After five long years, my fabulous, hard-working HP Compaq M2000 series laptop finally breathed its last breath and I was left devastated. Not only because I had to depend heavily on my lil Nettie that could but because it was on the Compaq that I've had the highs of highs of my career and its demise was bittersweet to say the least.
Bittersweet cos this meant I could get a new and improved work laptop with the latest specs. After overcoming feeling bummed about the Compaq, which admittedly took about a week and a half, I started my search for my next lil helper. I had a budget to work within, about 800 dollars, and I wanted something that would give me real bang for my buck. A laptop that would run a relatively fast processor with decent amount of HD space and a minimum of 2GB of ram. I knew I wanted a machine with more than adequate battery life and a bonus would be a dedicated graphics card running on its own ram memory. I wasn't too concerned about weight since it would merely be sitting on my desk/bed and its not really a travel item.
I spent a couple of days really researching for my version of the holy grail lappie and at the end of it, I had a couple of options lined up from different manufacturers. One of the things I swore I would do this time around was look beyond the HP range. I've mentioned that once I find something I like I'm loyal to a fault to that brand but I knew that at the moment, HP wasn't the leading major player in providing bang-for-your-buck laptops. That's not to say I didn't have any HP notebooks in my lineup. It was really pretty varied in terms of specs as I wasn't opposed to Intel or AMD processors. All I really fixated on was the fact that I wanted a fast processor as I do need to run an SQL server for testing on this machine.
When it came to it, I was truly interested in getting an Asus laptop. Few years back, I would NEVER consider them cos, honestly, what the hell kinda name is Asus. At that point they weren't really well-known and I was loathe to invest money in a brand that wasn't established. But they must be doing something right as their consumer base has grown by leaps and bounds. I usually hear great things about the brand, especially with their EE range of netbooks. Not to mention, they apparently make truly decent higher-end laptops. I had one particular notebook that was number 1 on my list from the A52J series.
Last Saturday while I was back in Homeland, I went to go get the notebook at one of my fave IT stores located in this well-known IT Mall in the city. Anyone and everyone go here to get the best deals in IT paraphernalia and I like to think that I know the 2 best places to get the best bargains :D I've spent an inordinate amount of my time there and even know the sales associates by name so I guess that kinda proves how geeky I can get over all things techie. However, once I got there and asked about this specific model I had my eye on - apparently it was no longer available. I made a sad face but my frown quickly turned upside down when the guy serving me presented me with the latest offering which had a faster processor and would be roughly 35 bucks less. It was lacking 140GB of space since the version I was looking for came with a 640GB HD but when I really thought about it, I could make do with 500GB of space if the trade off was a 2.53GHz processor compared to the other one which was just a 2.40Ghz. Yes, that 0.13GHz makes a difference! So, here is my newest laptop - of course it's company property but hey, it's still all my own choosing!
Ok, that's just me teasing the cover, hehe. The specs are as below and are pretty much standard issue:
I've been using it for about a week now and so far it's been a great experience. This is my first Windows 7 machine and though there have been many times I've had to readjust from the comforts of my previous XP system (though Nettie is still on XP), I've had nothing bad to say about this notebook. This is also my first experience with a 64 bit laptop. One of the things I never truly realized I would appreciate till this notebook came along is how quiet it runs. I think my previous notebooks are noisy compared to this one. It's truly silent when it runs. I also love the fact it features a full keyboard complete with a numbers keypad. It has created a bit of confusion cos I keep trying to type like I do on my old Compaq (RIP) and Nettie but it's still all good. And the trackpad has that multi-touch thingy that the iPhone/iTouch has to zoom in so perhaps, if I learn how to get used to this, I might not be totally averse to converting to an Apple iPhone (though I think I'd rather go android first :P). Battery life is reasonable, it lasts at most 3 full hours on a single charge. This is while I'm doing my usual downloads, watching some shows and internet surfing. Yup, basically I'm using my work laptop to run my multimedia stuff, hehe. What else is new :D
So, with that, I bid adieu, I kinda have to write a number of other stuff and it appears as if I can wax lyrical about this Asus quite a bit. Here's a cute pic of my Big and Small side-by-side.
Yea, yea, I know it's excessive and environmentally bad that I have both machines running simultaneously but, in my defense, there are certain apps that run better on my Nettie.
