Latest Updates:
Page Index Toggle Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5
Topic Tools
Very Hot Topic (More than 25 Replies) Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka? (Read 71661 times)
proustiskeen
YaBB Moderator
*****
Offline


Hello from Omaha!

Posts: 678
Joined: 08/11/08
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #69 - 07/05/14 at 20:08:22
Post Tools
Is there any sense as to which of the lower-end processors are better for chess right now? The A6 (or A8) or the i3?
  
Back to top
WWW  
IP Logged
 
MartinC
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love ChessPublishing!

Posts: 2073
Joined: 07/24/06
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #68 - 05/09/14 at 08:26:06
Post Tools
That'd be the tidier solution you'd think -dual booting for one piece of software isn't really ideal - although (as the article says) it will slow analysis down quite a bit.

Could always do the analysis in some native program like Scid (Arena?) instead I suppose and import across as needed.
(I've no idea how well input/output from Scid to chessbase works though.).
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
WSS
Senior Member
****
Offline


I Love ChessPublishing!

Posts: 273
Joined: 04/22/11
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #67 - 05/09/14 at 01:07:54
Post Tools
Straggler wrote on 05/07/14 at 17:57:02:
Well, I'm not a complete idiot where computers are concerned, but I couldn't get Boot Camp to work. A virtual machine under Parallels works fine for me. ChessBase keeps crashing, of course, but it wouldn't be ChessBase if it didn't.


I've used a MacBook Pro with Parallels for over a year with no problems.  I wanted the MacBook for digital music recording so I needed the Windows VM for Chessbase.  If I didn't specifically need the Mac I might have preferred a Windows laptop.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Paddy
God Member
*****
Offline


The truth will out!

Posts: 964
Location: Manchester
Joined: 01/10/03
Gender: Male
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #66 - 05/08/14 at 23:34:22
Post Tools
Paddy wrote on 05/07/14 at 13:54:14:
For me this is a good time to revive this topic, since I need to replace my aging Samsung netbook (running Chessbase under Windows XP!) for travelling abroad to tournaments. I was on the point of ordering a Windows i7 ultrabook when this recent article by GM Dave Smerdon about using a MacBook was brought to my attention.

http://www.davidsmerdon.com/?p=1478

I use an Iphone and and IPad, so the thought of being able to run Chessbase with no problems on a MacBook is quite appealing.

Does anyone else here have any experience of this?


Thank you both (MartinC and Straggler) for your comments. I'm still unsure which way to jump, so further advice from forum readers, preferably based on experience, would be most useful!
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Straggler
Senior Member
****
Offline



Posts: 382
Joined: 08/09/09
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #65 - 05/07/14 at 17:57:02
Post Tools
Well, I'm not a complete idiot where computers are concerned, but I couldn't get Boot Camp to work. A virtual machine under Parallels works fine for me. ChessBase keeps crashing, of course, but it wouldn't be ChessBase if it didn't.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
MartinC
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love ChessPublishing!

Posts: 2073
Joined: 07/24/06
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #64 - 05/07/14 at 14:02:52
Post Tools
Essentially guaranteed to work with the final method he's describing. Do that and you're dual booting into OSX or Windows as required.

The hardware underneath in macs is essentially the same as the windows ones nowadays, so once booted into windows it is a entirely normal windows notebook.
(Well a nice one that is Smiley Apple certainly do specify their notebooks nicely.).
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Paddy
God Member
*****
Offline


The truth will out!

Posts: 964
Location: Manchester
Joined: 01/10/03
Gender: Male
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #63 - 05/07/14 at 13:54:14
Post Tools
For me this is a good time to revive this topic, since I need to replace my aging Samsung netbook (running Chessbase under Windows XP!) for travelling abroad to tournaments. I was on the point of ordering a Windows i7 ultrabook when this recent article by GM Dave Smerdon about using a MacBook was brought to my attention.

http://www.davidsmerdon.com/?p=1478

I use an Iphone and and IPad, so the thought of being able to run Chessbase with no problems on a MacBook is quite appealing.

Does anyone else here have any experience of this?
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
ReneDescartes
God Member
*****
Offline


Qu'est-ce donc que je
suis? Une chose qui pense.

