Posted on 03/28/2014 2:03:22 PM PDT by Chickensoup
Time for a new laptop. The Sony Vaio is getting tired. Am looking for a reasonably priced laptop with some power to it. It is a desktop replacement so it cannot be one of those sissy teenyweenies.
Currently have a 4gb ram, 2.20ghrtz 64 bit system running my beloved Windows 7 with word and outlook 2003.
Looking for something as big, perhaps a little lighter and certainly faster, that has a disc drive, and ports for my trackball.
I refuse to consider Dell.
Yes I know, Applehead, they are wonderful but no thanks.
Any recommendations?
I hate getting older...
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you and me both. My wrinkles get cuter though.
what’s wrong with the Sony? That does not sound like a bad machine
Have you tried running CCClean and putting a thumbdrive Ramdisk?
You biggest issue seems only to be the 4G of ram. You’re not a real man unless you’ve got at least 8 gig of RAM
1) defrag
2) put a 4Gig thumbdrive and use ‘readyboost’
3) put in another 4 gig of RAM
4) Run CClean and clean up your files and registry
5) Run antivirus scan and MalwareBytes.
I bet it feels like a new machine. Your description of ‘tired’ makes me think it just needs some cleanup. Hardware either works or it doesnt
Got a Lenovo 510p in November ... it’s got an Nvidia graphics card and a 1920x1080 display that is just gorgeous. Very slick. Under $1000 from the company website. I’m lovin’ it.
Misterioso is correct. Ask the mods, but I think that because the topic is computers and opinions this should be the Religious Forum.
put a 4Gig thumbdrive and use ‘readyboost’
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Why do I want a thumbdrive? What is it? Is it like a SSD but not in the box?
I can feel the hair growing on my chest as I ponder adding another 4G of RAM. Somewhere.
I would not piss on an HP if it was on fire. I have wasted way too much time and money on their crapware.
I have ALWAYS had good experience with Dell, I wish I knew why you didn’t like them.
And I have purchased and/or obtained(from work) probably 100 laptops (I write software for a living)
Used to love HP. Now I hate them. I wouldn’t buy another ever.
Misterioso is correct. Ask the mods, but I think that because the topic is computers and opinions this should be the Religious Forum.
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Post of the Day! Post of the Day!
So true!
Lenovo is the name used outside of China for Lien Hsiang, a Chinese company that took over International Business Machines’ computer production operations a few years ago.
Fujitsu is a Japanese information technology company founded before WWII. I don’t think the companies are related.
What is built like a tank from the processor up, faster than anything else you could buy off the shelf and reliable?
Because that’s the computer I want.
So much so that I purchased a second in 2000. Biggest piece of sh*t I ever purchased. In less than 30 days the Power Supply went out, then the memory went bad. Within the first 60 days the HDD crashed. Each time, Dell insisted on sending some pimply faced kid to my house to fix the computer.
Every time pimply faced kid never made it past the front door. I removed the bad parts myself, handed them back to pimply faced kind, took the new parts and installed them myself.
The last straw was when the monitor caught fire. As I sat in front of it, the monitor sparked, arc'ed and caught on fire. I had to unplug it and get the fire extinguisher.
When I called Dell Technical Support to complain and get a new monitor, the dumbass Indian named "John" sitting in a call center in India could do no more than follow a script, instructing me to plug the monitor back in to "run diagnostics and confirm the monitor was bad."
I don't think I need to tell you how well THAT went over with me.
It took another 30 days of arguing with Dell in Texas to ship me a new monitor under warranty and to take the old one back.
Dude, I'm never buying another Dell! In fact, Friends don't let Friends buy Dell!!!
He should call Asus and get paid to do an ad on reliability.
So you read my little dell story. I have, proudly, over the years, dissuaded thousands, or maybe hundreds of Dell Sales.
I have a 16ig thumbdrive but you can get a 4Gig tiny one and use the entire thing for Readyboost, for like $12 bucks these days.
The ‘ReadyBoost’ is built into the Windows- it is a ram drive. Whenever something is read-from or written-to your hard drive it ‘caches’ a certain amount using intelligent caching algorithms, and it increases the speed of read/writes about 1000 times. It also increases battery life because of less power usage from the disk drive and also extends the life of your disk drive from less wear and tear.
If you try my recomendations ($12 total investment) you should be pretty amazed.
Avast antivirus is free for home use. Malewarebytes is also free for home use. Let them both do a full scan (overnight)
Do them in this order: CClean, defrag, antivirus scan(s)
The additional RAM (to a total 8Gig) will just make the operating system work so much better- Windows uses much of the 4 you got all by itself.
I look forward to hearing about your results.
With Dell ruled out, HP is a prime choice, with a wide range of models, configurations, and prices. I have a three year old large screen HP laptop that has never failed or faltered or otherwise given me cause to regret the purchase.
“because of the abominable scratchpad thing that is in lieu of mouse (wtf those don’t come with an off switch, I’d really like to know)”
Well, because the scratchpad can be disabled in BIOS. ;-)
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