Tough Laptop Buying Situation

[noah]

NaturalViolence Wrote:What does maturity have to do with it? We live in a digital age. Don't you guys type your homework up these days instead of writing it on paper? Don't you do your research online?

See my parents think I'm going to watch porn.

NaturalViolence Wrote:they're the type that feels that always putting you down is the best way to build character

Yep. That's my parents.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Ok......you haven't told us how many boxes you process per week/month so we don't know your income.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Ok....... What does this have to do with you?

I get paid PER BOX. So I told you all the boxes and how it gets higher each month. This is a monthly business. I told you that I get paid $0.10 per box, and I told you that there are 300 members, so 300 boxes.

NaturalViolence Wrote:That's great....except we don't know how long you've been working there

You don't need to. I've made $100 so far. That adds up in the money total.

NaturalViolence Wrote:How does this allowance work exactly? Does it increase at a certain rate or is it just $40 every time you buy an expensive item?

This is $40 I earned when I used to take out the garbage. My parents will let me use it once I buy something.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Good this we can actually use. However does this $60 come from the $100 that you made or is it from a separate source (relatives maybe)?

This is from relatives from my last birthday. It is all I have left from last birthday that I haven't spent.

NaturalViolence Wrote:So you're predicting to get $75 from relatives. Correct?

Yes, and an extra $40 possibly.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Why does it have to be a laptop?

So I can bring it to school and work more efficiently. Also since my parents think that I'm going to watch porn I have to use it at the kitchen table.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Wait I thought the whole point was that you would get the gift card instead of the toshiba laptop so that you could get the MSI laptop instead? Am I missing something?

My problem is my dad says I should wait to get my laptop but I want one now.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Now I'm confused. Tricking you into what?

When my brother got his Kindle, my parents had him convinced he wouldn't get it. They "tricked" him. They could be doing that to me.

[NaturalViolence]

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:See my parents think I'm going to watch porn.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:Also since my parents think that I'm going to watch porn I have to use it at the kitchen table.

Oh god that's hilarious. What do I even say to that? That's just such a futile and stupid idea. It's like trying to stop someone from breathing. It must really be a big deal to them for some reason.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:I get paid PER BOX. So I told you all the boxes and how it gets higher each month. This is a monthly business. I told you that I get paid $0.10 per box, and I told you that there are 300 members, so 300 boxes.

So then you're the only person at the company who does this and the "members" are customers or transactions? Customers can have more than one transaction can't they?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:You don't need to. I've made $100 so far. That adds up in the money total.

Well it helps me calculate the rate.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:This is $40 I earned when I used to take out the garbage. My parents will let me use it once I buy something.

Do you expect to get any more "allowance" in the future?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:So I can bring it to school and work more efficiently.

You're in middle school correct? Your middle school lets you bring and use laptops during school hours? Man things have changed.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:My problem is my dad says I should wait to get my laptop but I want one now.

Then why did they offer you a way to get it? And why did your mom tell you that they're going to be getting it for you?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:When my brother got his Kindle, my parents had him convinced he wouldn't get it. They "tricked" him. They could be doing that to me.

So do you think they're going to tell you that they won't get the laptop then get it anyways? Or the other way around?

[noah]

NaturalViolence Wrote:So then you're the only person at the company who does this and the "members" are customers or transactions? Customers can have more than one transaction can't they?

No we all work on it. I have to put tissue in the boxes and fill them. My brother makes the actual box. We still get paid per box. And yes they can, so let me word it this way. There are 300 box orders and 300 boxes to make this month.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Do you expect to get any more "allowance" in the future?

Probably not since I lost that job.

NaturalViolence Wrote:You're in middle school correct? Your middle school lets you bring and use laptops during school hours? Man things have changed.

Teachers actually get mad if you don't brin anything. I'm forced to bring my iPod but I hate using it.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Then why did they offer you a way to get it? And why did your mom tell you that they're going to be getting it for you?

My parents are very confusing if you haven't already figured that out.

NaturalViolence Wrote:So do you think they're going to tell you that they won't get the laptop then get it anyways? Or the other way around?

