Merry Christmas to all! In the spirit of Christmas (that and timing out deep in the money of the Sunday Milly, miniFTOPS main, again and again with top set, KK, AA, etc.) I decided that it's time to buy myself some new presents. I'm lookin at getting a new laptop, to be used primarily for grinding. Price is not a serious consideration, I'm looking for the most reliable, best processing machine that I can get my hands on. So I'm looking to the P5s community for some help...any suggestions please?

In addition, I think it's time to get a HUD and I'm looking at either HEM or PT3. I tried a free download of HEM awhile back and had some problems getting it to load correctly, but I believe that was because it was in the trial stages. From what I've heard both programs are much more polished than they used to be. I've read some reviews on both, but most of these reviews are from awhile back. So I was also wondering if people had opinions on these two programs, and any fundamental differences in which one program might be better than the other?

Thanks for your 2 cents...

17inch macbook pro....v easy

if you want the best processing machine you can then this is what you are looking at - which the more I think about it is practically a machine you'd buy for gaming...

--Though note that the more horsepower you put in the thing the less battery life you will get, though I assume if you are grinding you will be running off the power cord, in which case it doesn't matter.


- i7 quad core processor

-as much memory as the thing will let you have in it. (probably 8mb).

- separate graphics processor on it. This will help save you processing power when you are running all those tables on diff sites. Assuming it has a separate graphics card, max the memory on the graphics card.

-Hard drive should be 7200 rpm and as big as you can get. (Faster speed is much better for HEM/PT.) 500GB+ is reasonably standard.

*if money really doesn't matter then get a solid state drive*

the thing will scream like a mofo speed wise and give you a little better battery life. These are pricey compared to Hard Drives, but worth every penny. You need to decide what else you are going to do on the machine though to figure out how much space you'll need on the drive. If you are going to have all your music etc on there then you'd need a much bigger one. If it's only for poker then prob 128Gig is a reasonable size, though 256Gb would leave you room for not having to upgrade in future if your databases get real huge/ whatnot. I Put a 128gig in my new Win7 machine (that i am using for everything, not just poker) and while I could grind on it I need an external drive to save music, pics, all my spreadsheets etc....

-Screen size - if you are grinding on the laptop screen and tile, then you'll obv want the 17". If you will almost always be jacking into externals you prob can get away with the 15. Only downside of a 17"+ screen is that it's going to weigh more to haul around and gonna use battery life a lot quicker.

-Battery: Get a spare battery so you'll have it if the power goes out. For max battery power get a 9cell (or whatever the biggest cell # is for the machine) THey cost more and weigh more, but if yo uare really trying to max performance/reliability, then this is the way to go.

- Obv make sure you have an aircard as backup internet

- Pay extra for warranty service that is next business day- in home- so when you have a problem, which you inevitably will, you can get it fixed much quicker.

-Like anything else buy a brand name. You'll find just as many people that love or hate their Dell, HP etc. since some % of these machines are going to have trouble and dealing with call centers/service people just plain sucks everywhere.

-PT3 vs. hem: You really need to try them both and seee what you like more- they both have some form of free trial. That said, most people have not tried both and tend to like what they use - so people's opinions here are probably biased. That said, I use PT3, and for MTT's. IMO PT3 is ahead and working harder at making MTT specific functions improved. (search the HEM and PT3 forums on their sites and see what people are asking about/bitching about there....)

Only other thing I can think of is realize that a bunch of decisions above will affect weight, so decide how much time you are going to be hauling around and whether it will annoy you to haul a 10 pounder vs a 5 pounder....

GL and have fun!

 

Originally Posted by telks

+1 on the mac book if you aren't concerned with the money. you are gonna spend a decent amount more than if you bought a PC, but i'd bet it will last a lot longer and run a lot better and you'll be a lot happier.

except you'll have a heck of a time getting some sites to be setup and working properly on a mac, especially if you are playing some other than the big two.

also need to look at how well PT3/HEM run under MAC. I know PT3 is now running for mac, dunno about HEM

lol macs. gotta love companies that make their buck scaring people who know little to nothing into believing complete bullshit and charge twice as much for it. go by what bonziflubi says, just make sure you get the highest resolution possible on the screen (assuming all your play isnt going to come from external monitors), that is more important than the actual screen size (should be able to find a 1920x1080 if you spend enough). everything else sounds fine.

Maybe I should have been a little more clear...def looking into a laptop sounds like a Mac book is the way to go.

http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-g73jha1-...ck-p-2731.html

Just got this one, its pretty sick... can actually fit 12 tables on it the resolutions unreal

All new Asus stuff is pretty sick, as a computer engineer i have plenty of nerdy friends that would also agree, if you're all about the mac, however, i can offer you no help. just get good processor and plenty of RAM in addition to good display and graphics. that is all.

