Saturday, July 16, 2011

My new laptop

Today was the day: I had saved up my money, decided what I wanted, and had weighed the pro's and cons of each of my potential new "toys."  Obviously due to years of distinguished service I was strongly rooting for the Sony Vaio, I mean while my first desktop was an HP(that did it's best but as the saying goes you get what you pay for) it was a budget PC and didn't last long. Due as much to it needing constant upgrades as to one fateful Christmas holiday somebody breaking in to our apartment and stealing it and the Christmas presents. It was one of those walk in the door and instantly be struck dumb moments, nothing makes sense, it couldn't happen to you and yet it did. Unfortunately for the exact same features the Vaio cost 400 bucks more, which yes I'm a Sony fan, and yes I don't mind paying for what I want, I just don't want to get raked over the coals due to brand preference.


So I grabbed this Toshiba, not that it was as simple as that. I originally noticed it while I was in the Southaven Best Buy in Mississippi looking for a passport drive for a customer. The hard drives are normally near the computer section(being a computer accessory) and I decided to peruse the various laptops just to see if there were any in store deals better than what I was seeing online.  They had a sweet Vaio(blu ray, i7, graphics card, 750 gb HD, WIMAX, 3D ready, backlit keyboard seriously sweet) the price tag was a little steep but it was the one I had seen a few times on the internet. Then I noticed this Toshiba, while I usually rail against the monstrous 17+ inch screens you would actually pay less for a 17 and get the same if not more features. And as times have changed this 17 is a lot lighter than they used to be, I remember 17's being in the 8 pound range this one is withing 6 pounds. Now while it doesn't have a built in blu ray burner(neither did the Sony), the Satellite does have a blu ray player and some very nice speakers. Of course I almost didn't get it tonight because the first Best Buy here in Memphis that I went to had them in the computer but just not in building. So it was a race against the clock to get around the expressway to the next Best Buy down, I wasn't gonna risk Wolf Chase 30 minutes and having to run the express way the whole time(especially since they were knocking it down to one lane for the majority of the way) no thanks I went back to my old stomping grounds on Winchester.

Seems a lot of people were doing some late night electronics shopping because none of the associates for the computer department were visible when I first got there. I was hoping I wasn't going to have to open box my laptop, that would have been a serious no bueno for me. I was also looking at alternate laptops just in case I couldn't get the one I wanted, thing is while I don't usually go for the 17's I also avoid the 13's and 14's like the plague. Those images always seem smooshed to me, 15.5-15.6 or 16 inch monitors are USUALLY my sweet spot, even the added bonus of the 10-key(that little numbered pad that looks like a calculator to the right of all full size keyboards) usually doesn't sway me towards 17 inch monitor laptops. I looked around for passport/flash drives because I still do have to reload the Vaio desktop, though I have changed my mind. I will leave the original hard drive intact(I'll just store it somewhere), load the Free Agent drive with Windows 7 and now that I have another computing device to use allow the old data to be transferred to the new drive overnight. It may take a few nights as my old drive is a pretty much filled to the brim 250 GB drive, luckily my puter takes sata so if I see fit I can get my hands on a 1 TB plus and go to work. Maybe take it down to the shop and blow the dust out of it, put a blu ray burner in the top bay since the DVD burner gas been dead forever.

While I've only had this laptop a few hours I must say it is blazing fast. I've seen a few waiting circles but I know it wasn't due to this laptop or the processor it's because the website in question was slow. This processor just flies, and 6GB's of ram is like YES. I know DDR3 can and will go way higher than that, at the moment I don't care I have ram to spare without spending an extra dime. Now yes in a few days I will have put it through it's paces, will probably find some likes and dislikes(the little vibration sensor is cute but dude, I was moving around on my bed it wasn't an earthquake CHILL) I'll probably keep the little eco friendly screen protector it will help mitigate the dust. So far though definite thumbs up





the Toshiba open with the dust cover on it


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