How complex are the things you’re looking at modeling in CAD? I bought a used Dell Latitude 7400 with an i5 to putter around on when I don’t want to sit in front of my fixed position tower. It’s truly not a very impressive device from a specifications perspective, but it runs fusion 360 well enough for basic CAD work (single, non-complex components). Fusion 360 has given me warnings about the computer specs, but I haven’t run into any performance issues.
You’ll want an external mouse, but that’s not a big deal.
I haven’t tried loading a larger model on it though. I suspect it would work, but it would struggle a bit more.
If you’re going to get a laptop, I suggest buying an “enterprise” model. They’re generally better built than the consumer models.
If you’re looking at new laptops, there’s two main things to look out for IMO: soldered on RAM, and a plastic chassis.
Over the years I’ve had the unfortunate experience of repairing so many broken HP laptops in particular that I just avoid them out of principle. They tend to place a lot of heat generating components internally right beside the lid hinge, causing the plastic there to weaken and start to break off. On some occasions I’ve seen this plastic get stuck inside the nearby CPU fan, which causes the laptop to overheat and shut down on you without warning.
There are other companies that used to be more sensible with their component placement, like Asus and Fujitsu, but IMO it would be relatively safe to pick a laptop with a non-plastic chassis that feels good to use.
No, a desktop is not mandatory for CAD. I personally use both a 4 yo desktop and a 12 yo laptop just fine
Everyone else has posted some really helpful answers for your other questions so I’ll end my post here!
Based on your needs, I think it would be best to avoid Linux as an operating system which people will likely try to steer you towards here. A lot of commercial/CAD software will likely be Windows-only and it’s not worth trying to set up a compatibility layer and troubleshooting issues when they pop up.
If you’re looking for a reliable laptop, I can say Lenovo and Dell are generally reliable. If you wanted to go the Apple hardware I also don’t think you could go wrong with a Macbook if you can afford it, which you could install Windows or any other OS on if you need to.
I have a work-issued Dell laptop which can take a beating and is okay, albeit a bit old at this point and due for a replacement. I have a Macbook Pro that I bought in 2013 and is still going strong, but 11 years later is feeling its age. And I have an MSI gaming laptop which is powerful, but I am not sure is going to survive another couple years.
If you want to go the desktop route, you have a lot more flexibility when it comes to specs and you have the advantage of not having all your components on a single board, so that way down the road if a component fails or you want to add more RAM or add more storage space, you can pretty much swap anything out instead of replacing the entire unit. I don’t know if there’s a “Build a PC” community here on Lemmy but if you take a look at the requirements for the software you want to use and look around the internet for builds that meet those requirements, it will help give an idea of what components you might want to buy.
Not to mention, of course, that Dell and the like will also sell prebuilt desktops with hardware you’re looking for, albeit with a bit of a markup.
They have a device which progressively shines a light on a piece of paper while moving across the page and converts the brightness of the reflected light into an audio signal. Once it reaches the edge the paper is incremented and the process repeats. Each of these segments of sound are sent via a standard telephone connection to a similar device on the other end which uses the sounds to reproduce the image on the original paper on a new sheet of paper. This can be used to send forms, letters, black and white pictures, and even chain letters. It also forms the basic underpinning of a significant fraction of formal communications with landlords, employers, medical systems, government offices, and so on.
I think he’s saying that, for as futuristic as Japan may seem, they also still rely on outdated methods for certain things, just like every other country.
Ironically, I just noticed this morning that the pizzaria on the corner (here, in the US) can take orders via fax (as well as in person, via phone, and on the Web).
I don’t know about today, but back around 2000, stuff on the Japanese market was quite a bit ahead of the US in small, portable, personal electronic devices, like palmtop computers and such. I remember being pretty impressed with it. But then I also remembered being surprised a few years later when I learned that personal computer ownership was significantly lower than in the US. I think that part of it is that people in Japan spend a fair bit of time on mass transit, so you wanted to have small, portable devices tailored to that, and that same demand doesn’t really exist in the US.