MY PARENTS MAKE NO SENSE. My dad is still considering not letting me try out for football next year. WTF? Most parents force their kids to do this stuff and buy their kids computers. It seems that they will do anything in their power to make sure I'm not happy.

[NaturalViolence]

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:No we all work on it. I have to put tissue in the boxes and fill them. My brother makes the actual box. We still get paid per box.

Then the answer would be "yes, I am the only one that performs that job", correct? Each of you has a different job. For all I know there could be other people who do the same job as you. And if that were the case then you wouldn't get $30 from your company processing 300 boxes you would get a portion of that $30. That's why I asked the question.

So since you told me that you've made $100 so far I can assume that you've only been doing this for 1-2 weeks so far correct?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:And yes they can, so let me word it this way. There are 300 box orders and 300 boxes to make this month.

And this increases at a constant rate of 10 + n per month (where n is the number of months). Are you sure that increase will continue at a steady pace?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:Teachers actually get mad if you don't brin anything. I'm forced to bring my iPod but I hate using it.

WTF? If I whipped out in ipod in high school I would have been given a detention. Why on earth would they want you to have an ipod for?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:MY PARENTS MAKE NO SENSE. My dad is still considering not letting me try out for football next year. WTF? Most parents force their kids to do this stuff and buy their kids computers. It seems that they will do anything in their power to make sure I'm not happy.

This is purely speculation on my part but your parents sound like one of those "old fashioned family values" types. If I'm right then there behavior can easily be explained by "they were raised in another era and a very different world".

[noah]

We ship out boxes monthly. I've been doing it since July. It should increase at that rate, and maybe even higher soon. My parents projected that in a few months if we get a boost in members I could get $400 a month but I would have little time to actually USE whatever I buy. So I guess I would try to quit. And we need our iPods to look up definitions to words we don't know in a novel study, do we quests, listen to music (this part actually sucks because the few times you can kids tell you to turn down your music when it's at the lowest possible because it is so quiet.), and read books/articles. Also the school blocks Dolphin forums.

[NaturalViolence]

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:We ship out boxes monthly. I've been doing it since July.

You've been doing it since July and you've only earned $100? At your current rate it should have taken you less than 4 months to earn that. Perhaps you spent some of it.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:It should increase at that rate, and maybe even higher soon. My parents projected that in a few months if we get a boost in members I could get $400 a month but I would have little time to actually USE whatever I buy.

It takes less than a minute to buy stuff online. And you just mentioned an interest in having a high end laptop. Also to increase from 300 transactions per month ($30) to 4000 transactions per month ($400) would be about a 1,200% increase in transactions. So how exactly would that happen?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:So I guess I would try to quit.

Why? Money is always good to have, even if you don't plan on spending it immediately.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:And we need our iPods to look up definitions to words we don't know in a novel study,

So your school requires you to bring an internet connected device to do this? Or did you just decide on your own to do this because you found it helpful?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:do we quests,

?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:listen to music (this part actually sucks because the few times you can kids tell you to turn down your music when it's at the lowest possible because it is so quiet.), and read books/articles.

This sounds like stuff that you would be doing during a recess period, not a class.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:Also the school blocks Dolphin forums.

Ah the memories. Yeah I remember growing up that my high school blocked nearly every site that I frequented back then. There are always ways to get around whatever security they try to put in your way. Try running proxy software off of a flashdrive.

Ok. So algebraically so far we have:
40 (allowance) + 60 (savings from relatives) + (300 + 10 + n)(0.1)z (earnings from job) + 100 (savings from job) + 75 (bday money from relatives) + 75 (bday money from parents)= 699

Is this all correct?

Where:
Birthday money currently assumed at $75 from relatives + $75 from parents.
z = number of months

Simplified
350 (total after bday) + (300 + 10 + n)(0.1)z = 699

Let's get rid of the n for now so that we don't have to use a sum function (at the expense of accuracy) and instead assume an average increase in rate of 15 transactions per month. Simplify again and we get:
350 + 31.5z = 699

Solve for z:
31.5z = 349
z ~= 11

It should take approximately 11 months without any extra allowance or money from other sources such as relatives. This is a nice approximation but I cannot give an accurate representation without better data about projections of the rate of change in transactions per month.

