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Socrates16
Aug 21, 2012

"Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."
"But I don't think of you."
Any word on the durability of Toshiba's more expensive laptops? I spec'd out a Qosmio to 1,200, and the bang for the buck is pretty awesome http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cdetland.to?poid=2000098978&src=EXPL&cm_mmc=explore-_-bto_page-_-qosmio-_-X70 My current 500 dollar toshiba has deteriorated too quickly in a year and ten months.

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null_user01013
Nov 13, 2000

Drink up comrades
Hey, I got my laptop today. The thing is pretty slick, ThinkPad X230 Tablet. I like the screen, a little bit smaller than I expected but it gets the job done. The pressure sensitive option works great and it runs games pretty well. Thanks for the help everyone!

Brut
Aug 21, 2007

Optiquest posted:

Theres a Windows 7 Home premium key under the battery, and the Windows 8 looks legit as far as I can tell (although it was a clean install when I received it). Should I try to get a Win 7 disk and then do an upgrade to get a 64 bit version, or would a Win 8 OEM disk work?

e: Nevermind and I'm dumb. It was 64 bit the entire time :ms:

e2: What about reinstalling on a SSD? The Win8 Pro key doesn't match the Win7 key under the battery.

Huuuuuuh? why would the Windows 8 key "match" the Windows 7 key?

Okay look, the Windows 7 key under the battery is almost certainly a legitimate key that you can use to install both the 32bit and the 64bit version, in fact if you do so from an OEM disk it will likely not even ask you for the key, it will just install and use it.

Whether or not the Windows 8 key is legitimate or was sent to you plus 50 other ebay buyers is entirely up to how reputable/shady the person/vendor you bought it from, again though, this has no bearing on 32 or 64 bit. Personally if I had bought a laptop on ebay that originally came with windows 7 but somehow arrived to me with a clean windows 8 install on it, I'd basically assume it was pirated, YMMV though.

Boner Slam
May 9, 2005

Socrates16 posted:

Any word on the durability of Toshiba's more expensive laptops? I spec'd out a Qosmio to 1,200, and the bang for the buck is pretty awesome http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cdetland.to?poid=2000098978&src=EXPL&cm_mmc=explore-_-bto_page-_-qosmio-_-X70 My current 500 dollar toshiba has deteriorated too quickly in a year and ten months.

Once upon a time a boss of mine used a 17" Toshiba, apparently it was nice.

A friend of mine had a midrange Toshiba for years, until it was stolen. She said it was her favorite notebook so far.


Then I heard they were good once, then bad and now possibly not so bad again.


None of this is solid information but yeah

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
What's the significance of having the i7 macbook air over the i5? My wife is shoppin now and it's like a 150 buck difference and we're wondering if this is going to be worthwhile or detrimental based on her usage. She wants to use Adobe creative suite I think, for her work where she deals with 100+ page documents doing minor image editing and putting them in the right places on the docs etc.. Need to know if that's going to matter, or if it will matter in 2 years or what.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

signalnoise posted:

What's the significance of having the i7 macbook air over the i5?

Zero. None.

Sendo
Jul 26, 2011

Hadlock posted:

Zero. None.

I wouldn't agree with that, it's probably the only laptop I'd consider getting the i7 because you're going from 1.3GHz to 1.7GHz and it has hardly any impact on the battery life.

The Insect Court
Nov 22, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
How are used laptops for lower price points (<= $600). I'm looking for something that will hold up to occasional use(basically flights/trips/etc.) mostly for word processing/web surfing/coding, so performance is secondary to keyboard and screen quality but I don't need something particularly sturdy either. I don't give a poo poo if it stops working within two years if using it occasionally for a few hours at a time won't want to make me tear out my eyeballs or destroy my wrists. I see a lot of talk about used thinkpads, but mostly because of their case durability, which isn't a big issue for me.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Hadlock posted:

Zero. None.

20% boost in speed, look in the Mac thread or Anandtehs review for the benchmark results

Goober Peas
Jun 30, 2007

Check out my 'Vette, bro


Hadlock posted:

Zero. None.

I strongly disagree. He has perfectly described one of the few scenarios where a user would see a performance boost with the i7, at almost no cost to battery life.

sports
Sep 1, 2012

Hadlock posted:

Zero. None.