Then everyone jumped on smartphones at some point after that, and I think things homogenized a bit.
Yeah, PC games are a nothing market in Japan as virtually no one owns a gaming PC; they’re much more likely to own a console (Sony and Nintendo are domestic companies) or a mobile device.
I think it’s because the country did not significantly recover from the 90s financial crisis, and their society is so conservative that they literally could not try anything modern again afterwards
They literally went “industrial society and it’s consequences have been a disaster for Japanese society”
The impact of the financial crisis reverberates to this day, and that drives a huge proportion of the issues, but the crisis in my opinion was inevitable. From my perspective, the Post-War Economic Miracle, as it’s called, catapulted Japan through all the stages of economic development into an almost accelerated version of the same problems that are afflicting the U.S. and other Western countries.
The dream of infinite growth in the Japanese context fell flat for the same reasons it is falling apart in other developed countries. A rise in standard of living and wages led to offshoring and outsourcing of production, the hollowing out of the middle class, a work culture at odds with family life, and so on. The country’s land and businesses were valued in the late 1980s as though it could remain competitive internationally with a mostly domestic supply chain, even as the production costs of its goods continued to rise along with the needs of its population, which in a globalized economy turned out to be a pipe dream.
We see the same thing in the U.S., where every president promises to restore the American manufacturing base, then comes up against the reality that U.S.-produced products made by U.S. workers paid U.S. wages cannot be competitive with something built in Southeast Asia and shipped overseas for less than $100 per ton. But the conservatism of Japanese society certainly plays a role, in that the country is highly resistant to change, and also due to a rigidity that stifles innovation, making it hard to start new businesses outside the keiretsu/conglomerate structure. The U.S. has somewhat mitigated its manufacturing decline through the creation of new service sector and especially tech businesses that operate internationally, which path is less available to Japan due to the rigidity of its business structure.
But the part I disagree with is the idea that Japan has rejected industrial society. Japan is still extremely proud of its culture and the impact it’s had globally. They love that people in western countries eat ramen and sushi, play Nintendo games or watch anime, and they have a deep reverence for their globally successful businesses and particularly the auto industry. They have no desire to reject or withdraw from industrial society, they just haven’t been able to figure out amidst external economic barriers, and internal cultural and financial barriers, how to move forward.
We see the same thing in the U.S., where every president promises to restore the American manufacturing base, then comes up against the reality that U.S.-produced products made by U.S. workers paid U.S. wages cannot be competitive with something built in Southeast Asia and shipped overseas for less than $100 per ton.
That is the lie they tell us. Meanwhile we do everything we can to make we don’t have an industrial base.
We zone factories far away from everything instead of allowing them to be in normal commuting range
We tax the land they are on the same way we tax commercial property. Which you might think is fair but we don’t do that to farmers. Especially considering how easy retail gets it, with governments willing to give plenty of free roads and police protection to them
We treat inventory as taxable which punishes factories that want a buffer and rewards the quick turnover of fast fashion places. Ever wonder why they never have your size and you have to go to the website to get it?
Thanks to our shit medical system any workplace injury is going to be devastating which means that the insurance as a whole will be very high.
Factory investments take longer to pay off which doesnt mean much when we all think quarterly. A tax on rapid stock trading could probably fix that but that isn’t going to happen.
There are other factors as well. We don’t hire women to do factory work which limits the labor pool. There is still a lot of discrimination against Latinos and African Americans. Which again lowers the labor pool and kinda leaves us with…well the kind of people who feel only comfortable only working with white Christian men.
I tried watching that awhile ago and found it hard to get into because I’ve seen it parodied and ripped off so many times in other shows/movies that it’s hard to take the original seriously anymore.
How to get all kremkoins in Donkey Kong Country 2, through a cheat:
Enter the cabin with the map and the life balloon. Leave without touching anything.
