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Anyway, @Sibreen if you are in the market for a new computer, you can build yourself an absolutely brutal rig for bugger all nowadays. I went mental (more mental) earlier this year and built a Quadro k6000 intergalactic daemon-slayer which is so powerful I could have 4 instances of Maya open, rendering Transformers 1 - 4 so fast that I could actually watch the movies live as they processed, if I could somehow figure out a way to slow the bloody thing down. It cost me less than my bike. So, for a few 10,000yen notes, you can easily build yourself something capable of handling the might of Facebook and Google in a browser. Plus you get to boast about what you have built on Reddit. Happy to spec up some nerdy builds with you.
 
. . . my usable browser real estate is less than 800px as I have the Mac toolbar thingy at the top of the screen, then three lines of Chrome toolbar thingies (tabs, address, bookmarks), before I get to the active webpage itself.

I sometimes use Chromium, which is similar to Chrome. With one of my laptops, F11 toggles fullscreen ("kiosk") mode; with the other, it's Fn-F11. I believe that OS X reserves F11 for other purposes, so let's explore alternative methods. For me, pressing Alt-F when the cursor is near the top of the window (the position is important and needs experiment) brings a drop-down menu. Within this is "Zoom", and next to this word is a stylized rectangle; clicking the rectangle takes me to fullscreen mode. While I'm in fullscreen mode, having the cursor approach the top of the screen pops up an offer to get back out of fullscreen mode. Your Mac won't have an Alt key but surely there's some other way to bring this menu and thence to devote not just most but all of your screen to this glorious website.
 
Anyway, @Sibreen if you are in the market for a new computer, you can build yourself an absolutely brutal rig for bugger all nowadays. I went mental (more mental) earlier this year and built a Quadro k6000 intergalactic daemon-slayer which is so powerful I could have 4 instances of Maya open, rendering Transformers 1 - 4 so fast that I could actually watch the movies live as they processed, if I could somehow figure out a way to slow the bloody thing down. It cost me less than my bike. So, for a few 10,000yen notes, you can easily build yourself something capable of handling the might of Facebook and Google in a browser. Plus you get to boast about what you have built on Reddit. Happy to spec up some nerdy builds with you.
bs1.JPG

This is what he built for me.
 
On a desktop / laptop? 1920x1080.

Any recommendations for a laptop with that resolution? (One of my laptops is showing its age.) US keyboard greatly preferred; compactness, light weight and slimness not necessary. No OS or some flavour of Linux would be best, but I'm pretty much resigned to paying Microsoft for something I'll immediately remove. (I gurgled for such a beast a month or two back but I couldn't find anything that cost less than double what I paid the last time around.)
 
Lenovo or Asus

I still have a 2002 Thinkpad with Mint on it for browser based work (ie, what most people use their machines for) and also had an Ideacentre for years which was rock hard, so Lenovo are cool.

Asus are like Lenovo but a bit more stylish.
 
what laptop do you have at the moment and what do you use it for?
 
what laptop do you have at the moment and what do you use it for?

The one I'm thinking of replacing is a Dell Inspiron 1370, with 8GB RAM rather than the standard 4GB, and with a beefier battery than the standard one. I often need to move it a few metres here or there but seldom want to move it further. It's used for the web, "office" stuff, gimping photos, and watching videos -- not for video editing, games or anything else that notoriously needs lots of oomph. Screen resolution is 1366 x 768; even within this, playback can be a bit jerky at times. I'm sure it would be a slug with Win8, but it's not running Windows and I rarely find it slow. What I'd like is a higher screen resolution. Also, the hard drive is very full and there's something odd about the charging, so all in all a more luxurious replacement is tempting. (But there's no huge rush. Of course buying it and installing Crunchbang on it should be easy. But there's no reason to buy it till I'm ready to switch to it from the Dell; and before October I'm unlikely to have time for all that this would entail.)
 
