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After 7 years, I'm looking for a replacement for my Nexoc (insert model name) with a 2,1 Ghz Core 2 Duo T8100 and 4 GB of RAM. I'm currently in the US as an exchange student for at least 15 more months and looking for an all-round deal that doesn't need to excel at anything, but gives me some flexibility. The last time I paid around 800 Euros I believe, this time around I'm thinking about something sub-or-equal-to 700 Dollars, how does this deal for a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E545 look? I gathered I definitely want an SSD with at least 128Gb and 8 Gb RAM, I myself would like an HDMI output, a no-poo poo numpad, a decent screen to look at for 5 hours of studying/working per day (I'm also currently sitting with a 15.6" screen) and the capability of running non-cutting-edge games at meh-solutions would also be cool. (Let's say Eve Online and World of Tanks for two differing examples) I have a 2 Terabyte USB 3.0 external drive, so should I drop to the 128Gb SSD version for 100 Dollar less? This would be my first SSD and I don't know for certain if I should apply the universal (better go a little bigger) principle. Would there be anything else in the sub-700 price segment you guys would recommend that would be comparable to what I'm looking for?
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Jan 29, 2015 06:26
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 12:15 |
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dissss posted:You should be able to do a lot better than that - that APU is pretty much garbage and the system comes with an awful 1366x768 screen Okay, it seems I misread a whole bunch and got my priorities messed up. So grabbing a non-SSD deal with the capability to replace the HDD with your own SSD would be the way to go then? Aphrodite posted:Looks like right now they have the i3/4gb/128gb SSD/No touch model for $799, with a $75 coupon code. I've looked at the deal and the screen looks amazing, but would there be any comparable models with equally good screens with a better processor that I could get sub-700 Dollars if I get an SSD seperately? 700 is sort of my hard cap, possibly 750. I'm currently on a fairly tight monthly budget so I don't have too much upwards wiggle-room without murdering the next months budget. I have never looked at installment payments, but if there are reasonable options for that, I'd be open for it. My main concern is that the non-touch XPS 13 with the next-gen i3 only has 2,1 Ghz and 4GB and while I understand that that will beat a 7 year old 2,1Ghz CPU and 4GB Ram any day no questions asked, I was looking to maybe take a little step up in performance over the price/performance category I was in last time. /edit As an ancillary question, are newegg and amazon proper places to look for deals or do I go straight to the manufacturer in some cases? Sorry for the rookie-esque questions, I've had my two to three go-to stores in Germany but I'm stumbling around a little clumsily over here. Duzzy Funlop fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jan 29, 2015 |
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Jan 29, 2015 17:25
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Any recommentations on a sub-650 Dollar Laptop with a good quality screen, HDMI-out, SSD OR fool-proof option to upgrade to SSD post-purchase, decent CPU (i5?), 4 (8?) GB of RAM? My aging Laptop is on its way out and I'm looking to pull the trigger on a replacement within the next couple of days. Been following some offers and models for the better part of 3 weeks, but it seems like everytime I come across something remotely up my alley, there's something that makes the deal much less attractive through a characteristic I absolutely don't need. I have an external 2 TB drive, so I don't care about storage space, I'll be sitting in front of the thing for the majority of the next year (hence decent screen), would love some decent performance and the option to play some basic, non top-of-the-line games (Eve Online, I'd give World of tanks on minimal settings a try maybe; not a priority, through?), probably wouldn't need MS Office package due to my student status, have been using Windows 7 Professional 64bit for the past couple of years, don't really have a preference in terms of OS, would go with whatever is recommended.