This is correct. Looking through 100-page pdfs and the like is more of a RAM and disk space test than a processor speed test.

Blinky2099
May 27, 2007

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Is this a good option if I just need a laptop to browse a few websites with decent battery life? or is there a more recommended solution?

http://m.bestbuy.com/m/e/product/detail.jsp?skuId=8850098&pid=1218914355314

butt dickus
Jul 7, 2007

top ten juiced up coaches
and the top ten juiced up players

Blinky2099 posted:

Is this a good option if I just need a laptop to browse a few websites with decent battery life? or is there a more recommended solution?

http://m.bestbuy.com/m/e/product/detail.jsp?skuId=8850098&pid=1218914355314
That is exactly what that machine is for. There's also an ARM Chromebook that has better battery life and boot/wake times, but has a slower processor and is $50 more. I think the screen is also better?

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

sports posted:

This is correct. Looking through 100-page pdfs and the like is more of a RAM and disk space test than a processor speed test.

Is there any significant downside to getting the i7 other than price? I'm getting conflicting reports here. If she got the i7, money aside, is there going to be a situation she finds herself going "ugh shoulda got the i5"

butt dickus
Jul 7, 2007

top ten juiced up coaches
and the top ten juiced up players

signalnoise posted:

Is there any significant downside to getting the i7 other than price? I'm getting conflicting reports here. If she got the i7, money aside, is there going to be a situation she finds herself going "ugh shoulda got the i5"
There is no downside to the i7 other than the cost. Anything that's CPU-bound will perform better on the i7. It's a reasonably-priced upgrade and were I getting one I'd totally go for it.

Bloodmobile
Jun 15, 2012
I'm looking for something that would last me through the next 4 months of my military service. Basically all I need is a cheap laptop that doesn't break easily, has wi-fi and can run Quake 3 at 120ish fps. Possibly going to get a used one. What are some good models to keep an eye out for?

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:

There is no downside to the i7 other than the cost. Anything that's CPU-bound will perform better on the i7. It's a reasonably-priced upgrade and were I getting one I'd totally go for it.

Ultimately it's just a matter of whether you want to spend $150 for the upgrade, I guess. It sounds like she probably won't get much use of the upgrade (editing documents and minor editing of images) but yes, it will be slightly faster on processor-intensive tasks (such as _____?). Reasonably priced or not, if she's not going to use it then there's no point in getting it, right?

The people in here are laptop junkies, signalnoise, so you're going to get skewed results toward getting the upgrade. Just use your best judgement. If you think that she'll be doing processor-intensive things like video editing or computations, then get the upgrade. If you'd rather save $150 and don't expect that she'll have much use for the extra power, then don't get the upgrade.

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Aug 29, 2013

butt dickus
Jul 7, 2007

top ten juiced up coaches
and the top ten juiced up players

QuarkJets posted:

yes, it will be slightly faster on processor-intensive tasks (such as _____?).
Rendering 100 page PDFs?

Superterranean
May 3, 2005

after we lit this one, nothing was ever the same

Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:

Rendering 100 page PDFs?
PDF rendering isn't computationally expensive. :)

On a different topic: I borrowed an Ivy Bridge Samsung Series 9 and tried out Diablo 3, as a light-gaming-on-my-laptop test. Normally (i.e. in 6+months of regular web-and-email-and-moviewatching), the computer is functionally silent and only warms up noticeably while the battery's charging.

Framerate was totally fine with settings at medium-low; even down-resolution, the scaling wasn't particularly noticeable. Totally playable. Heat and noise, on the other hand, were intense. The top middle of the keyboard (Where I assume the processor is) became uncomfortably warm to the touch, and the fan spun up like never before. I don't think I'd want to game for hours on it at a time, for fear of heat stress to the components. Certainly that poor little fan was working very very hard.

BabyRyoga
May 21, 2001

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
Got my Lenovo y510p and put the SSD in to replace the stock 1TB HDD. Windows 8 boots up in literally 2-3 seconds. Pretty ridiculous, I have a bit of buyer's remorse for buying a new to the market chipset laptop, but this machine seems like it will be pretty solid for a while.

