How good is this notebook (laptop)?

Question

Details can be found here:
http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/4732a30c01e06a222740c0a87f9c06d8/Product/View/XC4157

What are the bad points?
What problems will it have playing games?
How long will it last?
Does it cost too much? (It is in Australian Dollars)
(You dont need to answer all these)

Answer 1

It seems pretty good specs there Aussie and its not a real heavy unit.

I put this info here for you, I strongly recommend to partion the hard drive.
I suggest 40 gig will be plenty for C drive unless the games programs are big, perhaps go to 50 gig.

good luck

This is from my notes, hope it helps..

1 Choosing a laptop
=============
You have to decide on weight and battery criteria.

1. Weight - If you are going to carry it to and fro to school/office then consider getting a lightweight model. An external CD drive may be an option as if you not into burning disks or watching DVD then you hardly use the CD drive. Something about less than 2 kg is a lightweight.

2. Battery Life, - if you never going to use it on batteries then you can go bigger processor and larger screen. You can consider not buying the battery if appropriate. You can have two power supplies; one at home and one in the office is good for large heavy laptops.
If you want to use the laptop on batteries then you may have to choose a smaller processor and a smaller screen so you can get the hours required out of the battery.

3. Minimum specifications –
Games will require more specifications – more ram and –more video card specs – more processor power.
Generally though:
-a decent video card (for projection of power point presentations)
-Wireless networking
-Ethernet
-Consider a high speed hard drive ********* (highly recomended)
- Consider 80GB Hard drive or larger
- Consider an external DVD drive or an Internal Burner -depending on your needs
-Consider 1 or 2 Gig RAM
-Software able to update from their websites
-Internet security and
-Antispyware (free from net) is a must for internet use.
-Easy accessible USB ports
- built in webcam
- A Mouse
- a keystone lock
-A carry bag. Sometimes the manufacturer’s bag is the best buy

Consider getting the hard drive partitioned to C: and D:. The C drive can be 30 gig minimum (eg on a 60 gig hard drive) to 50 gig maximum. D drive is extended across the remaining.

When looking at laptops in the shop do this:
(this is written for XP but should be able to do it in Vista, ask the attendant for assistance.)
Click Start – help and support.
Type in Processor in the search

Go through the results you can see what hardware and what Microsoft products are installed in the laptop/ computer.

Google luck!!!


2. Partition the Hard drive – reasons
========================
Firstly C drive is compulsory for the Operating System (XP) (Vista), and you install all your programs on C drive.

D drive is made for YOUR files.

What you do is MOVE my documents to D drive.

When you download music, videos, pictures from your camera or make any MS Office documents or save emails, you save it on D drive. You may be able to save your game advance to D drive, by pointing that file to D drive.

The reason for this are:
1. Hard drive failure - usually a failed hard drive will not boot, but can often be seen when hooked up as a slave.
So when you get your new hard drive up and running, you can copy D drive from your old to your new. You haven’t lost anything.

2. Virus. Normally virus are programmed to infect C drive. If you get a bad virus all that has to be done is format the C drive partition then re install you OS and programs from disks.
You haven’t lost your personal stuff because its on D drive.

3. Scanning your C drive for virus or spyware. These malware programs live on C drive. It is not necessary to scan D drive. It is a lot quicker to scan a small partition than a large hard drive.


Now you can see the above is compromised by the fact that programs get updates and lots of programs are installed from the net. Therefore if you had to wipe out C drive it be hard to get it back to how it was.
To remedy this we use Norton Ghost to image C drive and store the Image on D drive.
(Vista requires a different version of Ghost).

If you get a bad virus you just use the Ghost disk to boot up on, then copy the image stored on D drive back over C drive.
It takes less than 30 mins to rebuild C drive.
Also you may have this running on say a 250 gig HDD, and it fails. You buy a new 400 gig HDD and install both into you computer, the failed one as a slave.
Using the ghost disk to boot up on, you partition the 400 C drive to 50 gig and the remaining to D drive. Then you repack C drive from the image. Then Copy your old D drive files to your new one. In a time of less than 1 hour and it’s all running. The image loads all the drivers, OS everything.

Then you update new images of C drive every few months so that the one stored on D drive is not to out of date.


On XP and Vista you create C drive to a maximum of 50 gig. It doesn’t need to be any bigger, even 40 gig is heaps. However if you have a HDD less than 100 gig then limit C drive to 30 gig.


3. Keep this info for later if your computer slows down:

Clean Up Computer
===============
Download and run superantispyware. I was put onto this program because of an annoying popup (XP)

http://www.superantispyware.com
Superantispyware is a good program and remember to update it before scanning. A scan may take 45mins.

afterwards clean up the registry with this
Clean up pc and IE
==============
To clean up run this Microsoft’s windows live program. It does registry, spyware , virus , disk clean up and defrag

it takes 2 hours or more so once it starts to scan (go to bed etc)

XP Users http://onecare.live.com/site/en-ca/defau...

Vista Users http://onecare.live.com/site/en-ca/cente...

Run the full scanner, then at the end of the scan it asks you to set it running full time.

Think twice about setting it to run in the background as it could be another thing to slow you down. However, it may be worth while if you have no other security programs running.

Consider the following options:
I personally run Norton 360 which is full internet security and run superantispyware when I want to.

So if you don’t have a decent internet security program then perhaps run the superantispyware with your antivirus in the background.

If you sick of antivirus programs that don’t work perhaps run onecare full time and run superantispyware whenever.

Now you should be flying and Onecare has even set up a new system restore point for you.

Answer 2

Guess what, I'm looking for a gaming laptop just like u. I do some research here and there and I found Toshiba gaming models are good choices... Toshiba Qsmio series . Good luck!

Answer 3

It is a good one and priced just right. It is a powerful business laptop and quite decent for many games at low to medium settings.

Answer 4

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1945763

Answer 5

its a good buy!