Walker Engineering

Engineering, Management, Technology Consulting

  • TheWorldsWorstEngineeringMistakes

  • You have got to be able to connect this with what you are passionate about!

  • From an article on makeuseof which addressed the question I had of how do I find a really good mid range laptop when mine went out last.  I finally was handed a used one that I put an SSD drive into.  I am now looking to upgrade the SSD drive for more space.

    This article explains why is is so difficult to compare units, still the final two ACER units are a solid recommendation:

    Acer Aspire E5-573G: As mentioned earlier, the E5-573G may use the slightly older Broadwell generation of CPU, but it’s paired with the NVIDIA GT-940M GPU and includes a 15.6″ 1080p screen, and 6GB of RAM. You won’t find a better performer anywhere for the money.

    Acer Aspire E5-573G 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop (Intel Core i5 5200U, 8GB, 1TB, NVIDIA GeForce 940M 2GB, Windows 10 Home)

    Intel Core i5-5200U 2.2 GHz (3 MB Cache)
    Price: $499.99

    Buy Now at Amazon.com

    Acer Aspire V3-572PG-767J: This laptop uses the 4th generation Haswell architecture, along with the unupdated GT-840M GPU. It’s a solid performer and for $533, you could do a lot worse. There haven’t been big performance increases with Intel’s 5th and 6th generation processors, except within their integrated GPUs and in battery life. However, this unit uses a discrete GPU, so there’s not a tremendous difference between this laptop and modern ones.

    Acer Aspire V3-572PG-767J 15.6-Inch Touchscreen Laptop (Platinum Silver)

    Intel Core i7-4510U 2.0 GHz Processor (4MB Cache)
    Price: $594.21

    Buy Now at Amazon.com

  • From Northshore Fireplace

    Home is where the heart is, but sometimes it’s also where a homeowner’s savings plan comes into account. Homeowners may have a long wish list of home renovations and projects, and sometimes the work is never done. While return on investment (ROI) may not be the biggest consideration in a homeowner’s mind when deciding which projects make it to the top of the list, knowing which projects see the highest returns may be helpful in the decision-making process.

    It IS a fireplace shop.  And besides those actually living in the space, who notices the windows, especially when the house is sold during a Summer House Sale!

    I always have to remind myself that thinking about a “bottom five” ranking on a short list is silly.  If the list was 25 items, then the bottom five might well be ones to avoid. No matter how large or small the list someone is always at the bottom and arguing that windows at 77% are not good ROI is a little strange.

    So the infographic is fun and informative; however, make your own decisions.

     

    HomeOwnerROI