Fast and economic laptop, bigger and brilliant screen, overall a good deal. The only drawback I can see is the size if you're a serious traveler.
Showing posts with label refurbished notebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label refurbished notebook. Show all posts
Dell - Inspiron - 17R-N7110 - Intel Core i5-2430M 2.40GHz - 8GB RAM - 640GB HDD - DVD+/-RW - Intel
Fast and economic laptop, bigger and brilliant screen, overall a good deal. The only drawback I can see is the size if you're a serious traveler.
Gateway NV55C28u 15.6-Inch Laptop (Satin Black)
My first computer was a Gateway and I keep coming back. I love the full key board on this computer and the touch pad works like an iPhone which I really like. I wasn't sure that I would like the color, but the texturing adds dimension to the color and I'm liking it more than I thought I would. Its pretty fast and picture quality when Skyping is good.Some people don't think the speakers are lound enough, but they are fine for what I want to do. I also love the sleeker design and the larger screen makes it easy to watch movies. I use an HP at work and since getting this computer -I hate the work computer. I would recommend this to anyone!
No Problems at all.
Buy Gateway NV55C28u 15.6-Inch Laptop (Satin Black) Now
Really stylish! Love the look and feel! Have not any issues with performance or any issues with anything breaking! So far so good! Highly recommend! Great product for it's price, well worth what it cost!Read Best Reviews of Gateway NV55C28u 15.6-Inch Laptop (Satin Black) Here
I've been using my Gateway laptop for awhile now and have not had any problems. I love the color too. This laptop suits my needs perfectly. My only issue has been the black keyboard. I use my laptop in dim lighting and find it hard to find the correct keys. I put a little felt on the 2 main keys (f & j) and my problem is solved. Even though the keyboard is black, I still give this laptop a 5 star.Want Gateway NV55C28u 15.6-Inch Laptop (Satin Black) Discount?
At first i was very upset. The speakers were not working, nor the video. i had to call, speak with technicians, the video improved but I had to send it to them to change the speakers. After that has been ok, although the sound is not great.If you are not computer savy you should be ok, but if you are into watching movies and videos in it, not very recomended.
It is ok as a work tool or for emails.
Sony VAIO E14 Series SVE14125CXW 14-Inch Laptop (White)
Sony has gone downhill in implementation of an overall happy experience in their "lower priced laptops ($569.-$679.)". While I think this unit is overall a decent design, it has a major annoying aspect one can't ignore. The Track pad. Sensitivity is wayward, but the killer part for me is the cheap clacking noise it makes when clicking on it. It makes a cheap plastic clack every time you push it (and you must push it firmly). The PC works great, fast, good keypad, good heat dissipation, fast start up, etc. The speakers are lackluster and the case lid has some sharp edges. I bought mine at F**y's and am suspicious of their product source and them. I find it odd that when opening the box the item looked "almost" expertly repackaged. I suspect either they are selling overuns ,rejected quality items, or refurbished out of country items,and not letting on. Or maybe customs opens items more these days. The giveaway is the plastic covers that are supposed to be taped over(on new items) are not.I'll Buy Amazon next time.
Buy Sony VAIO E14 Series SVE14125CXW 14-Inch Laptop (White) Now
The laptop is beautiful and it Works perfectly, but it seams cheap, I fear that if I am not very very gentle with it, the computer may break. The keyboard and the trackpad look easy to break. But the reason why it looks cheap is because it costs less than other laptops. So, I think I would recommend it to people looking for something cheap, but only if you know you can be careful with it. I think you get what you paid for.Read Best Reviews of Sony VAIO E14 Series SVE14125CXW 14-Inch Laptop (White) Here
this is a really nice computer, you can't obtain a better computer for this price. the backlit keyboard is very useful when you are in low lit conditions. Intel HD graphics 4000 run almost everything you need. bluetooth works perfectly (after some upgrades). procesor is really fast, letting you to run a lot of apps and programs. Windows 8 is a little bit annoying at first sight but you'll get used to it and when you do you'll find out that is a very nice system, really fast to boot up and very fluid. battery lifetime is quite good 3.5 to 4 hours with a single charge. and finally a thing that really impressed me is that this laptop doesn't heat up like other ones. no matter what you do with it, this laptop stay fresh.Want Sony VAIO E14 Series SVE14125CXW 14-Inch Laptop (White) Discount?
My wife fell in love with this laptop. She loved the "pink" color. I read several of the reviews and had mixed feelings about this product. I even talked to the IT guys at work who told me Sony made a solid product. I had reservations based on some of the reviews but I bought this for my wife anyway. We received the laptop in 2 days via Prime, which is great by the way. The moment I opened the box I had concerns. The cloth bag the laptop was in had been obviously opened before so I figure this had to be a return. The fit and finish on this pink and white pastic case is terrible. The corners in the front do not match up well and leave gaps to snag on things. Performance was good, quite fast, but that's where it ends for the good stuff. The Bluetooth did not work, it would not connect with anything. The USB ports would accept some devices but not all. The keyboard area that is pink plastic, had some sort of residue on it that felt rough, almost like a paint overspray of some kind. We tried to get the wireless printer to connect but that would not connect either. We have 3 other laptops in the house that all connect flawlessly. I called Amazon and got an authorization to return the unit for a full refund. For the same money we went to Best Buy today and found for the same price $599.00 an Acer Ultrabook M5-581T-6405, 6gb of ram instead of 4, the same 500gb hard drive and it also has a 20gb SSD included. This think blows the Sony away on speed, picture quality, features and connectivity. Sorry Sony, I generally love all your products, I have several of them in my home, but this laptop is a dud!
Samsung Chromebox XE300M22-A02US (16 GB, Intel Core i5, 2.5 GHz, 4 GB)
This machine is not intended to be a replacement for my old Windows PC... but still there are things I miss... however, with that old machine running I can use Chrome RPD to almost feel like I am on the old box! I have all my windows tools and my quick, lean Chrome book for streaming and interfacing to the laptop. It is very cool having my apps showing up in Chrome on all my Win other computers once I log in to Chrome... very cool actually!
HP Pavilion dv6t-7000 Select Edition 15.6" Laptop - 2nd Generation Intel Core i5-2450m, 8GB DDR3 RA
It is a good laptop, and it runs decently. It has a lot bloatware but also a good trial on Norton Antivirus. The only annoying thing is that one key (the key) gets stuck when you press it. Quite annoying but not that bad I guess. Overall a good purchase.
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HP Pavilion dv7-4170us 17.3-Inch Laptop PC - Up to 7.5 Hours of Battery Life (Argento)
I was almost sad to see it go as I dropped it off at UPS today for a refund. After about a week of troubleshooting with HP about why it would lock-up after two hours or so, they reported that it must have had defective hardware.FIRST IMPRESSIONS (FINISH, HEAT, QUIETNESS)
When I first took it out of the box and powered it on, I loved it! The aluminum finish was the biggest plus for me. After an hour or so setting it up and installing (and uninstalling) software, the entire unit (save for the plastic heat outlet) was still cool to the touch. And it was incredibly quiet, too. I don't think I ever heard the fans wind up in the week that I had it. The low setting that they were on was hardly audible.
SCREEN
The screen was brilliant, though vertical viewing angles were unimpressive. Colors were great out of the box. I chose not to play with the ATI display settings. The 1600x900 resolution is a good choice for this screen size. I wouldn't go any lower, and while I would still go higher, that is only to satisfy my greed.
KEYBOARD
The keyboard had a generally positive feel to it. I didn't have time to get accustomed to the keyboard layout. I'm used to my HP dv4 which does not have a numberpad. And the fact that I used my dv4 for trouble-shooting purposes for the better part of the week didn't help. One of my favorite features, though, was the integrated action keys like you find on Macs. The function keys up top are, out of the box, primarily used for functions such as play/pause, volume up/down, brightness up/down etc. You don't need to press the fn key to access the functions. If this is undesirable, there is a toggle in the bios setup.
TOUCHPAD
The touchpad is a serious design problem for me, though I knew what I was getting into when I ordered it. I am pretty readily adaptable to keyboards and touchpads, so I figured it wouldn't be a problem. Truth be told, I wouldn't have a problem if I kept it. It was just an annoyance. Let me clarify: When I'm using the touchpad, I like to keep my index finger on the mouse button while my middle finger does the tracking. Since the touchpad is an entire unit, with the buttons integrated beneath the sensitive track pad, any movement of my index finger would send the cursor in a frenzy across the screen. It wouldn't take terribly long to get used to, though. And tapping the top-left corner twice disables or enables the touchpad, so accidentally moving the cursor when typing isn't a worry.
