Newb questions, about to order a G73 or G72

Greetings!

About to buy my first laptop. Was just about to order the G72 and saw the thread for the G73. I read as much as I can but have just a few questions.

1. About that solid state hard drive,... I've read all about them and they sound great for Windows and the games to be installed on then using the other 500gig drive for everything else. If I were to upgrade to one, would the seller automatically know to pre-install Windows on the solid state drive? Do I need to give any special instructions about that when ordering or is it understood that most people use it for the operating system and applications (games).

2. I've read that many like to fresh install Windows instead of the version that comes pre-installed because of bloatware. Is that easy to do? Do I just need the CD that comes with the laptop?

3. Are there any upgrades that are considered a "must have" or any upgrades that I should stay away from?

4. Since they are the same price, would it just be silly to still consider the G72? Or are there any benefits of that machine over the newer G73.

Thanks for any information!

 

1. if you choose PRIMARY DRIVE as the solid state drive, that is where the OS will be put.

2. with Asus generally a fresh install is done by using the recovery Disk, and when it asks you to insert the Driver and Utility disk (aka driver and bloatware disk) exit the setup by shutting down the system and you will have a clean install. Insert the driver disk and install drivers/utilities of your choice. But just FYI, Asus has some of the most useful bloatware I've found in laptops, tho some of it is quite useless.

3. imo, the system is insanely sweet as is. the only major upgrades that you can really do to it are CPU and an SSD, and you've got the SSD covered. the best price erformance is the i7 720 imo, but the 820 isn't too shabby either.

4. there are zero benefits that I can see with getting the G72.


and 5, as always, I recommend getting your PC from gentechpc from personal experience with their staff they have excellent customer care =]

 

Awesome info, thanks a million!

If some of the bloatware is useful, then I will keep it. I got the impression from some other threads that it sometimes causes performance issues or something.

As for #5, I've pretty much come to that same conclusion from reading all the threads over the last month or so. They will be hearing from me soon

Thanks again!

 

No problem. The only one that I know for sure can cause huge performance issues is Live Update, it can get large memory leaks and take up gigs of ram for no reason.

 

element answered most of your questions, but as far as the bloatware, alot of it can be reinstalled off of the asus website. so if you find out that you dont need most of it you can just reinstall windows and add what you want.

side note: i know this isnt what you asked but if you are considering getting vista and upgrading to 7, try to get a fresh install of 7. I ended up not using my $30 upgrade to windows 7, and just got a full installation of windows 7

 

If you get it from a reseller, I would highly encourage to upgrade your thermal compound also, though I believe there all offering Artic Silver 5 for free now.

 

don't think so, just checked xotic's page and saw a +9$, but tbh thats still a good deal for pre-applied paste. I'm getting ICD on mine from Gentech =] I have experience with that paste on my G51 and it gave me better temps than the current MX-3 I have

 

I also got the ICD24 for it.

 

I am also looking to buy a G73 laptop. I want to ask you guys who own one now, "Have you experienced any crashing issues that are reported by other users"?

I see that you have nothing but good to say about your experience here, but if you read reviews on newegg you will see people crying about laptops that lock up when you get into some video intensive applications.

I would appreciate anything you have to share.

Thanks.

 

Except the freezes from the creative drivers which i knowingly caused just to check and the fn+esc freeze (flashed to bios 209 to fix it), i never had the laptop crash on my in over a month of ownership.