Yet another month has gone by. There hasn't been much going on. I bought a new gaming laptop at the end of September. Since then, I have been budgeting in order to amortize the cost. Because of that, I haven't done many exciting things this past month.
The laptop, an Alienware R13, marks an important change in direction from all my previous laptops, which had prioritized portability and battery life over processing power. This laptop is the most expensive one I have bought so far, at $1250, after a $300 rebate that is coming in the mail. It replaces my previous Sony Vaio, which I had gotten in 2013, for around $800, the previous record for the most expensive laptop I ever bought. I had bought a few other 2-in-1 laptop/tablet combos in between, which had been more on the portable side, with WACOM pen support, but those tended to be more reasonably priced, at around $600 for the Toshiba Portege, which I still use at work to take notes with. At any rate, none of the laptops I have ever bought can compete with this one in terms of computational power. However, though I had always been on the lookout for a powerful laptop, it was really a combination of factors all lining up that led to my purchasing decision:
The graphics could handle real games. Laptops in the past, even with the best mobile graphics, always delivered unsatisfactory gaming performance. It wouldn't make sense to sacrifice portability and battery life if all I got in return was still unsatisfactory. WIth a 6GB GTX 1060, this laptop could compete with the GTX 1060 in my main desktop.
An OLED screen. After you go OLED, you can't go back. My first device with an OLED screen was my 2013 Moto X smartphone. It had really beautiful colors, really deep blacks, and great viewing angles, which I would've loved to have in a larger screen. This laptop has a gorgeous screen, to say the least - at 13.3 inches.
Portability was compromised but still acceptable. While gaming on the laptop would drain the battery in an hour, I could get 5 or more hours out of it doing normal things. At less than an inch thick, and less than 6 lbs, it was acceptable; it was comparable to the Sony Vaio, which I lugged around throughout our Europe trip.
Finally, nothing else was a dealbreaker. It had expandable memory and storage. It had a mechanical keyboard. It has a very nice trackpad. It has a touchscreen. The i5 6300HQ was the weakest link, but that still has adequate performance.
On the other hand, today, I finished the Life-Studies of the Old Testament. Originally, I had embarked on this journey at the beginning of 2010. It's taken me almost 8 years, when, at one message (chapter) per day, it should've taken me about 2.5. Nonetheless, I am very happy to have eventually finished, and I will now start on the Life-Studies of the New Testament. This is one of the longer endeavors I've started and am still seeing through to completion. I was never very good at perseverance. The world has changed a lot around me while I was in this 8 year tunnel. I wonder when will I appear at the end of the tunnel.
