unreal25

Lenovo Ideapad Y500 actually isn't bad at all. I was worried about the gap in (build) quality between Thinkpad and Ideapad and for the short time I held Y500 it actually seemed like a quite decent laptop. Last time I checked an Ideapad (few years ago) I remember the cheap plasticky feeling which luckily wasn't there on Y500.

That said, it does not compete with business grade laptops. Dell Latitude/Precision are really good laptops. It's really unfortunate they can't be configured with IPS RGB LED screens anymore but they are still pretty good nevertheless. HP Elitebooks also similar and they look quite nice IMO, but I don't know much about the workstation models (and their web site is a useless piece of crap so GL finding anything there).

Yep, and you can also flash their graphic card with Radeon/GeForce VBIOS if I remember correctly. Also, IPS RGB LED.

OK I'll give it a try. On the other hand I'm a huge Star Trek fan. Just finished watching Deep Space 9 (I stopped counting how many times I've seen each series).

I actually never watched or read anything related to the Lord of the Rings and I feel like I'm missing out. Anything you would recommend to start with?

Currently, it's always a big tradeoff between portability and power (just look at Razer Blade). I agree 1.5kg is a big difference but 4kg is still fairly heavy IMO. Where do you use M18x right now? (Why not just stick with the desktop and X220?)

Slumdog Millinoaire. Loved it!

Razer Blade.... Sorry couldn't resist.

HP Elitebooks 8560w or 8570w is pretty decent too as it can (could have?) be configured with the DreamColor display. I've no clue about the price and the weight since I currently don't have 3 hours to even attempt to navigate through their website to find this out.

Hi HTWingNut, thanks a lot for sharing your experiences here! It would be awesome if you'll have time to put some pics.

all drivers removed, plugged in, whining ^^ think i will just have to live with it haha

Sounds a lot like my ex-gf. In the case of Core 2 Duo CPUs, I believe disabling the low-power CPU c-state fixed the buzzing problem (even though as I said in my case the sound is so quiet the only way I could hear it under normal conditions is if I press my ear against the laptop keyboard ). It's not happening with other mice?

Well, a desktop CPU is an entirely different story. I was pointing out at the fact n1smo kept changing the paste fairly quickly (or it seemed so from his post). Even if he does a decent job with AS5, the results should be good nevertheless. AS5 certainly doesn't require you to pretreat surfaces (I've used it normally plenty of times), you just won't get the lowest temperatures possible, but they should still be pretty good.

Yeah if its especially pronounced when you move the mouse, I'd bet it's an electromagnetic interference from the mouse. I sometimes hear something on my Thinkpad X200T but you can only (and barely) hear it if you are in the room that's dead silent.

I had a similar problem recently (noise when I moved the mouse) but I heard the sound on speakers and the reason you could hear the noise because the volume control in Windows was set to very low ~few % of the max and the speakers were set to almost max volume so any EM noise was amplified together with the signal coming from the computer. In that case the solution is to simply amplify the signal coming from the computer (~20%+ of the max volume) and the buzzing went away. In your case, it might be something else producing the noise, however.

+1, Exactly, I had one of the ones where Lenovo did apply the thermal paste correctly and I was maxing out 3DMark11 demo at 64C (maxing out meaning running it for 5 hours straight even though the temperature plateau'd at around 30 mins. I have since done something that I'm still regretting, I pulled it off and reapplied cheap ass thermal paste, but I laid it on there beautifully, any nerd would be proud, thinking that it would improve the caked on Lenovo stuff. Temperatures increased 10C, and so I said to myself, well that was stupid. So I purchased some AS5 and after resetting the heatsink probably close to 20 times now, I am still not at the same temperatures while it was stock!!! Talk about fail. But still decent, I max out Furmark at ~87C running the 15min burn-in 1080p benchmark. CPU temps are good to go, just the GPU I think there is a setting issue because one of the screws actually bends the motherboard when tightened but I have loosened it before so the motherboard is flat and the temps actually got worse. It's a real head scratcher... Don't mess with the heatsink if you are seeing good temps!!!

Edit: Forgot to mention, this is with the GPU overclocked to 1155 core and memory overclocked to 2555. Stock settings, it runs very cool.

