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Progressive JPEG posted:FWIW I think you're the only person, online or offline, I've ever heard saying they wanted a Blu-ray drive in a laptop*. They might just not be that common beyond people who want the highest spec of everything, which would imply the SSD. Fair enough - even I thought that it was daft and I am the one who said it. The price difference was fairly trivial, and I just thought that it would be nice to have a Blu-Ray player in case I might need one, as I do not have one otherwise. QuarkJets posted:The screen is fine, it's just not incredible; there are some really nice laptop screens out there. There's nothing wrong with the Y410p screen I am leaning towards a 510 because I want a larger machine with an integrated 9-key, as trivial as that might sound to some. I should take it from this remark then that the screen quality is quite good? QuarkJets posted:SLI is a waste of money. Laptops do not exhaust heat fast enough to fully utilize an SLI setup, so you get a marginal improvement in graphical quality in exchange for a higher price tag and being unable to use your ultrabay slot for something else (like a dvd drive or a hard drive, as you noted). I can corroborate this as someone who had an SLI laptop. Heating was a huge issue despite this monolith having tons of fans and it was buggy as hell from the first go. Eventually one of the cards died and I had to take it out because replacing it was hundreds of dollars. QuarkJets posted:Are you talking about the 1TB HDD + 24GB SSD option? That's a trap; it's not actually 24GB of SSD that you can put stuff on, it's just cache space and is generally pretty useless. You should either stick to the 1 TB HDD or install a SSD yourself, which is pretty easy to do and really worth doing. I figured as much from your original post when you mentioned it as cache space, but I wanted to make sure - having a small SSD just for the OS to greatly increase boot speeds would be awfully nice, not that I couldn't get one on my own. My current gaming laptop has 3 (yes, 3... I said that it was a beast) old-style drives in it, and I could always pull one of those. As I said above, the Blu-Ray is just a nice luxury and the price difference seems pretty minor. I might get the top-end 510 anyway and then pull the SSD from it - $999 is comfortably within my budget. Does anyone know how long this sale will last? The model that I just referred to is marked down $500 according to the site and if it were to go back up to $1499 it certainly wouldn't be much of a deal then.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 17:37 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 14:13 |
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Yoga 2 Pro at Best Buy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ideapad-yoga-2-pro-ultrabook-convertible-13-3-touch-screen-laptop-8gb-memory/1817254.p i7-4500U with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $1200? Sign me up. edit: I wonder if these are finalized prices. i5-4200U with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD for $999: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ideapad-yoga-2-pro-ultrabook-convertible-13-3-touch-screen-laptop-4gb-memory/1817272.p Naffer fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Oct 13, 2013 |
# ? Oct 13, 2013 17:45 |
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Naffer posted:Yoga 2 Pro at Best Buy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ideapad-yoga-2-pro-ultrabook-convertible-13-3-touch-screen-laptop-8gb-memory/1817254.p This looks great. I can't find any pro reviews yet, let me know if you see any. This might be the laptop I buy. Edit: There is this. AriTheDog fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Oct 13, 2013 |
# ? Oct 13, 2013 18:56 |
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AriTheDog posted:This looks great. I can't find any pro reviews yet, let me know if you see any. This might be the laptop I buy. Yeah, that's the one I'm looking at. Just waiting on reviews to see what battery life is like.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 18:57 |
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I haven't seen the Yoga 2 in person yet, but my buddy upgraded from an x120e (11.5") to the Yoga 1 and the build quality on the Yoga 1 is really impressive. He prefers his Yoga 1 over his T400 and x120e. Only downside is the lack of trackpoint, but he says that the touchscreen seems to make up for it. When he uses the T400 he's already found himself inadvertently touching the screen trying to do stuff. The Yoga 1's Ive seen are all really impressive, well built machines. AriTheDog posted:This looks great. I can't find any pro reviews yet, let me know if you see any. This might be the laptop I buy. At about the three minute mark she explains why the hinge is so drat good and probably puts in to words (along with the smooth rotation of the hinges) better than anyone why this is such a stellar device. Thinkpad quality hinges, maybe better than thinkpad quality keeps the whole device sturdy, it never feels like it's going to do the splits and fall flat if you leave it in tent mode too long. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Oct 13, 2013 |
# ? Oct 13, 2013 19:10 |
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fookolt posted:Of course, it'll be Haswell :P She needs it for PhD work so she'll need Microsoft Office, SASS, and Stata (Chromebooks are out of the picture). Keep in mind that Stata requires everything to be loaded into memory. For the most part this is not a big deal, but a large dataset and a complex procedure will gobble up ram in a hurry. Buy as much ram as you can afford. SAS is bloat ware. It is less dependant on ram than say Stata or R but it has an install footprint of 8 gb. Don't buy something with a 64 gb SSD. I once did some fairly complex work on an atom netbook. If the ram is there, it will get done.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 19:22 |
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Yudo posted:Keep in mind that Stata requires everything to be loaded into memory. For the most part this is not a big deal, but a large dataset and a complex procedure will gobble up ram in a hurry. Buy as much ram as you can afford. Thanks; I had no idea about that. I'll make sure to get at least 8GB.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 19:38 |
