right now the damage is on the right side of the screen, but research says it's gonna spread

So looking for recommendations on a new one.

I need a computer that can handle basic stuff and art stuff, and will last a long time.

right now I'm using a Mac, and my current external hard drive is a Mac one

Does anybody have advice?

If you're going to get a new computer, do you know if you'll do a desktop? if so, if the laptop screen damage doesn't make the laptop a danger to use, I'd see about maybe getting a monitor for the time being.

Then you have a monitor for when you get the computer (like I said, assuming you want a desktop) and the monitor will let you use your laptop in the meantime

When my laptop (ages ago) had the screen start to die, I used an old desktop monitor and then the laptop just served as the drive and the keyboard. Of course make sure your laptop has ports for a monitor before trying this.

I can't help with new computer info, but good luck!

I'm looking for a new laptop probably? I end up using my computer from bed on bad pain days

and I couldn't do that at all with a desktop

Ah, good luck then!

(but yeah, I'll probably end up getting a really cheap monitor as a stopgap until I can get a new computer)

Honestly if it's just the screen and you have someone handy, it might be possible to replace it fairly easily. You'd have to check your model

It's a 2013 Macbook pro

OH A MAC sorry I missed that part

so hahaha sob

Oh christ I'm seeing $600 for replacement screens

Okay no that was an outlier

y-yeah. I think I just need to get a new laptop at this point. like, it's the special pro-retina screen for true colors for art. I'm not sure how expensive a replacement screen will actually be, but 'cost of a new computer' sounds about right

Yeah I'm finding $150-250 for the regular retina display and that's assuming parts are genuine and nah yeah sorry for plurk detour

I just basically know to try to avoid HP and Dell.

yeah, never getting a Dell again. my first two laptops were Dell and both broke right after the warranty ran out

woof

My last HP lasted basically 8+ years with only a graphics card replaced when it broke but that was also bought a decade ago.

if you can hold out, we will be coming up on black friday and such sales in a couple months

yeah, I'm hoping to hold out that long

it might depend more on the specific laptop; I have what was for its time a pretty nice HP laptop that's now... many years old? it's running Win 7 (I think the sticker on it said 8, but I put a new HD in it and didn't want to touch 8, so 7 it was at the time), but it's freaking solid, even now.

that is true. I have no idea who makes decently long-lived laptops now-days. (I mean my Mac is over 10 years old right now. it probably would have lasted a few more years if it hadn't gotten knocked off the desk, honestly.

I think one of the reasons it might have lasted so long was that I shelled out a bunch extra for a solid state drive.

I think I'd actually prefer a slightly heftier laptop with a CD drive and a bunch of usb+hdmi ports and such?

then you're almost certainly looking for a PC, afaik. I haven't actually looked up much of the recent macs' specs, but I know that what PR stuff has reached me about them presents them as being all about trying to basically be high-end tablets lately. sigh.

bleh

(there is some draw to a computer that is also its own drawing tablet, but I think that's probably asking for a short lived computer)

possibly, but uh.... I will forever stan Wacom tablets. it took me about a good fifteen minutes to work down a checklist I made for setting it up how I want (Windows has a lot of stuff in it now for in the event it's being run on a tablety sort of comp, like a Surface, stuff that makes the cursor super obvious, or handles tap-hold/long-pressing things...)

(so I uh. went in and disabled a bunch of that kind of thing. I wanted the classic behavior, where the graphics tablet just. straightforwardly replaces the mouse.)

yeah, I've got a Wacom right now that still works pretty good. behaves a bit weird with my new art program because my photoshop cs6 finally refused to play nicely with the operating system but still works

ooh. what Wacom do you have?

(I will say I'm much better at actually analog drawing, where I can like turn the paper and stuff, but eventually I'll have enough tablet practice to get over that, right? right)

Intuos ...4 I think?

...remind me which model that was, again? I've only ever had Graphires and Bamboos...

I've had it since I got the computer I've got now so it's also old

I mean - no screen, right?

Oh I had a graphire too; it was nice, but also tiiiny

it's like a usb-connected mousepad with a cool plastic pen that goes with it?

hah, yeah, the Graphires were amazeballs, but boy did sizes change over time....

yeah. this is about what it looks like:Wacom Intuos Intuos4 - Medium

(amazon is good for finding old products haha)

oh wow

looks a lot like my current Wacom but with more buttons

I'm using a CTH-460

I honestly don't use the buttons, but I do like that the drawing surface is really big. it feels more natural to me

I forget offhand what the model name was... Bamboo Pen&Touch maybe? idk. I got it for, I KID YOU NOT, $15 shipped on ebay. I totally lucked out!

wow! you really did get lucky!

had its pen with it, too!

my honest advice? if you want a solid setup cheap and possibly quickly, see if there are any hospitals in the area, and see if you can find out what the IT department does with the obsolete computers.

there's a setup here in Anchorage where UAA and the local hospitals and stuff tend to have like... kind of a sort of outlet store for computer stuff? and if you aren't looking for the latest-greatest, you may be able to find something working for less than $100 that'll do what you need. may have to put a hard drive and install the OS yourself, though, if so.

which is a lot easier than you might think.