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Feb 15, 2015 08:31
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http://outlet.lenovo.com/outlet_us/itemdetails/20B7X023US/445 Couple of questions to offers like this refurbished T440:
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Feb 17, 2015 02:48
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Hadlock posted:
Brilliant. So I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on that refurbished T440 and grabbing a seperate SSD as soon as possible, so two follow-up questions: - Is there a tried&true sub-100-Dollar SSD that folks here would recommend? I don't really have an idea what amount of minimum space i'll need for OS and a bunch of games these days, but I have an external 2TB drive and figured 128 GB would be plenty. - As I have literally nothing over here in the US outside of my external drive, two 8GB USB sticks and a Samsung tablet, is there anything else I'd need to reinstall the OS on the SSD I'm buying? (Also, uh...am I replacing the manufacturer's harddrive or sliding it into a seperate slot?) /edit: Welp, my shopping cart expired, I tried to reload and now it appears the outlet store site shat the bed. Sick trigger-pulling skills. Nevermind, I'm accessing the page from my phone and it seems just my laptop is suddenly displaying blank pages for the outlet.lenovo.com subsites, I don't know what the gently caress. Duzzy Funlop fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 04:34
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Now I'm seeing a refurbished T530 just below the T440s with an i5-3320M CPU at 2,6Ghz and not a lot of differences except for a 15.6" screen instead of 14" and an optical drive...for the same exact price, 574 USD...bargain? I mean, I'm guessing it's going to be a little more cumbersome what with the drive and larger screen. /Yup, getting a completely blank page for outlet.lenovo.com now, but just on my laptop. Do they temporaribly block IP adresses when you reserve items in your shopping cart but then let it expire or am I being paranoid? Aaaand apparently Lenovo doesn't accept my credit card. Guess they don't want my money. Well, this certainly was a lot of fun. What are my options if I can't get refurbished model deals from the Lenovo outlet? Same models several hundred dollars more expensive at other online stores, or is there something else that could turn this around for me? Duzzy Funlop fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 04:48
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Hadlock posted:Lenovo likes to pass the savings on to you in the form of a dodgy ecommerce website in 2015 Well, seeing as they don't accept internationalmaster cards, I don't believe the outlet store is still an option for me, sadly. /edit: I was just about to give up on the outlet store when I noticed "Amazon Payments accepted" on there, looked that service up and figured it was perfect for me, I can send a payment to Lenovo through Amazon with my credit card that Amazon has been happily accepting. "All is well", I think to myself...   Duzzy Funlop fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 05:39
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Alright, finally managed to sort out my payment issues and bought this one for 492$ from the outlet store. I don't know how (stupidity, probably), but I managed to somehow completely let an HDMI port fall off my list of priorites. After surviving that initial heart-attack, I saw the T440 series has a Mini-DisplayPort which would enable me to use an HDMI-adapter, any opinions on the reliability/quality of those? Should I pay Lenovo-bucks (23$) or would a generic adapter for half the price suffice? Is there any resource or tutorial on how to go about using a replacement SSD (eyeballing the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB) in the Laptop? Mirroring the old HDD/fresh installation with recovery of OS somehow/etc? (Guess that might be a question for the SSD megathread)
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Feb 17, 2015 22:47
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Calidus posted:Cable Matters, Startech, Amazon and monoprice all tend to be fine for basic hdmi and displayport cables. There are tons of guides on how to clone your drive, I think Samsung even sells a kit with a Sata to USB adapter, but you might just want to do a fresh install of windows using a USB drive, that way you don't have to worry about crapware. So, rookie-question: With Laptops no longer having optical drives these days, how do I do a fresh install of the OS on an SSD that replaces the stock harddrive? Are there images or folders with the OS data or recovery data that I would be able to temporarily dump onto my external USB HD or bootable USB stick version? I've been installing windows from an 8GB USB stick for ages now, but with windows being considerably larger now, I'm a bit confused. dissss posted:Windows still fits fine on an 8GB stick. My concern is not having a way to clone onto the new SSD since I understand I'll have to replace the stock one. Duzzy Funlop fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 00:57
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So my T440 came with UPS today, conveniently when the entirety of northern Arizona was cut off from the Internet due to some folks screwing with a fibre optics cable. I'm incredibly impressed by it so far, even with the track pad. Yes, read that again and then try to envision how lovely of a trackpad I had in my previous, 8 year old, laptop. Installed the newest drivers, cloned the OS to my Evo 850 250GB, installed the SSD, booted it up, everything goes smoothly. The one thing bothering the everloving gently caress out of me is that upon booting the thing up, there are 87 processes running... I knew there was gonna be a bunch of bloatware preinstalled, but god-drat. So my questions now would be: 1. Without any recovery CD / Windows CD included in the product, how would I go about doing a clean Windows 8 installation? I have a 4 GB Stick here that I used to install windows 7 with, but googling clean install yields a whole bunch of info regarding resets to factory-standards and such. 2. The hardware-review site I checked for detailed specs of the T440 listed it as having an internal battery, but, upon opening...there's just a plastic placeholder? 
