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Well, since the OP extolled the virtues of Thinkpads, maybe some of you might know the answer to this question. I have a 4.5 year old Thinkpad R500 with a tiny 40GB SSD. I was hoping to replace the Ultrabay DVDRW with the old HDD for a little extra storage. The Lenovo branded Ultrabay (12.7mm) -> SATA adapter costs $70, at which point I might as well just buy a new SSD. There are a bunch of cheap knockoffs available, but most of them are sold in the US and don't ship to Canada, and only a few questionable sources are available in Canada. I'd rather not resort to ebay. I have found a Silverstone adapter available, which should work, but one person with a T420 (which should have an identical ultrabay to the R500) said it was too short and didn't fit properly. So, uh, any suggestions? The only other alternative I've found is this similar looking caddy, which would be about $30 and possibly have a higher chance of actually fitting.
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Jun 13, 2013 00:27
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InstantInfidel posted:Assuming you got a 250GB SSD, you're looking at around $180. I wouldn't buy a third-party adapter without knowing that it fit for sure, so I'd probably stick first-party. At that point, you're $250 in. For $320, you can buy an SSD megathread-approved 480GB Mushkin drive and use that as your single primary, or wait for a sale and pick up that or another equally sized drive for less. On top of that, that drive is going to be big enough and fast enough that in two or three years you can drop it in to a new laptop and not face the same situation you do now with your 40GB SSD. Just food for thought. Uhh I'm not looking to spend $300 to add way more storage than I need, $30 would do just fine.
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Jun 13, 2013 15:54
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A Haswell x230t with Windows 8 and SSD for $1000 would be swell. Maybe even a discrete GPU too. Pretty please?
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Jun 14, 2013 04:23
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Things... break on a Thinkpad? Well, to be fair, I'm not sure the card reader on my R500 worked for more than a few months, and the cable connecting the trackpad to the motherboard is close enough to the wristpad surface that if you press too hard, you can temporarily disable both the touchpad (whatever) and trackpoint (noooo).
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Jun 15, 2013 17:05
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If anyone cares, I got a Silverstone TS-09 SATA hdd adapter for my Thinkpad R500 and it fits fine. The only thing is that it didn't come with faceplate and the DVDRW's faceplate's hooks are too short to latch on. Duct tape solved that problem for now. Anyways, if anyone has a thinkpad with the same Ultrabay as the R500, chances are that the TS09 will do the trick to swap your DVDRW for an extra HDD/SSD. The $10 no-name poo poo on ebay and amazon might work too, but who knows. At least Silverstone is a brand I've heard of and an extra $5 for a harmless bit of plastic is no big deal considering that Lenovo branded adapters sell for $70.
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Jun 23, 2013 22:21
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Speaking of ultrabays, are there cheap covers for ultrabay adapters? I got an adapter that fits and tried to reuse the DVD drive's front plate as a cover, but it doesn't quite fit in place. I've been using extremely sexy hockey tape to cover the gap but that only prevents dust from coming in - over time, the HDD in the bay does get loose enough t oneed to be pushed back in to make contact with the SATA/power ports. If it matters, I have an old-rear end R500 with the Serial Ultrabay Enhanced.
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Dec 3, 2013 17:47
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joepinetree posted:As I wade through possible laptops, I've started to see a lop more 15 inch laptops with 4k screens. Is 4k on a 15 inch monitor even noticeable? If the screen is 30 cm away from your eyes, then each pixel will be slightly wider than the diffraction limit for green light (500 nm) and a fairly narrow pupil (2 mm). So very unlikely in bright light, but possibly (barely) if you dim the screen.
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Sep 1, 2014 19:24
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JawKnee posted:I'm thinking about picking up a new laptop for the last couple semesters of my CS degree; normally I've been doing coding/other coursework at home or in the labs on campus but increasingly I'd like to do it on the go so I'm not stuck for hours in the same two places. Reading the OP has convinced me to go with a Thinkpad but since that post was made over a year ago, is there anything pertinent to picking up one of those Thinkpad models I should know about? Any new clear favorites? The Yoga 13 seems to be somewhat hard to find locally (in BC, Canada, NCIX doesn't seem to carry it or else I'm just missing it). The Microsoft store seems to have some decent deals. They don't have as many models or customization options as Lenovo's site, but what they do carry has better regular prices (sales are another matter). Plus you can get various discounts like student deals, Office bundles and cashback through redflagdeals and the MBNA e-mall if you have one of their Canadian cards. I was looking at the Thinkpad Yoga and it's significantly cheaper there than on Lenovo's site, but for now I decided to wait until Broadwell models start going on sale since I don't need anything right away. You could probably try pricematching NCIX or any other retailer if you find similar models in stock.