AUDIO
Sound quality was a big factor in choosing this laptop. It had a brand-name moniker (apparently well respected, so I'm told), so I figured it must have been something special.
Let me be clear up front: If you are looking for sound quality, YOU WILL NOT FIND IT HERE. The laptop speakers themselves sound good, with the built-in subwoofer carrying some of the lower frequencies you don't typically find in a notebook. But this does not mean the unit sounds good. There is some filter applied, which I could not find for the life of me, that was heavily COMPRESSING the sound (boosting the quiet sounds while ruthlessly drawing-back the loud sounds). It made listening to music with the on-board speakers literally painful at times (play a song by Atreyu with lots of cymbals and it will sound like you're underneath a helicopter from the dramatic volume cuts with each hit of a cymbal). I searched all over, and even reinstalled Windows and updated drivers, and nothing would fix the problem. On the other hand, sound through the minijack was great. The output was strong, though it seems the low-mids were boosted a little as compared to my dv4 with IDT HD audio.
This whole Beats thing though is a complete gimick. Out of the box, the bass and treble controls in Windows are set to full boost, which sounds like crap. By toggling the "Beats" feature (fn+b), it simply turns the bass all the way up (on), or all the way down (off). Not intuitive at all! Also, the control panel is the exact same as my dv4's IDT control panel, but with the Beats logo stamped in some places. I am much more pleased with the Altec Lansing setup on my HP dv4.
PERFORMANCE
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to test the performance of the laptop. I did have pretty high expectations, though, as I'm coming from (actually, currently typing on) an older AMD laptop with integrated graphics. I used to be pretty interested in computers and could tell you how certain components would perform, but over the years I lost touch with that side of me. Now days, I don't know how the AMD phenom stacks up. My understanding (confirmed by a few searches) is that AMD has gotten increasingly closer to Intel's competing processors, but is still a little behind in most regards. I'm guessing that ATI graphics processor is in the midrange as far as GPUs go. With its stay on my desk, it never felt underpowered, though I admittedly did nothing to truly exercise it. When purchasing, I felt that this laptop had an outstanding price-spec ratio, which helped me pull the trigger.
BATTERY LIFE
Another thing I never got to try. If it can live up to its claim of 7.5 hours, then that is very impressive for a laptop of this size (in my opinion). More time than I would ever need in one sitting. Truthfully, I don't doubt that number can be seen if settings are kept low and activity is kept reasonable.
PROS
stunning aluminum finish, nice screen, runs very cool and quiet, good featureset for the price
CONS
touchpad can be finicky, pathetic Beats audio, disc drive eject button can be challenging to press
I'll miss most the sleek and stylish aluminum finish. I'll forget the somewhat quirky touchpad. I'm glad to be away from the terrible Beats audio.
...
I know I didn't delve into as much as some would like, but due to my unit being defective, I spent most of my time focusing on getting it working rather than putting it through its paces. I hope my review can be of at least some value to most.
*Note: My dv7 being defective has no effect on my rating. All manufacturers have duds, and I'm still in a positive relationship with HP.
Buy HP Pavilion dv7-4170us 17.3-Inch Laptop PC - Up to 7.5 Hours of Battery Life (Argento) Now
I like the computer. If is relatively fast, and it has lots of space on it. The monitor is large and clear. I love the fingerprint reader mostly for the novelty. I've had no real issues with performance of the computer itself, but the driver for the fingerprint reader was out-of-date when it arrived. I initially set the reader up, but within a couple of days it mysteriously stopped working. I had to do a little research to find out what I needed to do. I updated the driver, and now it works fine. The worst thing about this computer for me is that it is not left-hand friendly. There is a spot on the top left of the mousepad that completely turns the mouse off. Being left-handed, I am constantly hitting this area. According to tech support, there is no way to turn this feature off. The tech support person did offer to tell me how to turn the whole mouse off. (Wasn't that the problem to start with???) Had I known this, I am not sure that I would have purchased this computer. It does seem to me that there must certainly a better place to put the switch. I feel that it was poor planning and lack of consideration on the part of hp.When I first received the computer, I had some problems with it crashing, loading CD reading cds. But after installing windows updates, most problems evaporated. I love the portability of this laptop, much lighter than last HP I have, and keyboard is easy to type on. Seems to work flawlessly most of the time and very quick. Only gripe I still have is the cd door closer, hard to open. Heard that from other reviewers also. Much too cheap hardware. Coming from HP should be better.I have tried 3 laptops before this one. This is like a Cadillac compared to the others. I love the keyboard. The mouse-pad is not a problem. The display is bright and crisp. Movies are great!! Love the fingerprint reader. The sound is much better than my old unit, so I don't really have a problem with this one. Had never made this large a purchase online. but everything went like clockwork. HP Pavilion dv7-4170us 17.3-Inch Laptop PC Up to 7.5 Hours of Battery Life (Argento) Just really happy overall with this computer. Thanks Amazon. My old laptop (also an HP Pavilion) was about 7 years old, so maybe that;s why this one is such a pleasure. But there's a lot to be said for the fact that it lasted so long. I don't think you can go wrong with the value either. A laptop with the same features at a warehouse club is almost $200.00 more. And that's after the price increased on this one.The one gripe I have is with Microsoft not HP. It's the starter editions of Word and Excel. I already bought an upgrade for 2007, now if I want Outlook I have to buy another. Can't use my old one. Enough boohoo.
MSI X460DX-008US: 14Inch HD (1366x768) Laptop, 2.1Ghz Core i3-2310M, NVIDIA GeForce GT540M, 4GB DDR
I have been using this laptop for about a month now, and have really enjoyed it. The performance is great, even with just the i3 processor. I have been able to run some fairly intensive games on it, running Witcher 2 at medium settings yields about 30 fps, which while not great, is playable and still looks nice. One annoyance on this front is the aggressive throttling that occurs when running off battery power, making it impossible to play anything that uses the dedicated graphics card when not plugged in to a wall outlet. For instance, I was playing an older game (Railroad Tycoon 3) off the integrated Intel graphics on battery fine, but if I switched it to the Nvidia graphics, the gameplay stutters.Another issue I have come across is the placement of some of the keys on the keyboard. The right shift key is smaller than on a full size keyboard, with the up arrow right next to it. Many times while typing, I will accidentally hit the up key instead of shift. This also occurs with the small backspace key, where I will often hit the home key instead. Otherwise, the keyboard performs well. It has a nice action without a lot of noise.
The touchpad works well, especially with the included drivers. It enables multitouch much like a Macbook does (I bought this after selling my Macbook Pro). Not quite as smooth as the Macbook, but things like three finger left swipe takes you back in the browser. Pinch to zoom also works, although again not as smooth as what a Macbook has. Two finger scrolling also works well. An issue I have come across is the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the touchpad will sometimes activate when I don't want it to, scrolling me over instead of selecting what I want. It took some getting used to.
Otherwise, the screen looks great and has good brightness when turned all the way up. Seat-of-the-pants feeling places battery life on par with the MBP. I can get a good 6-7 hours out of word processing and web browsing.
Finally, the fit and finish of this are good, better than what I have seen from other manufacturers. The weight is not too heavy. It feels lighter than the MBP, but not as well built. The body is thin, and overall it is easy to carry around.
I took one star off because of the throttling on battery without a way to turn it off, as well as the keyboard design. Without those two things, it would have been five stars.
1/20/12: Purchased MSI laptop. It was everything I wanted it to be and more. Plus it was less expensive than a comparable Dell, and it ran computer drafting programs and 3D graphics games pretty well! Especially for the cost.
6/25/12: Laptop suddenly developed a problem where, if picked up or if resting my wrists on the empty space on either side of the touchpad, the laptop turns itself off. Tried this with and without the battery while plugged in and not plugged in and it happens consistently under all conditions. Since I was out of town at the time, I just used my laptop very delicately while placing it on a desk instead of my lap.
