A few Y400 questions

[epicepe]

So, I bought a refurb Y400 a few months ago, and so far I have loved it. I got it back from a warranty repair yesterday, reconnected the USB ports that some stupid Lenovo employee disconnected, and am now trying to install Ubuntu.

So, first of all: Do I need svl7's BIOS mod? If so, could someone send me a download link? (I don't have permission for the normal ones yet )

Second: How different are various Win8 laptops? I have seen tons of very different tutorials -- will any work on the Y400? If not, which will?

Third: Has anyone seen a 1080P screen for the Y400 for sale?

And last: How much would it help to get a cheap ~32GB mSATA SSD to use as a cache? I am currently HDD-limited and am getting kinda pissed.

Thanks for any help.

[conscriptvirus]

1) you dont NEED the bios mod. Only real advantage is if you are switching graphics cards or need to access an advanced bios menu which pretty much no one does.

2) What kind of tutorials are you talking about? I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. The biggest difference between "win8 laptops" is that some are touch screen which can be useful for win8. The y400 isnt touchscreen. Pretty much most modern day laptops can use Win8.

3) 1080p screen does not exist. You can try finding a 3rd party 14'' 1080p screen, but it may not be compatible and may not fit.

4) Its hard to say. It will help a little, but I havent really seen the advantage of a greater size for the mSATA cache. I have a 16gb msata card and used it as a cache then later partitioned it so I could put some programs on it so that there was now only like 5-6GB cache. Didnt notice a difference between the 16 and 5gb cache in terms of opening file speeds.

[Chowned]

For your msata question, you could always do what I did with my y500. I bought a 256 gig crucial m4 msata ssd to replace the 16 gig cache and installed windows 7 (8 works too) on it. I use my original platter drive as bulk storage. Speed is noticeably faster with the os and programs on the ssd. The msata was around $179 on Amazon.

[peniku8]

3. Only the Y500 comes with an FullHD display, as conscriptvirus said, you could try 3rd party producs but i would not try that...

4. I recomment buying a ssd; about the same price as a msata one (1€/GB, a bit cheaper), you cal also get 128gb ssd for less than 100€

[Alex Sung]

I have the Plextor 128 GB ssd. And that works really well with my y400 set-up. Hope that helps.

[epicepe]

Conscriptvirus:

1), 2). I am talking about installing Ubuntu. Have you tried it?

3) Do you know what connector the screen uses?

4). I currently don't have an mSATA cache. How much of a difference does it make versus just the standard HDD?

[t0astm0nkey]

4) msata SSD has made a noticeable difference for me. But the thing to keep in mind is that SSDs (based on NAND Flash) can only be written to so many times. I'd suggest making a 'RAMDisk' for frequently overwritten files (browser cache) to give you more longevity. That being said, if you are planning on using it for gaming, more than likely you aren't being held back by your HDD