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MechaFrogzilla posted:I've been looking around for a new laptop for a little bit, want something that is portable that I can also do some gaming on. I'm currently looking at this, and wondering if I should pull the trigger: Good things have been said about the keyboard, and allegedly it has a fantastic trackpad. Of course the newer version has a better screen, which would be good for your e-peen.
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May 3, 2014 01:39
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DrDork posted:Because you can get a laptop with this year's GPU in it for the same price, without the garish logo. You trade a 256GB SSD and crappy 1600x900 TN screen for a 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD and a beautiful 1080p IPS. It's lighter, too: http://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-P34Gv2-CF1-14-Gaming-Notebook/dp/B00JLJICZG/ About the only downside is the battery life (~4hrs vs ~6hrs for light use). I've been looking at that exact laptop. I found some reviews/info online (can't seem to find it again right now) that mentioned a version of the laptop with only a SSD, but in exchange a much larger battery. The review (from a UK site, I think) said they reliably got 6-7 hours of non-gaming time out of it, which sounds amazing. It's pretty much exactly what I'm looking for (no optical drive, large battery, discrete graphics, generally slim profile). The issue is I can't seem to find that particular version anywhere. Is that the sort of thing that might only be overseas or something? Xotic has no options on the battery, anyway. Are there other sites I should check? I'm in the US, if it matters.
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May 3, 2014 02:10
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The P34Gv2 itself has only just started to pop up for sale, so it doesn't really surprise me that Xotic doesn't have a full selection of models yet. Give it another few weeks.
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May 3, 2014 02:35
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havenwaters posted:Overall display quality is pretty bad and the cpu can get hot, 92-93 celsius hot. Pretty good/great battery life for a gaming laptop though. Ah, you know, I knew I was forgetting something. You're right, the screen is not great, and that's a concern. I'll hold off for now, thanks all.
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May 3, 2014 03:22
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Seems like the GTX 860 is in most of these ~$1000 range refreshes. Is it a pretty big jump over, say, a 750M or 760M? It seems to be ranked high on Notebookcheck.
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May 3, 2014 04:55
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Nickoten posted:Seems like the GTX 860 is in most of these ~$1000 range refreshes. Is it a pretty big jump over, say, a 750M or 760M? It seems to be ranked high on Notebookcheck. The 860M is a decent jump over the 760M, and the 850M simply smashes the the 750M.
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May 3, 2014 09:22
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Nickoten posted:Seems like the GTX 860 is in most of these ~$1000 range refreshes. Is it a pretty big jump over, say, a 750M or 760M? It seems to be ranked high on Notebookcheck. So, yeah, it's a big fuckin' bump.
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May 3, 2014 09:42
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I'm looking for a new laptop that's similar to the ASUS UL30Vt-X1 I got about 4 years ago: http://www.amazon.com/UL30Vt-X1-13-3-Inch-Laptop-Windows-Premium/dp/B002XZLURC That was the best laptop I've ever had. The main things that made it great: - 11 hour battery life - Fast one-button switching between NVidia and Intel graphics for power saving - Only 3.7 pounds - Build quality was good. I carried it around in a backpack and abused it a fair amount and nothing ever wore out This will mostly be for doing software development and general work but I'd like it be OK for gaming too. Like if it can run modern/recent games with the settings turned down that's good enough. I'm willing to go a bit heavier than the UL30Vt, but would like to keep the long battery life if possible. The main things I want to avoid: I don't want an optical drive, and I don't want a touchscreen or detachable screen. I guess a lot of laptops come with touchscreens now so if I have to buy one that comes with one I guess I will, but I'd prefer not to. If I want to get something similar to that UL30Vt with modern specs, does Asus still make laptops like that? Is that what they call an Ultrabook now? I haven't really kept up on the laptop market.
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May 3, 2014 16:05
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Macbook Air 13" is a really good deal, especially after they shaved $100 off the price recently. You'll get 12 hours of battery, fantastic build quality, no touchscreen or convertible silliness (although it does have a great trackpad), and it weighs about a pound less than your old laptop (2.9 lbs or so). The HD5000 graphics are the best you can get without going to a power sucking discrete card. By all accounts it's quite capable of running games at moderate to low settings. You can run Windows of course with bootcamp, Parallels, etc. If you're doing development, Mac OS is quite good with homebrew or other package managers. I really don't think you'll find a comparable PC laptop for $999.