8/15/12: Finally home. Tested a theory where I hooked up the laptop to an external monitor and used a wireless keyboard and mouse. Laptop ran without any shutdowns for well over a week (never powered off). This confirms to me that it is something within the laptop that has a loose connection.
9/3/12: Went to MSI customer support and arranged an RMA online. It was quick and painless. Things are looking up!
9/17/12: On the MSI RMA status website, my laptop is indicated as "Your RMA has been received and is now in replacement, testing, or repair process."
9/21/12: MSI called me to tell me that they can't replicate the problem. I told them that they're insane because the problem occurred for me every time I would pick up the laptop. I told them so and they said they would look into it.
10/3/12: The MSI RMA status website has not changed. Called MSI to ask where my laptop is. After being on the phone for a half hour, I was told I would be emailed with more information. Apparently they have been waiting for a replacement motherboard and my laptop will be shipped out on 10/17/12.
10/24/12: The MSI RMA status website has not changed. I do not have a laptop. Called MSI to ask where my laptop is. After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, a recording told me to leave a voicemail. I left a very irritated voicemail. Then I sent an irritated email as a reply to the email that told me the laptop would be shipped out a week ago. Then I went to Amazon.com to write an angry review.
TL;DR version:
MSI Customer service is a joke. They have had my laptop for over a month and a half for what seems to me to be a very obvious diagnosis. This was my first MSI laptop I usually buy Dell. Dell had amazing customer service and they would promptly fix my problems whenever they arose. Dell would have shipped me a brand new laptop by now. One time I sent in my Dell (desktop) computer for repair and since that model was discontinued, they sent me the newer model, which was a thorough upgrade that I got entirely free of charge. THAT is customer service. Dell, I am sorry for abandoning you. MSI, words cannot fully express my disappointment. You have failed me for the last time.This laptop delivers good performance for the price however it does not last at all. From opening and closing the lid the hinge magically breaks and eventually the monitor backing separates like it was cheaply glued together. Seeing that I am currently outside of the US I can't simply return it. I was trying to cope with the broken hinge until the webcam seems to have stopped working and now two out of my three USB ports seem to be gone as well. And this is after owning it for about 4-5 months.
Great looking laptop but S***TY QUALITY
WASTE OF MONEY, WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING MSI AGAIN -_-Bought the laptop for a friend who needed a gaming laptop. The laptop was a great deal, pretty much half price to other comparable laptops. Runs D3 on high and runs smoothly.
I liked the layout of the laptop, I liked the functional buttons, very well thought out.
The glossy surface of the keypad shows some fingerprints but it didn't really bother me.
Great value, well designed gaming laptop.
Would 100% recommend.
Portege Z930-S9312 I7/2.1 6GB 128GB W7P 64
I have to first say that I have had this less than one week. The first impressions have been love at first sight: the look, the feel, the weight, the speed... Amazing, really! The SSD is great and makes the laptop wake up lightning fast.Now for the cons... Today the display driver acted up twice while watching videos. I find this is unacceptable for a machine of this pedigree. It also seems to get very hot at times, and mind you I live in an environment where the room temperature is in the 60-70F temp range wonder how it works in a hotter environment?!
I will update this review once I have more input...
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Lenovo ThinkPad X130e 0622-2FU Notebook PC - AMD Dual-Core E-300 1.30GHz, 2GB DDR3, 320GB HDD, 11.6
***my original review of mid Jan was great. I was impressed. it's now April 6th. yesterday it was fine. Today, as soon as I hit the power button a white screen comes up and that is that. I tried fixes I found online (taking out battery, holding the power button for a long while, hitting it ten times, putting battery back in etc.) still no boot.Warranty is handled by IBM EZ serv. I spent 3 hours online yesterday trying to find out where I could get it repaired locally. By the time I found it, after the mess of IBM EZ website (what a nightmare. Why do they need you to sign up for an account THEN ask you for your name and address like 4 times before they will get you to a screen where they finally STOP asking! They even kept saying I needed to add the floor my business was located on. I don't own a business. In the end, made on up. just stupid. The most frustrating experience esp since I was trying to do it on my cell phone. The only other internet access I had at the time.) Course, by the time I finally found out where the most local repair authorization place was (gave up on the IBM site and dug till I found the info elsewhere), it was after 5 on friday and now have to wait till Monday. But from the message on the answering machine, it doesn't sound like the place I found in Asheville, NC is really a repair place either. We'll see if they call me back. I did manage to put in a ticket to IBM in the end. Think twice about where you will get this fixed before you buy it. I can't throw away a few hundred dollars on a computer that lasts only 7 weeks. And I just discovered this is a not uncommon problem? So much for sturdy enough for kids. This computer was treated kindly yet still broke in less than 6 months. Call me angry!
----original review. all true except if it won't boot, it don't really matter right?-----
I am a writer and needed certain things. they say the netbook is going away but for writing, we can't use a tablet without a real keyboard. this is the answer for many of us.
1. battery longer than 3 or 4 hours. This one is 6 without a dimmed monitor. btw, the only way to get the 8.5 stated is to have the monitor so dim it's almost black. stupid for them to even begin to count that! but 6 is good for writing anywhere there is no plug. I'm NOT limited to certain coffee shops etc.
2. Has windows 7 pro64 which I found amazing. Most have windows starter a real stripped down version of windows. Wanted 7 because 8 seems to be a nightmare. More work to learn a system to do the same thing in the end. (without a touch screen, windows 8 might as well not exist.)
3. runs on the amd equivalent of the intel i3. Many run on ATOM (stay clear!), the new ones run on chrome which means you can't run your own programs (like celtx, photoshop, indesign etc.) You can only run google apps and they all get stored on the cloud instead of in your personal computer. NOT ok for writers or anyone who wants the document on their OWN computer. no better than a tablet without a real hard drive. This one had only 1.3ghz rather than the newer version which has 1.66 but for about $300 less, i'm good with the slower processor. I'm not intending to run the world from here! :)
3. 320 gig and NOT a 5400 hard drive. For those who don't know, the faster hard drive is quite amazing! it's rare to find such a fast hard drive in such a small device. Lenovo seems to mostly use faster hard drives which is a very pleasant surprise and speaks a lot to me of the company. (doesn't just stick in the least expensive parts even if you have no idea what a fast hard drive is.)
4. upgradable to 8 gigs of RAM/memory! most gateway 10in netbooks have 1 gig and difficulty upgradable to 2 max. This one has two ram slots and can be good enough to run all adobe products you want to run in a small screen.
5. speaking of which, an 11.6 inch screen rather than the traditional 10.1. great.
6. AMD dual core is the semi equivalent of the i3 intel. same system I have on my "real" laptop and it works fast enough for me (a graphic designer). good enough sometimes is financially good enough right?
7. price. this is almost $600 on the lenovo website. this is a great price. older netbook but not by much. worth a little older for windows 7. the technology is less than a year old. good enough for gov. work.
8. this is a "built tough" netbook which I frankly didn't know when I bought it. (got it from woot.com for $300 + $5 shipping on special.) it's almost 4 pounds because the plastic on the computer casing is much higher quality than any other I looked at. it's not flimsy. there is a rubber rim all around the monitor which encases all the edges when it is closed. Less chance to bump and dent and have a "mild" drop and have it no longer work it seems. The keyboard is spill proof or resistant. forget which. it's made specially for grades 1-12 which doesn't turn me off at all since the plus is "tough built". works for me, an adult wanting my netbook tougher and the extra 3/4 pound is ok with me. btw, this also means that all the side ports are recessed! and the plug seems more heavy duty as well. I have lost an HP because it would no longer charge because the plug on the laptop broke loose from the motherboard. this seems much less likely to happen on this computer. there is even a center wire (like on a cable wire) on this plug which makes it seem like it's less likely to be yanked out which I think caused the "broke off the motherboard" issue I have had.
***there are two problems I have already seen in 3 days. One is that the mouse track pad is really bad out of the box. you put the mouse somewhere and it slides away. a real PIA and enough to make me want to return it. You can't put the mouse between letters and next thing you know, you are typing elsewhere. NOT ok.
