Nine Days With an Absurd 9,0.Gaming Laptop. There may exist inside of you a desire that burns white hot for the Acer Predator 2.X, but you will never buy this laptop.It is not for you, because if you want this laptop, you probably cant afford it, and if you can afford it, you are probably old enough to not want to spend 9,0.But if youre reading Gizmodo youre still enough of a gadget fan to want to at least understand the 9,0.To that end, I spent nine days working almost exclusively with Acers ode to excess.Here is its story.Day 1 The arrival.Our office manager looked suspiciously from me to the box, which is the size of three ten year olds squeezed together.Its a laptop, I explained.While the office manager was incredulous, others were delighted.BrilloPad2.jpg' alt='Can You Smoke Crack With A Brillo Pad Art' title='Can You Smoke Crack With A Brillo Pad Art' />7 springSummer 2009.MONkey puzzle. featuring new work by Keith Kumasen Abbott Margaret Randall Tim Skeen Mittie Roger Travis Cebula Nancy Stohlman Olatundji Akpo.I want to sit in the box, a colleague shouted while snapping photos.Following the included instructions, I managed to open the gigantic cardboard boxas well as the nearly indestructible Pelican case contained within.Desiring nothing more than to game, I plopped the Predator 2.X on my knees as I would a Mac.Book. Fortunately, I used to bicycle a lot, so Ive got strong thighs that dont weep under the weight of 1.When I told inquisitive on lookers the price, they looked at me aghast.Why does a 9,0. 00 machine exist I didnt have a good answer.So I pulled the trackpad out of its slot and showed people that it can be flipped over and used as a number pad.Everyone agreed that was very neat.The trick earned the computer its first wow unrelated to size or price.After an hour and ten minutes of use, the computer died.It was after 5pm, and I did not want to find outlets for the computers two two necessary power supplies, so I left it on a coworkers desk and went home.Day 2 Set up. When I got to the office, I finally found outlets for the the 2.Xs two 3. 30 watt power supplies and began to use the laptop in earnest.It comes with Tobii Eyetracking, but it didnt appear to be working.The Nvidia graphics drivers were out of date too.The Frame by Samsung is about as pretentious as a television could be.Its a 2,000 4K TV that doubles as a digital display for works of art.You can even hang it.Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online.Easily share your publications and get.Cocaine, also known as coke, is a strong stimulant mostly used as a recreational drug.It is commonly snorted, inhaled as smoke, or as a solution injected into a vein.Nvidia Ge. Force unhelpfully uninstalled its drivers, and the computer broke for twenty minutes.I uninstalled everything with the Nvidia name.Reinstalled. Inexplicably, the eye tracking started working on the third restart.After three hours of futzing with drivers and settings, I got Rise of the Tomb Raider running.My coworkers crowded around the computer shouting their advice on how to walk in a straight line.Take a moment, remember when there was only one controller for the SNES at a slumber party.This moment was like that, but burlier.Yet there was exactly one coworker who did not care.She was the one who told me to mute the computer earlier when shed had enough of Windows notifications exploding from the computers four speakers and two subwoofers.Now she was irritated because the work day was over and people were peering at a laptop.Lets go get beer she bellowed.The horde agreed.I saved my game and closed the laptop.The battery was still not fully charged.Day 3 Making my way downtown, part 1You are taking this on the train.It was not a suggestion.My boss and I agreed that you couldnt review a laptop without testing its mobilityhow easy it was to pack up and move around.In the case of the Acer 2.X, it is a chore.Thanks to the gentle curve of the display, the lid does not sit flush, so the 1.The 2. 1 inch display might crack.So I packed it back up into the Pelican case and headed home an hour and a half early.No one questioned this.A woman offered to help me carry it down the second flight of stairs to the train, but I declined.I need to do this for myself, I said.On the train, everyone eyed me like you always eye the asshole with huge luggage on a rush hour train.It was only 4 4. Thursday, but the train filled up the closer to Brooklyn we got.When I arrived at my stop, I had to muscle my way to the door and pray the wheels on the case didnt roll over a foot.I am too delicate to be shouted at by cranky commuters.Off the train, I made it up one flight of stairs, a line of annoyed passengers forming behind me.A man wordlessly held out a hand and helped me up the second flight of stairs.New York is nicer than youd expect it to be.It is. 4 miles from the train station to my home.The sidewalks arent the smooth and clean ones of the Flatiron District.Theyre broken with concrete jutting up out of the ground.On the day I brought the Predator home, it had just rained, and while the streets were dry, puddles of brown, stagnant awful lay in a pedestrians path at every intersection.I lifted and dodged and hurried home.The shipping weight of the box is 7.Pelican case, power supplies, and 1.I