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Sep 4, 2014 21:46
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Anyone have a Thinkpad Yoga 14? It seems like exactly what I'd want, after using a Surface Pro 3 with Lenovo bluetooth keyboard and getting irritated by the poor DPI scaling on a smaller and overly reflective glossy screen. Unfortunately it only seems to be available in the US, and only with a 1TB HDD and a 16 GB 'caching' drive, which seems to be a half height M.2 SSD. Really? I guess you can replace the HDD with an SSD, but surely they could have fit a full M.2 drive in there. e: Oh, it also has a glossy touchscreen with no digitizer. Is a model with a proper SSD, matte screen and digitizer too much to ask for? Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 23, 2014 07:00
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Zerilan posted:I think I'm pretty sold now on trying a yoga 2 pro once I find the best deal I can on one. Starting grad school this fall and looking for something that will last me until I finish my phd. Are you sure you can't get funding for a computer from your program? It's worth waiting if you can get it paid for from your future advisor's grant or something, plus you can splurge on an 8GB / 3 year warranty type of addition that might not be worth it with your own money.
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Dec 28, 2014 05:18
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Core 2 duo's aren't that much slower than even current Haswell CPUs. A P9600 is about 60% of the speed of an i5-4200M (single-threaded). The main difference is in power draw, multithreaded performance and the integrated GPU.
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Jan 2, 2015 05:06
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Can you buy Lenovo laptops with an international warranty in Hong Kong? Lenovo's HK website is useless, and their page on international warranties almost equally so - it can tell you if your device has an international warranty after you've bought it... great. I probably won't bother anyways because the few reviews I've read online on people trying to get international service from Lenovo have been less than glowing.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:36
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Also hexadeca-core quantum CPUs will be out next year so you'd be an idiot to buy an electromagnetic CPU today.
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Jan 12, 2015 18:56
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You could get a desktop in a mATX or smaller case, many of which fit in carry-on luggage. Weight would probably be the limit.
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Jan 25, 2015 19:54
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I was excited about the Thinkpad Yoga 14 but now I see it has the old lovely trackpad and a glossy screen. The gently caress, Lenovo?
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Feb 5, 2015 16:42
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Grundulum posted:Ph.D., computational astrophysics, and looking to expand into OpenMP or CUDA to speed things along. Looks like I'll be looking for QM suffixes once the research budget starts. Why would you get a laptop instead of a desktop then?
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Feb 8, 2015 04:37
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Ok, so the Thinkpad Yoga 14 is up on Lenovo Australia's website. The good part is that the 1080p screen is listed as matte. In a world of lovely glossy screens, that's awesome. But there's no digitizer option listed on either model. However, if you customize the i5/4GB model and choose the 8GB upgrade, it bumps you down to a 768p screen... but then the 1080p option reappears, listing a digitizer + pen. 
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Feb 20, 2015 15:26
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Hadlock posted:The Australian dollar is worth something like $0.70, plus everything there costs 25% more because captive market. I think well equipped they go for about $999 out the door in the US. AUD is 0.79 right now. I was just looking at laptop prices now out of curiosity as I haven't had a personal laptop since a decrepit decade-old T400 (I had work laptops and didn't need my own). Prices look equally mad on the Australian and US sites: ThinkPad X380 Yoga Part Number: 20LH0003AU Web Price: $2,199.00 ThinkPad X380 Yoga Part Number: 20LH0005AU Web Price: $2,799.00 ThinkPad X380 Yoga - Black Part Number: 20LH000LUS Web Price: $1,549.00 (1961 AUD) ThinkPad X380 Yoga - Black Part Number: 20LH000MUS Web Price: $2,239.00 (2832 AUD) Mind you the US specs are slightly better so none of the models are exactly comparable but the AU prices include 10% GST.
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Feb 18, 2018 11:13
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Actually I saw a new Yoga 370 for $670 in the outlet and almost got it but didn't because it apparently has a super glossy screen and it wasn't 100% clear whether the pitiful 4GB of RAM was soldered on or upgradeable.
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Feb 19, 2018 02:41
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I'm getting a new laptop for work to replace a T480s with a busted screen. I like the 14" size and the best deal hardware-wise seems to be the new P14s Gen 4 (Intel versions have a discrete GPU that I don't care about while the Ryzen ones are just coming out now and seem like a better deal). The display options are matte 1920x1200 (ok but I would prefer higher res), glossy touch (no thanks), and a 2.8k OLED which seems ideal. I have a few concerns though... burn in I can avoid and power usage isn't a big deal as I mostly use dark mode/themes anyway. It claims to be anti-glare and anti-reflective but I gather it's still shinier than matte LEDs, no? There are a few comments about the panel using relatively low-frequency PWM for dimming which apparently gives some people headaches/eye fatigue. I have no idea if this would bother me, though. I can't even tell if Lenovo has updated the panel. Some online reviews say it's a Samsung ATNA40YK01-1 but Lenovo's prebuilt spec site (PSREF) doesn't even specify.
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Aug 18, 2023 16:49
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