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AriTheDog posted:This looks great. I can't find any pro reviews yet, let me know if you see any. This might be the laptop I buy. I'd actually be really surprised if those are the final prices. The $1200 one is $150 cheaper than Lenovo is currently selling it's i7/8GB/256GB First-gen Yoga 13 for.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 19:51 |
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Maybe I'm just being nitpicky but I am really put off by the Windows logo hard-printed on the display bezel. I'm not anti-Windows or anything, but I really wish they hadn't included it on there. I wonder how much Microsoft paid for that. Really glad that the T440 won't come branded like that.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 19:55 |
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Martytoof posted:Maybe I'm just being nitpicky but I am really put off by the Windows logo hard-printed on the display bezel. I'm not anti-Windows or anything, but I really wish they hadn't included it on there. I wonder how much Microsoft paid for that. It's a Start/Home button for tablet mode. The Start button is the Windows logo.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:04 |
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Oh, right. I forgot about that. Well I guess that's more acceptable then. I thought it was just shameless branding.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:05 |
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Naffer posted:I'd actually be really surprised if those are the final prices. The $1200 one is $150 cheaper than Lenovo is currently selling it's i7/8GB/256GB First-gen Yoga 13 for. Yeah, the price seems too good to be true so I went ahead and ordered one from BB. Worst case scenario the battery somehow blows or something else and I return it.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:06 |
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BestBuy will stock powered-down versions of non-Mac hardware for cheaper than list prices. Don't buy from them unless you can see the entire spec sheet beyond "i5 processor! ZOMG!" When I was buying back in 2011 they had some stripped out versions of the Samsung S7 priced well below what you could find online.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:11 |
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I realise fully that I am in the minority here, but I've never cared much about touch screens on personal computers. I have a small, portable notebook from 2008 or so that has a more primitive touch screen and I never use it. Partly it's out of habit, and party it's my OCD that doesn't want fingerprints on the screen (and my notebook has a digipen, even).
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:13 |
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Stew Man Chew posted:BestBuy will stock powered-down versions of non-Mac hardware for cheaper than list prices. Don't buy from them unless you can see the entire spec sheet beyond "i5 processor! ZOMG!" When I was buying back in 2011 they had some stripped out versions of the Samsung S7 priced well below what you could find online. The specs from Best Buy match what Lenovo has on the website - QHD+, i7-4500, etc. so it looks to be the highest-end config available aside from the 256GB SSD. Here's hoping the order goes through okay. Wasn't this not supposed to be released for another week or two?
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:16 |
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fookolt posted:Thanks; I had no idea about that. I'll make sure to get at least 8GB. Don't worry too much about the initial RAM configuration; these are the two things you want to be asking whenever you look at a laptop and are worried about RAM: 1) How many DIMM slots does it have? If it has 1 DIMM and 8GB, then it's going to be hard to upgrade because it only takes 1 stick of RAM. If it has 2 DIMMs, then you can buy two 8GB sticks and have a total of 16GB, much more than most laptops and great for working with medium-sized datasets. 2) Is the RAM soldered to the motherboard? If so, you can't upgrade it at all. Avoid these unless you're satisfied with the amount of RAM that's already in there. RAM is cheap, and accessing the RAM is also a very easy process for most laptops. Of course, if you find a laptop with the amount of RAM that you want then you can safely ignore this advice QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Oct 13, 2013 |
# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:17 |
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JustJeff88 posted:I realise fully that I am in the minority here, but I've never cared much about touch screens on personal computers. I have a small, portable notebook from 2008 or so that has a more primitive touch screen and I never use it. Partly it's out of habit, and party it's my OCD that doesn't want fingerprints on the screen (and my notebook has a digipen, even). Yeah, unless it's a convertible I don't find the touchscreen very useful. Probably most of that is Microsoft's fault though. There's nothing you can really do quicker with touch in Windows 8 than just continuing to use the mouse/trackpad.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:20 |
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Martytoof posted:Maybe I'm just being nitpicky but I am really put off by the Windows logo hard-printed on the display bezel. I'm not anti-Windows or anything, but I really wish they hadn't included it on there. I wonder how much Microsoft paid for that.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:24 |
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QuarkJets posted:1) How many DIMM slots does it have? If it has 1 DIMM and 8GB, then it's going to be hard to upgrade because it only takes 1 stick of RAM. This may be the thing that finally pushes someone to offer a 16GB SODIMM. Last time I checked nobody manufactures one, or ever has. At which point Ivy Bridge thinkpad users can finally upgrade to 32GB of RAM* *(for no good reason)
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:25 |
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Progressive JPEG posted:Never understood anyone who left those windows/intel/amd stickers on their laptop beyond the first day or so This one isn't a sticker. It's part of the bezel, and it's a touch key for Start.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:25 |
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I don't remember this being mentioned in the Yoga 2 reviews on various websites, but will there be a good reason to go with athe i7? Or will it just get extra hot for a little performance gain? And will the Yoga 2 ram be self upgradeable?