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May 3, 2014 16:15
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mod sassinator posted:Macbook Air 13" is a really good deal, especially after they shaved $100 off the price recently. You'll get 12 hours of battery, fantastic build quality, no touchscreen or convertible silliness (although it does have a great trackpad), and it weighs about a pound less than your old laptop (2.9 lbs or so). The HD5000 graphics are the best you can get without going to a power sucking discrete card. By all accounts it's quite capable of running games at moderate to low settings. You can run Windows of course with bootcamp, Parallels, etc. If you're doing development, Mac OS is quite good with homebrew or other package managers. I really don't think you'll find a comparable PC laptop for $999. Interesting, I hadn't considered Apple. That price is about the max I'd want to spend, although I'll have to add the cost of Windows to that. What if I ease up on the weight and battery life requirements a bit? Would an 8 hour battery life open up any options for PC laptops? Edit: I'm mostly going to be developing Windows applications using .NET, so a Windows dev environment is needed. Doing some reading, it looks like Ultrabooks are basically the modern version of a light laptop like I had before. And all the new ones come with touchscreens? That's stupid. a shiny rock fucked around with this message at 16:43 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 16:24
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Parallax Scroll posted:Interesting, I hadn't considered Apple. That price is about the max I'd want to spend, although I'll have to add the cost of Windows to that.
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May 3, 2014 17:42
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Bob Morales posted:Are you in college (or know someone who is)? The leftover 2013 Airs, which are pretty much the same as the new 2014 models, are $750 at Best Buy with student discount. That's not a bad deal. I know a few grad students if that qualifies.
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May 3, 2014 18:16
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My edu address I still have access to from 2007 worked. As long as it ends in .edu it's good.
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May 3, 2014 18:24
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The Dave posted:My edu address I still have access to from 2007 worked. As long as it ends in .edu it's good. You need a .edu email address, that you can still check? I don't have one of those anymore. Both of my old universities close your email account when you're no longer a student.
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May 3, 2014 18:32
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Yeah they send a confirmation email.
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May 3, 2014 18:40
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Anyway, the Macbook Air doesn't have discrete graphics, which is one of the reasons I liked that old Asus. Does Asus (or anyone else) still make anything good with discrete graphics that you can switch off to save power?
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May 3, 2014 18:49
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All discrete graphics turns off to save power now (nVidia Optimus, AMD Enduro), though most laptops are going through refreshes right now so you'd probably have to do some research on what's available. Last gen only the Acer V7 and the Lenovo Y410p were under $950, with things like Clevo's 13" discrete GPU model (forget the name) at around $1150 with SSD if I remember correctly and the Gigabyte P34G up probably above your budget. MBAs are fantastic machines but settling for HD5000 if you really care about playing games is probably not ideal as you suspect because it's not any more efficient per watt, new mobile GPUs are fantastic, and HD5000 still kind of sucks performance wise. As always, look up benchmarks for what you plan on doing. Screen quality wise, mainstream systems are starting to cut into the lead Apple has historically enjoyed too. You won't be able to touch the battery life figures, though.
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May 3, 2014 19:24
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Playing any games, even something small like FTL, makes the fans on my 13" Macbook Air go nuts and it becomes hot enough to melt your balls. I love the laptop but something about games really messes with it. It will also suck down battery much faster if you use Windows on it.
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May 3, 2014 21:01
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I need a new work laptop that works well with Linux (preferably Ubuntu). My company doesn't really have a budget or a preferred vendor, so things are pretty open as long as it's less than around $1500. I'd like it to be in the 13-14" range (i.e as close to 3lbs as possible), have a high-dpi screen if possible, and ideally some way to drive multiple monitors. I'd really like something with keyboard / trackpoint / build quality on par with a Macbook Air, just with solid Linux support and a higher-res screen. The Lenovo X1 looks good except for the weird keyboard. What else is there? I'm kinda leery of Dell, HP, and Asus, but maybe they've improved. Lenovo seems to be going downhill  .Is it a dumb idea to put Linux on a MBP?
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May 3, 2014 21:31
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I went ahead and took the plunge on the Gigabyte P34Gv2 after realizing/remembering the computer I'm using presently was just to be a stopgap measure after not having any computer at all for a while. It's my first time ordering from xotic, though--how accurate are their time estimates for the different phases, usually?
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May 3, 2014 21:47
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Thanks to advice from this thread and happening to find a refurb unit at $600 from Micro Center, I now own a Yoga 2 Pro. For anyone familiar with the Lenovo software, is there anything that might be worth keeping?
