Brown Star for Effort – This AliExpress Gaming Laptop is HILARIOUS

[HC_writes]

From the far shores of AliExpress comes another strange and confusing product – there are other gaming laptops with mechanical keyboards, but none are quite like this one! Let’s take a look at some of its more unique features.

 

 

[h91]

Reading through the store listing itself for this is funny. Stitch select reason? What does a Reflex mean on a CPU? And calling the display super retina like it's a Macbook. Just be careful of that 200w camera.

 

[williamcll]

This is a fantastic product for kids and maybe for people that never game. Useless for everyone else.

Also, here's a working Taobao link: https://world.taobao.com/item/682696534907.htm

[darknessblade]

Linus see if you can modify the Keyboard so its supports QMK. which would make it a lot better

[Ubersonic]

Comical note, DDR4-2400 isn't actually slow, it's the literal midpoint between the slowest and fastest DDR4 standards (DDR4-1600 and DDR4-3200).  Linus is just skewed because he's used to seeing crazy overclocked modules that don't adhere to the standards.

[Middcore]

3 minutes ago, Ubersonic said:

Comical note, DDR4-2400 isn't actually slow, it's the literal midpoint between the slowest and fastest DDR4 standards (DDR4-1600 and DDR4-3200).  Linus is just skewed because he's used to seeing crazy overclocked modules that don't adhere to the standards.

 

DDR4-1600 doesn't really exist in the wild. Nothing below 2133 does. 

[WhiteAirLock]

I actually bought a very similar laptop from that brand and with the same design like 3 years ago for 210usd worth in JPY when I was visiting a Japanese game developer conference.

It came with same screen, a 4gen i3 CPU, pirated version of Windows 8, 8gb DDR3 1600 RAM, 120gb SATA SSD, external BD/DVD USB drive as a free gift, BT4.0/WLAN 802.11 b/g/n card, 95w charger, 49wh battery and it had a 480p camera in it with the same shitty magnetic holding feature.

 

I have to tell you, this Laptop with the Windows 8 was just terrible. My wifi card just disappeared and only worked if I ran the "troubleshoot for problems", battery life was bad and it took ages to install anything. Then I installed Manjaro 18 on it and it was running to this day very well. I still use that laptop if I'm going somewhere and just want to browse the internet or write some documents.

[pyrohydrosmok]

Where's the list of other used budget options? I'm actually in the market for a used laptop it's a headache researching all the specs even as a technophile. I settled on an HP Elitebook 840 G3 with a touchscreen and i7-6600U for my Linux dev/TailsOS machine. Got it for a respectable 167$ mint condition. But I'd like something with a better graphics chipset under 299$. 

[grenskul]

Did someone find this on aliexpress ? Not even joking I'd buy this for a basic linux machine for my old man.

[Raiken]

11 minutes ago, grenskul said:

Did someone find this on aliexpress ? Not even joking I'd buy this for a basic linux machine for my old man.

I was just thinking this would be perfect for my Dad, not even Linux just reinstall a fresh Widnows Windows and it would be good to go.

[TJarsun]

If they had a version with better CPU, like a low power i3 or i5 and bigger battery it would be an amazing product. That would be worth an extra $200.

Still it’s rare to see high end options like the mech keyboard and screen resolution paired with such a slow CPU

[MokuMoki]

1 hour ago, h91 said:

Reading through the store listing itself for this is funny. Stitch select reason? What does a Reflex mean on a CPU? And calling the display super retina like it's a Macbook. Just be careful of that 200w camera.

 

The 200W camera, it basically means 2MP, 200W just mean 2 million where one W (万) is 10k. Or maybe it does need 200 watts to power it, who knows.

 

I don't know how it got translated into Reflex, but those words basically means Intel Turbo Boost frequency at 2.9GHz.

[Rev_Pizzaguy]

40 minutes ago, grenskul said:

Did someone find this on aliexpress ? Not even joking I'd buy this for a basic linux machine for my old man.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804566017391.html

 

Price up to $699 with the 1TB ssd

[iLikeBananas]

Watching this I wonder, do you guys  just connect random tech stuff to your network? Like this laptop for example, could it be a security risk? 

[grenskul]

8 minutes ago, Rev_Pizzaguy said:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804566017391.html

 

Price up to $699 with the 1TB ssd

Found it for cheaper https://pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005005103746876.html but nowhere near what linus paid .  For 300 euros id be down but 400 is not worth it.

[tim0901]

That Windows installation? Yeah they're straight-up pirating Windows.

 

The product keys listed in that batch file will be the Generic Volume License Keys (GVLK) which are freely listed inside Microsoft's documentation.

 

But the thing with them is that they don't work if you just type them into any old machine, because they are designed for use in a particular network setup.