I mean, if there was a way to put together a laptop out of parts like people do with desktops I'd teach myself how to do it

in fact, if you want to snag a Win 7 key for cheap online somewhere, iirc, it's transferrable to Win 10. (you may want to at least look into that. I could be wrong, after all!)) ....and I could easily send you the Win 10 ISO to image it to a USB.

but I don't think there is?

I might take you up on that. I'm :/ about Win in general, but ehhh.

(I like the Mac OS. just not so much the hardware, if that makes sense?

possibly not. you might have better luck looking online for a decent laptop being sold used. a lot of the time, people will just gank the old HD out of it so they won't be giving away their data, and can reuse the drive elsewhere, and sell the old one working or for parts

I'll have to look into it

(oh, absolutely. I have an old laptop running... 10.5, I think? maybe? with GarageBand. I do love OSX. I'm just disgusted by Apple's hardware practices. plus, most of my programs are Windows-based.)

you could also always put 'nix on it, jsyk

OSX is a fork of BSD, if that makes any difference?

unix you mean? I don't know that much about operating systems

but like I said, this is what I'd suggest as a "workable, maybe not ideal, but decent enough for doing illustration stuff, and cheap" option. what with my own chronic lack of budget, it's absolutely the way I tend to go myself.

unix, linux.... they're pretty similar.

but yeah, OSX is a branch of BSD Unix.

iirc

good to know

plus if you do try the Windows route, I'm right here to assist however I can. I can talk you through browbeating Windows into bowing to the Wacom instead of trying to demand the reverse, lol, and toss you some of my fave art programs...

if there're any particular Windows irritations you have, I've managed to find workarounds for pretty much everything on mine that's ticked me off so far, with the exception of making Windows Update wait until I explicitly reboot the comp myself.

that would be awesome. I like Rebelle 5 that I got on a sale? but it is very much not an editing software, so I've been using the online photpea thing for that kind of thing

(it doesn't do it that often, but it enrages me every time it does, lmfao. I really do need to learn to save what's in Notepad more often....)

ooh, Photopea is fabulous

I'm... actually still using Photoshop CS.... XD

but I also lean a little more toward illustration work and low-poly 3D modeling stuff

what's bugged me the most about trying to do things on windows laptops is wtf is up with their trackpads. makes no sense

oh?

(I would still be using CS6 but I needed to update the OS for...I don't even remember what anymore, but then CS6 refused to work with the updated OS)

(I'm actually sitting here on a Surface Pro 4 with keyboard/trackpad as if it were a Proper Laptop, and have no issues with the trackpad? it might be a matter of What You're Used To... what issues was it giving you?)

like, for scrolling and stuff. two fingers works for the Mac trackpad but ??? what does scrolling for any of the PC trackpads I've had to deal with

ohhh. okay, so that is actually hardware-dependent!

I've had several different Windows laptops with trackpads, where they all did something a little different, and that was super disorienting, to swap between them. some, you'd put two fingers and swipe down, to scroll down on the page. others, you'd swipe up to scroll down, as if you were doing it on a mobile device....

one I had, you could scroll if you swiped even just one finger, but it'd only work on the far right side of the trackpad, like how a lot of mice have a rotating wheel-button thing in their center....

it's so very frustrating figuring out what is supposed to scroll and what isn't

several of them didn't click on a quick gentle tap on the trackpad. one of them (admittedly a really old one) actually had mechanical buttons placed below the trackpad, and there was no clicking on the trackpad at all. at least the modern ones all seem to let you use the trackpad as mechanical buttons too?

(I have a mouse with buttons and scroll wheel, but I honestly only ever using it when modeling, because 3D programs actually use those buttons)

like, here on my Surface, I actually can press down on the lower left and right corners, and it goes down with a click, just like a mouse. it's lovely.

I do tend to scroll a lot with my trackpad...

yeah, I like that part about my current trackpad. I can do all my usual stuff just with the trackpad itself

(It has gotten a little finicky about "left click" options, which is two fingers, in its old age, but otherwise works just like new)

I'm on a Surface - effectively a laptop in the form of a tablet, running Windows 10 and everything - and I don't even use the touch-screen function at all, which is... ostensibly the usual main selling point of it, being able to treat it as a tablet...

but yeah, the trackpads are... not a Windows thing, but a comp-specific thing. at least Win 10 here on my Surface lets me define two- and three-finger taps and stuff?

hahaha. I mean there are probably benefits of having a touch screen on a computer too but I wonder if that decreases the life of the screen, honestly

like, I got irritated with it doing weird stuff when I accidentally did three finger swipes and taps... so I told it to just use three-touch up/down swipes for volume up/down and ignore all other three-tap things.... XD

no more windows disappearing from my screen, no more pages reloading or going back/forth in the browser....

yeah, 3 finger swipes can be annoying. I've gotten good at not doing them (except when foster kitty is trying to play computer and putting her paws on the touchpad)

(kitten swipes! )

Honestly, windows 11 keys can be gotten for fairly cheap online. But you would want to also buy Start11 to restore the start menu.

Your local government might also have auctions of old hardware but you would need to provide new disk drives

I'll have to look into that