Socrates16
Aug 21, 2012

"Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."
"But I don't think of you."

BabyRyoga posted:

Got my Lenovo y510p and put the SSD in to replace the stock 1TB HDD. Windows 8 boots up in literally 2-3 seconds. Pretty ridiculous, I have a bit of buyer's remorse for buying a new to the market chipset laptop, but this machine seems like it will be pretty solid for a while.

What's the issue with buying a new to the market chipset laptop? I'm liking the y510p more and more the more I look at it. Is the battery replaceable? Why did you buy it and then swap out the hard drive rather than just adding on the SSD when you bought the laptop? How's the screen quality? Laptop reviews love not mentioning the screen quality. Yeah, I can look at the numbers on a spec sheet, but that doesn't tell me anything about the color accuracy, or the contrast ratio, black levels, etc. What'd you pay and where'd you get it from? Sorry for so many questions haha.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:

Rendering 100 page PDFs?

Even my lovely 6 year-old desktop does that in a negligible amount of time.

Socrates16 posted:

What's the issue with buying a new to the market chipset laptop? I'm liking the y510p more and more the more I look at it. Is the battery replaceable? Why did you buy it and then swap out the hard drive rather than just adding on the SSD when you bought the laptop? How's the screen quality? Laptop reviews love not mentioning the screen quality. Yeah, I can look at the numbers on a spec sheet, but that doesn't tell me anything about the color accuracy, or the contrast ratio, black levels, etc. What'd you pay and where'd you get it from? Sorry for so many questions haha.

It's often cheaper to buy your own SSD and pop it in, and you can still use the 1TB as a storage drive if you're willing to go without an optical drive.

e: I, too, don't understand having buyer's remorse for a new chipset, especially when the previous generation really isn't much cheaper.

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Aug 29, 2013

butt dickus
Jul 7, 2007

top ten juiced up coaches
and the top ten juiced up players

QuarkJets posted:

Even my lovely 6 year-old desktop does that in a negligible amount of time.
What's your idea of negligible? Both my work machine (Linux) and home machine (Windows) are relatively high-performance and it can still take them a noticeable amount of time to render some pages, which can be irritating when going through a long document.

BabyRyoga
May 21, 2001

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021

Socrates16 posted:

What's the issue with buying a new to the market chipset laptop? I'm liking the y510p more and more the more I look at it. Is the battery replaceable? Why did you buy it and then swap out the hard drive rather than just adding on the SSD when you bought the laptop? How's the screen quality? Laptop reviews love not mentioning the screen quality. Yeah, I can look at the numbers on a spec sheet, but that doesn't tell me anything about the color accuracy, or the contrast ratio, black levels, etc. What'd you pay and where'd you get it from? Sorry for so many questions haha.

They actually don't offer it with an SSD option on Lenovo's site. They offer it with the mSATA cache, but only up to like 24 gb or something which seems for the most part useless. I actually got mine from newegg, since there was such a long wait on Lenovo's actual site. I got the model with the SLI graphics option, which was priced at $1049.00 before tax. I believe the same model is $1199.00 on Lenovo's website, but also comes with the mSATA cache SSD I mentioned above, whereas this one did not. I'm leaning towards actually removing the SLI graphics and putting the 1TB drive that came installed in the laptop in the ultrabay where it was instead.

The SLI model from Newegg is something like $80 more expensive than the non-SLI model from Lenovo's website, but there is a wait till the middle/end of Sept right now, and the extra $80 for an SLI graphics card that may or may not be useful seemed like a good idea to me.

Not sure what to say about the screen quality. It seems really good to me, but I don't regularly use assorted laptops enough to make a comparison. Maybe check out random reviews for that? I think the only real downside to this model is that it won't get very much battery life (maybe 2-3 hours) when not plugged in, but I don't really intend to use it as a browse the net and watch poo poo for hours solution, so no problem for me there. It's a very nice looking machine too, with the red backlit keys and sleek build quality. If I didn't care about such things, I might have considered building something from Sager for around the same price. You can generally get the same machine with way more customization available, but it won't have all the aesthetic bells and whistles.

