My G73jh has finally died

After a long, harsh, abusive life, my g73jh has finally left this world. It stopped detecting the hard-drives occasionally on boot a few weeks back, and today, simply stopped detecting them all together.

I punched the keyboard a couple times, and then took her apart and redid the hard-drive caddy's ribbons, but to no avail.

I'm going to put the parts up on ebay tomorrow, so if anyone is in the market for some spare hardware, keep tuned.

I'm looking forward to my next purchase and I have some questions to prepare me:

The 2 500GB harddrives are fine and I desperately want the data from them. Does anyone know of anyway to access the harddrives without the original caddy?

I'm thinking of buying a Y580 which has a 15.6" display @ 1920x1080. Is the difference between 1920x1080 in 15.6 & 17.3 anything noticeable? For watching blurays specifically.

Alternatively, if anyone can recommend a laptop @ 1920x1080 and a 17.3" screen to make the transition from machines easier?

 

You can buy all kinds of external docks or adapters that will let you connect the drives to another computer either through USB, e-sata, firewire... no need for the caddies.

You just need a dock/adapter that takes sata 2.5" drives.

For laptops there are a few alternatives, finally up to you and what you like. I was about to buy a laptop like that only a week ago, but I repaired my G73 and decided to keep it a while longuer.
For me, the Asus G75VW, the Sager/Clevo P170HM and the Alienware M17x were top. Of course, each of them is customizable or has many models, so you have to get what you want in them. There is also the MSI G70 with the GTX680.

And there is price. Asus always finds a sweet spot between looks, cooling and price that is hard to beat, but at the same time they don't allow you to easily upgrade and they don't always offer latest and best hardware.

I think at the end of the day I would have taken the G75vw with an ssd and a 750HD but my G73 came back to life *and* I wanted to wait to see what would happen after Windows 8 comes out and all the hardware/prices are announced.

 

If you have already punched it several times, then I am all out of idea's sorry. 8)

Clevo Sager 170PEM only with the 680M / M17 R4 with either 7970M/680M. The real estate difference from 15-17 at 1080p is marginal. 17 FTW.

 

The size of the text between 15-17" isn't that marginal though. I'd run 17" at native DPI and 15" at 125% DPI personally, but DPI scaling in 7 isn't that great.

 

can i have your stock hdd caddy?

 

Guys, no advertising outside of the marketplace what so ever.

 

oh, that's why.

 

And knowing is half the battle.