july 5, 2008
My GQ NX-L513 (aka ECS LS51II, aka $399 notebook) is a cool machine. It is still rather speedy and it still runs great. It just turned One in April and I wanted to upgrade for a few reasons:
- I wanted something smaller that is willing to travel. The NS-L513 is a 15.4" monster that is really built to live at home.
- I wanted to have that extra "core".
- More to the first point, I wanted a processor that was more battery efficient and that did not run at "holy crap, I'm 100%" all the time. The Celeron M 420 is fast and it was fast all the time -- no fancy SpeedStep.
- I wanted 802.11n (draft) speeds, since my D-Link DIR-655 is one of the routers that gets great 802.11n speeds.
- I wanted something with a DVD burner inside -- the NX-L513 only had a DVD-ROM / CD-RW drive.
- Did I mention, I wanted something smaller?
The first machine I found was a HP dv2845se, which is a "special edition" notebook that comes with a (what I think) neat lid design and palm rest design. It was on sale for $750 at Best Buy and that was a great deal for what was being sold:
- AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-62 [2.0Ghz]
- 4GB RAM
- 250GB HDD
- DVD-RW
- 14.1" WXGA screen
- Nvidia GeForce Go 7150M
- 802.11b/g wifi
It was priced much less than some comparable machines (say from Dell) and HP is not a bad name to go with. I had done my research at night and the morning after Best Buy pulled it from their website and said that it was no longer sold in stores. Boo!
So, I looked around for another notebook with comparable specs and price. What I found at Fry's and Circuit City was the HP dv2910us. It was a near match for the dv2845se, except that it was $50 more and had an Intel Core 2 Duo chip inside. Yay! I've always liked having Intel chips in my PCs, I don't know why, but I do. What do you all think about the whole Intel vs AMD thing? Are they on about the same playfield now? (Perfomance, power efficiency, etc.) The dv2910us looks like this spec-wise:
- Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 (1.83Ghz)
- 3GB RAM
- 250GB HDD
- DVD-RW
- 14.1" WXGA screen
- Intel X3100 Video (GM965)
- Intel 4965abg wifi (802.11 a/b/g/n)
And that was perfect. I picked it up at Circuit City and have been tweaking it ever since. It has less RAM than the dv2845se, but that's OK, I think I'll survive. The dv2910us also has the high-gloss imprint on the lid and palm rests also. It's a different, more subtle one. I'll write more about the new notebook as I use it more. The old GQ notebook will get a fresh install of Windows Vista Home Premium and then it will go to work with me to see if I can't find it a nice new home.
I want to mention that I will never shop at Circuit City again. I only bought the notebook at Circuit City because it was closer to my house (4 miles versus 12 miles compared with Fry's, one way). Fry's and Circuit City both had the same price on the machine, so the cost of gas really made the decision for me. During the purchase, I was asked no less than four times if I wanted the stupid "protection plan" (from three different people). I was asked three times if I wanted "free" anti-virus software and a "free" printer (after mail-in rebate).
One guy, who I figured was a floor lead (because his shirt was black and not red) asked me the last time for the "free" printer and software to which I was steaming mad, this is how it went:
Him: Are you sure you don't want the free printer and software?
Me: Sure, as long as it shows up as $0 on my receipt.
Him: No, it's a mail-in rebate.
Me: Then it's not free since I have to pay tax and postage. Shut up. Go away.
I was not steaming mad just because he was the third person to ask me about the "free" stuff, but he walked in late on the sale and started this conversation:
Him: Do you want to get one of these external USB harddrives?
Me (politely): No, thanks.
Him: Are you sure?
Me (slightly less politely): Yes, I'm sure.
Him: Ok, I just came out of a training recently and they told us there are two types of people. Those that can recover their data and those that are destined to lose their data...(trailing off his voice to insinuate something).
Me: Can you please leave now? You're unpleasant. (Last part was in my head.)
I'm sorry stupid sales guy, I'm not your regular customer. I'm sorry that you don't see there are lots of other types of people out there like maybe the kind that has 4TB of storage at home in different locations, and a lot of that is dedicated to backups. Sigh. I'm sorry if you're a dense dumb-ass.
Oh, and when the guy selling me the notebook first pulled out the notebook, he offered me an "optimization" service. I was curious to what they would optimize. He told me that for a fee, they would remove all unnecessary programs. Really? He's going to charge me money to uninstall stuff?
I'll never shop at Circuit City again. At least at Fry's, if you know what you want, you can just walk up and buy it. Boo to Circuit City for such terrible service.
And lastly, to those of you were going to ask (since it seems like a question I have gotten a lot \): No, I didn't buy a Mac. I have a PowerBook G4, it still works great. It was very pricey and still has a way to go before it gets replaced (if at all). The MacBooks are nice, but pricey also. And I didn't want a new Mac.
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