was sure I was dragging all 7.The dog and cat were both alarmed by the monstrosity that took up residence in our living room.That night my roommate arrived home.She saw the computer on my lap and could not take her eyes off of it.Is it like. for army she asked.Her voice was a whisper, barely heard over the hum of the machine.No. It was not for army.Day 4 I cannot feel my toes.The journey home had clearly affected me.Like the best friend in an 1.I was plagued by a cough and a sniffle and a weakness of indeterminate origin.My only salve was the laptop.I found a place for its two plugs, settled it on my lap, and downloaded Mass Effect Andromeda.The machine did not like the internet in my home and it took an hour, three attempts to fix the internet, and one restart to download the game.The laptop rested on my thighs and destroyed all sensation below my knees.I cannot feel my toes, I texted a friend at 3 3.Playing the game on the 2.Xs keyboard and using its trackpad was a study in painful frustration.I couldnt get comfortable.The Cherry Brown mechanical key switches were nice, and the trackpad gave me zero issues, but the spacing between the keyboard and trackpad felt all wrong, especially when the computer was sitting in my lap.I finally gave up and found my Xbox One controller.Gaming was instantly more pleasant.Day 5 Never mind, everything hurts.I played Mass Effect for longer than I should admit in polite company, and at the very least the gaming performance is incredible.The dual Nvidia GTX 1.GB SSDs in a speedy RAID 0 configuration, plus the 6.GB of RAM and the Kaby Lake i.It had zero issues giving me 1.And with two Nvidia GTX 1.As long as the laptop was plugged in.After a very rare bathroom break I sat back down, balanced the computer across my lap and was startled to see the game had slowed to a crawl.I quit. Restarted.Played again. It was still slow.Then I realized the plugs had disconnected, and I was running on battery power.I plugged back in and balance was restored Until my controller started to randomly disconnect every few minutes.As if the computer knew Id been playing Mass Effect for 1.I got annoyed and powered off for the night.Day 6 Its hot in here.It was over 8. 0 degrees outside.The heat didnt bother me, until I balanced the computer on my knee.Then I was reminded of summers in Texas, my god daughter sitting in my lap, all sharp bones and sweat and a furnace that would rival whatever burns in your basement.The laptop is like a toddler I can put in a box at the end of the day.The discomfort grew too bothersome for me to ignore.I tried placing it on my secretary desk, but it was too bigtoo heavyto be supported.I eventually gave up and went and played Mass Effect on my regular PC.I immediately missed the expanded field of vision the 2.X afforded me. The 2.X. Moving to my 5.K TV should have meant everything would feel bigger, but while the assets rendered by the game were larger, the 1.Yet I continued to play, because I did not miss the heat, or the disconnects, or the crushing weight of capitalism on my thighs.Day 7 A day of rest.I sat on the couch, and worked hard at my job, and I used the 2.X as a stand to hold my phone.It was better this way.Day 8 Making my way downtown, part 2.My dog has a fear of packed bags.I am always mindful of it, distracting him with treats whenever I have to pack a bag for a trip.As I dismantled the X 2. Enter The Matrix Pc Iso Iso 9001 . I looked up. The dog thought I was going for good.But I was not. Instead, I took a Lyft to the office and an elevator up the stairs.Is that a laptop a co worker laughed.Yes, I said. Day 9 Goodbye old friend.I shot photos in the afternoon.The laptop felt heavier than usual, its fans and cute little beeps were a cacophony overwhelming the quiet hum of the newsroom.The Frame by Samsung Is Not a Work of Art, But It Sure Is a Fine TVThe Frame by Samsung is about as pretentious as a television could be.Its a 2,0. 00 4. K TV that doubles as a digital display for works of art.You can even hang it on your wall with a no gap mount and attach faux wood panels to the sides so that it looks like painting.Neat idea, sure, but inevitably, The Frame by Samsung is still just a television wrapped in a fancy sales pitch.Ive spent the past couple of weeks with The Frame in my living room, and Ill admit its a nice TV.Samsung actually calls it The most beautiful TV youve never seen in its marketing materials.The cheeky word play, I think, suggests that you could put this on your living room wall, and nobody would know that its actually a full featured television.The unique art mode allows you to select prints, paintings, or photographs to display on the screen when the TVs power is off.Theres also a motion sensor on the front that can display the art only when someones nearby, so that youre not wasting electricity.Again, cool concept.Im not sure the tech is quite there yet, though.What is it A high end 4.K TV that looks like a picture frame.Like. Great display, well built TVNo Like.Art Mode sucks, price is way too high.The 5. 5 inch model costs 2,0.I want to make these numbers very clear, because theyre big, and the cost to value ratio played a major role in my opinion of the Frame by Samsung.Put bluntly, these TVs are too expensive.That said, the TV part of the package is actually quite good.The 4. K edge lit LED display is clean, crisp, and luxurious.It features a 1. 