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:28 |
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JustJeff88 posted:I am leaning towards a 510 because I want a larger machine with an integrated 9-key, as trivial as that might sound to some. I should take it from this remark then that the screen quality is quite good? The screen quality is nothing to write home about. I think that it looks good, but others have complained about it. There are definitely better screens out there quote:I figured as much from your original post when you mentioned it as cache space, but I wanted to make sure - having a small SSD just for the OS to greatly increase boot speeds would be awfully nice, not that I couldn't get one on my own. My current gaming laptop has 3 (yes, 3... I said that it was a beast) old-style drives in it, and I could always pull one of those. As I said above, the Blu-Ray is just a nice luxury and the price difference seems pretty minor. I might get the top-end 510 anyway and then pull the SSD from it - $999 is comfortably within my budget. Does anyone know how long this sale will last? The model that I just referred to is marked down $500 according to the site and if it were to go back up to $1499 it certainly wouldn't be much of a deal then. As soon as a sale ends Lenovo just launches another sale. These laptops have been perpetually on sale since they were released, so don't worry about waiting. I would highly recommend an SSD, I replaced the HDD with an SSD in my Y410p and it is a dream. The laptop fully boots in about 2 seconds, I don't ever feel the urge to use sleep or hibernate mode.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:29 |
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Bah the Best Buy order system is messed up now. Went to check out and said Amex wouldn't approve the charge, called them and said everything was fine and they weren't sure why it wasn't approved. I tried again but got an error saying it was removed from my cart due to high demand. Now it can only be purchased for store pickup but it's of course not available anywhere so it's not possible to actually order it. Oh well, it was worth a try. Edit: The i5 version is still showing available for shipping if anybody wanted to try that. Butt Soup Barnes fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Oct 13, 2013 |
# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:30 |
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The Yoga 2 Pro has a SRP of 1,599 Euros over here in the old world. The 1200 USD price from Best Buy comes to 885 Euros (+ tax). Jesus. I could probably pick one up by flying to the east coast and still come out ahead.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:37 |
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JustJeff88 posted:I realise fully that I am in the minority here, but I've never cared much about touch screens on personal computers. I have a small, portable notebook from 2008 or so that has a more primitive touch screen and I never use it. Partly it's out of habit, and party it's my OCD that doesn't want fingerprints on the screen (and my notebook has a digipen, even). No, I can't stand touch interfaces for desktops or laptops either. I would much rather use the mouse for just about everything I can think of. I'm not saying that touch doesn't have its uses, but unless the UI is built for touch I'm not sure why I would bother. Even things like Windows 8, I much prefer to use desktop apps instead of Metro apps, so if I had a touch screen all I would maybe use it for is to launch apps. Which would be really dumb when I can do that with a mouse as well. Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion and I don't begrudge anyone liking touch interfaces more, but I'm definitely in your camp here.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:40 |
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Aphrodite posted:Yeah, unless it's a convertible I don't find the touchscreen very useful. If by convertible you mean the kind that you can flip the screen around and use it as a pad, mine has that and I still never use it. Martytoof posted:No, I can't stand touch interfaces for desktops or laptops either. I would much rather use the mouse for just about everything I can think of. Indeed - to each his own. I'm not crazy about these Lenovo machines having Windows 8 on them as I strongly prefer 7, but every machine is built for that now. My mother just bought a cheap productivity notebook and I put 7 on that, leading to all sorts of problems. QuarkJets posted:The screen quality is nothing to write home about. I think that it looks good, but others have complained about it. There are definitely better screens out there I'm not hard to please in that area - the PC I am posting on has a 1600x1200 4:3 monitor from years ago (I don't care for widescreen) whose picture is about as sharp as a grapefruit, and it doesn't bother me. My old gaming laptop is gorgeous, though. Overpriced oversized piece of shite that I should never have bought, but drat pretty screen. QuarkJets posted:As soon as a sale ends Lenovo just launches another sale. These laptops have been perpetually on sale since they were released, so don't worry about waiting. I had a feeling that it was one of those "perpetual sale" situations. QuarkJets posted:I would highly recommend an SSD, I replaced the HDD with an SSD in my Y410p and it is a dream. The laptop fully boots in about 2 seconds, I don't ever feel the urge to use sleep or hibernate mode. I would really like a small one for my OS for that very reason, and then keep my games, media and productivity software on another old-fashioned drive. I assume that a 510 would allow me to do that? The problem that I find frustrating is that the SSD included in the upper-tier models is cache space only, so basically useless for me. What irks me is that the 510 models that come with the better screen (I could live without the Blu-Ray, but I want the better display) both come with that SSD, so I feel like I am stuck paying for something that I wouldn't use and just pop out in favour of an actual drive that I can actually install poo poo on.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 20:58 |