Buyer's remorse is just because they will probably have slightly cheaper machines with more efficient batteries in x months or next year or whatever, but it's also just me being a little pessimistic.

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

signalnoise posted:

Is there any significant downside to getting the i7 other than price? I'm getting conflicting reports here. If she got the i7, money aside, is there going to be a situation she finds herself going "ugh shoulda got the i5"

The important question is are you trying to fit a budget?

If you are, if you can you get a larger SSD or more RAM or something for that $150 I'd do that first.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Goober Peas posted:

I strongly disagree. He has perfectly described one of the few scenarios where a user would see a performance boost with the i7, at almost no cost to battery life.

I was doing 600 dpi CS print work for about six months on a Core 2 Quad (2008 era machine). Mine was only ~72-86 pages though, not 100 pages. 20% speed increase only counts for something when you are maxing out the CPU. Compiling the final print ready PDF to go to the printer with took about 4-5 minutes, generally only something you should have to do a couple times a week at most. A modern mobile i5 should be 50% faster than my old desktop workstation.

If she is proofing and compiling many 100 page projects per week the i7 might be worth looking in to, as she'll save up to an hour a week, but there will not be a 5%, certainly not a 20% increase in her workflow by spending an extra $150 and upgrading from i5 to i7.

Naffer
Oct 26, 2004

Not a good chemist
A hands-on review of the 440s was posted on a german forum. Translated link:
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/...G-BILDER-VIDEOS

The short video showing the clickpad makes it look unbelievably bad. There's no way Lenovo would actually ship that is there?

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Doctor rear end in a top hat posted:

What's your idea of negligible? Both my work machine (Linux) and home machine (Windows) are relatively high-performance and it can still take them a noticeable amount of time to render some pages, which can be irritating when going through a long document.

It takes maybe a tenth of a second for me to load any page of a PDF that is plastered with graphics. Define noticeable, I guess. I can "notice" a 1/10th of a second load time, but driving that down to 1/12th (i7 vs i5 performance, you probably won't even get this much improvement) of a second isn't going to make any difference in what I notice.

PDF performance is usually going to be limited by hard drive I would guess, not CPU... or at least not until you go to publish something. Publishing will be ~ 20% faster if i7 vs i5 HD5000 benchmarks are to be believed, but the rest of her work won't see any real improvement because it sounds like the rest of her work is not CPU intensive.

BabyRyoga posted:

Buyer's remorse is just because they will probably have slightly cheaper machines with more efficient batteries in x months or next year or whatever, but it's also just me being a little pessimistic.

Not much cheaper or much better, no. If anything, most of the laptops that are coming out this year will be as expensive or more expensive (HD5000 laptops, I'm looking at you) with the same battery life (they'll still be using Haswell, although maybe without a dGPU, yes).

Part of your buyer's remorse might be the SLI that you paid $80 for and aren't even going to use

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Aug 29, 2013

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

Aphrodite posted:

The important question is are you trying to fit a budget?

If you are, if you can you get a larger SSD or more RAM or something for that $150 I'd do that first.

There's no budget really. She's just lookin for a quality machine and she's already going to be going to a 256 gb drive and 8gb ram. It's really a question of if there's anything we lose by going to i7, like if it affected the battery life by a significant amount. It may be that she goes for the extra 150 bucks just for the peace of mind, knowing she got the best she could get for the permanent stuff. We're expecting this to be a 3-4 year machine at least so another 150 isn't something we care too much about, it was more making sure there wasn't some significant trade off in performance.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

signalnoise posted:

There's no budget really. She's just lookin for a quality machine and she's already going to be going to a 256 gb drive and 8gb ram. It's really a question of if there's anything we lose by going to i7, like if it affected the battery life by a significant amount. It may be that she goes for the extra 150 bucks just for the peace of mind, knowing she got the best she could get for the permanent stuff. We're expecting this to be a 3-4 year machine at least so another 150 isn't something we care too much about, it was more making sure there wasn't some significant trade off in performance.

The difference in CPU power is about 20%, the difference in battery life is negligible unless you're putting the CPU under heavy load for a long time (then the drop in battery life is about 20% on the i7)

Mitsune
Jun 24, 2005

BabyRyoga posted:

Got my Lenovo y510p and put the SSD in to replace the stock 1TB HDD. Windows 8 boots up in literally 2-3 seconds. Pretty ridiculous, I have a bit of buyer's remorse for buying a new to the market chipset laptop, but this machine seems like it will be pretty solid for a while.

