|
Doctor Albatross posted:I bought a 15" Macbook Pro back in 2010(?) with the intention of using it for my film projects and general use. It did the trick just fine and it's still running nicely, but as I'm no longer doing film and will be going to university next year, I'm looking at something lighter and with lesser specs - I feel like I'll be wasting such a laptop if I'm only really using it for taking notes, Netflix and web browsing. I see no reason at all to get the Chromebook Pixel. You want a retina screen and thin light? Get a Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus stupid loving name edition, one of the Asus Zenbooks that are coming out, or the Yoga 2. If you do get the Samsung Ativ Book 9 I'd suggest the Windows store, I'm curious what shitware programs won't be installed if you buy it through them. The Pixel always struck me more as a "look at what we can do" and less of a product anyone would ever want.
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 14:02 |
|
|
Doctor Albatross posted:I bought a 15" Macbook Pro back in 2010(?) with the intention of using it for my film projects and general use. It did the trick just fine and it's still running nicely, but as I'm no longer doing film and will be going to university next year, I'm looking at something lighter and with lesser specs - I feel like I'll be wasting such a laptop if I'm only really using it for taking notes, Netflix and web browsing. If you're going to spend over $1000 on a laptop, get the MBA. It's lighter and has lesser specs than the Pro (well, it's actually pretty much on par, if I remember correctly) and its OS isn't a glorified web browser. It's the average consumer laptop, if the consumer can afford it. The only downside is no retina screen, but it's otherwise a great computer.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:55
|
|
|
Well, I ordered the y510P. Ended up going for the single GPU. Lenovo's return policy is pretty solid. I have 30 days to return it, so I figure I'll take a look at the screen myself to see if I like it. Thanks for the help folks, and I'll be updating from time to time my thoughts on the laptop.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 20:23
|
|
|
My girlfriend and I are looking to get a laptop soon but, even after reading the op, we're having a bit of a hard time narrowing things down. Essentially, our price cap is £600. I've taken a look at some of the Lenovo models listed in the OP (at approximately $600) and they've all jumped up to about £1000+ just now. For the most part we'd be using the laptop for entertainment purposes, such as watching videos, and it would be nice if it had the potential to play games released within the last year. We were discussing just getting a tablet, but I do a lot of work online (I use MS Office and various Google services a lot) and figured that if we were going to spend the money on a portable device it would be best to go for one that let us do all of these things. I've been trying to filter my search down to an i5 Ultrabook based somewhat on the recommendations of the OP, and ideally I'd be looking for a larger screen in order to work comfortably, but I'm not quite sure where to go from there. I know it's probably not much to go on but does anyone have a recommendation?
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 21:57
|
|
|
Kin posted:My girlfriend and I are looking to get a laptop soon but, even after reading the op, we're having a bit of a hard time narrowing things down. I didn't want to spend a lot on something that wasn't IPS so I did this: t420 for £270 shipped Samsung Evo 250gb for £140 This leaves you £190 to buy a mouse, 4gb of ram, a case, new battery, and an ultrabay caddy. It will chrome, word process, 1080 youtube, and play FTL. If you can't get a t430 from the op, then going used + a ssd you can carry forward might work for you? Optiquest fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Sep 22, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 22:27
|
|
|
Optiquest posted:I didn't want to spend a lot on something that wasn't IPS so I did this: Thanks for this, but I had to Google some of the things you referenced which might give you a bit of an indication on how little I know about laptops. With my level of experience with laptops I'm more looking for something that's essentially "out of the box". I did a little digging on Amazon with the specs i'm after (based on what i've used for my home rig) and it's come up with the following suggestions: Lenovo Z580 Acer Aspire I know poo poo all about Windows 8 too. Seeing as it's bundled in everything now i just figured it's the official "portable OS" and shouldn't bother looking for anything with Windows 7 right?
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 23:59
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:So my Y410p arrived a few hours ago. In that time I've replaced the HDD with an SSD, slapped the HDD into the ultrabay slot, freshly installed windows 8 on the SSD, and installed a bunch of stuff. A lot of people in the thread have asked for guides on doing this kind of thing with the Y410p/Y510p, so here it is: Great post! I've got a Y410p on its way, and this answers all the questions I had about putting an SSD into it. It took a 2-month business trip to make me realize I needed more than my 13" 2009 Macbook Pro could provide, so I'm looking forward to being able to play newer games and watch HD video more smoothly without having a gross-looking, heavy gaming laptop.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 00:20
|
|
|
Fallom posted:Great post! I've got a Y410p on its way, and this answers all the questions I had about putting an SSD into it. Great post indeed. I've probably built over a hundred desktops but I've never opened a laptop but this doesn't sound too hard. All I need is a 2.5" ssd and a y4XX/5XX series ultrabay caddy, right?
