So this sounds like corporate privileged bull**t and it probably is…but here goes. The annual work charity golf tournament took place on Friday and I went along for the first time. Yeah…you really go golfing and drinking for the whole day and call it “charity”.
Admittedly, the history of the event is quite cool - it kicked off in 1941 as a fundraiser when the bank employees wanted to send food to London during the war. They kept the event going after the war as a general annual charity event. The Londoners sent a big Cup back as thanks in 1951 and the winning team gets their names engraved to the base each year.
I can’t play golf to save myself but they played with Ambrose rules so I was mostly tagging along with the guys who could actually play.
Anyway, as part of the event, there was a raffle, with the prizes generally from bank clients…and I won a new laptop. Of all the 80 people on the golf course, as far as golf skill goes, I was probably the least deserving to win a prize, but then I’d rather be lucky than good!
I haven’t had a recent laptop in years, so I realized I don’t really know what I’m looking at here in terms of performance. The important question is - can I play games with this thing??
On the numbers, it is a Thinkpad T490s with a touch screen with the following quick info:
i5-8365U CPU
16 GB RAM
256 GB SSD
It looks as though there is no dedicated GPU, so would I be correct assuming that it means it’s not going to run any 3D games (say DCS)?
It’s odd, the RRP seems like a lot for something that doesn’t have the oomph for gaming (and a fairly small hard drive), but I guess that isn’t the point with a ‘business’ laptop. I just struggle with why you’d put in 16GB RAM just to use Office, I guess.
Yeah. Looks like that has the Integrated Intel® UHD Graphics 620 built in. It will play some games but I would not hold out hope of anything with moderate requirements.
It may have a 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2** Type-C / Intel Thunderbolt 3 (Power Delivery, DisplayPort, Data transfer) port on it, depending on the config (link). But that port is 10 Gbit/s which is slower than required for an external graphics card box.
Thanks guys! I guess graphics isn’t the focus when it comes to designing a general use laptop.
You have to splash out a bit if you want to be gaming on the move. I just looked up what the Alienware gaming laptops cost here, just to get the idea…wow. Even the cheapest versions are NZ$2,799 and the high end almost double that.
I have been meaning to dig into Operational Art of War IV, which I can’t imagine would be very heavy on the graphics…could be a nice one to do a few turns while on the go.
Another game I enjoy occasionally is Crusader Kings II, which does have a 3D interface, so we’ll see how it fares.
Congratulations, that‘s a pretty good laptop. Sturdy and well balanced. Keep it for non gaming, it will serve you well.
16 GB of RAM is standard in my business. Heavy use of browser tabs, Slack, MS Teams, Skype for Business, MS Outlook. Plus a ton of small things running in the background, like password managers, screenshot tools, VPN, Antivirus… etc.
After all of this is loaded 8GB is used up (just checked - it‘s true). Now try to do anything useful and there‘s your reason to have 16 GB.
