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I'm shopping for a laptop lately, and you can actually get a pretty decent midrange laptop for that price (with a discrete GTX 940M or 950M GPU) and a 1080P dis

I'm shopping for a laptop lately, and you can actually get a pretty decent midrange laptop for that price (with a discrete GTX 940M or 950M GPU) and a 1080P display. It won't have an i7 in that price range, but with a better GPU you'd be able to play games more effectively, and an i5 is fine for everything I ever do. So, yeah, I agree...this is pricey for what it is. I've also been surprised to find that laptops are now about the same price as similar specs in a desktop or small form factor mini PC.

alanfranzoni 10y ago
Sure, the laptop comparison is interesting. But the real point of this i7 is that it's quad core (there're mobile i7 processors, especially in the U line, which are dual core), and that usually pushes up the price quite a bit. But as a portable desktop/development machine, I think the idea is quite interesting, maybe one of the most interesting that came out lately. If only Apple kept up with Mac Mini updates...
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  I can see how it would have its place in some circumstances, but they seem to be targeting a gaming/entertainment market segment, which is problematic with Intel integrated graphics (which have improved remarkably over the years, but still trail the leading edge of nVidia and ATI GPUs by several years). And, lately, I think the folks doing heavy computation are looking to GPUs for the thinky parts; certainly scientific computing is happening more and more on GPUs rather than CPUs. So, even in those cases, I might prefer a fast GPU to a slightly faster CPU. Anyway, the price is a little high, though I'm sure the quality is good; Intel's servers have always been excellent.
rektide 10y ago
For example: Acer Aspire V Nitro was onsale from Newegg for $650 recently. 15", i7-4720HQ, 1080P, 960M, 8GB ram /w one slot open. Haswell era but that just makes me want to see a comparison all the more. The really nice thing about this unit is that it has dual M.2 slots (for if you want to throw absurd NVMe at it) and it has the new Thunderbolt (so you can plug an expensive external GPU enclosure on it). Either one of these paths will cost you that $650 purchase price again! But there's nothing else out there with this kind of performance density, carry-ability really. (Perhaps until the xb1s?)

alanfranzoni 10y ago

Sure, the laptop comparison is interesting. But the real point of this i7 is that it's quad core (there're mobile i7 processors, especially in the U line, which are dual core), and that usually pushes up the price quite a bit. But as a portable desktop/development machine, I think the idea is quite interesting, maybe one of the most interesting that came out lately. If only Apple kept up with Mac Mini updates...

SwellJoe 10y ago
I can see how it would have its place in some circumstances, but they seem to be targeting a gaming/entertainment market segment, which is problematic with Intel integrated graphics (which have improved remarkably over the years, but still trail the leading edge of nVidia and ATI GPUs by several years). And, lately, I think the folks doing heavy computation are looking to GPUs for the thinky parts; certainly scientific computing is happening more and more on GPUs rather than CPUs. So, even in those cases, I might prefer a fast GPU to a slightly faster CPU. Anyway, the price is a little high, though I'm sure the quality is good; Intel's servers have always been excellent.

rektide 10y ago

For example: Acer Aspire V Nitro was onsale from Newegg for $650 recently. 15", i7-4720HQ, 1080P, 960M, 8GB ram /w one slot open. Haswell era but that just makes me want to see a comparison all the more. The really nice thing about this unit is that it has dual M.2 slots (for if you want to throw absurd NVMe at it) and it has the new Thunderbolt (so you can plug an expensive external GPU enclosure on it). Either one of these paths will cost you that $650 purchase price again! But there's nothing else out there with this kind of performance density, carry-ability really. (Perhaps until the xb1s?)