vast quantities of knowledge and expertise have been handed over in pursuit of greater profits, they outnumber westerners considerably, and they lead the world at internet censorship, so on the balance of probabilities the Chinese are probably leaders of the pack when it comes to this sort of thing.

OTOH they are mostly shipping Intel silicon, which handles stuff like TPM, lights-out management access and so on, so it's quite possible that Uncle Sam has a tunnel leading into your back passage as well.

I think this and the Huawei thing are basically western governments thinking "better safe than sorry" as they are unable to tell with certainty if this stuff is compromised or not.

[Bunk]

Perhaps. Vast quantities of knowledge and expertise have been handed over in pursuit of greater profits, they outnumber westerners considerably, and they lead the world at internet censorship, so on the balance of probabilities the Chinese are probably leaders of the pack when it comes to this sort of thing.

OTOH they are mostly shipping Intel silicon, which handles stuff like TPM, lights-out management access and so on, so it's quite possible that Uncle Sam has a tunnel leading into your back passage as well.

I think this and the Huawei thing are basically western governments thinking "better safe than sorry" as they are unable to tell with certainty if this stuff is compromised or not.

Whenever our government or the Americans denounce China's censorship I always suspect they're thinking "Lucky barstewards! I wish we could do that".

[Ticktock]

Nothing special normal the Civ series - which seem to be more memory/processor hungry than graphics intense so probably do not need a dedicated graphics card

also cheers all - much appreciated

Even with Civ 5 you would be fine with a fairly basic machine. You'd probably do fine with an el cheapo laptop, and don't need to build spec up too much. If I were you I'd think about a budget first, then look at what you can get. I think I spent about £500 on my current mid-range notebook. It's got a decent Core i5 processor, 6GB RAM, dedicated graphics card. The only things I would have considered changing would be to put an SSD in (although of course I'd lose some capacity) and maybe to shove the RAM up to 8GB. I use it for gaming as well as work and most things seem to run pretty well, apart from Planetside 2, which runs pretty crappily on any machine.

[IRMe]

I love the Samsung series 9 stuff, a laptop you can happily use on your lap and hardly notice carrying it about. No optical drive but most of my games come from Steam, or just serve the CD one time over the network.

80GB SSD is limiting but very fast.

[ladymuck]

I spend as much as I can possibly justify on the best spec I can, as it will then last longer and survive at least one, maybe two, OS upgrades. I also like mine small and light and have had two Toshiba Portege's over the past 8 years that have performed brilliantly.

If you're only going to use it for surfing and documents, this strategy will work out fine.

[tranceporter]

I spend as much as I can possibly justify on the best spec I can, as it will then last longer and survive at least one, maybe two, OS upgrades. I also like mine small and light and have had two Toshiba Portege's over the past 8 years that have performed brilliantly.

If you're only going to use it for surfing and documents, this strategy will work out fine.

Or you could buy the same from eBay. A brand new Macbook pro costing £1549 from Apple cost me £1000 on eBay in a bid I won. The next guy won another bid for the same laptop from the same seller for £800. Go figure

[Scrag Meister]

What games?

Angry Birds or the latest and greatest Call of Duty at full resolution?

Most machines these days will manage the internet and the associated graphics etc, but games on the other hand depend on everything, CPU, RAM and GPU and even SSD v HDD to some extent.

Edit : See this was mentioned before, still stands.

Civ V system requirements

Pretty low Recommended spec considering machines these days.

[amcdonald]

If it helps when working away I can play Battlefield 3 on High on my lappy even with it decidely lame Geforce 630M (yes that bad), mainly because unless you run the graphics maxxed out it is cpu intensive so and a quad core i5 is enough

Do get an SSD, and as much memory as you can afford as those two things will prolong it's life as a development machince

[quackhandle]

if you get a Lenovo (mine is a T420s) you can remove the optical drive and stick in another SSD. (cheaper than having lenovo do it for you).

Plenty of vids on youtube showing you how this is done.

qh