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QuarkJets posted:Don't worry too much about the initial RAM configuration; these are the two things you want to be asking whenever you look at a laptop and are worried about RAM: I'm aware The reason I said that was because it looks like the MacBook Air looks like her best option and the memory's not upgradeable for that.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 21:17 |
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fookolt posted:What are the good ultrabooks at the 11-12" screen size other than the MacBook Air? It's for my girlfriend; she wants a whole lot of battery life and portability and wants to check some other options before going with the MacBook Air. From last page, but my wife just got a Yoga 11s. She wanted something 13" or smaller, didn't care too much about battery, and as cheap as possible (and I wouldn't let her get a complete piece of poo poo). The Yoga 11s is actually quite nice, but 4-5 hours of battery is all you should expect. That's not bad, and I was pleasantly surprised it matched the 13" version, but it won't come close to a Haswell MBA. A touchscreen on an 11" laptop is actually reasonably useful, too, since it's that much closer to a tablet in size and distance to you. The IPS screen is also quite good. If Lenovo refreshes with a Haswell Yoga 11s before you need to get a laptop, I'd definitely check it out, especially if there's an 8GB RAM configuration. It's not got as good battery life as the 11" MBA and probably not quite as good a keyboard or touchpad (though they're still good), but I like the screen better, the touchscreen is reasonably useful, it'll have Windows, and will be cheaper.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 21:38 |
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I don't see anything on Lenovo's own website about it but Bestbuy has been selling a Haswell Yoga 11 for a few weeks now: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ideapad...=6#tab=overview
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 21:44 |
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Aphrodite posted:This one isn't a sticker. It's part of the bezel, and it's a touch key for Start.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 22:14 |
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JustJeff88 posted:I would really like a small one for my OS for that very reason, and then keep my games, media and productivity software on another old-fashioned drive. I assume that a 510 would allow me to do that? The problem that I find frustrating is that the SSD included in the upper-tier models is cache space only, so basically useless for me. What irks me is that the 510 models that come with the better screen (I could live without the Blu-Ray, but I want the better display) both come with that SSD, so I feel like I am stuck paying for something that I wouldn't use and just pop out in favour of an actual drive that I can actually install poo poo on. Yes, you could do that. It does suck that all of the Y510p models with a screen resolution larger than 768 force you to also get the hybrid drive. I think last month the Y510p models followed the same upgrade flow as the Y410p models, so you could get the higher resolution screen but with the non-cached hard drive. Basically there are three slots on the Y410p/Y510p for hard drives 1) The normal hard drive slot, which is SATA 3 and is what the stock hard drive is attached to. If you buy an SSD, it should go here. 2) The ultrabay, which is SATA 3 and is what the stock optical drive or SLI graphics card is plugged into. If you want a blu-ray player, it goes here. If you want to keep the stock HDD as an easily-removable storage device, it goes here. You can keep both, but only one could be plugged in at a time. 3) An empty NGFF slot. These types of drives are basically mSATA drives but in a smaller form factor. Right now you can't actually buy these drives anywhere, and it will be at least a few months before the first retail NGFF drives become available. I don't really know anything about these things
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 22:57 |
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JustJeff88 posted:I am leaning towards a 510 because I want a larger machine with an integrated 9-key, as trivial as that might sound to some. I should take it from this remark then that the screen quality is quite good? I am literally packing up my Y510P to return as we speak. It's definitely a quality device, but screen is the most important thing to me, and the 1080P screen wasn't good enough. It's not bad by any stretch, and the bang for the buck on the device is great, but the screen just can't compare to my HDTV or phone. I'm just going to grab that new HP 11 chromebook because it's the only computer I've seen with an IPS display that isn't $1,500+.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 23:06 |