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 00:55
|
|
|
I have an older Lenovo x120e that is in fine shape mechanically and good enough processor-wise to do everything I expect from a netbook, but over the course of the last few months it feels like the mechanical hard drive is delivering data slower and slower. There's a ~10 second delay between hitting the power button and seeing the Windows logo come up on screen, and applications take a good bit longer to load than they used to. Since I don't use the machine a ton and would be happy to keep it around for another couple of years, would it be crazy to pick up a $99 Samsung 120GB SSD and swap out the mechanical drive? Would I be able to transfer my existing Win7 license to the new drive? Will I find myself mired in driver hell while trying to get everything up and working again? Or, is my idea that the hard drive is slowly making GBS threads out wrong and a full wipe / restore to factory conditions the way to go?
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 01:28
|
|
|
S I got a Y510P from the outlet, refurbished for ~$700... a few days later they put up a new Y510P for $600 on the outlet... I'd contact Lenovo for a price adjustment, if that's even possible with the outlet, but the charge on my card disappeared and still hasn't come back yet... Any input?
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 01:54
|
|
God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
|
Sinz posted:S I got a Y510P from the outlet, refurbished for ~$700... a few days later they put up a new Y510P for $600 on the outlet... I'd contact Lenovo for a price adjustment, if that's even possible with the outlet, but the charge on my card disappeared and still hasn't come back yet... Any input? Is that for a 1366 by 768 version? I just dropped 929 on a full HD one using the Barnes and Noble link.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 02:42
|
|
|
PDP-1 posted:I have an older Lenovo x120e that is in fine shape mechanically and good enough processor-wise to do everything I expect from a netbook, but over the course of the last few months it feels like the mechanical hard drive is delivering data slower and slower. There's a ~10 second delay between hitting the power button and seeing the Windows logo come up on screen, and applications take a good bit longer to load than they used to. Go for it. If you have < 120GB of space used on the existing drive you can easily clone your current Windows install to the new drive with something like Macrium Reflect and a USB adapter.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 02:50
|
|
|
Appreciate all the tips and advice - it's now that I realize how behind I am on the laptop market. I recognize that my current laptop is perfectly capable of what I want to do specs-wise, but it's a clunky big thing I'd hate to lug around campus at uni next year. What I'm looking for is something with the nice metal build quality but also thin, light and capable of plugging into my television for Netflix / movies. The ASUS ultrabooks mentioned seem well-suited for the job, my local PC shop has a lot of them so I might pop down and check them out sometime.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 02:58
|
|
|
Socrates16 posted:So, I popped into Bestbuy today, and FYI it's about 50/50 Haswell to Ivy Bridge. Anywho, I tested out a bunch of screens and they're all awful. Getting paranoid about getting the y510p. Do all laptop screens suck in comparison to HDTV's and smartphones? I had the exact opposite experience. If I had to guess, I would say that it's been so long since I've used a laptop other than my first gen MBP that I'm pretty easily impressed (I want to say that the screen was 1440x900) In particular, playing around with the SSD was interesting. Are there any laptops with SSD and great battery life for under 700? Weight isn't an issue, and screens seem to impress me pretty easily. The ability to play older games (and maybe even a few made in the last couple of years) would be a plus.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 03:02
|
|
|
URL: http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=321213238715 Bought this laptop today for web surfing and in the garage. I will eventually be running an engine management software on it [very light, requires 1ghz and 512 ram]. What, if any upgrades would you guys recommend? Ssd, another stick of ram? Also, whatre the wifi cards that come in these, are certain ones more powerful than others?
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 03:17
|
|
|
Socrates16 posted:Is that for a 1366 by 768 version? I just dropped 929 on a full HD one using the Barnes and Noble link. Yeah. I didn't need the full HD here.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 03:56
|
|
|
mugrim posted:Are there any laptops with SSD and great battery life for under 700? Weight isn't an issue, and screens seem to impress me pretty easily. The ability to play older games (and maybe even a few made in the last couple of years) would be a plus. Pretty much any laptop lets you replace the HD with an SSD, and pretty much any laptop when purchased separately from the SSD will end up cheaper than buying the SSD as an option from the manufacturer.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 04:25
|
|
|
Brut posted:Pretty much any laptop lets you replace the HD with an SSD, and pretty much any laptop when purchased separately from the SSD will end up cheaper than buying the SSD as an option from the manufacturer. So I was thinking of getting a refurbished T420 or T430 from the lenovo outlet when there stuff drops tomorrow and throwing in an SSD. Is there any reason to not do that?