Any current 50,000 - 60,000yen laptop will absolutely rinse that Dell, especially with a tuned Debian distro on it, and the fact that you are not doing anything taxing with it.

I'm unlikely to have time for all that this would entail.)

1. Buy it online; 20 mins.
2. Take delivery; 2 mins.
3. Install and set up whatever Linux distro you want; 4 hours max.

You don't have 4hrs22mins spare? Are you in the middle of week 1 of training for the Royal Marines or something?
 
Any current 50,000 - 60,000yen laptop will absolutely rinse that Dell, especially with a tuned Debian distro on it, and the fact that you are not doing anything taxing with it.

I took a quick look at the Lenovo website and found that yes, computers with hi-rez screens are indeed cheap. (Strange: How had I got the opposite impression?) Lenovo offers 14 series, though, most described uninformatively. (Example: "mobile workstation". Huh? If it's a laptop, of course it's mobile. And laptops aren't normally used as servers, so of course it's a workstation.) Working out which is which will take a little time. (And all that I looked at have JIS keyboards only.)

Getting Crunchbang installed and running takes less than one hour. In the past though I've found that this or that unexpected snag adds to the time needed. (If I knew what I were doing, it would take no time at all. But I have to google for info, not find it, post to a BBS....)

Are you in the middle of week 1 of training for the Royal Marines or something?

No but I probably ought to be. (What would Franz say?)
 
Lenovo; the T-series is the benchmark of toughness / longevity. I have a T42 (and two T43s) from the early 00's which I bought second hand, around 2007 and are still going strong; all with Linux on them (they would not handle anything post XP from MS). They have taken a kicking and refuse to die. In actual fact, due to the way computing has gone, with everything being done in browsers with server-side processing, and also with data being stored remotely, in a weird way the Thinkpads I have have actually become more viable in the last few years than they were a few years after they were made. Off the shelf laptops around the 50,000yen mark will be far far more powerful than probably 99% of users will ever need them to be, because, well, people don't really do anything with their computers (apart from gaming, which is always going to be a tax, but for hardcore PC gamers, this communication would be entirely unnecessary due to the fact that they all built their own rigs from scratch.)

As for a Japanese keyboard... why would you not want one, living in Japan? I would have thought that would be vital.

Getting Crunchbang installed and running takes less than one hour. In the past though I've found that this or that unexpected snag adds to the time needed. (If I knew what I were doing, it would take no time at all. But I have to google for info, not find it, post to a BBS....)

An hour, with another hour sorting out niggles. Two hours. Double that to four, and there you go. Ample time. You are not too busy to do this.
 
Lenovo; the T-series is the benchmark of toughness / longevity. I have a T42 (and two T43s) from the early 00's which I bought second hand, around 2007 and are still going strong; all with Linux on them (they would not handle anything post XP from MS).

All sounds good. Actually the predecessor of this Dell was a Toshiba "Portegé" that I bought when Win2k was new. I used it for about a decade, till the keytops were shiny, and it never let me down; I finally gave up on it because the screen was fading at the edges. (Meanwhile, acquaintances' Toshiba "Satellite"s seemed to die after just two years.)

Ah, computer ad copy. . . . This page of Lenovo's tells us that different versions of Windows are available for the T540p. Turns out that you can downgrade (that's their word) from Win8.1 to Win7 for an extra 11 thou. No hint that I can up/downgrade to a sensible OS or none, but such is 21st century "consumer freedom".

As for a Japanese keyboard... why would you not want one, living in Japan? I would have thought that would be vital.

The other computer has a US keyboard; I like to standardize. Of course in principle we can use any keyboard we like for any language. (Hmm, a Mongolian keyboard would look rather kewl....) I notice that Lenovo has a US keyboard option: good.

An hour, with another hour sorting out niggles. Two hours. Double that to four, and there you go. Ample time. You are not too busy to do this.

True, but I think that about this time next week I'll be checking in for flight to Europe. I'll buy the thing after I return.
 
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