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May 3, 2014 22:29
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Nickoten posted:Seems like the GTX 860 is in most of these ~$1000 range refreshes. Is it a pretty big jump over, say, a 750M or 760M? It seems to be ranked high on Notebookcheck. I feel like the 870m is the sweet spot between the budget and performance. The 780 is really good but even though it's the old model getting a laptop with one is still pretty much the same price as the newer models when you factor in the other little hardware improvements 
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May 3, 2014 22:32
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evensevenone posted:Is it a dumb idea to put Linux on a MBP? Quite the opposite, you're combining the best hardware with the most open/free software (though not quite so much with Ubuntu  ) Mu Zeta posted:Playing any games, even something small like FTL, makes the fans on my 13" Macbook Air go nuts and it becomes hot enough to melt your balls. I love the laptop but something about games really messes with it. It will also suck down battery much faster if you use Windows on it. That's hilarious, my Toshiba Chromebook handles that game fine. Battery drains faster, unsurprisingly.
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May 3, 2014 22:49
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I'm looking to buy a laptop for work (and paying for it myself) Will definitely be using multiple screens, and would like to be able to use 2 externals + the laptop screen at the same time. Is a discrete graphics card necessary for this? My previous one could either run laptop + 1 external, or 2 externals and no laptop but was integrated graphics.
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May 3, 2014 23:23
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What's the resolution of the monitors? If you're not gaming at all you might be able to get away with one
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May 3, 2014 23:29
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Christoff posted:What's the resolution of the monitors? If you're not gaming at all you might be able to get away with one They'll be 1920x1080. It's mostly a preference for how I work. I won't be gaming at all on it (or like 1%) but need/prefer lots of screen real estate for my work (many windows open at once). Some insane part of me is actually considering a Surface Pro 2, I guess the latest Windows update allows for daisy chaining of monitors...
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May 3, 2014 23:34
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Trebuchet King posted:I went ahead and took the plunge on the Gigabyte P34Gv2 after realizing/remembering the computer I'm using presently was just to be a stopgap measure after not having any computer at all for a while. It's my first time ordering from xotic, though--how accurate are their time estimates for the different phases, usually?
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May 3, 2014 23:53
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Ah, okay. I'm in phase one, and I've got the message that spells out the different phases and how long each takes and all that and was, well, daunted. Thanks!
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May 4, 2014 00:03
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evensevenone posted:Is it a dumb idea to put Linux on a MBP? I wouldn't recommend it. Linux on Mac hardware has a ton of issues, especially if you want to keep an OSX partition.
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May 4, 2014 01:00
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Alright, I think I'm throwing out the idea of a 2-in-1 like a Yoga or Surface Pro. I'd rather just have the extra power and ease of external monitor use. So, another "Thoughts on my T440p build?" -Intel Core i5-4200M Processor (3MB Cache, up to 3.10GHz) -14.0" HD+ (1600 x 900), Mobile Broadband Ready -Intel HD Graphics 4600 with docking connector -4GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600MHz SODIMM -500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm -Intel Dual Band Wireless 7260AC with Bluetooth 4.0 I'm thinking I'll upgrade the RAM and hard drive myself? Is the dual band wireless still a worthwhile upgrade? Are either of the next to i5 upgrades (4300m and 4330m) worth it? Is the 1600x900 display upgrade good enough, or is it crap until the 1080p screen? And final question- Do I have to buy the discrete graphics card in order to use the DisplayPort and VGA together? Or do I have to buy some stupid dock to use two external monitors with the integrated graphics card? Apologies for all the questions.
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May 4, 2014 05:12
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spidoman posted:Alright, I think I'm throwing out the idea of a 2-in-1 like a Yoga or Surface Pro. I'd rather just have the extra power and ease of external monitor use. Given this config (with 1600x900 in particular), I would ask, why not a T440? It's lighter, you can still upgrade the RAM to 8 or 12GB. (You can't get 1920x1080 on the T440, you can on the T440s.) spidoman posted:I'm thinking I'll upgrade the RAM and hard drive myself? Is the dual band wireless still a worthwhile upgrade? Are either of the next to i5 upgrades (4300m and 4330m) worth it? Is the 1600x900 display upgrade good enough, or is it crap until the 1080p screen? Well, I asked why not a T440, with its ULV processor, so I guess to be self-consistent I'd answer that neither of the i5 upgrades are worth it. Or maybe they are! It depends on how much you use the laptop and what for. Generally speaking some people would really want the i7-4700MQ or better, others would just be fine with the i5-4200M. But slight speed upgrades like the 4300M or 4330M could be worth it considering the life of the machine and what tasks you might use it for. (Single-core performance improvements are a nice-to-have.) The 1600x900 display is good enough for getting-work-done purposes. The 1920x1080 screen is real nice (if you don't get a bad spotlight-effect LG model), but you don't have to get it. Will it sit at a desk hooked up to monitors all day, or will you be watching movies on it all the time and be so disappointed that your blues aren't perfect? It depends on how you use the machine and how much you value money. spidoman posted:And final question- Do I have to buy the discrete graphics card in order to use the DisplayPort and VGA together? Or do I have to buy some stupid dock to use two external monitors with the integrated graphics card? Apologies for all the questions. No, no. And I'd go integrated. Less stuff that can break. Maybe the discrete GPU lets you have three external or something, or three external + one internal. Edit: To clarify, you can use two external + 1 internal on integrated graphics with the T440p. shrughes fucked around with this message at 05:30 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 05:26
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What do we think of Dell's Precision M2800? If I hadn't already dropped money on the M4800 (Which I might regret still down the line, if I can't workaround the power management issues) I might have gotten that.