[noah]

NaturalViolence Wrote:You've been doing it since July and you've only earned $100? At your current rate it should have taken you less than 4 months to earn that. Perhaps you spent some of it.

Nope. It used to be $0.05 a box but I got a raise I guess.

NaturalViolence Wrote:It takes less than a minute to buy stuff online. And you just mentioned an interest in having a high end laptop.

I meant I would spend so much time on the business that I would have no time to use my actual laptop. So if I get enough for the high end laptop...

NaturalViolence Wrote:Why? Money is always good to have, even if you don't plan on spending it immediately.

I would quit so I would actually have enough time to use it. Remember I'm turning 14. I don't need to buy food and pay bills, and I'll get along like I did before the business.

NaturalViolence Wrote:So your school requires you to bring an internet connected device to do this? Or did you just decide on your own to do this because you found it helpful?

School requires it. It's part of going "above and beyond" and "standing out from your peers"

NaturalViolence Wrote:?

Sorry autocorrect got me that time. I meant "we do web quests" which means going to websites and filling out what you find in the site or answering questions using the site as a resource on a separate sheet of paper or a Word document.

NaturalViolence Wrote:This sounds like stuff that you would be doing during a recess period, not a class.

We don't even have recess. The teachers allow you to do this on tests and with busy work, however if you do it with tests you cannot retake the test. I choose not to though. I am distracted by music with words while trying to do something, and I forget I'm listening to music with no words when I'm working, so I say it's not worth losing battery life over.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Try running proxy software off of a flashdrive.

The school uses Fortinet to filter its web sites. I found that air-proxy.com works fine, but it doesn't work too well and it doesn't let you download files most of the time, and it has no flash. I tried using a proxy program from a flashdrive, but the computer just got error messages over and over and still does if you turn on that exact computer. If a teacher is logged in, however, there are no blocks except for pirating websites and pornographic websites. I once pressed random buttons before logging on as a teacher had logged on before me and when I logged on I had no blocks. Also I heard if you log on as Hime User you have no blocks, but I don't know how to do that. Also using Bing's cached pages I can read articles that are blocked just fine. The reason my terrible Weebly website in my signature gets over 1000 views per day is because the school blocks every flash game site out there; they don't block Weebly sites. It's been a hard battle with Fortinet.

NaturalViolence Wrote:Is this all correct?

Yes. I realized that by 11 months the laptop will most likely be out of stock and no longer sold. This means I could wait until Black Friday and get a great deal. Laptops are also dramatically falling in price.

My concern is that tablets will have taken over and keyboards are gone, x86 processors are gone, non-touch displays are gone, and who knows what else. I hope PCs make a comeback.

Well now what should I expect to see at Black Friday next year in terms of prices, processors, graphics, screens, and keyboards? Is it worth the wait or should I just get an average laptop now?

[NaturalViolence]

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:I would quit so I would actually have enough time to use it. Remember I'm turning 14. I don't need to buy food and pay bills, and I'll get along like I did before the business.

You may do as you wish but when I was your age I worked at every opportunity that I could find because I knew what would be coming (college). As a result by the time I left home I had quite the nestegg saved up and it turned out to be a wise decision. That was just my experience though, I know that you could probably get by without doing it and that every life is different.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:We don't even have recess.

Yeah now that I think about it we didn't have a recess period either in highschool, just a lunch break. As for middle school I don't remember because that was too long ago but I imagine that we didn't have one then either.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:The teachers allow you to do this on tests and with busy work, however if you do it with tests you cannot retake the test. I choose not to though. I am distracted by music with words while trying to do something, and I forget I'm listening to music with no words when I'm working, so I say it's not worth losing battery life over.

They're not worried that you would use an internet enabled device to cheat?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:Sorry autocorrect got me that time. I meant "we do web quests" which means going to websites and filling out what you find in the site or answering questions using the site as a resource on a separate sheet of paper or a Word document.