I have been looking into laptops again for my girlfriend. She's starting her pharm. program this week and is looking to replace her Dell Inspiron e1505. Long story short: she has a machine dedicated to school and work, but wants a new laptop to playing video games (e.g. FFXIV, BL2, etc) on the go.

The Lenovo Y510P seems to be a perfect match for what she's looking for, but I'm concern about the performance and overheating.
A) In general, how well does this laptop manage heat? She's been using a laptop cooler to keep the old Dell machine running.
B) How much more does SLI improve gaming performance (e.g. SLI GT750m x2 vs GTX 770M x1)?
C) I hate to ask, but are there better alternatives that's high in performance and manages/displaces heat for long-term gaming (e.g Alienware :v:)?

BabyRyoga
May 21, 2001

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021

Mitsune posted:

I have been looking into laptops again for my girlfriend. She's starting her pharm. program this week and is looking to replace her Dell Inspiron e1505. Long story short: she has a machine dedicated to school and work, but wants a new laptop to playing video games (e.g. FFXIV, BL2, etc) on the go.

The Lenovo Y510P seems to be a perfect match for what she's looking for, but I'm concern about the performance and overheating.
A) In general, how well does this laptop manage heat? She's been using a laptop cooler to keep the old Dell machine running.
B) How much more does SLI improve gaming performance (e.g. SLI GT750m x2 vs GTX 770M x1)?
C) I hate to ask, but are there better alternatives that's high in performance and manages/displaces heat for long-term gaming (e.g Alienware :v:)?

I haven't ran anything too intense on it yet, but from what I gathered before I bought it, the GTX 770M and the 750sli are comparable, but the 770M is probably a better choice overall, because you won't have to deal with issues like heat, or micro stuttering at lower frame rates. I haven't done any extensive testing yet, but I will put something like Skyrim on here pretty soon and give it a whirl. As far as heat goes, i'm using it with a Cooler Master NOTEPAL U2 that has 2 adjustable fans, and it seems like it should be enough. Once again, I don't know how hot it will get if I run something demanding on ultra settings with the SLI card in, but I imagine it should be good.

If I had more money to spend, I probably would have gone with one of the Razerblades; those seem like the best gaming laptops you could buy, but start at around $2000 for the 14" with a 256 SSD, and probably 2500 or more for the 17". Alienware machines look nice too, but when you are in that overkill price range, the Razerblade appealed to me more. The 14" one gets beastly battery life and performance with the only downside being that it doesn't have 1080p resolution. At 14", that might not be much of a deal anyways.

The Rat
Aug 29, 2004

You will find no one to help you here. Beth DuClare has been dissected and placed in cryonic storage.

Just got the X220 I ordered from ebay. Already works better than the X230 I had to return to Lenovo, in that the wireless card has a range of more than four feet! Further review forthcoming.

Mitsune
Jun 24, 2005
I know what you exactly what you mean.

The Razor blade is so much more appealing in terms of it's minimalist style, but I've been reading how terrible it handles heat. On the other hand, she scoffs at the Alienware style but having a GTX 770m/780m (with large vents beneath it) would be the ultimate machine.

Please let me know how well your machine handles heat while running Skyrim and/or other intensive programs. And thanks again for your input.

OXBALLS DOT COM
Sep 11, 2005

by FactsAreUseless
Young Orc

Naffer posted:

A hands-on review of the 440s was posted on a german forum. Translated link:
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/...G-BILDER-VIDEOS

The short video showing the clickpad makes it look unbelievably bad. There's no way Lenovo would actually ship that is there?

They've already shipped it or something very similar to it on a handful of new models. Having used it, it's pretty surprisingly bad and has weird driver issues or something that lead to bad inputs even ignoring the design itself.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness
Details of the review aside, I always love auto-translated pages. "You must not endure boring and cheap plastic to happiness" indeed, my German friends, indeed.

e; After reading it, he seems pretty impressed by the unit as a whole, outside the trackpad thing. I guess we'll see when someone posts some performance numbers, but it looks like as long as you can handle the trackpad, the T440s seems to be a pretty solid machine.