I googled the issue and found that on December 18th, they came out with an update to the drivers for the ultranav system on thinkpads. I installed it and bam, problem fixed. yeah.
the other thing that matters to me and may not to the casual user, is the placement of the fn key. I am used to the control key being at the end of the lower row of the keyboard. I use "control A" "control C" and "control v" tons. Its not working for me since I find myself always pushing the fn key instead. that will take adjustment is all. I wish they had put the function key closer to the space bar like it is on many laptops like my viao. bad design decision in my mind but I will adjust.
otherwise, and with the ultranav update, this seems like it will be perfect for me. the newer version with the 1.66 is the exact same organism, so this review will count there as well. the ultranav update:
hope this helps.
I am surprised by the negative reviews. It's quick, boots up pretty fast, and it is the perfect size for life on the road. I have large hands and I manage just fine with the keyboard, and I appreciate the 11.6" screen when compared with a tablet or 10" netbook screen. This one seems so much larger.
I love Thinkpads and also had a Lenovo x120e that I dumped a can of soda on, so this cute little guy is its replacement.
Great company, great netbook-sized laptop!These are actually great little computers. I bought one at a super discount last fall and it has been a rockstar. However, it got the H20 virus and I needed a replacement asap to get some important project files off the drive. I found this one. The title says "2GB RAM" but the description says "8GB RAM." I asked an Amazon rep to clarify the actual equipment and she confirmed it shipped with 8GB of RAM.
When the computer arrived it only had 2GB RAM. Because the purchase was through a third party vendor "fulfilled by Amazon," my only option was to return the computer. At that point I had already installed my old drive, was on the road with my project, and didn't have time to return and re-order, so I settled for purchasing a RAM upgrade. I will say Amazon's customer service was very good, but there is only so much they can do regarding third party sellers.
This title not matching the description issue has been plaguing the site for quite awhile now, Amazon really needs to reign it in. 2GB of RAM barely gets Win7 Pro up and running.
Now, regarding the actual computer, these things have a bad rap, but as an IT professional I have found mine to be solid workhorse of a netbook. Don't expect to do any gaming or major video procution, but if you need a good, solid netbook that travels well, is solid and reliable and will handle day-to-day office tasks (Office, basic image editing, PDF creation, etc.), this is a great buy. An 8GB RAM upgrade is under $100, so you can save some money by buying this one they cheaped out on and adding some RAM.I bought this lenova laptop its nice small looking a bit weight then comparing with other small laptops and key pad works slowly and other application as well ok to buy not fully satisfied
Dell D600 Laptop (1.6ghz, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW)
This is a great laptop for the price. It functions beautifully for basic use (school, work, surfing the web, etc.). I have had absolutely no trouble with mine, and would highly recommend this product to everyday users.I've seen a couple of bad reviews simply because users purchased this computer with the intent to make it their "gaming" computer, and then were disappointed with the outcome. Check the specs and your game requirements first. If you truly want a gaming computer, you probably shouldn't be looking at Laptops in the first place.
It's a great computer at a reasonable price. If you just need something for work, school, and surfing the web, it's perfect.
Buy Dell D600 Laptop (1.6ghz, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW) Now
Decent product however I bought the laptop from BRAVTEK and I got cheated on the deal. He sold me a defective product and refused to fix it. Be careful shopping for laptops and by all means avoid the above vendor.Read Best Reviews of Dell D600 Laptop (1.6ghz, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW) Here
I adore mine.I'm not a gamer or anything of the sort, I just use mine for internet purposes and college, and it's perfect. It lags a bit, which is annoying, but should be expected with the low price. Overall, I like it a lot.
Want Dell D600 Laptop (1.6ghz, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW) Discount?
I bought two computers on the same day from two different sellers, one was from StarTech and the other from Alpha. Both computers were described identically with one exception; the one from Alpha advertised the unit included MicroSoft Pro. So I paid more for that unit from Alpha. I received the unit from StarTech and it was great, plugged it in, started right up and looks and works like new. A week later I received the one from Alpha, with paperwork enclosed describing some other computer without internet card or any programs installed as advertised not to mention the unit appeared to have been in a war zone physically, plugged it in and it wouldn't work. Contacted the seller who immediately offered to sell me an internet card to make the unit work and did not acknowledge the missing programs or the misleading information in the advertisement. I took the unit to a REAL Dell tech who put a wireless card in the unit and found the unit defective. I immediately notified the seller that I believe I must have received the wrong unit by accident that I wanted a good one and I would return this one at my own expense, which I did. The seller was rude, called me a liar and went as far to send emails threatening to keep me from getting a refund for the defective unit. I would NEVER do business with this seller again, his ego is bigger than his brain and he has no people skills. I did receive my refund, thanks to Amazon, I am out the cost of the Dell service call and expense to ship and insure the defective unit, but that is a small price to pay to break all ties with a seller like this one. I am corresponding with Dell right now about this experience.
Gigabyte 14-Inch Notebook with Intel Core i5-2520M Processor and 1366x768 LED Backlight Display (M2
I haven't bought this because I can't justify paying that muchfor a 14" notebook. The features do not justify the cost. A couple
of bones less might be good but the current price is just too much.
I'm sure, being it is a Gigabyte product that it really does merit
5 stars because I have built many computers using Gigabyte motherboards
and none of them have failed including one computer that I have had running
24/7 for 5 years now. Bring down the cost and I will be an instant customer!
Save 3% Off
Lenovo ThinkPad T60p
I am using the T60P using windows XP Pro (today's year is 2012) to write this review using MS OFFICE 2003 and connected to the web via Google Chrome. I have had no issues beyond only one with this Lenovo (IBM) ThinkPad: it is a Centrino Due. A slower processor that I have not found to run hot, and it has not crashed either. All and all it is a good machine. The battery has lasted up 3.5 hours with normal use of MS office and desktop publishing. Not unexpected considering the age of which this computer came out. That also can be solved by purchasing any one of the many extended battery methods on the market. I do not use the Lenovo T60P to travel much away from home, I bought the Lenovo X41 for this and an extended battery that last me a good six hours of MS Office time (the X41 cannot handle desktop publishing but I don't require that when I am away from home--who does?). For me, whatever the subject, it has always been "the right tool for the right job!"Oh, one more thing if anyone is reading this, I am not a rich man, if I was I would have the latest and greatest computers, one for the road and one for home as now. They still would be a laptop and a notebook computer (of sorts) but they would, most likely, be an Apple Macbook Pro and iPad. They seem to be the best system for my uses and the computer technology of today (imho).
Sony VAIO VGN-UX380N Core Solo U1500 1.33GHz 1GB 40GB 4.5" Touchscreen Vista Business Micro PC
Hello,I bought my Sony Vaio UX380N back in the beginning of 2008, and I haven't regretted it one bit. Even now, after having it and using it all this time, i still keep finding newer and more exciting ways to use my UX380N. Sony had a real winner on their hands with this model, but they were quite outrageous on the prices of them. If they would have lowered their prices to a more reasonable amount, and maybe have upgraded the RAM to 2Gb instead of just giving up on the UX model idea, they would and could have probably sold them like hot cakes. Everyone that I have talked to and showed my UX380N to really loved it, and they really were interested in purchasing one. But the Sony price of them, along with Sony's decision to discontinue the model rather than make a few upgrades to it and lower the price of it, drove them away from buying one. Sony could have made a killing profit with this model, but their poor business and tech practices, once again, put a damper on their sales.
Personally, I don't know or understand why Sony thinks so much of their cumputers that they raise their prices wayyyy above everyone else that builds computers with the same or better quality, and sells them cheaper, but Sony needs to come down to reality and notice and see that their brand name doesn't have the quality or known-ness as it once had. Sony just needs to come down to reality period. Until then, not too may people will pay their outrageous prices for things that they can just go to other manufacturers and get the same quality mwith a much more reasonable price tag. But still, that doesn't take away the wonderful computer that the UX380N is. If you can find a UX model UMPC at a reasonable price (Maybe @ $799 or less), then I highly recommend that you buy it. You will not regret it. Thanks for reading!!
To fully appreciate this laptop, you MUST upgrade it to Windows 7 Vista Business is WAY too SLOW. Once you put Windows 7 it is a totally different machine snappy, performs well and is a joy to use. The 1G RAM is sufficient for Windows 7 but not Vista Business. Oh, I did a clean install as well for Windows 7 and loaded all Sony drivers, everything works perfectly, actually much better than under Vista.
The screen is small indeed, the keyboard tiny, but what do you expect it is a micro-laptop, it is supposed to be small. The quality of components is superb the screen is crystal clear, the keyboard slide action is great, can't expect better built quality than this. Never tried out the EDGE modem, but it is too slow to be of any use anyways.
