First impressions of a new laptop

prino

Member
So what do you do if your old laptop dies?

You go for something new, and having bought a desktop from PC Specialist nearly three years ago, the choice was easy, PC Specialist. In the end I settled for

Code:
Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4710MQ (2.50GHz) 6MB
24GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (3 x 8GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 860M - 2.0GB DDR5, 640 CUDA Cores - DirectX® 11
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-7260 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Optimus Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
1 x European Power Lead & 120W AC Adaptor
BACKLIT OPTIMUS UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve
Firefox™
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
2 DAY DELIVERY TO BELGIUM
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days

And after 17 (a bit too long...) working days it arrived.

After unpacking it, switching it on, activating Windows, and installing my standard software, I realized that I had not mentioned that I wanted the hard disk to be partitioned to make it easier to port the software from my desktop to this baby. It turned out that this was still possible, although the resulting C-Disk is now a bit too big for the SSD that I want to add - PC Specialist was unable to install the one I wanted, a Samsung 850 Pro 256Gb with a 10-year guarantee.

The machine is very snappy, its Performance Index is even higher than the desktop (an 8-core AMD FX8150 with 16Gb), but that's only due to the fact that the latter has a very basic Graphics card - I'm not a gamer.

The most important software I will be running on it is another OS, z/OS, under the Hercules emulator, and with 24Gb I can run it without the need for a paging file, so that was also one of the things I disabled straight away.

As for the negatives?

The touchpad is crap, no crappier than crap, so I bought (read: had to buy!) an external mouse!
A glossy screen would have been so much nicer...
The Cc and Airplane buttons don't do anything, probably W8 features

The photos?

- the PC with my standard background
- so how does it perform
- next to it's big desktop sibling

DSCF0277.JPGDSCF0279.JPGDSCF0280.JPG
 
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