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May 4, 2014 05:35
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SwissArmyDruid posted:What do we think of Dell's Precision M2800? If I hadn't already dropped money on the M4800 (Which I might regret still down the line, if I can't workaround the power management issues) I might have gotten that. It's just a Latitude E6540 with different firmware loaded on the GPU. Edit: Not that there's anything wrong per se with it or the E6540. Reportedly the E6540 has a better 1920x1080 screen than the M4800 comes with (since that has the 3200x1800 option) so maybe there's that? But still it's not a real workstation, it only has two RAM slots (right?).
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May 4, 2014 05:43
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shrughes posted:Given this config (with 1600x900 in particular), I would ask, why not a T440? It's lighter, you can still upgrade the RAM to 8 or 12GB. (You can't get 1920x1080 on the T440, you can on the T440s.) shrughes posted:Well, I asked why not a T440, with its ULV processor, so I guess to be self-consistent I'd answer that neither of the i5 upgrades are worth it. Or maybe they are! It depends on how much you use the laptop and what for. Generally speaking some people would really want the i7-4700MQ or better, others would just be fine with the i5-4200M. But slight speed upgrades like the 4300M or 4330M could be worth it considering the life of the machine and what tasks you might use it for. (Single-core performance improvements are a nice-to-have.) The 1600x900 display is good enough for getting-work-done purposes. The 1920x1080 screen is real nice (if you don't get a bad spotlight-effect LG model), but you don't have to get it. Will it sit at a desk hooked up to monitors all day, or will you be watching movies on it all the time and be so disappointed that your blues aren't perfect? It depends on how you use the machine and how much you value money. Thanks for all the feedback, if the processor difference isn't that big the T440 would probably work fine.
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May 4, 2014 05:44
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spidoman posted:The low clockspeed on the 4200u makes me a little nervous. Are those fears unfounded? I'll mostly just be using the machine for enterprise management stuff, SQL Studio, various management consoles, Excel, generally all at the same time. Yes? No? But if it's connected to the screens almost all the time, the portability wouldn't be worth having anyway. (For that matter, maybe you should just get the L440.)
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May 4, 2014 05:47
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shrughes posted:It's just a Latitude E6540 with different firmware loaded on the GPU. I'm almost regretting asking this next question: So what is the M4800, then? Did I just blow an extra $500 when I could have reflashed the firmware with a lesser model?
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May 4, 2014 05:47
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SwissArmyDruid posted:I'm almost regretting asking this next question: So what is the M4800, then? Did I just blow an extra $500 when I could have reflashed the firmware with a lesser model? The M4800 has a better AMD GPU option, has two NVIDIA GPU options, more and better CPU options, better cooling. The high-res IGZO screen option, 4 RAM slots so you can upgrade to 32 GB, easier access to the internals, a quick-swap hard drive bay, three monitor outputs on the laptop itself instead of just HDMI/VGA. More optical drive configuration options. (More configuration options for everything.)
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May 4, 2014 05:55
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I'm looking at Lenovos now. Do they make any laptops that don't come with an optical drive? That's just a pointless waste of space in a laptop.
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May 4, 2014 13:55
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Parallax Scroll posted:I'm looking at Lenovos now. Do they make any laptops that don't come with an optical drive? That's just a pointless waste of space in a laptop. The Yoga 2 Pro has no optical drive. I imagine most of the ultrabooks do not.
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May 4, 2014 16:41
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Parallax Scroll posted:I'm looking at Lenovos now. Do they make any laptops that don't come with an optical drive? That's just a pointless waste of space in a laptop. Most of their models don't come with an optical drive.
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May 4, 2014 18:38
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