Buying a gaming laptop :o

    Hey guys, I wanted to stress the machine more, but since the discussion is ongoing I can give a first impressions.

    When I opened it the first day I had the impression keybord was a bit lousy and that construction leaves something to desire in a few details, in particular i've noticed on the front bezel, where palmrest and chassis meet, there's a minimal gap (you can see some light from the from status leds), which annoyed me because if you spend so much...

    But I used it a few days and palmrest is solid* and keyboard is not bad at all for typing.

    What I'm most impressed is the cooling department: I've played Far Cry 4 maxed out and the machine is absolutely cool to the touch, I think the GPU/CPU are located to the right where the unuseful numpad is cos it's the only area where you can feel to be tiepid. Good news is that it's also not noisy at all! I will have to pay more attention but first impression is that fans don't go crazy like on my old Macbook trying to digest Youtube even when gaming, definitely not audible on top of the speakers/headphones (and I've only used the iPhone earbuds); when idle/browsing is very silent.

    A small complaint might be that keyboard illumination has just 3 levels of brightness and is not as nicely distributed like on Macbooks, but the WASD keys have a transparent bevel so they are easier to find in the dark.

    The other complaint would be the audio department: it's advertised as some stereo cool technology while it has only one speaker (grill) so you will notice that, but on the other hand there's some software enhancement when you connect an external system, a window pops up asking what you are connecting, and the 2+1 JBL speakers I have definitely have a more rich sound that i've experienced until now!

    *although would be nice if all laptops had moved to the "unibody" design instea of having an outer shell that cointains everything

    PS: you are probably used to this by now, but it's fucking fast! Win 8 + SSD, and it boots in what feels like 3 seconds. It's almost as waking up a modern tablet from sleep. Hope performance don't drop.

    I am tempted to buy an SSD since the amazing sale on Amazon (Samsung EVO 840 are almost 50% off) but I think this machine mounts a PCIE SSD, which I'm afraid I can't move to the old Macbook to give it some new life.

    I haven't modded it yet, but is not like you see the start screen a lot, when your main sw is all linked through the taskbar.

    Have to say I actually like the Metro style quite a lot, I like the live tiles… I cant wrap my head around the fact that MS thought the system was ok like that: 2hrs of user testing would be enough to understand that you can't have a one-size-fits-all. The New Start would be fine if it was just a launcher, leaving you the taskbar there. And whattahell, how come that on windows phone you can change background and have transparent tiles, while on a PC you can't, even if 8.1 has been basically advertised as a major release.

    And let's not talk about the fact that Metro is sandboxed away, that you can run 2 different skype at the same time -_-

    Windows 8 doesn't need modding... You press the windows key on <8 and you had a menu, now that menu is just full screen which I don't even use it, I boot straight to desktop and to access things like control panel, right click the start button and you get a full range of tools.


    If you know anything about windows and it's window key shortcuts, win8 is just a better OS.


    Running 2 versions of skype isn't necessarily bad as it just allows you to run it the way you use win8, you can also launch chrome in "windows 8 mode" which is super useful /sarcasm


    The only thing I'm sad about is the removal of the windows indexing system, but that's seriously trivial.


    I think Microsoft have received an unfair amount of flak for win8. People expected this to be a bad release and have done nothing but look for things wrong with it

    It looked different, so the "power users" cried.


    Indexing still is there, though, just start typing on the start menu to search.

    Yes they advertise like the speaker have something special, instead sounds very mono because there's one grill on the bottom left :/

    That's the only big thumb down I would point out atm. But you are likely to play with headphones or better speakers anyway, right? I have some good JBL 2+1 and very happy of the sw enhancements I get (compared to my mac).

    I haven't tested any sdk yet, but FC4 can run at highest settings plus some AF and AA set via nvidia panel. Although I scaled down to high (with AA+AF) cos it got very choppy during some crazy situation of car chase and banging into each other.

    I can definitely recommend for the cooling aspect, it has always been running cool, and even more impressively very quiet!

    There are details here and there that I would like to see more refined for a machine of this price, but I'm not sure how many pcs do better, and certain things might be limitations caused by windows.

    Yeah I would say yes.

    Materials are nice, the machine feels solid. Keyboard seems alright to type, I'm still not used to the eng layout and some function keys seem placed in a bit odd position; I'm more annoyed about the keys being shifted because of the numpad... but that's an issue with all the windows laptops anyway.

    Display seems good to me, vivid and bright, I was most impressed with the viewing angle.

    Quote from Marcem

    It looked different, so the "power users" cried.


    Indexing still is there, though, just start typing on the start menu to search.


    wow, reviving this slightly late... just realised what I read. When I said indexing, I meant that rather sad excuse for a performance index that they ran. Gave a score based on lowest sub score.


    I'm well aware of being able to type an app/file name on the windows screen.


    Also... since that conversation: free windows 10 upgrade for practically anyone with a computer that's <5 years old

    Quote from jackophant

    wow, reviving this slightly late... just realised what I read. When I said indexing, I meant that rather sad excuse for a performance index that they ran. Gave a score based on lowest sub score.


    I'm well aware of being able to type an app/file name on the windows screen.


    Also... since that conversation: free windows 10 upgrade for practically anyone with a computer that's <5 years old

    hahaha, that thing. I wanted to look at my number after getting my ssd, was a little sad to see that it was removed. It could've been a decent benchmark for system requirement stuff, but it was so buried.

    Quote from Marcem

    hahaha, that thing. I wanted to look at my number after getting my ssd, was a little sad to see that it was removed. It could've been a decent benchmark for system requirement stuff, but it was so buried.


    SSD's still don't cut it, I managed to test one of my earlier SSDs before I moved to Win8.


    I think the best bet for scoring high is to have a large striped RAID setup of the fastest SSDs you can find!

    I can point out a very annoying detail of my machine: the dvd drive is very sensible and keeps opening all the time when handling the computer to reposition it, or like now when it's sitting on our laps in bed

    Quote from marks

    I'm looking at buying one of these for 3d work on the go - any thoughts?


    http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-17-7737/pd


    I'm a fan of Dells, they're pricing can be a bit wonky sometimes but luckily this seems ok. Would you not maybe want a wee bit more GFX grunt?


    Are you sure you want 17"? I got my 17 as a desktop replacement, and it's very cumbersome. Admittedly, this would be lighter, but I map quite happily on my 15".

    Pricing seems very honest for that machine, whatever the three. Weights almost 1kg less than mine and I'm sure it's quite thin so I'd say that in bulkyness is acceptable.

    Guess it just depends the scenario one has to work in.

    I'm already getting fed up of lugging mine around, I mean because I haven't really used it when I was at my gf. In the future I'll move it only if I'm visiting when she's at work or if I'm into some work I need to get done.

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