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 04:48
|
|
|
Other than wanting a T440? No, not really.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 04:51
|
|
|
Hadlock posted:Any pictures? I will go ahead and add this to the OP I took some but got lazy and didn't upload them. Going to do that now
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 08:50
|
|
|
I also got a chance to play some games today. EVE Online plays great with just the HD 4600 running, almost no heat at all on the highest settings. TF2 was pretty much the same case. I'm not sure how to make use of the NVidia GPU, but so far I haven't actually needed it Either way, having an SSD vs an HDD is like night and day. With the SSD it takes maybe one whole second to boot up. This is also my first exposure to Windows 8. I was expecting to hate it, but it's actually not bad at all. The home screen and the focus on apps is stupid, but it's trivial to flip over to a Desktop and then everything is almost the same, minus a Start button that I don't really need. I've read that you can get a replacement Start button, but I don't really feel the urge to do that. Brut posted:Would me pulling out the HDD and putting in an SSD before booting it once account for why it refused to give me any boot options but IPv4 and IPv6? I tried a CD with a burned ISO as well as several different ones on USB, a different computer (some old dell pc I was using at work) was able to select them as boot drives. Weird, any Windows 8 install disk should be EFI bootable. Try this: go into your BIOS, go to the Boot tab, and change Boot Mode to Legacy Support. This should work, let us know. Klaus Kinski posted:Great post indeed. I've probably built over a hundred desktops but I've never opened a laptop but this doesn't sound too hard. Yes. And they're so universal that pretty much any 9.5mm hard drive caddy will do. The caddy that I bought even came with a tiny screw driver Surprisingly this was actually a lot more difficult than my 6 year-old Dell Inspiron. It just had a little plate covering the hard drive, so you could remove two screws, replace the drive, and then screw the plate back in. Having to remove the entire bottom panel in order to reach the HDD is a scary idea, but it's still really easy. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Sep 23, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 09:10
|
|
|
Okay, here are some pictures of the Y410p SSD install process. Pretty straightforward..jpg) Here is the butt of the Y410p. The battery is at the top. On the upper left you can see a little latch (there's a little red there), and on the right you can see a corresponding latch. These allow you to remove the battery. .jpg) Once that's been done, it's time to remove the optical drive. This little latch in the middle does that. Pull that latch down and your optical drive should slide out somewhat easily. .jpg) A little blurry, but see? It just comes right out, no big deal. You don't even need a screwdriver to do this. .jpg) Here is the laptop with the battery and the optical drive both removed. There are 8 screws to remove now. Let's do that. .jpg) The screws are all the same size, so don't worry about putting them back in any particular order. Set them aside for now. .jpg) It's hard to show exactly how to remove the panel now that it is unscrewed, but this is what you should get when you're done. The removed panel is at the top of this photo. You can see some round cylinders sticking out of it; these are the plastic pegs that keep the panel attached to your laptop even when the screws have been removed. This is a pretty good design even if it makes accessing the hard drive a little harder. Try not to damage these pegs; work your finger around the edges and slowly apply some firm pressure until you feel it coming up along all of the laptop's sides and corners. Being extra careful it took me about 5 minutes. Middle-left: your optical drive was here Middle-right: here's a heat pipe and a fan, possibly close to your CPU or maybe GPU? We don't particularly care right now Bottom-Center-Right: Your RAM. If you wanted to add more RAM, you'd do that here. Note that both DIMMs come filled, so if you ever want more RAM then you'll have to buy bigger sticks and throw away (sell) the old ones Bottom-Left: Your HDD in the laptop's HDD enclose .jpg) Close-up of the HDD. Here it's still connected to the SATA interface. As you can see, there's relatively little space here. There are two screws on the bottom left of this picture; you'll have to remove those before the enclosure can be removed. When I tried to use the little flap sticking off of the metal part it actually started to come off, so I eased off and tried moving the entire enclosure instead. This worked. As you can see, there's about a quarter inch of space allowing you to slide the enclosure leftward. After you slide it all the way to the left (you should have felt it leaving the SATA port during this), you can pull it out of the laptop. .jpg) With the enclosure removed, it's time to replace the HDD. I have a nice Samsung SSD for this purpose. There are 4 screws holding the HDD in the enclosure. Once they've been removed, slide it out. Slide the SDD in and screw it into place. Put the enclosure back in the laptop and screw it into place. Put the laptop panel back into the laptop and screw it into place. Either slide the optical drive back where it belongs or go through the steps to replace the optical drive with a 9.5mm ultrabay hard drive caddy. No screws this time Put the battery back into your laptop Use the stupid little button next to the power hole instead of your normal power button. Go into your BIOS. Disable Safe Boot. Either insert your Windows 8 DVD or USB stick. Use the stupid little button again. Choose Boot Menu. Your DVD or USB should be selectable. If they're not, then try going back into your BIOS, go to the Boot menu, and change Boot Mode to Legacy Support. Try to boot off of your DVD or USB stick again. By this point you should be at the Windows 8 installation screen. Choose to install on your SSD; you won't need a product key, it's read directly from your BIOS.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 09:52