 

Originally Posted by nyy486

ummm, the price? its admittedly very bias, but the idea is valid. their prices are ridiculous, which is common knowledge.

there's a reason so many ppl have suggested macs in all these types of threads....so if you have the money to get one, you definitely should.

mbpro... gg

anyone who disses macs is just a stubborn mule who doesnt want to even give them a chance

trust me, i used windows from 95 all the way to vista.. ive built my own pc rig, im not a dumb lame hipster... i was windows all the way till i die...

tried my gfs mac book and never looked back. i love both mac os x and windows 7... but idk if i can ever go bak to windows now..

and poker co pilot rapes for mac

 

Originally Posted by nyy486

wow blind mac homerism here. still havent seen one reason why mac>windows. they look good, thats just about it. inferior hardware for superior prices thanks to a massive marketing scheme, which is obviously working. I've used every type of OS, from windows, to mac, to solaris, to ubuntu, and have a degree in computer science. there is nothing superior about mac. congrats to all the mindless homers who payed for an overpriced and bogged down linux machine....oh yeah, linux is free.... but hey, i guess the opinions of random poker players, who wouldnt be able to pick out a piece of ram from a processor if it was right in front of them, is better than someone who actually studied the field.



and theres a reason why if you look at people who actually work with computers, aka the people who actually know their shit, just about none of them have macs

All i was trying to say is all the comps i've had before a mac would freeze up constantly and get virus' etc....i know a lot of ppl who have macs and none of them seem to have those issues, they all pretty much have the best things to say. Seems like a sensitive subject for you tho so i hope he doesn't decide to get a mac.

People tend to put way too much emphasis on processor speed. Outside of high-end gaming, bulk encoding or rendering (in which case you wouldn't be getting a laptop anyway), any non-netbook dual core processor + separate graphics card will probably be fine for poker, movies, web, email etc.

The biggest bottleneck in almost every modern computer is the hard drive. If you want something that runs really quickly, spring for something with an SSD (or buy one and install it yourself). A lot of 17" laptops even have 2 drive bays so you can have an SSD for your OS and applications and a bigger drive for storage. For everyday tasks (launching applications, startup, shutdown etc), a pretty basic dual core 2ghz processor + SSD will run much much faster than a quad-core i7 machine with a 7200RPM spinning disk. Also, anything above 4gb RAM is pretty much overkill when you have an SSD, because the rare few times you'll run out of RAM, the process of running out of swap memory is almost instantaneous anyway.

As for the Mac vs PC thing, I tend to play poker using a Mac running Windows on a Bootcamp partition. I have never found another brand of PC that runs Windows as well as a Mac does! If I'm not playing poker I use Mac OS and find it more stable and much faster than Windows for web/email/media etc. Some PC brands are a lot better than others when it comes to testing how well components actually work together etc. At the end of the day, you usually get what you pay for...

Have to support hawk on the SSD. Whatever you do get one with a SSD. It's the single most important thing (as well as the screen resolution for a poker player). Got SSDs on all my computers now and i don't think i would survive using a computer without one for anything serious.

 

Originally Posted by nyy486

wow blind mac homerism here. still havent seen one reason why mac>windows. they look good, thats just about it. inferior hardware for superior prices thanks to a massive marketing scheme, which is obviously working. I've used every type of OS, from windows, to mac, to solaris, to ubuntu, and have a degree in computer science. there is nothing superior about mac. congrats to all the mindless homers who payed for an overpriced and bogged down linux machine....oh yeah, linux is free.... but hey, i guess the opinions of random poker players, who wouldnt be able to pick out a piece of ram from a processor if it was right in front of them, is better than someone who actually studied the field.



and theres a reason why if you look at people who actually work with computers, aka the people who actually know their shit, just about none of them have macs

u kinda just supported our arguments

NONE of us are computer science majors.

PCS are GREAT when u can optimize them however the fk u want them. theyre obv the best rigs... but ive ran comps with windows on them for 11 years, and had numerous problems, and I even know whut I am doing... graduated with a cisco certificate IT program...

bought a mac book pro... and its the best for someone who wants peace of mind, no crashes, and just wants to open it up and have it run without any BSOD or any other bshit. so get off ur windows high horse and realize that its not just the marketing as to why people r switching, its cuz mac os x just runs smoother 90% of the time... although I will say that windows 7 is def great within its own right... (and practically a rip off of mac os x.... soooo yea... seems like mac is doing SOMETHING right)

All I know is I have a 15" macbookpro and a 27" apple cinema display and both work excellent. I play on stars, Full Tilt, Absolute, and Carbon poker sites which are all mac friendly and I use poker co-pilot for a hud which is very user friendly and easy to use and is always improving but is not quite as deep and doesn't have as many options as pt3 or hem. No viruses and a smooth look too, I bought my mac before I realized that I wouldn't be able to get HEM, or table ninja or play some sites, but wouldn't switch for anything now.

My next purchase coming soon will be a 27" Imac so I can run dual 27s then the macbookpro will just be for travel.

GL on your decision.

macbook city