I think you often need to wait some time for the paste to "set in", I'd think its performance should reach the plateau after few days, but most likely not immediately. I don't have that much experience with different compounds but roughly speaking I think it's good to give it some time.

How do you know its the CPU making the noise? The noise comes from the CPU die?

Ooooh... look at that sexy blue PCB and those two drive bays... but I'm not sure about the red outlines on the keyboards. I guess I much more prefer the "spartan" Thinkpad looks than the "sylish" Ideapad.

Btw, M17x-R2 had (has?) touchpad problem too (the problem being the touchpad is shit). But I guess its not as bad if you use the external mouse often.

In my experience, the contrast is better on glossy screen under ideal (pitch black) conditions -- conditions that I personally had only when I watched something in a completely dark room.

Under any other conditions, even home desktop use, glossy (depends on a particular screen of course) is highly prone to reflections. It boggles my mind when someone would EVER produce a laptop, by definition a portable device (or any other portable device) with a glossy screen.

Keep in mind that if the HD is making noise, its also possible that there's some power savings active so the HD might be turning on and off (for example, if its a secondary drive); but that's probably not happening if it clicks also during file transfer. In this case you can check this option:

Welcome and good luck!

Do you get any beeps when the computer tries to boot up? They (usually) serve as a code to what's wrong, e.g. there will be something like 1 short, 2 long beeps if your RAM is faulty. Also try hooking up an external monitor. I usually figure out easily if something is off with the display because you can sort of see the computer booting (the hard drive LED starts blinking and other LEDs come up as well as the boot goes on).

Why wouldn't you then just put the SSD in the primary bay and a regular hard drive in the secondary?

You know what the scary part is? The other computer companies typically have even worse customer and tech support.

My memorable time was when I was ordering M11x-R1 over the phone and the Dell/AW sales guy tried to convince me that the cheaper CPU was actually a single core (it cost $100 less than the more expensive one and according to benchmarks they were identical in speed). I told him I have ark.intel.com open in my browser right now and I can see that SU4100 in fact has, as expected, two cores.

If this is your last day you should call and just talk to another customer rep.

Yeah, no clue. My impression is that this whole bluetooth thing never really caught on, at least for peripheral devices. The only bluetooth mouse I remember was Razer Orochi which has some quite annoying bug (surprise...) where the mouse would go into a power-saving standby mode if you didn't use it for few seconds and then it would have some lag while its turning on again -- not sure whether that was ever fixed. My main problem with it is that it is quite small. I tried using mice of that size and it literally hurts me to use them; I can't get a good grip. I use Deathadder as a "portable mouse".

Pretty challenging to drive this beast

"Unwanted" ? I kind of felt like I always talked to a person from slums in Mumbai. In the US they always (>99% of the time) connect you to their outsourced Indian call centers, even though that <1% of the time I got someone who spoke decent english he had very little clue about the product he was supposed to support.

Just call them and explain that the non-uniformity is way more than "normal", you have nothing to lose.

The only branded desktop I had was Dell Inspiron and I guess it was ok. It has lasted for over 5 years now, and its still in mint condition (apart from the fact that I really have to dust it out on the inside). I used it mostly as a home server which means it was on pretty much 24/7 for at least 2 years. The only problem with it is that it came with Windows Vista which initially had very unstable drivers.

Desktops are much different than laptops as its much less likely for some part to fail. I recently built a custom desktop but was also looking at pre-made desktops (Dell, Asus and some other weird brands like iBuyPower). Needless to say, they simply cannot compare to custom built desktops. There are probably better choices in terms of brand name desktops for companies where you just need a computer for people to work on and you couldn't care less about what's actually inside... and its probably very convenient to have a single company providing the support for the entire computer. And if you buy business stuff like IBM ThinkCentre, Dell Vostro its still pretty decent. I don't know much about real servers used in more professional settings, but it seems brand-name desktops would probably be a good choice there too.

Alienware has similar support (you get parts next-business day), but I found their desktops too pricey for what you get, compared to custom built. As for "gaming" branded desktops my observation is that they typically consist of a (too) powerful CPU and a sub-par or entry level GPU, priced about $700-$900, which seems to me like a rather bad joke.

That said, if I'll ever have my own research lab, rest assured every desktop computer in it will be custom built.

I don't know, but with the likes of Ubisoft and EA out there, I'm glad they haven't.