Posts: 1236
Joined: 05/17/10
Gender: Male
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #62 - 07/22/13 at 18:38:46
Post Tools
Um...yes, I'm aware of all that. Used to use KDE myself. I don't see how it affects my trivial point that the interface of an operating system is important, but if the example strikes you as like asking about the distance from Paris to France I won't disagree. Thanks for the hardware update too.

Best, RD
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Markovich
God Member
*****
Offline



Posts: 6099
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Joined: 09/17/04
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #61 - 07/20/13 at 16:30:26
Post Tools
Markovich wrote on 05/26/12 at 01:02:44:
The obvious question is, what do you want to do with your laptop? Serious chess analysis makes extreme demands on any processors devoted to it. I have eight core on my desktop machine, and when it's calculating, all the cores peg at 100% and the fans are so active that it's a bit like sitting next to a turboprop. I don't think that that kind of computation can be done on any existing factory laptop.

Does anyone really need to do that kind of computation on the road? If so the way to do it is to ssh to your home machine, not try to do it on a laptop.


I have since learned that this remark was behind the times.  You can buy a laptop these days equipped with Intel i7 chips (4 core, 8 threads) that is a reasonable substitute for an eight-core desktop machine. You should also buy a good cooler for it (a cooler is a sort of flat stand on which the laptop sits; it has fans in it that are powered by the laptop).

I bought a Zareason Verix 530 equipped with dual i7-3840QM chips, 16 Gig of ram and 180 Gig of SSD. See http://zareason.com.  Zareason specializes in Linux (I would never want a non-Unix computer), but there are many suppliers of custom-built Windows laptops (AVADirect is one; see http://avadirect.com).  If anyone DOES want Linux, I can personally recommend Zareason. I bought this mainly for development (Php, Mysql, Apache) when away from home, but it turns out that it works perfectly well for chess.  I run stockfish and scid.

Not everyone will want this much computational horsepower, but for large data base applications like Chessbase or Mysql, I strongly recommend SSD storage (solid state drives).  They are WAY faster than the traditional RPM (platter) drives.  One little bonus is that bootup is a whole lot faster, as well.

Because my Zareason laptop happens to have an Nvidia graphics card, it's possible to play games on it as well. At the instigation of one of my sons, I've recently been fooling around with Crusader Kings II.  Computer games are not really a passion for me, though; I have the nagging feeling that I'm wasting my time.

Stop reading now if you're not a geek.

@ReneDescartes: "The guts may be stable, but the other point of an OS is the interface. That's what makes OS X better than command-line UNIX." 

That statement seems a quite odd to me, because OS X has a command line, and essentially all Unix installations on PCs or laptops run a desktop GUI like Gnome, KDE or my preference, XFCE.  Only on servers, usually, do you not run a desktop GUI, because you don't need one.  Personally I like the freedom to choose which desktop GUI I want to use, not possible on Windows and OSX.  I DO find the command line quite useful, but this is a preference that someone with an OSX machine could satisfy as well.

Also, you may perhaps know that OSX is not entirely different from Unix.  I believe that much of it was borrowed from BSD.
  

The Great Oz has spoken!
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
ReneDescartes
God Member
*****
Offline


Qu'est-ce donc que je
suis? Une chose qui pense.

Posts: 1236
Joined: 05/17/10
Gender: Male
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #60 - 07/20/13 at 14:10:27
Post Tools
Just bought a new laptop. Asus, a respected part manufacturer that now makes laptops,  has some of the best deals and, more importantly, the best repair records in the industry. Only Asus's customer infrastructure is not up to par. I bought a Toshiba with Windows 7 Pro especially installed on up-to-date hardware, and Asus didn't have that option. I need to do software development among other things, and I didn't like the asynchronous Windows 8 architecture. But I would recommend Asus.

My own feeling is that Windows 8 is one of those every-other Microsoft OS releases that are gratefully forgotten and replaced once Microsoft has a little time to save face . (recall The Onion: "Evil Genius Pours Windows 98 into Water Supply"). The guts may be stable, but the other point of an OS is the interface. That's what makes OS X better than command-line UNIX. And it's never a good sign when the guy that created a product is fired right before its release, as happened in the case of Windows 8.

