New laptop from COMEX Show 2013 & comparison of three of them

I changed a laptop! YAY! A bit reluctant, but it's gonna die on me and I can't afford to let it die on my anytime soon.

My old fujitsu laptop:

I was ranting about my fujitsu laptop back in another post. But there are still some good to this laptop:

- the keyboard is not the island kind, which is hard to find nowadays
- screen can literally rotate to 180 degrees as in the picture
-  it has all my stuff. (lol!)

But what I really hated about this laptop is the fact that it crashed twice within the first year (both times was because the hard disk deciding to quit on me and me unable to boot the laptop). The service guy suggested I disable the shock sensor utility which disconnects the hard disk whenever there is an impact, and it helped, though my display driver started malfunctioning the moment I got my laptop back from the second service, and my CD drive started malfunctioning into the second year of my usage (which I never bothered to fix) and my sound driver also started malfunctioning into the third year of my usage...

A note to anyone reading this going to NUS and considering to get a laptop from the com centre at a 'cheaper price', you might want to think again. I got my Fujitsu at $2200++ (I can't remember the exact price), but it is only a 4GB RAM amidst other stuff. I honestly thought mine was 8GB RAM because I remember talking to my mum over the phone on the RAM and stuff and she wants me to get a Fujitsu and I remember telling her it was a 8GB RAM from the brochure. The prices now seems 'cheaper' at the range of $1500 and up, but from what I see they are still 4GB RAM. I got another laptop for my sis (also Fujitsu) at approx $1800. Hers crashed within a week (and I didn't have time to go down for a one-to-one change), and when they repaired it her notifications pops up in traditional chinese.

For those who already know, my final year project (FYP) is mostly coding based, with simulations. That's what drove me to change a laptop, coupled with the COMEX show 2013. The last day is tomorrow, so be sure to go down for great deals if you haven't! And in fact, I'm actually not surprised that Fujitsu is not on the floor plan.

So I went down, and honestly I considered three brands (more specifically just two laptops). The three brands are ASUS, Toshiba and Dell:

ASUS COMEX deals here for laptops, all others here
Toshiba COMEX deals here
Dell online COMEX deal here

I didn't consider the other brands that was down there, because:

Lenovo - I know people have mixed feelings about this brand (and so does people with Dell), and I should probably give it a shot. My dad's work laptop is a Lenovo, and so was my work laptop during my internship. The experience it gave me wasn't say extraordinary. In fact, it did hang on me numerous times (although I used it only for 3 months).

Samsung - Frankly, before this semester, I was considering between a ASUS and Samsung. But since I need one to do a year of heavy programming, I decided not to go for a Samsung since it's not very established in the laptop industry YET. It's up and coming, and my next lappy may be from Samsung. We shall see. :)

Acer -It's a brand that although I see almost everywhere, it's also fast diminishing everywhere (at least so I feel). Hence I dun feel comfortable considering it for heavy computing.

HP - There isn't really a HP stand there, but the Newstead booth carries it. I never did consider HP as my choice, mainly because my family has a HP netbook before, and the way it died was when my brother dropped it from the side from a kid's chair. As in he hit it and it slipped off the chair. The memory was wiped out instantly, and the netbook is sitting somewhere at home because it doesn't remember the windows OS and so it can't boot up.

Mac - Erm, no. I kinda like the windows interface (and am very used to it). And I dunno if my programme can run on mac. so...



Basically what I told the salesperson before they recommended my anything was "I need a laptop that is able to handle very heavy programming." The later two asked if it's CAD and stuff, I told them not really, probably heavier. I told the first one that the current programme (and com running it) takes one week to give me one data (or so I was told by my supervisor). So I was recommended (by order of booth visited and also what I wanted before the fair):

	ASUS	Toshiba	Dell
Model No.	S46CB-WX119H	Satellite M840	Inspiron 15
Screen Size	14”	14”	15.6”
Core	i7-3537U	i7-3632QM	i7-4500U
RAM	4GB	8GB	8GB
	750GB SATA + 24GB SSD	1TB Hybrid HDD, Ext 2GB VRAM	1TB SATA + 2GB GDDR5
Battery Life	Up to 5 hours/2 weeks (standby)
Weight	2.0kg	1.99kg	2.35kg
Price	$1,298	$1,199	$1,199
Additional stuff that they are willing to throw in	Upgrade to 8GB RAM	Free Microsoft Office (Home and Student), only Word, Powerpoint and Excel	Upgrade to 12GB RAM

Tough decision. I left with my new laptop feeling drains. I got the Dell Inspiron 15, weighing the specs it offered with the better reputation of Toshiba. I'm going to hope it isn't a wrong decision. (And I get an extra numerical keypad because of that size.) :)



That's it for now. :)