New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

Screw lenovo, I've had nothing but headaches with their crap. Dells are a lot easier to service and are far more upgradeable. Lenovo makes it hard to upgrade (like having to replace an entire LVDS cable just to add a bluetooth module, etc); dell makes it a lot easier (plus no wifi whitelists!).

And that reminds me, that my "Lenovorola" e4, randomly turns the volume down, when idle, but not when playing music on Spotify, LMHO!

[dmill89]

Re: New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

Dell Precision laptops have Xeon options.

yep, and the newer ones are BGA just like the i5/i7 .

[lti]

Re: New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

Also, every new Dell computer comes with MaxxAudio "enhancements." If you join a meeting remotely, everyone will sound like the teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoons until you turn off MaxxAudio.

Yes, that happened to me on a Dell Precision.

[ratdude747]

Re: New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

Also, every new Dell computer comes with MaxxAudio "enhancements." If you join a meeting remotely, everyone will sound like the teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoons until you turn off MaxxAudio.

Yes, that happened to me on a Dell Precision.

MaxxAudio does indeed suck. It can be nice, but from my experience does more harm than good.

[sofTest]

Re: New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

Having just a couple of weeks ago bought a E5470, that you are considering, intended as replacement for the E4310 that I also have owned for six years, a few observations might be of use for you.

- the E5470 got a chiclet keyboard. Some hate them. I'm still undecided, but I'm probably OK with it. I don't type a lot on this PC anyway. It supposedly is a lot more spill and dust resistant, that might be handy for some.

- storage expandability on the E5470 are badly documented. The BIOS got support for 3 SATA and one M.2 PCI-e drive, a total of four choices. On the physical side, it's not that simple. There is a 2280 M.2 slot. It is documented that the E5470 is delivered with both M.2 SATA and PCI-e drives from Dell in this slot, so it should be a dual purpose slot. If your computer does not come with a M.2 drive originally, you would need to buy a fastener bracket to use that slot. That accounts for two of the BIOS choices. There is a space for a 2.5" SATA drive, IF the PC does not got the big battery pack AND the dual purpose M.2 are not populated. If your computer came with a M.2 drive, you would need to buy a special Dell cable and bracket to mount a 2.5" drive, in addition to removing the M.2. That's the third option. Totally unsupported by Dell, the WWAN slot have been populated by many with a M.2 SATA 2240 drive. That's the fourth choice. Fine it you do not got or need a WWAN card. Mine does, so I'm investigating putting a M.2 2240 SATA drive or a mSATA drive on a 2.5" adapter, and connect it up to the Dell 2.5" SATA cable, to populate the 2.5" drives lesser space not taken by the long M.2 drive. I would need to fabricate some kind of custom fastener for this solution. I have not found anyone documenting doing this, so it's somewhat experimental. Or I might get a 2.5" stripped of its casing to fit. I've also seen claims that not all models of E5470 uses 4 lines for the PCI-e. It was suggested that the U-processors uses two lines, and HQ-processors uses four. Can't check that myself (yet), as the M.2 2280 in mine is a SATA-model.

- the E5470 is not that much speedier in general use than the E4310. I seldom max out the CPU my self, even on the 4310s 560M. My E5470 got the 6300U. More important for me is fastish disk IO (nothing spinning would to) and a largeish local storage, as I from time to time uses some large file sets on this computer. My E4310 got 2x240 GB SSD now, but the E5470 will get about 750 GB in some configuration not yet decided. I like dual physical disk configurations, as it is easier for me to swap an emptied storage/work disk than cloning a disk with OS on.

- you mentioned Minecraft especially, but as I have no gaming interest, I googled it. If I understand correctly, the CPU is most often the bottleneck for Minecraft. You might want to google your current CPU vs. the model you are considering, to see if it might give enough benefits. I don't know how Minecraft utilizes CPUs, so I'm blank.

- the E5470 got SS USB. That might be fast enough to boot a casual OS from! I'm thinking something like an external SSD with SS USB support. I will probably test it some time during winter to come. Until I've figured out internal storage, I will use an external 2.5" 500 GB SS USB SSD for storage/work.

- the E5470 got no optical, as is usual for newer laptops. No loss for me.

- why do I upgrade? More display estate. The E5470 got a FHD display. I have never liked displays with less than 1000 lines (ish). Not 900, and especially not 768 like the E4310 got. My other most used laptops now got at least FHD displays, or better like my Surface Pro 4s. It's time for me to leave that low res technology for my most frequent uses.

You mentioned future proof. If you got special known requirements coming up, fine, plan for it. Else, no one knows anything about what the future brings, and it's requirements. I tend to upgrade in steps when needed, until it's not practical or cost effective any more. Like the E4310, if I had found a FHD panel upgrade at a reasonable cost, I probably would have upgraded. I did however never find any such upgrade, nor an attempt documented by anyone. I know and trust equipment I have owned a while, but with new stuff there is always a chance of discovering dislikes and problems one didn't have with the old stuff. And there is usually trade offs in regard to loss of features vs. gaining new.

Anyways, just my 2 cent.

[ratdude747]

Re: New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

Sounds like I may be better off saving for an SSD and possibly a RAM upgrade. I have an i7 3632QM in my E6430. Specs:

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i...processor.html

I have 8GB of DDR3... 16 would help.

It uses the HD4000 graphics in the CPU. It has a 1600x900 display.

[ratdude747]

Re: New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

Sounds like I may be better off saving for an SSD and possibly a RAM upgrade. I have an i7 3632QM in my E6430. Specs:

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i...processor.html

I have 8GB of DDR3... 16 would help.

It uses the HD4000 graphics in the CPU. It has a 1600x900 display.

Also, it does have a couple USB 3.0 ports. I still wouldn't want to use it for an OS drive... not on a laptop, anyway.

[ratdude747]

Re: New SSD vs. "New" Laptop

Bit the bullet... and bought an Intel 545s 256GB SSD. I'm in Canada again (another company trip), and Canada Computers had a sale (to match Newegg). Yes, I got raped on sales tax (yay Ontario ) but it needed done, and I had the motivation at the time (along with the tools needed to make the swap, I came prepared.

Pictures:

Shiny packaging:



Apparently live arch sticks support HDMI; here's how I found out:



This is what I use hotel room TV's for... otherwise they're brainwash/idiot boxes that I have no use for most of the time. But they do work as a good 2nd monitor and external speaker system

Old and new drives:



Getting the new drive to run both OS's was fun. The linux part was easy (done it a million times, no sweat)... migrating the windows install was trickier... discovered what "active" partitions are, and once I "activated" the new partitions, I was able to use a windows 7 recovery disk (USB made from the CD ISO) to make the drives bootable from GRUB. All well now... and from the testing I've done, much faster. My disk speeds are no longer the bottleneck as per the windows performance index (went from 5.9 to 6.5, drive speed maxed at 7.9 :P ). And I did novabench it:



....

As for the old SSD, luckily I was able to remove the black trim ring to slim the drive down; it's now in the keyboard base of my Asus Transformer T200TA (as it's too small for any of my other laptops in service to not have the same problem, but too good to toss/shelve). That poor thing only has 64GB internal storage (and that's double what the base model includes ); good thing ASUS gave some provision for expansion.