Bittersweet cos this meant I could get a new and improved work laptop with the latest specs. After overcoming feeling bummed about the Compaq, which admittedly took about a week and a half, I started my search for my next lil helper. I had a budget to work within, about 800 dollars, and I wanted something that would give me real bang for my buck. A laptop that would run a relatively fast processor with decent amount of HD space and a minimum of 2GB of ram. I knew I wanted a machine with more than adequate battery life and a bonus would be a dedicated graphics card running on its own ram memory. I wasn't too concerned about weight since it would merely be sitting on my desk/bed and its not really a travel item.
I spent a couple of days really researching for my version of the holy grail lappie and at the end of it, I had a couple of options lined up from different manufacturers. One of the things I swore I would do this time around was look beyond the HP range. I've mentioned that once I find something I like I'm loyal to a fault to that brand but I knew that at the moment, HP wasn't the leading major player in providing bang-for-your-buck laptops. That's not to say I didn't have any HP notebooks in my lineup. It was really pretty varied in terms of specs as I wasn't opposed to Intel or AMD processors. All I really fixated on was the fact that I wanted a fast processor as I do need to run an SQL server for testing on this machine.
When it came to it, I was truly interested in getting an Asus laptop. Few years back, I would NEVER consider them cos, honestly, what the hell kinda name is Asus. At that point they weren't really well-known and I was loathe to invest money in a brand that wasn't established. But they must be doing something right as their consumer base has grown by leaps and bounds. I usually hear great things about the brand, especially with their EE range of netbooks. Not to mention, they apparently make truly decent higher-end laptops. I had one particular notebook that was number 1 on my list from the A52J series.
Last Saturday while I was back in Homeland, I went to go get the notebook at one of my fave IT stores located in this well-known IT Mall in the city. Anyone and everyone go here to get the best deals in IT paraphernalia and I like to think that I know the 2 best places to get the best bargains :D I've spent an inordinate amount of my time there and even know the sales associates by name so I guess that kinda proves how geeky I can get over all things techie. However, once I got there and asked about this specific model I had my eye on - apparently it was no longer available. I made a sad face but my frown quickly turned upside down when the guy serving me presented me with the latest offering which had a faster processor and would be roughly 35 bucks less. It was lacking 140GB of space since the version I was looking for came with a 640GB HD but when I really thought about it, I could make do with 500GB of space if the trade off was a 2.53GHz processor compared to the other one which was just a 2.40Ghz. Yes, that 0.13GHz makes a difference! So, here is my newest laptop - of course it's company property but hey, it's still all my own choosing!
Ok, that's just me teasing the cover, hehe. The specs are as below and are pretty much standard issue:
- CORE i5 2.40GHZ(M460)
- 2GB DDR3 RAM
- 500GB HARDDISK
- 15.6" HD WIDE SCREEN
- DVD BURNER (MULTI-RECORDER)
- NVIDIA G310M 1GBRAM DDR3)
- WIFI B/G/DRAFT-N
- BLUETOOTH
- CARD READER
- WINDOWS 7 HOME PREMIUM
I've been using it for about a week now and so far it's been a great experience. This is my first Windows 7 machine and though there have been many times I've had to readjust from the comforts of my previous XP system (though Nettie is still on XP), I've had nothing bad to say about this notebook. This is also my first experience with a 64 bit laptop. One of the things I never truly realized I would appreciate till this notebook came along is how quiet it runs. I think my previous notebooks are noisy compared to this one. It's truly silent when it runs. I also love the fact it features a full keyboard complete with a numbers keypad. It has created a bit of confusion cos I keep trying to type like I do on my old Compaq (RIP) and Nettie but it's still all good. And the trackpad has that multi-touch thingy that the iPhone/iTouch has to zoom in so perhaps, if I learn how to get used to this, I might not be totally averse to converting to an Apple iPhone (though I think I'd rather go android first :P). Battery life is reasonable, it lasts at most 3 full hours on a single charge. This is while I'm doing my usual downloads, watching some shows and internet surfing. Yup, basically I'm using my work laptop to run my multimedia stuff, hehe. What else is new :D
So, with that, I bid adieu, I kinda have to write a number of other stuff and it appears as if I can wax lyrical about this Asus quite a bit. Here's a cute pic of my Big and Small side-by-side.
Yea, yea, I know it's excessive and environmentally bad that I have both machines running simultaneously but, in my defense, there are certain apps that run better on my Nettie.