Don't you guys have desktop computers at school to use for this kind of stuff?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:Also I heard if you log on as Hime User you have no blocks, but I don't know how to do that.

Hime?

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:Yes. I realized that by 11 months the laptop will most likely be out of stock and no longer sold. This means I could wait until Black Friday and get a great deal. Laptops are also dramatically falling in price.

They aren't really falling price, just getting faster with lower cost alternatives appearing. Existing hardware rarely drops in price. The end result is pretty much the same though.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:My concern is that tablets will have taken over and keyboards are gone, x86 processors are gone, non-touch displays are gone, and who knows what else.

If tablets and smartphones increase in popularity that won't stop you from buying a laptop.

Non-touch displays may increase in popularity but they do bring with them a considerable cost increase that many people are not willing to pay for.

X86 cpus are going nowhere. There are no alternatives to x86 on laptops/desktops/etc. And soon x86 offerings will make there way into smartphones/tablets as well to compete with arm there. Nobody knows how that will end yet but many industry analysts predict that x86 will win.

Keyboards are still way more efficient as an input device, especially for larger systems. They aren't going anywhere anytime soon on laptops/desktops.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:I hope PCs make a comeback.

Oh god another one of these doomsday preachers. The PC is not going anywhere anytime soon. Anybody who wants to create any kind of content without terrible productivity will have to continue using PCs. Smartphones/tablets are only effective for content consumption.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:Well now what should I expect to see at Black Friday next year in terms of prices, processors, graphics, screens, and keyboards? Is it worth the wait or should I just get an average laptop now?

That is entirely up to you. Haswell will replace ivy bridge. 600m and HD 7000m GPUs will be replaced by 700m and HD 8000m GPUs. SSDs will continue to fall in price, increase in capacity, and increase in performance. RAM prices will continue to drop and speed/capacity will continue to increase. Trinity APUs will be replaced by richland APUs. Buses will continue to get faster. USB 3.0 will continue slowly replacing USB 2.0. VGA outputs may finally go away but I doubt it. Thunderbolt and lightningbolt may or may not begin to catch on. Displays and keyboards will likely remain the same. Prices will remain the same by performance per dollar will go up. It's pretty much the same every year.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:I tried using a proxy program from a flashdrive, but the computer just got error messages over and over and still does if you turn on that exact computer.

Well clearly you did something wrong. I don't know wtf you did.

This might be my last post for the night.

[noah]

I meant home user.

Teachers walk by and stare over your shoulder (shivers) so you can't really do that. I'm not a cheater but I have wondered if anyone has recorded themselves saying the notes and listening to that during the test.

Each classroom has 4 desktops and 30 students. There are laptop carts that are brought in sometimes, but they have Windows XP 32 Bit, some old AMD Turion, and take 20 minutes too boot up. It is recommended you bring your own technology.

Well I just don't know if I should look for a laptop to get on my birthday or go with asking for a gift card. I'm too tired to go through the trouble of quoting btw.

[NaturalViolence]

Things that I still need you to respond to:

NaturalViolence Wrote:Hime?

NaturalViolence Wrote:Also to increase from 300 transactions per month ($30) to 4000 transactions per month ($400) would be about a 1,200% increase in transactions. So how exactly would that happen?

Particularly the latter.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:I'm too tired to go through the trouble of quoting btw.

Nobody is going to force you to do it but we do recommend it especially in threads that have multiple active participants or when you're responding to a post that isn't directly above yours or on the same page. It's more of a courtesy to other forum users since it makes your posts easier to follow. I know it's a bit of a hassle but considering everybody else puts in the time to do it you should probably do it too.

IlovetheGamecube Wrote:Well I just don't know if I should look for a laptop to get on my birthday or go with asking for a gift card. I'm too tired to go through the trouble of quoting btw.

If you can indeed somehow increase your income from $30 a month to $400 a month you could easily save up for a decent high end laptop in 2-3 months. What are you planning on doing with the laptop exactly? And what computer are you using now?