By the way get the extended battery. It makes it slightly heavier but much more practical. I could get 5 hours of light use out of the UX. With the standard battery, it is slightly smaller and lighter, but not practical with only 2.5 hours of juice.
I wish Sony would continue production it is sad to see it discontinued....I've had a UX-380 for 3+ years, and it hasn't been used much the past year because of newer toys. But the first thing I did when I bought it was to rip out Vista and put in XPpro. Machine surprisingly fast, and is a REAL PC running all my desktop/laptop apps.
Lenovo U510 15.6-Inch Ultrabook
laptop had great features & looked great for a good price, ***HOWEVER*** the touch-pad was completely defective, the wireless had connectivity problems AND the screen dimming-brightening feature was also faulty, it would dim & even go completely black when I tried to brighten it and then bright when I would try to darken (or vice-versa). The cherry on top of all this trouble was Lenovo's JOKE of a "repair" depot, after spending 1.5hrs with tech support, including them remotely connecting to my machine and adjusting all the settings of the touch-pad and downloading different drivers AND waiting 10 days to get my laptop back, the laptop did the EXACT SAME THING right out of the box when I got it back. The repair depot "tech" noted on the paper that he fixed the problem by "resetting touch-pad to factory settings"??????!!!!! I called LENONO's repair depot and within 2 minutes the tech was asking me to return the laptop so they could replace the touch-pad...i said WHY DIDN'T YOU GUYS DO THAT WHEN I SENT IT BACK THE FIRSTTIME??" he replied "I'm not sure".I have since returned the laptop back to Amazon for a full refund and purchased a new HP ENVY DV6 that is beyond meeting my expectations.
Do your homework before buying, read these reviews and learn from the rest of us.
Happy Hunting
Again Laptop is great, but customer support is terrible, that's why 2 stars are off, I don't want to even imagine what's going to happen if I have a hardware problem with this device in the future.
Buy Lenovo U510 15.6-Inch Ultrabook Now
this laptop was my first and last lenovoif all you want to do is park it on a desk you'll probably be fine but if you want all the portability features of a laptop skip this one!
After just 6 weeks here's what I've encountered
1. When the battery gets low the wifi shuts off and does not turn back on once plugged in/charged. The trouble-shooters tell you to "turn the wifi switch on" ... there IS NO wifi switch!!
2. After a couple of weeks the battery stopped charging up all the way it would charge up to 50% and display "plugged in, not charging" none of the power-management options included a means of shutting this off. I had to call Lenovo support they blamed it on my installing software (of course) and walked me through uninstalling the old Win 7 power management utility and downloading a Win 8 one. My u510 shipped with Win 8 ... so ... ??
3. Now that I have the new "win 8" power management utility the settings seem stuck on "max performance" no matter what I do so I fly through my "5 hour" battery in under 2.75 hours. Lenovo tech support has no solution for this
4. It took 3 phone-calls and a slew of e-mails to the Lenovo extended warranty department to get them to give me my full 2 year extended warranty ... they kept setting the expiration date of my warranty to nearly 3 months BEFORE I even purchased the laptop!! I eventually got this fixed but why was this even ever an issue??
5. There is an extremely LOUD low battery beep that starts beeping ever 3 or so seconds once the battery is down to 10%. THERE IS NO WAY TO SHUT THIS OFF!!! Not in windows, not in BIOS ... you're stuck with this laptop making this obnoxious racket. And so helpful even if you close the lid it keeps beeping. You have to actually shut it down to make the beeping stop. Lenovo tech support just says "we can't do anything about that".
So to sum up This laptop is ...
not particularly fast
not particularly well priced
not particularly well made
not at all a good laptop for mobile tech workers using public spaces (coffee shops, libraries) or possibly going to drain the battery in front of clients
I've been using laptops since 94 and have used Toshibas, HP's, Dells and have never had any of these issues on any of those brands.
bottom line: the Lenovo u510 is the MOST INCONVENIENT laptop I have ever owned! I would return it in a heart beat ... pity I didn't know lenovo only gives you 3 weeks to evaluate their laptops
Read Best Reviews of Lenovo U510 15.6-Inch Ultrabook Here
Hi Friends I am writing a review about my recent purchase Lenovo Ideapad u510. Looks stylish, over all good design. I have to say about wifi problem for first use, spent some time surfing internet to find the solution, after installing latest driver which i downloaded manually from intel website() it worked fine though.Over all good looking and good laptop for this price.But ultrabook is just a little heavy which can be ignored.
I will recommend this product. Good one for this price.
Update--called lenovo customer care and they did troubleshooting with the over sensitive track pad settings, now its working fine.
Want Lenovo U510 15.6-Inch Ultrabook Discount?
I tried two models of this laptop one with ELAN touchpad and one with Synaptic. Synaptic one was kind of OK, but the ELAN one was horrible. I don't know why Lenovo won't recall this product instead of letting customers buy, return and give a very bad review. This laptop is is useless with this touchpad (otherwise a nice pick). Hope they do something seriously about the touch pad.
Toshiba Satellite U845W-S414 14.4-Inch Ultrabook (Midnight Silver)
Toshiba U845W-S414 Ultrabook -An interesting design, top performance, good bang for the buck.This is a very unusual and interesting design which is one of the things that first attracted me. As someone who constantly has multiple app windows open, 20 or so browser tabs (or more) and multiple browser windows, various utility programs running and so on...anything that gives me more screen real estate is welcome. As someone who also watches a *lot* of video on my laptop, anything that improves that experience is welcome as well. And as someone who has a speaker fetish and listens to a lot of music, sound quality is important as well. This U845W seemed to meet a lot of those needs.
But I hesitated a lot because reviews were very mixed. If it had an IPS display it would be a no-brainer, but it does not. And reviews were all over the place as to display quality, some rating it very high, others not so much. A lot of people complained about the keyboard. Not a biggie for me, but still. The screen size vertically was a concern, so much that I made a cardboard template to see what it would look like compared to my current systems. I then realized it is the same vertical height as my Acer Chromebook 1366x768 display, so no worries there. I considered a lot of other options. Did a ton of research. All the various machines I looked at had flaws of some kind. None are perfect. So, as usual, it came down to bang for the buck and my own particular tastes.
What finally won me over is that this machine seemed like the best overall compromise and I felt I could live with the trade offs. I wanted SSD, but felt 128 GB was too little, that ruled out several nice alternatives. An I5 might be enough, but if I could get an I7 for just a little more, that's insurance I will buy as I will also benefit from it every single day. And as someone who does a lot of video and audio conversions, the added horsepower will be gainfully employed. The ability to have side by side app windows visible was a big plus and when I compared to 1920x1080 options, I felt this (21:9) aspect ratio would work fine and I would get all the other key things I wanted at a very attractive price. A back-lit keyboard was a big plus as I work a lot late at night. A big item for me was that I am not yet ready to move to Windows 8, so I wanted a machine with Windows 7 (Yes, I could always wipe and load whatever, but I don't have the time anymore these days for that. I really wanted something with factory installed [and tested] Win 7.) The 6 GB of RAM vs. 4 GB in several alternatives, the long battery life, the Intel HD 4000 (vs. 3000) [though a discrete GFX option would have been great]. The three USB 3.0 ports are a big plus, especially now that USB 3.0 external disk drives are available at good prices. I will be loading/saving a lot of content, so transfer speeds are important. HDMI out is a win on an Ultrabook (rare). All the ports and HW must haves are there.
Another thing is that in many benchmarks, this rig was a screamer by comparison, outperforming (or tying) all the other top competitors. It even outperformed several rigs with the same Intel HD 4000 GFX. And all of those benchmarks were for the i5 CPU 550GB HDD unit, so the i7 and 256GB SSD performance boost were not even included. All of which told me that performance was going to be top notch with this unit. Something very important to me.
Portability, reliability and design are also important to me. The design won raves from everyone, and the portability seems good to me, even with the elongated form factor (in fact, I like it). Reliability is an unknown, but I have owned several Toshiba notebooks over the years and all have proven very reliable, so fingers crossed, this one will be as well.
And then there are the nice pluses like the sleep-n-charge port, sleep-n-play music feature, and the Harmon-Kardon audio. No need to haul external speakers when on the run. (The speakers actually do sound very good.)
