I'm on the market for a new laptop and am wondering if people might have some thoughts on the following couple questions. The first one is, well, especially technical (and maybe unanswerable).
I've read some hair-raising stuff about Intel vPro tech, which contains AMT--Active Management Technology. According to what I've read, AMT / Management Engine could be used by hackers / NSA, etc. to spy on everything going on on your computer (see article on ExtremeTech website). It seems, though, that almost any affordable yet powerful laptop has chips w/ vPro. I gather vPro by itself may not be sufficient for attacker access, but am not sure just what would need to be present to make this an open door to the computer?
A second issue is more mundane. Some years ago, I splurged for an expensive i7 laptop, figuring I could use it as a substitute for a desktop. I need to periodically do some very computationally intensive work. While the i7 could handle the work, I don't think the laptop could. Whenever the processor was above 15% use, the fans would go like crazy and I was afraid I'd burn the machine out. For that matter, anything above about 2.5% use and the fan would start to get annoying. For the most part, I've avoided using the laptop above 15%, so it wasn't an option for my more intensive work.
So, I'm now looking at laptops with options between i5 chips and powerful i7 or even Xeon chips, but am wondering whether with the current generation of chips I'd be able to fully use more powerful chips or not? I find it disturbing to have a laptop fan sounding like my vacuum.
I've read some hair-raising stuff about Intel vPro tech, which contains AMT--Active Management Technology. According to what I've read, AMT / Management Engine could be used by hackers / NSA, etc. to spy on everything going on on your computer (see article on ExtremeTech website). It seems, though, that almost any affordable yet powerful laptop has chips w/ vPro. I gather vPro by itself may not be sufficient for attacker access, but am not sure just what would need to be present to make this an open door to the computer?
A second issue is more mundane. Some years ago, I splurged for an expensive i7 laptop, figuring I could use it as a substitute for a desktop. I need to periodically do some very computationally intensive work. While the i7 could handle the work, I don't think the laptop could. Whenever the processor was above 15% use, the fans would go like crazy and I was afraid I'd burn the machine out. For that matter, anything above about 2.5% use and the fan would start to get annoying. For the most part, I've avoided using the laptop above 15%, so it wasn't an option for my more intensive work.
So, I'm now looking at laptops with options between i5 chips and powerful i7 or even Xeon chips, but am wondering whether with the current generation of chips I'd be able to fully use more powerful chips or not? I find it disturbing to have a laptop fan sounding like my vacuum.