I am about to purchase the UL80 from Amazon

My only gripe is the 1.3 GHz processor. I plan on doing some gaming once in a while..the graphics card and such is perfect for some games, but I am worried that processor will kill any attempt of playing any new games in the near future.

Are my fears well founded?

http://www.amazon.com/UL80Vt-A1-14-Inch-Light-Black-Laptop/dp/B002Q8HK7K/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Edit: Also, does anyone know if the hard drive is easily upgradable?

 

I'm playing Dragon Age Origins at native resolution, medium settings and 2x AA, so it's not that bad. (you can play pretty much any recent games at native mid settings with this laptop.)

you also have the Turbo mode which bumps up the cpu clock speeds.

I don't know what you mean exactly by "easily upgradable" but I replaced mine with a SSD and i'm using the 320gb hdd in a 10$ external enclosure. works great.

hope this helps.

 

yes it does. What I meant was in my dell I can just pull it out from the side, is it easy to take it out? I guess it aint that important.

I read some reviews bashing the build quality...do you find that to be an issue?

 

The Turbo33 mode bumps both the processor speed (from 1.3GHz to 1.73GHz) and memory bus (from 800MHz to 1066MHz) by 33%, so it's not really much of a bottleneck when playing modern games. IMHO, a faster processor will only be bottlenecked by the Nvidia G210M discrete graphics card when playing modern games, so the graphics card is the bottleneck, not the processor.

As for the build quality, I'm afraid it really is poor. On mine, the top and bottom plastic parts don't fit together right so there are sharp edges where those parts join. Of course, if you're lucky your UL80VT won't have those sharp edges, but I've read of at least 2 other people who complained about sharp edges, so I'm not the only one.

I also have squeaky palm rest on the left side, and several people also have this problem. The plastic is just not sturdy enough, so when you rest your hands on the palm rest and apply a slight pressure, you can feel the plastic bend and rub on the bottom plastic part which causes the squeaky sound.

Other than the cheap plastic, the keyboard is also too noisy and feels a bit cheap, and the LCD screen is average at best.

Well, those are my main complaints about the UL80VT. Other than that, it really is a nice machine for the price. However, if build quality is really important to you, stay away from the UL80VT. If not, there really isn't anything better out there for the price so it's a good buy.

 

oh definitely, although the build quality is not poor, it is mediocre at best. not top notch at all.

- average screen quality

- keyboard feels nice but has some light flex on the left side. (not much of an issue to me to me anymore after multiple RMA's to get a flawless screen)

but at the end of the day, I realize that no laptop is perfect and this is the best lightweight "all in one" laptop ever made.

the thing gets 8-9 hours easy on battery saving mode, I can game without a bulky desktop/laptop and i can carry it anywhere easily.

 

I would wait until the UL80JT are released might as well since they are so close to coming out now

 

yeah id wait for the jt version with the i7 processor and better graphics if i were u.

 

yea, same. I was about to buy the ul80vt but found out abt the ul80jt i was blown away

Anyone know the estimated date of the release?

 

too late I may sell it on ebay and buy the JT if it is that much better

 

Good choice , you'll never regret