So, I got a new laptop. The MSI GE63VR 7RE-010CA Raider. Last years model but no worse than my desktop machines 🙂
My Old MacBook Pro
My original plan for the long weekend was to rebuild Windows on my MacBook Pro after resizing the MacOS partition. That didn’t go so well. I deleted the Windows partition easy enough but resizing the new APFS volume that High Sierra installed was a lot harder to figure out. I eventually figured out that I had to boot to the recovery tools and use the diskutil command from there.
But there are a couple other problems with the MacBook. The battery is swelling again even worse than before. And no warranty this time so it would cost $600 to fix. And, SMART is reporting the SSD as failing… I was noticing some hangs in some apps when I was trying to resize that partition. Only problem, Apple didn’t think it needed to use a standard M.2 drive and their replacement 500GB drive is $600+ as well. So, I’m guessing it’s about $1200 to fix 🙁 I bought the MacBook back in October 2013, so it’s lasted almost 5 years. That’s a pretty good run.
My main problem with not having the MacBook, is that I can’t write iOS applications without it…
MSI Purchase
So Sunday, I get the weekly MemoryExpress email about all their daily deals and the MSI was on special on Tuesday. They don’t say how much of course. But regular price was $2249.99. So I click the link and see that it’s already on sale for $550 off until May 24. So, $1699.99!
Only problem is there is only 4 left in Calgary… And by Sunday night, the 2 in the NE are already gone. So, I headed over to the SE location first thing Monday morning to look at it. Ended up, there second last one was open-box so got 5% off the sale price as well. So, $1618 in the end. By the time I got home, the web site said the last one (display model) was gone too.
The Tuesday deal would have knocked another $100 off making it $1599 but since I got it for $1618 on Monday, I didn’t miss out much. Though, I would have got 5% off the $1599 technically, but there was no way they would have any left on Tuesday anyway.
The Setup
So, the setup of the new laptop was fun… Took THREE FUCKING HOURS!. It probably came with some 2016 version of Windows 10 and had to update itself to 1709.
I didn’t want Windows Home though so I’d have to re-install Windows Pro. So I downloaded all the drivers and utilities and plugged in my 1709 Pro release and installed it. Then I installed all the drivers and utilities to get everything working.
Next, time to join the domain… Not a choice! I check the computer properties and I’m still on Windows Home version!!! All that work for nothing. Turns out, on OEM machines with Windows key burned into the BIOS, the Windows install will just use that automatically.
Found two options though. I could add a special file to my USB installer to get back the Pro/Home choice, or I could try changing the product key in the existing Windows install. So, I thought I’d try my MSDN key and the second one I tried was accepted and it turned it into Pro. So grateful that worked!
Got it on the domain after that and started installing all my software. No problems there. Office 365, Visual Studio, Media players, and ITunes.
The Good Stuff
It’s FAST!
It’s a real 7th Gen I7 with 4 cores running at 3.8 GHZ with both Intel video and a NVidia GeForce GTX1060 card. Has 3 USB3 ports, a USB-C port, HDMI, Mini-DisplayPort. It can drive two external 4K monitors along with its own 1080p 120Hz display. It has both a 256GB SSD and a 1TB SATA drive for storage. Only 16GB of memory, but I can expand that to 32GB later if needed.
I can set different speed levels on the processor if I want. From Turbo down to ECO which would extend the battery life.
The sound on it is awesome with some of their audio tools. Turning their filters on and off made a huge difference in music quality.
Every key can be individually set to a different backlight color! The built in profiles have some neat cycling colors on every key. I didn’t think it was something I would use, but over the last few days I have found it nice to set certain editing keys that I use a lot as a different color so they stand out. Like the Compile key (F6) for Visual Studio, and the cursor navigation keys.
The Bad Stuff
The only critical thing I really look at on a laptop is the keyboard. The wrong keyboard can make a laptop completely unusable. The problem is, every laptop keyboard has something wrong with it.
With the MSI it has the Insert/Delete/Home/End keys along the top of the keypad. The PageUp/PageDown require you to hold Shift. And even worse, they didn’t use the Function key along with the cursor keys to simulate them like my MacBook and Surface Pro do. So all, that is left is the keypad itself if you leave the NumLock off.
The other completely stupid key they added was an additional backslash between the space bar and the right ALT key! What the fuck were they thinking! It makes the space bar a little shorter so I’m barely hitting the edge with my thumb. Problem is, sometimes it doesn’t register when you do that and the space gets missed. Luckily, I found I could reprogram it into a space with the lighting software.
The other thing that lots of laptop makers seem to screw up is USB port placement. They seem to think it is okay to put them on the right hand side middle to the front of the laptop. That’s where my MOUSE goes! I can’t plug stuff in there without it getting in the way of the mouse and I don’t have much space on my table for it. The USB ports is near the middle but still doesn’t leave much room for my trackpad.
Alternatives
I did look at a bunch of alternatives to this one. I looked at HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc. Seems like they all have people who’s job is to make sure every model they have has at least one bad decision. Either the memory is too little, the processor is only 1.8Ghz, the display is a crappy resolution, either none or not enough USB ports, a non US-English keyboard.
I was interested in the HP Envy 17 which had a large screen. But it had the 1.8Ghz process which is just half the speed of a real CPU. Came with a DVD drive, which I haven’t needed in any other laptop – and it should have been Blu-ray.
Summary
So, we’ll see how this one goes. I did get the 2 year warrant extension because it’s actually worth it from Memory Express. Anything goes wrong and if they can’t fix it in a week, I get the next year’s model!
As for the iOS development I want to do later, I have to maybe pick up a Mac Mini. It’s the cheapest option and other Xamarin developers say it works well enough as a build device. The only question is if Apple is updating it this year or not. That could be a good or bad thing.
If they update it, it will probably lose the USB3 ports which is bad for me. And the price could go up. But the current one is 3 years old with a Haswell processor so pretty out of date by today’s standards. The Xamarin guys says it works okay enough though and that’s all that matters. We’ll see if they say something at WWDC on June 4th.