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Feb 26, 2015 08:07
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Thanks for all the feedback, guys! Looks like since i have Windows 8 Pro installed, I can upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro for free, so I'm currently creating a bootable USB stick for Windows 8.1 pro with the Windows Media Creation Tool thing. Googling around whether I need to upgrade to 8.1 on the Laptop first (because of license stuff?) or not before flattening it all and doing a clean install, but since I have enough time today, I don't really mind doing it anyway. Not entirely sure I want to spend 70+ bucks just for an internal battery, but on the other hand, the shape and size of the T440 without the external battery is absolutely mind-blowing for me coming from Rommel's Reichs-PDA after 8 years and it would be kinda sexy to have the independence of just carrying around the Laptop like that, possibly with the external battery seperate in my book back as a backup. Speaking of batteries these days, is it still a bad idea to have the fully charged battery attached when the Laptop is just sitting on my desk while I'm working, hooked up to the charger? Support for my old laptop told me to detach the battery when fully charged because regardless of charging state, power would always "go through" the battery when hooked up to the charger and thus wear it down over time.
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Feb 26, 2015 19:21
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I just flattened the SSD on my new T440 again and did a clean install of 8.1 Pro, everything running smoothly so far. Is there a one-stop-shop type of deal for a driver&software package from Lenovo, possibly with options to not install stuff I don't need? Googling yielded this SCCM package, which looks like literally every single driver in one package, but this is the first time I've heard about Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, so I'm not entirely sure this is what I'm looking for. /edit: Goddamnit, they just had to release a remastered version of Homeworld now that I have a T440 that won't be able to run it. 
Duzzy Funlop fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 00:16
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Strange Matter posted:T440 for $500 That T440 is the exact same model I grabbed 2 weeks ago for 492, albeit with a 1600x900 screen. I'm pretty darn happy with it, and as someone that came from an 8 year old laptop with an extraordinarily lovely trackpad, I'm perfectly happy with the one this model has. Be aware though, that if you're used to a better trackpad from other Lenovo models (someone in here probably will be able to explain in better detail than me), it would be a pretty big adjustment. Other than that, definitely look for a screen better than 1366x768.
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Mar 4, 2015 06:28
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What's a representative/trusted benchmark program for laptops around these parts? The last time I even did a benchmark for my desktop system is 10 years ago I think and it may have been Aquamark or 3DMark or somesuch.
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Mar 8, 2015 19:43
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Has anyone had trouble with the Intel HD Graphics control panel on Thinkpads (I'm on a recently bought T440) here? The problem I'm currently facing is that I cannot disable the video profiles under graphics options -> profiles. One of the profiles, be it either Brighten Video, Darken Video or Enhance Video Colors is always selected and goes into effect when I switch to fullscreen in anything, flash video, video players, etc. I've tried returning to default graphics settings via hotkey, resetting the graphics settings manually, creating new profiles with default graphics settings, the lot, but I simply can't get out of one of those three profiles. Between them, I can happily switch around, but they're all poo poo and useless and while I can find some errors with the HD Graphics control panel via Google, I can't find my exact error. Another thing is that every other option in the graphics control panel dropdown menu displays a little check when activated, except for the profiles:  Any ideas?
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Mar 24, 2015 01:53
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 12:15 |
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Hey Laptop thread, It's been a year since I bought my refurbished T440 20B7 with your advice and I'm still extremely happy with it. I now have a bit of a perspective on why people were making GBS threads on the touchpad, especially the lack of buttons, but since I came from a somehow even more terrible touchpad, it was essentially an upgrade from extremely lovely to much, much less lovely and I'm still happy. I'm looking to upgrade to 8GB RAM as a late Christmas gift, which places should I look for good deals/reliable service? Most sources pointed me towards crucial.com and datamemorysystems.com, specifically, these two deals: http://www.datamemorysystems.com/dms-memory/lenovo/thinkpad-t440-20b7.htm http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/thinkpad-t440/CT4927823 Any recommendations?
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Dec 26, 2015 19:32
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