>>So even if I got very good compression it'd be a small overall gain.
While HTML tends to have the biggest gains in my experience, a lot of things get *some* space benefit out of compression. Even sometimes things like MP3s that are *already* compressed, just not quite as highly: the ~5% savings I'm getting on lifelogger archives adds up over time.
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>>Unfortunately, I have the vice of buying very light-weight 2-in-1 laptops (since I will be carrying them with me literally everywhere short of the grocery store)
My usual strategy is to rely on smartphones for portability-requiring uses, and buy 4- to 7-year-old high-end-at-the-time mobile workstations (= stuffing about as much into the laptop form factor as was possible back then) that I take out of the house only when travelling. I hear that tends to be less feasible for university, though.
New laptop is...I haven't weighed it myself, but judging from these specsheets it's about 600g lighter than my previous one, and that's definitely taking some getting used to. I can pick it up with one hand! I don't have to be careful to lift with my legs!
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>>since HP seems to name laptops in parallel across all models or something and there are similarly-named laptops in many styles.
Yeah, I ran into something similar myself. Does this laptop come with a webcam? Maybe™.
(Apparently the answer in this case is yes, but I honestly did not know until it arrived. The pictures on the listing cut off before showing that part of the monitor, so I couldn't get the information that way.)
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I was thinking the practicality issues of an external drive would be mostly "having an extra USB device attached to your computer ~all the time", rather than "having to go and get it". But if you carry your laptop around a lot I suppose it *would* be more the latter.
no subject
While HTML tends to have the biggest gains in my experience, a lot of things get *some* space benefit out of compression. Even sometimes things like MP3s that are *already* compressed, just not quite as highly: the ~5% savings I'm getting on lifelogger archives adds up over time.
---
>>Unfortunately, I have the vice of buying very light-weight 2-in-1 laptops (since I will be carrying them with me literally everywhere short of the grocery store)
My usual strategy is to rely on smartphones for portability-requiring uses, and buy 4- to 7-year-old high-end-at-the-time mobile workstations (= stuffing about as much into the laptop form factor as was possible back then) that I take out of the house only when travelling. I hear that tends to be less feasible for university, though.
New laptop is...I haven't weighed it myself, but judging from these spec sheets it's about 600g lighter than my previous one, and that's definitely taking some getting used to. I can pick it up with one hand! I don't have to be careful to lift with my legs!
---
>>since HP seems to name laptops in parallel across all models or something and there are similarly-named laptops in many styles.
Yeah, I ran into something similar myself. Does this laptop come with a webcam? Maybe™.
(Apparently the answer in this case is yes, but I honestly did not know until it arrived. The pictures on the listing cut off before showing that part of the monitor, so I couldn't get the information that way.)
---
I was thinking the practicality issues of an external drive would be mostly "having an extra USB device attached to your computer ~all the time", rather than "having to go and get it". But if you carry your laptop around a lot I suppose it *would* be more the latter.