Collect the banana bunch over the pirate crocodile. Go back to the cabin, now pick the life.
Repeat the above. You’ll see a kremkoin over the map. Pick it and you got 75 kremkoins.
In no moment you can touch the two lone bananas close to the entrance of the cabin.
…it has been decades since I played this game, and I almost never used the cheat above (it’s less fun than finding all bonus stages). Why do I still remember this?
I remember this one too! There was also B A↓B↑↓↓Y (bad buddy) to switch when you wanted in 2P, instead of waiting until the arsehole playing with you to switch it.
Plus LRR LRR LR LR for DKC3. Then you’d insert a cheat and… I don’t remember them. Damn.
A lot of early 90s late 80s comedies. As a kid I always just thought it was adults acting really dumb. And for the most part I still think that about that era.
I’m in the same boat as you for Titanic. That movie was so everywhere during it’s time & I just never felt the need to watch it. I feel like the modern equivalent would be someone not watching any of the marvel movies.
I saw Titanic 4 times in the theatre I liked it that much. It was so well done I recall wondering if the ship was going to sink when it hit the iceberg.
If you do consider Linux, check out system76.com — If you get one of their computers, Linux (Pop!_OS) comes pre installed, is supported by this company, and would be pretty similar to using Windows or MacOS.
Framework is the laptop designed intentionally to be fixed. They just came out with a big size version with a dedicated GPU since you mentioned CAD.
You don’t need a desktop for CAD anymore.
If it’s your livelihood then stick with Windows. If you need a little reliability then Ubuntu will have the most support. Otherwise, pick your flavor of Linux that you like most.
Browsers are chromium v Firefox. They will both get the job done. Chrome (google version of chromium) plays nicest with your google account.
As for answers, unfortunately you have to hit up multiple sources for any question. Usually ask a pc magazine, YouTube, and Reddit/Lenny and compare the answers while remembering their base motivations for providing answer.
Lemmy, reddit, find groups (but even those are far from full proof) sadly the internet as a hole is now a corporate marketing suspit. Learn what you can about the core components of computing, look at spec sheets rather than reviews (reviews can be coloured by bias, the publisher may want to stay in the good graces of the manufacture or is just ill informed) although reviews can be helpful and not coloured.
A library PC is not likely to let you just install whatever productivity software you want, nor is it even guaranteed to be able to run it if you could. Not to mention OP mentioned being paralyzed and there may be accessibility options with getting to a library that they’d rather avoid.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I am not physically paralyzed; there are so many details to getting a computer system that I am suffering from “analysis paralysis“!
Where can a Boomer catch up on current computer/software technology? What are the most reliable ones now? Do I need a desktop for CAD? Pros and cons of operating systems (and where do I find them?) Browsers ditto? Where do I find answers that aren’t just product marketing?
The library is where OP can find answers that aren’t just product marketing, to all the above questions, including catching up on technology, and there’s absolutely no reason he needs to physically be in the building to find them. However, if he’s in my city, and can get to the branch, we have workstations created in partnership with Easterseals that likely have many of the accessibility technologies and tools he’s used to using at home as a person who is paralyzed.
“Where can a Boomer catch up on current computer/software technology?”
“The library” is a valid answer to where you can find information, though I doubt computer purchasing info would be that great.
“I have an eight-year-old laptop that needs replacing and I’m paralyzed.”
If I understand correctly, “paralyzed” is being used metaphorically here to describe an inability to make a purchasing decision.
However, libraries are one of the best places people with disabilities can go. They are usually set up with accessibility in mind and run by caring people.
Good point. I live in a rural area whose librarians are enthusiastic but emphatically not trained. However, I live about 40 miles from a university; I could pop by there maybe.
Libraries and librarians are great. I agree they would likely know where to point OP for info, but I meant they probably don’t have the resources to test a wide variety of products themselves.
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