Re Markovich: A lot of players who are not playing centaur correspondence chess just want to analyze their own games for tactical errors. A laptop is more than adequate for that. And if you're on the road and want to do some chess analysis, what choice do you have?
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
FischerTal
Senior Member
****
Offline


I Love Chess Books

Posts: 307
Location: England
Joined: 04/11/08
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #59 - 07/19/13 at 17:34:39
Post Tools
Can you run chessbase (or maybe Chess OK programmes like chess Assistant ) on a Windows 8 touchscreen, I was thinking of getting a convertible notebook to mainly take the Tablet part around with me, the IPAd has very good portability and some good chess apps now but  I am looking for portability of IPad with chess power of ChessBase or Chess OK.

Or  would  Chessbase./Ok work on a Microsoft Surface?
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
bragesjo
God Member
*****
Offline


CCE at ICCF 2021 and CCM
at ICCF 2023

Posts: 1829
Location: Eskilstuna
Joined: 06/30/06
Gender: Male
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #58 - 04/27/13 at 14:20:06
Post Tools
About Windows 8, I work as a computer programmer and when I got a new computer recenelty I had Windows 8. At first I dit not like it att all but after a few hours using it I think is is the best version of Windows so far, it realy like it.
  
Back to top
WWW  
IP Logged
 
TonyRo
God Member
*****
Offline


I'm gonna crack your skull!

Posts: 1826
Location: Cleveland, OH
Joined: 11/26/07
Gender: Male
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #57 - 04/26/13 at 13:03:28
Post Tools
I recently just bought a laptop for traveling and chess analysis on the couch, and I actually really like Windows 8. I have my suspicious that the vast majority of people who complain about Windows 8 (this is speculation of course) are the people who don't want to invest the half-hour into how it works, or simply hate change.

I got a great deal on the Lenovo Y400, and I'm very happy with it.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Keano
God Member
*****
Offline


Money doesn't talk, it
swears.

Posts: 2915
Location: Toulouse
Joined: 05/25/05
Gender: Male
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #56 - 04/25/13 at 15:51:23
Post Tools
snits wrote on 04/11/13 at 00:42:24:
Windows 8 has had mixed reviews, but I think most of the complaints I have seen were not about it being broken, but the way that they changed the interface. Chessbase says it runs on Windows 8 so that should be fine. The system is definitely powerful enough to do chess work with the i7 and memory.


Talking to some people who know about it, the interface in Windows 8 can be changed back to the same as Windows 7 but for some stupid reason Microsoft have not made it an easy thing to do for non-IT people, sounds like you have to go and modify a value in the registry.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Mortal Games
God Member
*****
Offline



Posts: 587
Joined: 07/24/04
Gender: Male
Re: Laptop for Chessbase & Rybka?
Reply #55 - 04/11/13 at 15:59:44
Post Tools
Thanks, I was concerned about a dramatic change in the interface in windows 8, but I need to see it with my own eyes and grab some more opinions about it. The ultrabook had very good reviews in general, but some people refer some hot button after one hour and some noise or the position of the hands not in an ideal position in tablet mode or the trackpad precision. I think I will wait for more opinions based on the use with these machines. The Sony Vaio Duo 11 with i7 core is another interesting option but more expensive. In the end, I think there are no perfect solutions. Desktop is best for serious calculation, but above 4 cores is expensive and today any computer can access a cloud with powerfull machines like in playchess. The only drawback for me is the cooler when I want to study/play in the winter nights wich is a bit anoying. The laptop solution is not in my plans because the battery life is short and one can vitiate them with ease and are expensive. I prefer two options: (Desktop+ultrabook or tablet), but here the price is important, the battery life and the choice between windows or ios Mac (ipad) have advantages and disadvantages related to chess applications.
  

It has been said that chess players are good at two things, Chess and Excuses.  It has also been said that Chess is where all excuses fail! In order to win you must dare to fail!
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Page Index Toggle Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5
Topic Tools
Bookmarks: del.icio.us Digg Facebook Google Google+ Linked in reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Yahoo