Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: coglac on May 21, 2013, 06:01 pm
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I am getting a new laptop. Any suggestions?
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macbook pro!
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Security is in the software not the hardware and any computing purchase is a balance of requirements:
Want something cheap? Get a deal from an electronics outlet. Expect it to be the same as a top-end model from 2 years ago, but easy to break, full of bloatware, middle of the road everything but good enough to do most things.
Want a gaming machine? Buy Alienware. Expect it to pull 45w of power and be huge, heavy and noisy. The battery will last 2 hours and you'll pay a fortune for it.
Want something for surfing the web? Get a netbook. Expect it to be cheap, have amazing battery life but be slow as fuck, useless for anything other than surfing the web.
Want something fast and small? Get an Ultrabook or similar. Expect great battery life as long as you aren't actually using it and great performance otherwise.
Want something white middle class coffee shop bling? Get a Mac. Expect to pay top dollar for mid-range hardware and crummy software but get a really nice screen and case.
Want something for your business that is robust? Get a Lenovo. Expect it to come with a 4 year warranty, a million USB ports and look like shit.
Want something with touch-screen? Get one of those hybrid tablet things. Expect it to be twice as heavy as a tablet, 5 times as expensive with a quarter of the battery life and be flimsy.
So yeah, depends what you want.
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Look around newegg or tigerdirect and check out what they have for current ASUS laptops.
Have had 2 different ASUS laptops for the last 4 years, just upgrading to better one and they work AMAZING. Granted I got the ones that were in the 600-700 range so it wasn't "cheap" but for the price it has very high specs. They are durable, look nice, and work well. Runs most games on high settings easily.
My 2cents.
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Security is in the software not the hardware and any computing purchase is a balance of requirements
Sort of, but some hardware supports security features that other hardware does not support. For example, K series intel processors allow for overclocking, but non-k processors have support for IOMMU which is required for strong isolation. Newer processors support a range of security features not available on older processors. Different motherboards have different security features as well. Then there are things like Tresor, which requires AES-NI I believe. Software plays a big role, but it needs hardware support and not all hardware supports all security software. Thankfully laptop hardware tends to support pretty much everything, for desktops it is a bit more specialized.
Want something cheap? Get a deal from an electronics outlet. Expect it to be the same as a top-end model from 2 years ago, but easy to break, full of bloatware, middle of the road everything but good enough to do most things.
My advice is to get a laptop from a custom builder, not a major retailer like Newegg. Then you can automatically save a hundred dollars by not getting it bundled with Windows or other bloatware. You can also customize the hardware etc.
Want a gaming machine? Buy Alienware. Expect it to pull 45w of power and be huge, heavy and noisy. The battery will last 2 hours and you'll pay a fortune for it.
Yuck Alienware is like the Mac of the Windows laptops. Overpriced as hell and largely a marketing company. You can get an equal laptop for much less, Alienware is all about the brand name. The only real advantage of Alienware laptops is they seem to support overclocking the CPU a bit more than other laptops,but honestly you are not going to overclock your laptop CPU much anyway. Alienware laptops also weigh a metric fuckton compared to similar offerings from other companies.
Want something white middle class coffee shop bling? Get a Mac. Expect to pay top dollar for mid-range hardware and crummy software but get a really nice screen and case.
Mac laptops are like Alienware, way overpriced for what you get. At least they have really nice screens.
Want something for your business that is robust? Get a Lenovo. Expect it to come with a 4 year warranty, a million USB ports and look like shit.
I can recommend Lenovo. They have the highest overall build quality of all laptops that I have seen. They do tend to be more business oriented though, usually they do not have gaming GPU's but rather workstation GPU's. One good thing about Lenovo laptops is that they support manual GPU switching from BIOS instead of the Optimus nonsense, so you can easily use the dedicated GPU with Linux.
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Some who made the posts suggestions Lenovo, have somewhat a sense of whats a good laptop. I would say the same also.
Here a link to a Lenovo already set up for SR.
eddiethegun
http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/silkroad/item/2a8c69213f
If you are not from US, you are taking a chance with duty and tax, this can add a hefty sum in addition to what you already paid, so BE AWARE!
Wow somebody already extracted Tor Browser Bundle onto it?!
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Wow somebody already extracted Tor Browser Bundle onto it?!
So it seems. My faith in humanity has been restored.
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For those buying electronics like laptops on SilkRoad, exercise extreme caution. I personally would never vouch or use equipment bought from SilkRoad simply because it's too easy a way for LE to get to us by targeting us directly like that and could be modified to work against us.
I have no evidence of what I say, I am just recommending very real caution if you plan on using it for anything to do with SR.
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No matter what you get, you might as well wait 2 more weeks for the Haswell chips to come out.
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No matter what you get, you might as well wait 2 more weeks for the Haswell chips to come out.
Super excited for those! :D Yes.. I do need to get out more! :-\
Libertas
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Really depends what you're going to use it for. You can get a refurbished laptop from Newegg or somewhere similar for very cheap. Just bought my girlfriend a refurbished ASUS for $285 that has pretty decent specs. RAM is cheap too, so you can add some for $50, tops. :)
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Really depends what you're going to use it for. You can get a refurbished laptop from Newegg or somewhere similar for very cheap. Just bought my girlfriend a refurbished ASUS for $285 that has pretty decent specs. RAM is cheap too, so you can add some for $50, tops. :)
Exactly, before making a recommendation I would need to know what you plan on using it for. Will it just be left at home most of the time or will it go everywhere you go? Do you have to use it for school? For work? Will you just be browsing SR on it? Doing general Computing ie web surfing, emails. Gaming? Watching videos? All of the above?
Be as specific as possible, I can't recommend good models that I would buy without knowing exactly what your needs are. Durability, screen size and type, cpu type, graphics card, keyboard layout, these are all the factors that need to be considered carefully in a laptop as they a normally not upgradable and can cost a new computer to fix.
If this were 10 years ago I would say IBM all the way, but since they went Chinese I've seen the quality drop drastically so now I can really only recommend specific models after hearing what your needs are.
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Yes I would be growing SR on it but probably through a USB virtual machine. Wanna do some gaming and work on it as well. I need an all purpose machine that is portable and that's about as far as I have gotten I am fishing on here for ideas so have places to start my research.
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So you want a desktop replacement, those are expensive, what's your budget?
What kind of gaming? Angry birds flash type stuff or stuff like Crysis 2?
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You know either way I can point you in the right direction. What you want is to search for desktop replacement laptops, search google or whichever you prefer with something like "best desktop replacement laptop 2013". Start looking through the results at top 10 lists and reviews. Go to multiple sites and when you find one that looks appealing search for that model with the word "reviews" after it and read about others experiences with it.
If price isn't an issue I would go with the Origin PC EON17-SLX, I've been reading about it and o boy I don't even need one and I'm thinking about splurging. You would be spending around $4500 and it would be able to play any of the newer games.
If your not as into gaming as all that then you could probably go for any Samsung or Toshiba that has good reviews, personally I love toshiba and if I had to get one and was wanting to do something under $1500 I would go for the Toshiba Qosmio X775 3D.
I'm going to say this right now, I hate Alienware, they were bought by dell like 7 or 8 years go and have been shit ever since. Please do yourself a favor and don't open that headache. Alienware is for people who want to buy a name not a great computer.
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I ran an Asus G60V and it ran most steam games just fine on medium settings. But still, I think Desktop is the way to go if you're into gaming.