So...top notch performance, tricked out hardware, productivity boosts from 256 GB SSD, i7 CPU and added screen real estate...plus great video and audio for the R&R time spent with this nice rig. It's even up for some casual gaming and for the games that can use the added real estate, that's another unique and fun feature.
So, purchase decision made, how does the pudding taste?
The out of box experience was great. One of the simplest I have encountered. Everything was set up and running in a very few minutes (really!). The ugly stickers were there, but Hallelujah! -they were easy to remove. There was almost no crapware, only Wild Tangent Games and Norton Security that I could find. Some might like Norton. Both easily removed. The desktop was pristine, only the Recycle Bin Icon. Best and cleanest setup I have encountered in a very long time. (Having had several other Toshiba laptops, I do not consider the Toshiba apps 'crapware' as several are actually useful.)
There was actually very little setup. The only thing on my list is to attach an external DVD drive and burn some recovery disks. So, quickly up and running, I check things out and everything seems fine. Everything is very snappy, as expected. Opening windows is nearly instantaneous, starting programs equally so. The 256GB SSD, fast 6 GB of RAM, and the i7 CPU are a treat. I did a few tweaks, disabling indexing on the SSD, disabling disk defragementer, etc. which are better for SSD's.
I try out the windows sample videos and music. The videos look good, the music sounds great. The screen is pretty good for a non-IPS display. Fairly typical, maybe a bit better than average. Text is sharp, clear and readable (at 100% default setting). Screen is very bright, I had to turn it down. Colors look good. Black levels OK. Viewing angles not great, but OK. Man, if Toshiba had put an IPS panel on this they really would have had something, as it is, the display is fine, but not in that league.. Actually very good compared to many, though.
The speakers are very good. Video tracks and music sound great. There is an SRS enhancement that seems to work fairly well. I almost always use external speakers with notebooks, but I will not need to do so with this one. Very pleased. They are also capable of getting very loud. I'm very satisfied with them. Great that they are on the sides and fire up. Interestingly, they sound great with the lid shut, too (came as a surprise to me). This is nice because this rig has an unusual "sleep and play" feature. You can plug in an audio cable to the mic input and play your mp3 player, phone, or whatever via the laptop speakers --even while it is off/sleeping. Cool!
The system is fairly quiet. When the fans do rev up, they have a quiet whoosh sound that is pleasant and not annoying. In normal use, I rarely notice them. The SSD drive is great, silent, fast. In mine, it is a Samsung unit. There were mixed reviews on the keyboard, but it seems quite fine to me. Same for the touchpad. No issues. You do have to be careful when right-clicking to use the lower right, but there is a raised line on the touchpad that marks the "button" areas and if you use this aid, no problems. Scrolling (two fingers) worked fine. No complaints at all. Seems quite fine to me.
The backlit keyboard is very nice. The keys press easily and the layout is good. There is a little flex around the yhuj key area, but not enough to be objectionable. I like that you do not have to use Fn key by default for the control functions on the top row (e.g. media controls, screen brightness, mute, wireless on/of, etc.). The only true button is the power button. The whole unit has a very clean, classy style and look. It has all the essential ports, too, including 3(!) USB 3.0 ports and HDMI out.
As expected, my Windows Experience scores are slightly higher than those in most reviews which were for the i5, 500GB HDD model (and those scores were very good!). The i7-3517U CPU and the Samsung 256GB SSD give some performance boosts. My initial scores out of the box were: CPU 7.1, RAM 7.3, Dsktop Gfx 5.8, Gaming Gfx 6.4, and Disk 7.9 -those are all very good scores for an *ultrabook* in this price range. I miss having a discrete Gfx card, but the Intel HD 4000 is respectable for an on-board GPU -so I can live with it. Casual gaming is quite doable with this rig.
The system boots in about 10 seconds. Resumes from sleep nearly instantaneously (say 1 second). The build quality is excellent. I love the rubberized accents on the bottom, lid and palm rest area. Feels great and the whole thing feels very, very solid. As an online reviewer mentioned, it has the appearance of a piece of high-end audio/Av gear. Definitely a nice looking notebook.
I tried some videos (music videos) none were HD but they looked very good. I was surprised by how good the black levels were and the colors are very true not overly saturated as on many screens. I was very pleased as these were far from the best content, but they looked very good. And the sound as I watched was great. Very nice not having to hook up any external speakers. Not IPS quality, but very good for this type of panel and at this resolution. Viewing angles are the only hitch, but they are about average and OK. (I have been spoiled by my Toshiba Excite 7.7 tablet's Amoled screen though where black is really black, the absence of light, with no backlighting. Best vids ever.)
So, the initial experience is great and I am very pleased with this system. One of the slickest out of the box ever. I am already seeing the benefits to the wide screen in daily use. Can't wait 'til my external Blu Ray drive gets here!
I will come back and update this review once I have enough time and experience with this ultrabook to give additional useful feedback.
2012-12-13 update:
This display seems to have better than average colors based just on my eyes and comparisons with other notebooks I have handy. I've watched some HD Netflix movies and they look great. The viewing angles are the only noticeable hitch. As with most non-IPS notebook panels, you have to angle things just right. It's about average or better, not an undue problem, but I'm very used to IPS and AMOLED now, so I notice it. The HD Vids looked fine, though, and the sound was good. So as a portable entertainment center, it's a win. Played some games and they also looked very good.
2012-12-14 update: If you can live without the 256GB SSD and i7 cpu, the i5 cpu 500GB HDD GB 32GB SSD cache model is now selling at a lower price than when I purchased, making it very attractive (Toshiba Satellite U845W-S410 14.4-Inch Ultrabook (Midnight Silver)) and an almost unbeatable value proposition. Maybe the best deal on an ultrabook going if you are OK with the 1762x768 21:9 screen. For everyday use it performs very well. (12/15 price has gone back up, too bad!)
2012-12-29 update: Purchased BUFFALO MediaStation BDXL Portable Blu-Ray Writer BRXL-PC6U2B external Blu-ray drive for use with my U845W and it works well. Has a nice "smart-stretch" feature (for DVD's only) that seems to compliment the U845W display well. I posted a quick review of the drive, so see that for more info.
2013-01-18 Update: I am really pleased with the U845W-S414. I have continued to compare and I cannot find anything that can beat it for total overall value. Almost all Ultrabooks are shipping with 4 GB RAM (vs. 6 GB) and only a few have 256 GB SSD's (most have 128) and many have i5's (vs. i7). Only the 1920x1080 HD screens are a win for some of the others. But, I am very happy with the video and movie quality, so even though I lust for IPS, I can live with the nice S414 screen (great color). And the productivity of this screen aspect ratio is superb. Many of the pro reviews seem to miss this completely. I do a lot of things that require multiple windows open. And in many cases you want one a bit larger than the other which the default Toshiba utility handles very well. I was also very pleased to discover an "Advanced" options tab for this utility. It allows you to design your own custom screen layouts -very neat. For example, I made a layout with one large wide aspect window and 4 small square windows (l full height left and 2 over 2 right) or 5 total. Being able to build your own layouts and have windows "snap" to them is a great productivity feature and one I will use a great deal. It's a totally unique and useful feature of this line.
Performance is as good or better than anything out there (better than most). I love the style and handling all the more the longer I use it. And the good speaker quality is very enjoyable -having it "built in" is a luxury I enjoy. I congratulate the Toshiba engineers and design team on having the courage to try something different. I'm loving it!
2013-02-03 The 256 GB SSD in mine is the Samsung 830 which is a top quality SSD with great performance. A great choice by Toshiba.
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Everything below remains true. I continue to be impressed by this device's combination of power and portability.
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The first thing stated in any computer review, I believe, should be a description of what the customer's needs are. That way you can understand much better why I was satisfied vs. unsatisfied.
