How heavy, yak?

 

Their top model is 4.8kg and their bottom is 3.3kg.

 

That's not so bad, I carry more in books sometimes...

 

Been thinking of getting this Toshiba laptop.

Mainly needed for image processing using MATLAB and occasional gaming. I've got stacks of these huge images, (4727x5122x3 uint8) that take a lot of time to process. Think this system can handle it? Also, have any of you guys have used Toshiba? If so what was your experience with their product.

 

Don't get Toshiba. I have the Satellite L670. Firstly the support is nonexistent, they literally wrote on they website that they don't make any and will not make any drivers for this model(this was a 1 year ago imagine how shitty my video driver is). The other big issue is the cooling part. Absolutely shit. And the USB placement is so stupid it hurts. So don't buy toshiba.

 

Work is giving me a new toy for Christmas-

Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus

Core i7 4500U / 1.8 GHz
Windows 8.1 64-bit
8 GB RAM
256 GB SSD
13.3" multi-touch wide 3200 x 1800 / QHD+
Intel HD Graphics 4400
3.1 lbs. (~1.4 kg)

I'll split the drive to try other OS's, but just the notion of that screen makes me a bit giddy.

 

Are you dead set on under $600? If you're ok with going a bit over and it being a refurb, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231238

If you want new, something comparable to that refurb will cost you around $800.

 

Aye, netadmin/sysadmin. Don't recall mentioning it but I've posted some not-stupid replies in these tech threads- that may be the source of your induction.

 

So I got my new laptop yesterday.

Acer Aspire V3 -772G
Intel i5-4200M
GeForce GTX 760M
17,3 HD
1TB HDD
200GB SSD

Silent as fart in a sawmill. And cool and smooth as a newborn icegiant babys butt.

 

Would anyone be able to recommend a good value laptop for a budget of around £300-350? I don't need it for anything intensive, I won't be playing any games, just general school stuff as well as watching movies and internet browsing. I have a bad habit of having a shitload of tabs open at once, so being capable of that without massive slowdown would be nice. All I know about laptops is that I desperately don't want a Toshiba brand, I'm using one of their laptops at the moment and I'm beginning to contemplate suicide it's so slow and noisy.

 

I have the same question Viewtiful has, but slightly cheaper. 300-400$ instead. I need a cheap laptop for my little 9 year old sister. I can look around at the generic sites, but does anyone know of a specific deal or the like?

 

9 year old? Go buy some decent $150 laptops on Craig's until your sister learns how to take care of it.

I guarantee, she'll probably dump kool-aids on it at least once throughout the laptop lifespan.

 

So yeah, I'm planning on getting a new laptop soonish, probably going to try to take advantage of the Boxing Day sales, I've gotten some advice from Yak and Naeblis and I've been looking at http://www.logicalblueone.com.au/store/45-dedicated-gaming-laptops?orderby=price&orderway=asc

Budget is ~$1200 and I'll be using the laptop mainly for gaming.

 

Wait, you're in Aus? That would explain it.

Don't you have any other websites? Those ones you linked.... are, well, overpriced.

Like, seriously overpriced. Is that because you're in Aus, or...?

Can't you get a Lenovo Y500? It has pretty much all the specs of the $1,199.99 laptop on your link, while being $900 or less.

i7 something at 3Ghz,
GT750M
15.4" @ 1920x1080
1TB of ram

I should know.... I'm typing on it right now.

 

Yes, that's the "Australia tax" at work. Companies like ASUS jack up their prices for us. Those prices you can see are actually remarkably cheap for here. Sure, we can buy laptops from overseas, but then their warranties are worth jack all.

No, you can't get any of the Lenovo Ideapad Y series here. In fact, I don't think you can get any Ideapads at all. Lenovo still only have Thinkpads in this country, which I suspect means no gaming laptops.

Those Horize/Clevo/Metaboxes are actually quite renowned within Australian geeky IT and gaming communities for having a fantastic price-to-performance ratio and being quite decent machines too. They lose out with poor battery life and weight, and so are better aimed at the desktop replacement market. You get that problem with the ASUS G series of gaming laptops too, so it's not a unique problem.

 

I've been looking at the http://www.logicalblueone.com.au/store/559-horize-w670sr-multimedia-notebook.html but according to Naeblis SSD's are good to have, how much of a difference would it make to upgrade to one and if I should get one which should I get?

 

With a gaming laptop you're going to want all of the space that you can get. GTA IV, Dragon Age 1, are both 20-30GB each, and other new games are comparable. On top of Windows, Office, and all of the multiple gigs of anime, tv, and movies you might download, you're going to be pressed for space very quickly. I've got a 500GB drive and I'm constantly deleting and shifting.

I'd recommend two drives: one ssd, and one ordinary hdd.

Choose an SSD for your primary drive and then go down to "Optical Drive or Conversion" and choose an ODD conversion kit for an extra hard drive. You'd be sacrificing your DVD drive, but that's not a big loss since you'd probably want to have upgraded to a Bluray drive at least. The cost of the Bluray upgrade [$99] is the same as just buying an external bluray drive from elsewhere anyway.

I can't even remember the last time I used my optical disc drive. I transfer most files through USB or over the wifi, and so my internal DVD drive is just wasted space.

As to the size of your SSD, others can probably advise you on that better than I can - I still haven't splurged for one. It's on the list for my next computer. The standard HDD tho? The bigger the better. If you're getting an SSD, then your standard HDD could stand to sacrifice speed for size if that trade-off comes up.

Ignore the mSATA stuff. That's like a memory cache for your system [think those hybrid drives] if you decide to skip an SSD. It's not as good as a regular SSD. I wouldn't bother with them myself.