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QuarkJets posted:Yes, you could do that. It does suck that all of the Y510p models with a screen resolution larger than 768 force you to also get the hybrid drive. I think last month the Y510p models followed the same upgrade flow as the Y410p models, so you could get the higher resolution screen but with the non-cached hard drive. Ah, thanks for telling me this... I didn't realize that an optical drive and an extra hard drive were mutually exclusive - I'll keep that in mind. I kind of wanted to wait until November to make a purchase for financial reasons, so maybe I should hold off and see what's an offer next month since apparently they change their inventory on a monthly basis. Maybe I can find a more convenient upgrade path in a few weeks.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 23:08 |
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Socrates16 posted:I am literally packing up my Y510P to return as we speak. It's definitely a quality device, but screen is the most important thing to me, and the 1080P screen wasn't good enough. It's not bad by any stretch, and the bang for the buck on the device is great, but the screen just can't compare to my HDTV or phone. I'm just going to grab that new HP 11 chromebook because it's the only computer I've seen with an IPS display that isn't $1,500+. Yogas, Zenbooks, lots of other newer ultrabooks? I mean, they won't have the power that the Y510 has, but they're a lot closer to it than the Chromebook will be. I think any of the Ivy Bridge ones would be <$1000 now and will still get at least as good battery life as the HP Chromebook, too.
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# ? Oct 13, 2013 23:29 |
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Progressive JPEG posted:yeah just sayin in general Those things are usually stuck way the hell on there, and it would be a lot more trouble to take them off than just ignore them.
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# ? Oct 14, 2013 00:20 |
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Butt Soup Barnes posted:I don't see anything on Lenovo's own website about it but Bestbuy has been selling a Haswell Yoga 11 for a few weeks now: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ideapad...=6#tab=overview This must be an error or something.
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# ? Oct 14, 2013 00:32 |
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Russian Bear posted:This must be an error or something. I thought so too but the reviews are all mentioning increased battery life and Haswell processors so who knows.
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# ? Oct 14, 2013 00:35 |
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Socrates16 posted:I am literally packing up my Y510P to return as we speak. It's definitely a quality device, but screen is the most important thing to me, and the 1080P screen wasn't good enough. It's not bad by any stretch, and the bang for the buck on the device is great, but the screen just can't compare to my HDTV or phone. I'm just going to grab that new HP 11 chromebook because it's the only computer I've seen with an IPS display that isn't $1,500+. Well, at least you're honest. Like I said, my gaming desktop has a 4:3 monitor from 2005 or so that you would probably think is hideous, and that's fine, but screen just isn't that big of a deal to me despite my old gaming laptop having a gorgeous one. This line of notebooks is just so much power for the money, I think that's right up my street.
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# ? Oct 14, 2013 00:51 |
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Butt Soup Barnes posted:Bah the Best Buy order system is messed up now. Went to check out and said Amex wouldn't approve the charge, called them and said everything was fine and they weren't sure why it wasn't approved. I tried again but got an error saying it was removed from my cart due to high demand. Now it can only be purchased for store pickup but it's of course not available anywhere so it's not possible to actually order it. That's still pretty crazy. Here's the i5 for $1000, which is equivalent to the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus that's $1400 (i5, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD). I still think it must be an error, but I hope not! Even if it is a mistake, there's another listing for that model that says "coming soon" and has the same price, so maybe it's a listed-too-early rather than a wrong price kind of mistake? sourdough fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Oct 14, 2013 |
# ? Oct 14, 2013 01:18 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 14:13 |
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RVProfootballer posted:That's still pretty crazy. Here's the i5 for $1000, which is equivalent to the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus that's $1400 (i5, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD). I still think it must be an error, but I hope not! Even if it is a mistake, there's another listing for that model that says "coming soon" and has the same price, so maybe it's a listed-too-early rather than a wrong price kind of mistake? THAT is an excellent deal and right up my alley. 3200x1800 IPS display? *Begins drooling* I don't think it's a mistake. CNET has the MSRP at $1,099 http://www.cnet.com/laptops/lenovo-ideapad-yoga-2/4505-3121_7-35827161.html
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# ? Oct 14, 2013 01:51 |