Buying a new Laptop, Opinions? - Page 2

Jason1 · 01-16-2010, 09:51 PM

My brother has basically that exact same HP laptop, got it on Woot.com a few months ago, refurbished, for 630 dollars. He has not had any problems with it yet.

ZebraRampage · 01-16-2010, 10:00 PM

Well, I actually just bought the Sony Vaio. It took me a while to hit the "Place Order" button, but I don't regret my purchase.

I looked at the HP Pavilion and the Sony Vaio in stores. I realized that there are a lot of things I don't like about the aesthetics of the HP, but those articles about the malfunction rates kind of worried me as well. I do believe that a lot of malfunctions are due to the users though. This laptop is going to be taken care of though.

Thanks for the input everyone. I believe I made a good purchase here.

ZebraRampage · 01-27-2010, 04:12 PM

I'm going to post some pictures of what I got. This machine really kicks ass, so I'd recommend it if you're planning on getting a new laptop soon. The only issue is that it has a high pitched buzzing noise that goes away when you change some settings for the microphone such as muting it and checking the box that says to listen to the device. That's okay because if it's on mute then the buzzing goes away, and I only use the mic when I'm on the webcam, and when you do that with the mic unmuted, the buzzing noise isn't there too, so it's not really a problem.

Anyway, now for the pictures.

The first three were taken without flash, and the next two were taken with flash. The last one is a shot of the backlit keyboard, which is pretty awesome.

Vampyr · 01-27-2010, 04:56 PM

I wish my laptop had the backlit keyboard.

Looks like a great machine though. My girlfriend bout the Sony Vaio SR a couple of days ago. It's a 13.3 inch laptop with a great graphics card, which is pretty rare.

Seth · 01-29-2010, 11:57 PM

Congrats zebra. I hope you have nothing but pleasant experiences with your new technology.
Have you played any games on it yet. Impressions

ZebraRampage · 02-01-2010, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seth

Congrats zebra. I hope you have nothing but pleasant experiences with your new technology.
Have you played any games on it yet. Impressions

Playing Modern Warfare 2 on it was great. There weren't any problems with it, except for that intermittent wireless problem that I'm having. The game looks GREAT with the Full HD screen.

The processor is so fast on this thing. Whenever I go back to use my desktop, I can't believe I put up with such a slow machine for so long. This is a great laptop if anyone else is thinking about getting one with similar features.

ZebraRampage · 02-03-2010, 02:10 PM

I thought you guys might like to hear this. So I was testing the processor of this machine to see how much I could push it. I had these 8 programs running.

Firefox(with pandora and facebook open), thunderbird, skype, pidgin, itunes, google earth, steam(client, chat, and friends list), and the task manager. It was averaging only 6% CPU usage, and maxed at around 14% when I was using google earth, which usually almost maxes out the cpu on my desktop. I was also using only 1.8 GB of RAM, and I have 4 GB total. I'm sure I could run some other programs too, and play Modern Warfare 2, and it would be fine. I don't plan on doing that though, because I'm sure it would affect the game a little bit after a while. This computer is really great though, so I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a new one with strong hardware.

The cons are that it has that buzzing noise related to the mic, but when you use the mic it doesn't happen, and it goes away when the mic is set to "listen to this device" and muted. So if I'm not using it, I just do that, and it's fine. The speakers kind of suck too, but it's a laptop, and I just hook it up to my speakers, minus the bass and center speaker outputs, and it's fine. The screen has been said to be washed out, and it certainly looked that way until I turned off the "adjust brightness automatically" option, which allow for me to max out the brightness if I wanted. Everytime that I alter the picture with the Nvidia settings, it changes back to the original settings everytime I restart the computer, so I'm not sure how to take it off default, especially when I've been applying the nvidia settings, but it's not that big of a deal.