DrDork fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Aug 29, 2013

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

BabyRyoga posted:

I haven't ran anything too intense on it yet, but from what I gathered before I bought it, the GTX 770M and the 750sli are comparable, but the 770M is probably a better choice overall, because you won't have to deal with issues like heat, or micro stuttering at lower frame rates. I haven't done any extensive testing yet, but I will put something like Skyrim on here pretty soon and give it a whirl. As far as heat goes, i'm using it with a Cooler Master NOTEPAL U2 that has 2 adjustable fans, and it seems like it should be enough. Once again, I don't know how hot it will get if I run something demanding on ultra settings with the SLI card in, but I imagine it should be good.

If I had more money to spend, I probably would have gone with one of the Razerblades; those seem like the best gaming laptops you could buy, but start at around $2000 for the 14" with a 256 SSD, and probably 2500 or more for the 17". Alienware machines look nice too, but when you are in that overkill price range, the Razerblade appealed to me more. The 14" one gets beastly battery life and performance with the only downside being that it doesn't have 1080p resolution. At 14", that might not be much of a deal anyways.

Those Alienware laptops are heavy as gently caress though of course.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Mitsune posted:

I have been looking into laptops again for my girlfriend. She's starting her pharm. program this week and is looking to replace her Dell Inspiron e1505. Long story short: she has a machine dedicated to school and work, but wants a new laptop to playing video games (e.g. FFXIV, BL2, etc) on the go.

The Lenovo Y510P seems to be a perfect match for what she's looking for, but I'm concern about the performance and overheating.
A) In general, how well does this laptop manage heat? She's been using a laptop cooler to keep the old Dell machine running.
B) How much more does SLI improve gaming performance (e.g. SLI GT750m x2 vs GTX 770M x1)?
C) I hate to ask, but are there better alternatives that's high in performance and manages/displaces heat for long-term gaming (e.g Alienware :v:)?

A) It's pretty good at managing heat as far as gaming laptops go

B) Negligibly; SLI setups run way hotter, causing the CPU to get throttled down, resulting in almost no performance gain

C) If I had my choice, I'd take the Y410P instead of the Y510P. It'll run a little cooler, but at a slightly lower screen reasolution (1600x900 instead of 1920x1080), but the smaller resolution means that it'll actually get better performance on the same hardware. Other protips: buy an SSD and upgrade the laptop yourself, HDDs with small SSD caches are worthless, and don't ever get an SLI setup because they are universally a waste of money, and never buy a gaming laptop with a 1366x768 screen.

The Alienware 14 is functionally equivalent to the Y410p but slightly smaller and with the weird Alienware design and hundreds of dollars more expensive. They have the same RAM, they both have an HDD that you'll just replace with an SSD anyway, etc. The Alienwares also all seem to come with Windows 7, which lacks a lot of the battery life features of 8. The build quality may also be superior on the Alienware, but at +$350 to the price tag.

upsciLLion
Feb 9, 2006

Bees?
Best Buy is selling reconditioned Samsung 11.6" Chromebooks on eBay for $170 shipped at the moment in case anyone's interested. Link

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a_m_a_t
Nov 4, 2010

QuarkJets posted:

If I had my choice, I'd take the Y410P instead of the Y510P. It'll run a little cooler, but at a slightly lower screen reasolution (1600x900 instead of 1920x1080), but the smaller resolution means that it'll actually get better performance on the same hardware. Other protips: buy an SSD and upgrade the laptop yourself, HDDs with small SSD caches are worthless, and don't ever get an SLI setup because they are universally a waste of money, and never buy a gaming laptop with a 1366x768 screen.

I'm on the fence here because I've been eyeing a single graphics card y510p for a while. Since it will be my main computer, I'm worried about the screen size since I'm upgrading from a 16" laptop and I'm not sure how comfortable I feel with the smaller screen of the y410p.

I'm only planning to use it for surfing and moderate gaming (Skyrim being the game with the toughest requirements).

Also, for a non-techy person, is there a walkthrough for replacing the hard drive in this computer with an SSD?

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