My needs are the following:
=============================
1. Durability
2. Portability
3. Easy to write and type on because I write a lot of both fiction and code
4. File transfer speed for ease of backup
5. Ability to play a decent set of simple / old computer games but not the very latest or most photorealistic.
6. Hard Drive Space
I have owned a Toshiba Satellie A234(not 100% sure about the #) for a long time. I bought it on December 6th, 2006 and it lasted until Sept. 1st, 2012, at which point, the fan broke, although the hard drive and processor and other parts still work great. However, I did not want to risk other parts breaking due to age, so I decided to keep it in storage as a backup and buy a new computer. I was very satisfied with this 5.74 year lifespan especially considering I have driven up and down the east coast many times and taken the laptop many places, including going hiking. It was this solid durability, combined with my past experience as a computer repairer at a university --that gave me great confidence in the Toshiba brand and caused me to buy this particular computer as a replacement--especially because there is a big trend in the computer industry now to decrease durability in order to force customers to spend more money and make more purchases.
The U845W
================
I have owned this computer for about a week now, and I plan to update this review as time goes on.
Good Things:
-------------
The U845W is: Lightweight. Solidly constructed. Has a big screen. Has extremely powerful, high quality speakers (This was a happy surprise to me, because I had assumed it was impossible for a laptop to create "bass" sounds at all). The processor and GPU, while not the greatest ever, also meet my needs. One of the 3-D video games that I like play for a few minutes at a time is a game called Minecraft. It doesn't have huge demands on a processor or graphics card, but it runs smoothly in full screen and windowed mode. All 2d computer games, obviously, run perfectly. 3-D Visualizations on music players like iTunes and XMPlay also run smoothly.
The flash drive is amazing. I copied files from my USB 3.0 backup drive (I have ~150gb of music so it's a lot) and I was blown away by the speed: 90 megabytes per second. Very impressive! The computer also starts up and shuts down, hiberate or not, lightning fast. I really like this feature and I am glad I got the model with a 250gb flash drive. I also hear that a solid-state drive really increases durability so I am feeling very confident about that, although only time will tell of course.
OK Things:
--------------
The keyboard is fine, it is backlit and has no problems when typing. The function keys work well, although I would probably have preferred a sound volume wheel instead of using F4 and F5 as sound volume keys. No issue for me though.
Bad Things:
------------
Not much is bad. The only thing I have found annoying is that it's been difficult for me to get used to the trackpad: on this trackpad, "Left-Click" is the entire trackpad, not one button anywhere. "Right-Click" is the lower right corner of the trackpad. I would like to change the settings so that only the lower left is the left button and lower right is the right button, but I haven't found a way to do that. Overall though, I don't really care, since I am not trying to be the world champion real-time video game player.
In short: Everything is great, except for the trackpad, which is not a very big deal to me.
Buy Toshiba Satellite U845W-S414 14.4-Inch Ultrabook (Midnight Silver) Now
I've had this computer for about 3 weeks now, and I love it. My last 5 laptops were convertible tablets, as I live in One-Note (I'm trying out a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 for note-taking). I'd been investigating Ultrabooks, and was really focused on an 11" screen for mobility (I travel at least 2 weeks out of each month) and the ability to use the laptop in a coach seat. I stumbled onto the U845W at a brick and mortar store and had the opportunity to play with it. I researched reviews, and the functionality of the widescreen appealed to me not for viewing video, but rather for the ability to view documents side-by-side. I do a lot of analysis, and being able to see 2 spreadsheets side-by-side is a real productivity plus. I was sold! I chose the -414 for the SSD rather than the i7 chip.Positives:
1. Form factor I love the low screen height and the width
2. Keyboard spacious and backlit
3. Speed I've always converted my laptops to SSDs and they ROCK
4. Light weight
5. Case design the rubber cladding allows for secure maneuvering of the computer
6. Generous connectivity 3 USB 3.0, Full-size HDMI etc.
7. Great speakers
Negatives:
1. Had to get a new case for it to handle the width
2. Trackpad I prefer left and right buttons, but I'm getting used to it
Overall a good choice if you view a lot of video or need the width and height for the way you work.
Read Best Reviews of Toshiba Satellite U845W-S414 14.4-Inch Ultrabook (Midnight Silver) Here
I'm not a high tech person but do like high tech equipment. But due to this I won't be very technical in my review. This is more just experience based and what I like or don't like about it as an average consumer.I have been using an old TouchSmart HP computer. My wife's harddrive died so I gave her my TouchSmart (very slow) as an opportunity to get this computer. The SSD is fabulous. I doubt I will buy another mechanical hard drive. It takes 2-3 seconds to wake-up and 5 seconds to boot up.
I get so frustrated with all the updates from Microsoft, Toshiba, Adobe, Virus programs and they all want to reboot the computer. With the older computer I would just turn on the computer and had to wait a half hour while the updates did their thing and interrupted me with a reboot. With this computer it is no big deal. The whole update and reboot takes less than half a minute. I can actually use the computer instead of using my time updating it.
I bought this specific computer due to the price for a i7 with a 256 SSD. After watching prices for some time I thought the price right at $1000 was awesome.
For me the one negative is the screen shape. This computer has a wide screen for movie watching, which is not what I do very much. The problem with the wide screen is vertically there is not much space which for most programs results in a limited view.
If you watch a lot of movies on your computer you will likely LOVE this computer.
But overall I am very happy with my purchase.
Want Toshiba Satellite U845W-S414 14.4-Inch Ultrabook (Midnight Silver) Discount?
Well built has made it through 15 TSA inspections without one issue. I like everything about it except the default screen resolution and keyboard. Being 50 years old I could use a larger resolution that still maintained optimum focus however unless the default is selected you give up clarity something my eyes can't manage. The keyboard requires more attention than most laptops requires significantly more pressure with every keystroke than any other device I've used. Overall the speed is fast, restarts are a breeze, portability is great. No issues with OS.Save 34% Off
ASUS UL50AG-RBBBK05 Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3GHz 4GB 500GB DVD±RW 15.6" LED-Backlit Win7 Home Prem wit
This laptop freezes up if I use the battery. Even when I am using electrical current and the battery is in the unit, it freezes. If I do not have the battery in and use the electrical current only, it works fine.I hate to return it as I now have all my personal info on the hard drive, including bank accounts, credit card numbers, etc.
Please let me know what I should do.
MSI Computer Corp. Notebook GT70 0ND-491US;9S7-17212-491 17.3-Inch Laptop
I'm living in a place where space is a premium. I have a high end desktop, a work laptop, and a personal laptop. I bought this to consolidate all three, and it works incredibly well for that. I virtualized my work laptop, and run it as a VM under this MSI. With 16GB of memory, and the I7 processor, it's noticeably faster than it was before it was virtualized. It plays everything I throw at it with high quality settings ..Skyrim, Eve, COD2.. all play really well on it. When I have it at home, I have two displays.. the built in laptop display, and extended out to a 1080p TV. Work runs on the little one, games/netflix/etc run on the big one.The big difference between this one and the slightly cheaper 492 version is that this one has the super raid. Which is essentially just two 64gb drives in a raid 0 config. The advantage of raid 0 is that it's REALLY fast. The disadvantage is if you lose either drive, the raid fails. With the super raid config, windows boots incredibly fast... just a few seconds. Anything installed on it is very speedy as well. There's not a lot of space left over after the OS on this drive, but a couple of things you can do are move the swap file to the 750G D: drive, and disable hiberbnation. (the hibernation file has to stay on the boot drive..).
The sound was advertised to be groundbreaking for a laptop .. I dunno. Maybe it's just be, but I'm really not that impressed. It's decent for a laptop, but don't expect it to compete with most computer speakers. The "sub" adds a little depth, but it didn't live up to the advertising. Decent sound for a laptop is about it.
Some people complain about the keyboard.. I don't have a problem with it. The lighting angle is what I would expect (and the same as my Toshiba laptop), the space bar works, and the keyboard is comfortable and normal to type on. I do unix stuff for a living, and I'm pretty sensitive to badly laid out keyboards. This one is fine for me. The ability to change the keyboard colors in zones is pretty neat.. can set it to pulse, wave, etc.. in the end, I set it to a darker solid color, but to each their own.
One super annoying thing, more to do with windows 8 and synaptics touch pads. Swipe gestures were enabled, and there's no option (that I could find after a ton of research) to disable them. So if you swipe from the right side to the middle, it's brings up that search bar thing on the right. Super annoying, as it happens a ton by accident. How that passed by without an option to disable, I have no clue. But if you search google for "disable synaptics swipe windows 8", there's a registry tweak you can do to disable it. Remember, unlike a lot of registry settings, you need to reboot in order to for the changes to take effect.