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:I also got a chance to play some games today. EVE Online plays great with just the HD 4600 running, almost no heat at all on the highest settings. TF2 was pretty much the same case. I'm not sure how to make use of the NVidia GPU, but so far I haven't actually needed it If you haven't fiddled with any settings then it should have switched over to the DGPU automatically without you doing anything - Optimus works really well and is totally transparent to the user.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 10:18
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:I also got a chance to play some games today. EVE Online plays great with just the HD 4600 running, almost no heat at all on the highest settings. TF2 was pretty much the same case. I'm not sure how to make use of the NVidia GPU, but so far I haven't actually needed it shrughes posted:The Y410p doesn't have Optimus, that's why it gets poor battery life. A short google search finds people arguing about whether or not this is actually the case though, so I dunno. QuarkJets posted:Weird, any Windows 8 install disk should be EFI bootable. I'll give it a shot, although I'm probably RMAing this laptop anyway due to the broken key.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 10:41
|
|
|
Brut posted:A short google search finds people arguing about whether or not this is actually the case though, so I dunno. Well, the NVidia graphics drivers refuse to install until you install the drivers for the HD 4600, and I have tray icons for both, so presumably it has Optimus. It also wasn't generating hardly any heat at all for the games that I was playing, which seems indicative of integrated graphics (I'm expecting a lot more heat for more demanding games)
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 11:57
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:Well, the NVidia graphics drivers refuse to install until you install the drivers for the HD 4600, and I have tray icons for both, so presumably it has Optimus. It also wasn't generating hardly any heat at all for the games that I was playing, which seems indicative of integrated graphics (I'm expecting a lot more heat for more demanding games) Have you tried running multiple clients in Eve at all? It's hardly afk ratting if im not running 4 accounts.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 12:20
|
|
|
So what's the deal with Thinkpad prices in Europe? I'm looking for something to replace my shitheap Acer Aspire One and the T430 and 530 are both way more expensive here than in the US, even taking into account shipping and Dutch VAT.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 12:28
|
|
|
Hoping this is the right thread for this: I need to buy a new A32-1015 battery for my ASUS netbook, the old one is dropping out too fast to allow for hibernation. Amazon sells them from about eight different manufacturers, none of whom are ASUS. Is this something to worry about? Are there good and lovely battery manufacturers? Just hoping somebody knows more about this than me.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 13:50
|
|
|
Is Optimus the ability to switch between video cards depending on what's being used? If so the y410p definitely has it. I'm on integrated graphics most of the time, and only switch to the nvidia while gaming.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 14:37
|
|
|
LordSaturn posted:Hoping this is the right thread for this: I would just give up and get one of the third-party ones on Amazon that is cheap and decently reviewed, or maybe just cheap. It's possible that there's sellers trying to trick you into thinking "more expensive = better". Out of curiosity I spent a bunch of time a few weeks ago trying to find a "good" battery for that exact part number and didn't come across a better option.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 14:52
|
|
|
I was actively looking for a new laptop a few weeks ago, but put it on hold since the going advice was "wait, new stuff is coming out in a couple weeks.". I'm in the process of catching up on the thread, so is the wait over? Edit: apparently not and the new stuff sucks anyway. Back to picking out something from what's available. Hillridge fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Sep 23, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 15:00
|
|
|
surf rock posted:- The keyboard is pretty good. It's a similar layout but a totally different form factor from my previous keyboard, so there's an adjustment process at work here, as well. The major problems I'm experiencing are the Fn and Ctrl keys being switched around on the bottom-left corner, and the arrow keys being smaller than I'm used to. You can (and should) swap these two keys in the BIOS. There's an option there that will turn the FN key in to control, which makes it much more natural to use.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 15:09
|
|
|
arisu posted:Is Optimus the ability to switch between video cards depending on what's being used? If so the y410p definitely has it. I'm on integrated graphics most of the time, and only switch to the nvidia while gaming. I think what the y410p lacks is the ability to completely shutdown the 750m while it's not in use. It has switchable graphics, but the 750m is idling while on the integrated graphics rather than completely switched off. I do find the ability to switch graphics useful as you noted though as it does help battery life a bit and also the IGP doesn't throttle while on battery power whereas the 750m does throttle pretty severely. bull3964 fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Sep 23, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 15:13