20 Hz refresh rate and a 2.Hz motion rate. The refresh rate refers to how many times the image on the screen refreshes, and the motion rate is software that inserts frames between the actual refresh rate to make the picture seem smoother.This often creates something called the soap opera effect.Youve also got HDR Pro, which is a marketing term Samsung and other manufacturers use to imply that the color range of its TVs provide some of the benefits of HDR but dont quite hit the HDR1.The display also lacks local area dimming, the feature that provides multiple zones where the backlight can either highlight bright colors or turn off completely to produce blacker blacks.Nevertheless, the contrast and color quality is still good.The software side of things is also good.The Frame runs Tizen 3.Samsungs proprietary operating system.You can do the things that you do with any smart TV, like install apps and access the internet.Theres also an app to control the TVs Art Mode.The Frame comes with 1.You can also upload your own photos or images to display on the screen when the TV is in Art Mode, again, by using the smartphone app.Thing is, the primary selling point of the Frame isnt just about being a high quality display or a full featured smart TV.Its about the complete package and the aesthetic appeal it offers as a medium for artworks.And since the display itself is roughly equivalent to those in cheaper Samsung TVs, youre definitely paying a big premium for this wannabe haute couture hardware.The Frame is a graceful objectIll give it that.Its essentially an obelisk, around two inches thick and flat on the back so it can sit flush against the wall when you use the no gap mount.Due to a legal agreement with my landlord my lease, I was not able to mount the Frame, but I can appreciate the minimalist appeal of a TV that just looks as clean as a painting in a mid century art studio.Out of the box, the Frame has a thin, black bezel, but you can buy a customizable bezel with a walnut, beige wood, or white finish for an extra 2.TV. The decorative bezel snaps right on to the TV using magnets and takes about 6.But youre also paying hundreds of dollars for pieces of decorative metal.Once its all set up, though, the Frame is a handsome piece of hardware.Even when its not mounted, the TV just floats like a portal into whatever fantasy world your movie of choice wants to take you to.Whats especially impressive is the One Connect cable and box.This system uses a noodle thin cord that connects the port free TV to the separate One Connect Box, where your HDMI, optical audio, USB, and other cords go.In other words, you plug one tiny cord into the TV and that connects to the slim box with all the inputs, a little slab you can hide in a console or anywhere nearby.The only other cable that comes out of the TV is the power cord.So even if youre not mounting the Frame and instead using the sturdy, almost industrial stand that comes with the TV, you can maintain that minimalist appeal.All that said, I cant get past the fact that Samsung is trying to sell you a TV that doubles as a display for art.The Frame just doesnt work for that.The screen itself has that dull glossy sheen that most TVs have, and when the TV is in Art Mode, its dreadfully obvious that its just a digital image on an edge lit display.If you install the Frame anywhere near a window, as I did, youre going to see glare on the screen almost always.So theres no fooling me or my guests that theres now a painting where my TV used to be.It just looks like a really nice TV.For some people, that might be okay.I can see how the Frame might be wonderfully appealing for the lobbies of fancy office buildings or as incognito sports watching installations at nice restaurants.In those instances, the TV as an object is more of a business expense anyways.It almost looks good, too.From a distance, the effect of Art Mode on the Frame was somewhat uncanny, as if you were looking at a weird print in a shiny package.Once you get close up, however, the illusion completely falls apart.In the end, you can buy an equally good TV for much lower priceeven one made by Samsung.As CNET points out, the Frames specifications are roughly equivalent to the Samsung MU8.K TVs. Those TVs are 7.Frame TVs, respectively.Just recently, Samsung also announced a 4.Frame but didnt specify the price.So its not so much that Samsung made a bad TV.Its the fact that the Frames marketing doesnt quite live up to the products promisesor price.Would I recommend the quality of the display in the Frame by Samsung Absolutely.Would I encourage you to install it in your foyer to impress your friends or please some inner yearning to have a more future focused approach to interior decoration Almost.Would I encourage you to spend an extra thousand bucks to get a TV that promises to be a work of art I would not.READ MEA fine TVBilled as a digital canvas for art, but honestly still just looks like a TV with art on the screen.Wonderfully designed.Way too expensive.SPEC DUMP4. K LED display HDR Pro 1.Hz 2. 40 Hz effective refresh rate quad core processor Bluetooth wi fi 4 HDMI 2.Tizen 3. 0 OS Samsung Smart Hub.
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