 

They are designed to be used in conjunction with a Key Management Server or KMS. This server is intended to be deployed within a corporate network, with the idea of preventing the need for the hundreds/thousands of PCs on that network to talk to Microsoft - or perhaps if you don't want particular machines to talk to the wider internet at all. Instead they only need to talk to the KMS server, which has its own special (unique) volume license key which it validates with Microsoft directly.

 

Microsoft however, in their infinite wisdom, decided to write the KMS software in C#, which - as some of you may know - can be decompiled with almost 100% accuracy. So that's what people did, thereby allowing them to reverse-engineer the activation process and enable themselves to host their own KMS servers without the "validate this server with Microsoft" link of the chain.

 

So as far as this laptop is concerned, it has been activated by Microsoft. Or at least, by a server that - as far as it knows - has been activated by Microsoft. Hence it will get security updates and the likes. And those Chinese servers that script was calling to? Those will be publically-hosted KMS servers that this PC is looking for to activate Windows with. It will just find one that works and tell Windows "send activation key here". When activated in this way, your Windows activation will only last 180 days, so it would need to renew its activation with one of these servers periodically. But the installation itself doesn't need to be tampered with beyond giving it the ip address/url of a KMS server to look for.

[Suspiciousfish144]

But does it support S3 sleep?

The SSD looks cacheless btw, can't imagine how it'll hold up with time.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Suspiciousfish144

[Olgyd]

I don't think Linus knows that 'Golden Ratio' is an actual name for 16:10 and not something DEEQ or whoever is selling this laptop made up.

[AndreiArgeanu]

The laptop is surprisingly well cooled. Most laptops equipped with these celerons and pentiums made by more reputable manufacturers are often fanless design that will choke and rarely go beyond their base clock especially when all cores are hit.

[fawncashew]

2 hours ago, Ubersonic said:

Comical note, DDR4-2400 isn't actually slow, it's the literal midpoint between the slowest and fastest DDR4 standards (DDR4-1600 and DDR4-3200).  Linus is just skewed because he's used to seeing crazy overclocked modules that don't adhere to the standards.

Up to around 2017 2400 was the standard for premium laptops. The LG Gram, XPS 9560 and Blade 14 of that time all had DDR4-2400, the XPS and Blade both increased the next year to 2667 but the Gram carried on with 2400. Given all those machines would still be entirely usable today, I'd agree that 2400 is fine for something at this price range.

 

1 hour ago, tim0901 said:

That Windows installation? Yeah they're straight-up pirating Windows.

 

When activated in this way, your Windows activation will only last 180 days, so it would need to renew its activation with one of these servers periodically. But the installation itself doesn't need to be tampered with beyond giving it the ip address/url of a KMS server to look for.

Presumably its just scheduled to re run the .bat file every few months or so in Task Scheduler?

[iBabySlapper]

This thing is actually pretty cool, it's $600 right now, but if it goes back to around 350-400, I might pick one up.

[manikyath]

those celerons are pretty nice for a 'facebook machine' sort of device. i have one on an ITX board frankensteined to a GT1030, and it'll actually play some games pretty well as long as the CPU doesnt have to waste cycles on texture streaming, because then they tend to chug HARD. (that's what happened at 15:43)

 

and generally.. it's better to buy them from "we do not follow rules" manufacturers, because they tend to blatantly ignore intel's power limits, resulting in a lot of extra performance.

[Radium_Angel]

27 minutes ago, manikyath said:

resulting in a lot of extra performance.

But how much extra performance can you wrench out of that celeron?

[tim0901]

3 hours ago, fawncashew said:

Presumably its just scheduled to re run the .bat file every few months or so in Task Scheduler?

Windows should look for the assigned KMS server itself every 30 days, but yeah running this in task scheduler would allow it to change server should the assigned one be taken offline for whatever reason. Otherwise I imagine its there either as a reminant of the installation process or as something support personnel may ask you to run if things go wrong. Not that I imagine anyone outside of China will be able to access that support.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

3 hours ago, fawncashew said:

Up to around 2017 2400 was the standard for premium laptops. The LG Gram, XPS 9560 and Blade 14 of that time all had DDR4-2400, the XPS and Blade both increased the next year to 2667 but the Gram carried on with 2400. Given all those machines would still be entirely usable today, I'd agree that 2400 is fine for something at this price range.

 

Presumably its just scheduled to re run the .bat file every few months or so in Task Scheduler?

Plus I'd imagine they're using LPDDR4-2400 in media players, tablets, etc. at this point with a purpose-built SOC. Those things are pretty much always a generation or two behind so you can second-source the parts from multiple suppliers and increase the profit margin.