|
|
|
If I don't care about weight/thickness, is there any reason to get a T430s over a T430? For the T530, is going to the 1080 screen worth the added cost, or should I stick with the 900? The 1600x900 is only $15 more than the 1366 x 768 (which would look terrible in a 15.6" display), so that's a no brainer. What other factory upgrades are the best value? I plan to get the low end RAM and HDD, then add more and swap in a SSD on my own. I don't need to go to an i7, but is the i5 worth it? Other than the T430/530, is there a comparable Y series? I don't plan on gaming on it, but I may do some light CAD work.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 16:56
|
|
|
Anyone have any opinion on the Surface Pro 2 that was announced today? I have a laptop plugged into an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, external HD, etc 80% of the time, then just painstakingly unplug everything whenever i want to wander around the house for an hour tops to make up the other 20%. The dock for the Pro 2 seems like in theory i would only have to detach the thing from the dock, which would be great. I've never really been a fan of tablets but honestly whenever I actually use the laptop as a laptop instead of a desktop, I'm basically just loving around surfing the internet anyway and think the tablet form would be fine and if not i could just get one of those keyboard things. I'm kind of somewhat of a power user, doing programming and stuff, but I think the specs seem fine to support that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 17:20
|
|
|
jjttjj posted:Anyone have any opinion on the Surface Pro 2 that was announced today? Well with their space problems I want to find out what the higher-storage ones cost, but that info doesn't seem to be anywhere.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 17:22
|
|
|
jjttjj posted:Anyone have any opinion on the Surface Pro 2 that was announced today? I'm sort of in the same boat as you. For several years, I've had a personal laptop that I bring to work where I plug it into a dock that hooks into a keyboard, monitor, mouse, etc. Then I bring it home and use it for general internetting and other consumer-y stuff. However, I recently had the opportunity to use a Pro 1 with 8.1 for a few weeks as a replacement. I really enjoyed it, overall. The only point where it truly let me down was the docking situation, since there wasn't an elegant way to plug all my stuff in at work. I had the 256gb version, so space wasn't a huge issue, but 4gb of RAM was also a bit on the low end for my work purposes. At home, though, it was great, because I just kept it in metro mode and did my internet on the couch or in bed or wherever. 8.1 is a big step up from 8 when you stay in tablet mode, in my opinion. When I needed to write emails or do something more productive, the Type Cover worked great. People complain about it being heavy or awkward for tablet use, but for some reason I didn't find that to be as bad as they make it out to be. It was a bit goofy to use on my lap, but I actually don't really do that very often anyway so it didn't come up much. I think the Pro 2, with all its improvements (battery life and performance, 8gb RAM, 256/512gb SSD options, new hinge, etc.) and especially the dock, will allow it to be a true laptop replacement for me. As far as I can tell, the biggest detractor will be the price for the ones with the larger SSDs, combined with the keyboard and dock. Those won't be cheap, I'm sure. Edit: Pricing details via MS press release:   http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news...4202112_surface LifeSizePotato fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Sep 23, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 17:40
|
|
|
Hillridge posted:What other factory upgrades are the best value? I plan to get the low end RAM and HDD, then add more and swap in a SSD on my own. I don't need to go to an i7, but is the i5 worth it? i5 has turbo boost, which isn't useful now but in a few years will have been worth it. Depends on how long you need the laptop. The non-quad core i7 is mostly marketing The big factory upgrade is the Advanced or Ultimate-N wifi. It's a huge step up in range/speed and worth the price.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 18:21
|
|
|
LifeSizePotato posted:Edit: Pricing details via MS press release: I wonder how much the different keyboard covers will be. $1299 for 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD isn't the worst price compared to other ultrabooks, but it isn't very compelling when there are so many drawbacks to it relative to an actual laptop.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 18:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 14:02 |
|
|
Hadlock posted:The big factory upgrade is the Advanced or Ultimate-N wifi. It's a huge step up in range/speed and worth the price. You know, when I was specing out my work notebook, I opted into the Ultimate-N and it's been nothing but a nightmare with our access points. People with the base dell wireless have no issues connecting and staying connected, but mine will drop and refuse to reconnect without a reboot after a few hours (and sometimes a reboot doesn't solve it.) I know it has to be the AP's fault, but I just find it amusing that this is always the default recommendation that may not always work out in the real world.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2013 18:44
|
|