User:Daniel K. Schneider

About myself

I am coordinating work in this wiki and here is an official blurb about me:

Daniel K. Schneider is a senior lecturer and researcher at TECFA, a research and teaching unit in the faculty of psychology and education, University of Geneva. Holding a PhD in political science, he has been working in educational technology since 1988 and participated in various innovative pedagogical and technological projects. He has been a prime mover towards the introduction of creative pedagogical strategies and ICT technologies. His current R&D interests focus on modular, flexible and open Internet architectures supporting rich and effective educational designs. Within TECFA's "blended" master program in educational technology, he teaches educational information & communication systems, virtual environments and research methodology.

• My E-mail: Daniel.Schneider at unige.ch (E.g. if you have questions about the why and what of this Wiki)
• See my good old HTML Home Page
• Classes in french: Cours STIC: STIC I - STIC II - STIC III - STIC IV
• Classes in English: See Courses and workshops
• Talks: some slides

Blog

Last 10 posts from Blog:DKS, my wikilog:

Other

Needed a new desktop laptop

• It should be 3D enabled (both CAD and gaming 3D) and have both good Opengl and activeX support
• Fast CPU, e.g. i7-2630QM (Quad procesor) or better
• Biggest possible display
• a SSD (for quick installs and project start)

I finally got a DELL M6600 with a M4000 Graphics card (DELL gives universities huge bargains for some models). See an owners review at notebookreview.com. So far, I am happy with it, except for its low "HD" 1920x1080 screen resolution and the impossibility to connect it to our HD projector via HDMI. I'll have to investigate the latter - 18:32, 29 March 2012 (CEST).

Alternatives I considered:

Gaming/multimedia laptops (can do for the little CAD I do)

• Alienware M17x (too heavy, good gaming 3D Radeon HD 5870 , good screen)
• Asus G73 series, e.g. G73JW (cheap, only hdtv 1080p, quite heavy, ok screen, good gaming 3D NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M)
• Acer Aspire Ethos (cheap, slim, slow 3D, bad screen)
• Apple MacBook Pro (slim, don't trust win drivers, slow 3D Radeon 6750M)
• Clevo (also sold as Sager or XMG Schenker, plus other brands) 17 in. and above series. Flexible configurations. Probably the fastest laptops, various i7 chips, GeForce GTX 560M/580M for the high-ends, 18.4 in FHD (1920x1080). No better resolution ? Cheaper than comparable "brands". Resellers in Germany: Schenker Notebook, Deviltech, Notebookguru.de
• Samsung Series 7 Gamer Notebooks, in various variants. 700G7A with Radeon HD 6970M, 4GB, is about Euros 2000, 4kgs and higher.
• Sony Vaio, VPC-F22S1E or similar.

Cad Laptops (certified, also better OpenGL support)

• DELL Precision M6600, Nvidia Quadro 4000M or 5010M (too expensive!), HD (1900x1080), CPU: I7-2720QM (or better).
• HP EliteBook 8740W, 8760W (UWVA-Display, starts at 3.5kg, Various Nvidia Quadro (e.g. Quadro 4000M), various CPU, e.g. i7-2630QM
• Xirios W series from Schenker. Various configurations. An almost top W701 mobile Workstation model with a GTX 580M, Intel i7-2760QM, 8GB RAM, 300GB SDD etc. is about Euros 2500 (or about 2800 CHF). Schenker used to sell much more expensive Quadro-based models, e.g. the W710 (can't find them anymore).

None has what I would call a decent screen resolution. The actual trend is in fact towards less (i.e. HDTV 1900x1080 or 1900x900). There seems to be a fair market for custom-built laptops that may include larger screens, but I won't trust any that is not local (in case I have to return the unit for some quick repair)

• Comparison of Laptop Graphics Cards
• Passmark Video Card Benchmarks
• Computer display standard