Also do NOT update your video drivers from the nvidia site. It will cause the laptop to only use the intel on board controller for 3d stuff. I ran in to that, and had to download the driver from the MSI site. It was a trick to find it there, too. I ended up using their driver update software. But due to some .net bug, I needed to uninstall it again after I updated my drivers. (it was throwing an error on startup). There was an updated intel driver, nvidia driver, and sound driver. The annoying thing is, after you update the nvidia driver from their site, it will notify you that there's an updated nvidia driver on the nvidia site. Don't download and install it. It won't work.
In conclusion, it's a very fast, very beefy, tank of laptop.. Not for super portability, but as someone else wrote about a similar model, it's a great portable desktop. Everything worked out of the box, no issues, I don't regret the purchase at all.
Laptop locked up after first login, after which the NVidia video adapter would not be recognized properly and appears dead. LED's on the right side of keyboard not connected properly either. Flickers between desired color and red.
2nd laptop (from another source even) video card was again dysfunctional, but in a new crashy way. Driver support from NVidia was a no-go with the custom OEM part and MSI driver was ancient. No support from either company for updated drivers!
Contacting MSI was slightly more helpful than smashing my face with a hammer.
Never again MSI, never again.
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The computer is exactly what I was expecting. A very good price for the package. The only thing I changed was to upgrade Windows 8 to the PRO version.Read Best Reviews of MSI Computer Corp. Notebook GT70 0ND-491US;9S7-17212-491 17.3-Inch Laptop Here
Arrived with the w, s, x, e, d, c, r, 3, and 4 keys not working unless you supply 10 lbs of force. Also, counted nearly a dozen dead pixels. Make sure you set up a light colored background upon setup and check for black, dead spots. I am not going to wait to find out what else is wrong with this one: Will return and exchange, and edit review in the futureWant MSI Computer Corp. Notebook GT70 0ND-491US;9S7-17212-491 17.3-Inch Laptop Discount?
HP Envy 14-1260SE Beats Edition Notebook (Black)
This is one sweet machine. So far not a single problem with the software or hardware. A couple of caveats to that: The battery lasts about one hour while working and about two hours sitting idle. I contacted HP about this and it is a known problem. HP assured me that when the problem is resolved they will let me (and all owners) know what the fix is and repair it at their cost if necessary. It may just be a BIOS update or a different battery; we'll see, and I'll update when I know more. You can (and should) order the "slice" (HP 6-cell Slim Fit Battery for Envy 14-1000 Series (RS06)) secondary battery. This will boost the working time to about four hours including the original battery. Once they resolve the battery issue, I hope to get about eight hours out of the two battery configuration. Second, the touchpad takes a little getting used to. The right and left click buttons are built into the touchpad and the pointer will move while trying to click, but I've pretty much gotten the hang of it now. Finally, back in November or December HP went to a two-year warranty for all ENVY computers, however, not all serial numbers were updated. When mine arrived the "HP Support Assistant" software said my warranty was up in one year. A short phone call to (an English speaking person in Canada) got my warranty changed to the stated two years. If you have this issue, just give them a call; my experience with customer service was better than any I've experienced in a long time (BTW they also gave me a $125 credit towards the "slice" battery bringing the cost of the second battery to less than $50.00).So, that's all the issues I've had with this machine and all are easily fixed (or gotten used to). The machine itself is beautiful. The back-lit keyboard is awesome and easy to use, comfortable on the hands. The display is bright and crisp. The sound out of the built-in speakers is better than any other laptop I've owned, but they are still laptop speakers. To get the full benefit out of the Beats Audio setup you need to plug into headphones or an external amplified speaker system. The clock speed (CPU) is outstanding, programs open in the blink of an eye and I run a lot of "heavy" software like photoshop, cad programs, and accounting software. I can have multiple programs running at the same time and have never noticed a slowdown. I don't even know what the limit is before I'll notice any slowdown. One other benefit of this machine (and there are probably plenty of other manufacturers with the same benefit) is that you can plug in an external drive or flashdrive and tell the system to use it as system memory. So, if you have 6 GB of system memory and add a 10 GB flashdrive you'll have 16 GB of system memory. Pretty sweet!
Bottom line, I would recommend this machine to anyone (especially those with their heads stuck in an Apple)! I plan to buy a silver one for my wife. Outstanding laptop and outstanding customer support.
I'm one of those people who really spends a lot of time researching to find out which is the best laptop I can get, and for the best value -and I think this is it.
I know $1000-$1100 is still a lot for a laptop, but you really are getting a high performance, extremely portable, and sleek laptop. I was looking at the MBPros, which in my opinion, are the best "physically" designed laptops on the market, and this is actually pretty comparable. The fan is certainly louder, and it's not quite as thin as a MBPro, but design-wise it's a close second. Not only that, but the black and red back-lit keyboard really looks nice.
Performance wise, it has been awesome -extremely fast, battery life is around 4 hrs if you are actually running program, listening to music, etc, and the storage is probably more than you will ever need.
Ultimately I needed a PC no matter what because of the plethora of MS programs I run, but, if I had a choice, I would still definitely go with this. You get the performance of one of those $2000 MBPros for about half the price. (And to be honest, Windows 7 is pretty damn close to Mac OS in a lot of ways).
Buy HP Envy 14-1260SE Beats Edition Notebook (Black) Now
I got this laptop few days after old ACER stopped working(worked 4 yrs pretty well). This one is really really good one. I recommend this laptop to every one(even the apple fans who think that there is no other laptop that can be more powerful). Yes this one is really a good & powerful one with a 6GB DDR3 memory and Intel Core i5-480M Processor 2.66GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.93 GHz.I didn't find any issues so far in this one. It loads games really fast, has a crispy image screen and it has a nice graphics card(ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 switchable graphics with 1024MB DDR3 with up to 3738MB total graphics memory). I love the way it shutdown the machine just in about 10 seconds and takes about 20 seconds to start. The beats audio is really awesome. I have Bose In-ear head phones and i listen to high end quality of music in it.
It has all the features for every one graphics, speed, camera, bluetooth, HD audio and display.
This one rocks all the way. I am waiting for the battery issue as it runs about an hour on battery against the said 6.5hrs.
Once it is resolved this one be a sure winner.
Finally an awesome laptop totally satisfied.....
Read Best Reviews of HP Envy 14-1260SE Beats Edition Notebook (Black) Here
I have been shopping for a new notebook for a few months now. And after countless reviews I read, I finally decided to give the HP Envy 14 Beats Edition my final answer.I received the notebook today, and it performed well until...
MY POWER BRICK FAILED WITHIN THE FIRST FEW HOURS OF MY USE.
The brick was plugged into a surge protector, and I was careful enough to charge the battery fully before I even powered it on.
As I was using it, I noticed a crackling sound coming from the the power unit. Next thing I know, the notebook switched into battery mode.
After troubleshooting the usual (another outlet, removing battery, rebooting computer, etc), I gave up and finally decided to call HP.
I remembered that as an HP Envy owner, there was a dedicated line to reach technical support. I placed the call and pressed one button for Envy owners. The call took about 5 minutes to reach an actual person. Not too bad.
As I was talking with the tech support, they had me go through the usual trouble shooting as well (which I gladly did). After 3 different unsuccessful cures, I was told that I had a defective AC Adapter.
Since the product was still in warranty, they offered to send me a new AC Adapter at no charge. Of course, before taking my address and shipping information, they had to offer an accidental warranty to me.
The call took about 45 mins, and the result is that HP is shipping me a new AC Adapter via FED EX NEXT DAY.
What can I say? I am pleased with HP for standing behind their products, but also disappointed that the product failed so soon.
BOTTOM LINE: YOU MIGHT NOT BE THE ENVY OF EVERYONE AROUND YOU IF AND WHEN YOUR AC ADAPTER FAILS ON YOUR HP ENVY 14 BEATS EDITION.
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I received this laptop a few days ago and so far I love it.Many reviews you'll find online talk about the screen and picture quality to be the laptops only downfall, but..I don't see the issue.
There are only 2 things I don't like about the laptop.
One, the battery life is pretty..well, awful. I'm at 75% and only have 51 estimated minutes remaining...hm? Could be a faulty battery, though..not sure.
Second, as others have said..it's certainly a fingerprint magnet.
Love the rubberized feel, love the red backlight on the keyboard.