HELP, Should I sell my L702x 3D for a L502x?

(Long_Post: ) I need your advice!!! I'm in the UK, and have spent the last six months agonising over which laptop to buy;

...now I've bought it, I'm still not happy!!!... I think I just want my cake and eat it!


I eventually bought a refurbished l702x i7 2630 imported from the U.S., that I thought was a rare-as-hens-teeth, non-3D 1080 with four dimm slots

...turns out it was actually just a regular 3D 1080 after all! (If you can say that this model is 'regular'?)


So I've now used it for about a week, and yes it's a real powerhouse with 14GB of RAM, a great display (of which I do not need the brightness or 3D, but do like the colour neutrality, viewing angles, and resolution)

...BUT I really don't like the size and weight, nor the 2.5 to 3 hour battery life on a 9 cell battery, along with the heat and fan noise

...BUT I do like the 14 GB of RAM, and the fact I can put my SSD in it as well as keeping the 500GB as a second disk.


(can you sense that I'm a little torn here???)


-Now I'm not a gamer, but I do part-time wedding photography (1 to 2 per month) and am also an I.T. technical trainer, so was hoping to be able to occassionally run several server VM's on it whilst I'm on the road with work, as well as my photoshop 64 bit. But 80% of the time it will be more normal office-type creation and web browsing with the odd H264 1080 film playback. (Not asking for much then am I?!)

Thing is, my company laptop is a 14", and up until now I've been used to a 12" personal laptop for things like web-browsing in bed (I currently do my photo editing on a desktop PC with a 24" 1920x1200 screen), so a heavy L702x is a bit of a rude awakening... even it's 150W PSU is massive and heavy!!! Not for the road warrior really!


-I always shoot to RAW files, but in sRGB not Adobe RGB for a more simplistic workflow, so a 95% Gamut display is NOT a must for me, as sRGB fits exactly into the 72% gamut of the l702x's 1080 3D display.


-I would dearly like less weight and size though, hence more portibility, and 5 hours of battery life from a 9 Cell instead of 2.5!.. it's the difference between going out for a day's job and deciding can I afford to leave the charger at home, or do I really need to lug it around with me?


-I don't really need dedicated Nvidia graphics 95% of the time, only for accelerating photoshop which is just 5% of my usage time.

-I cannot afford, and really don't want a larger, heavier, Alienware or Asus G-series machine.


-So do I just sell the l702 and buy a l502x 1080 B+RG and max it out to 8GB with a hard disk caddy in the optical bay, or just stick with what I've got and lump it?

-I only need more than 8GB of RAM maybe once or twice a month (for those VM's, or for stitching many large images together in photoshop), so if I'm forced to compromise to 8GB, it's not going to be the end of the world, and I do not use an optical drive more than a couple of times a month either, so an external one is just fine by me.

But:

A. is 1080 going to be just too small on a 15.6" screen? (I want 100% windows font size not 125%)

B. I wish I could fit 16GB of RAM in the l502x for those occasions when i DO need it!!!!!


-I did look at an Asus n53 which had a 1080 screen and four dimm slots, but correct me if I'm wrong, I cannot get a 9 cell battery for that, nor an illuminated keyboard that I have longed to have for the last three years!!! ...Unless of course I buy an illuminated keyboard and solder it to a 5V supply point in the asus as a couple of other guys have done.

Help, Help, Help me with your thoughts please, as I'm now going out of my tiny little mind!!!


DO I:
A. just Wind my neck in, and get on with my heavy, bulky, hot, noisy, but otherwise really powerful L702x 1080 3D?

B. Sell it and opt for an l502x 1080 B+RG with just 8GB of RAM?

C. buy an Asus n53, mackle an illuminated keyboard together, and have the 16 GB of Ram that I desire, but worse battery life than an L502 (58Wh?) and other poor hardware (naf wifi and web cam)?

D. Give up on all things I.T. and techy, and become a monk?

E. .... something else?

(as I'll probably never be satisfied anyway, ...Will then probably be freaking out for ivy-bridge as soon as it's available!!!)


Thanks for listening!!! (/Long_Post)

 

Well as you know the noise will be diminished greatly on an Optimus system for most usage. You will also get 2x battery life easily, 5-6 hours on a 15/17".

That said,if you want something smaller, then get something smaller. The 17 is big, it doesn't bother me, but I would have gotten the 15" if I was taking to work everyday or something. Mine stays home except for trips, when it isn't too bad to lug through an airport or such. I see your problem though.

16GB was a bit annoying, I was one of those early l702x adopters that Dell blatantly lied to about the amount of RAM I would get. It took them 2 months to start giving a consistent story out, but even to this day they still lie sometimes. Dell doesn't train their staff very well at all. 8GB is indeed fine for most uses. Like you I would have liked more, I do heavy simulations that benefit from lots of RAM. That said, it is possible these systems will support the 8GB DIMMs that right now are very expensive. They will come down in price steeply in the next year or 2 I would expect, so that MAY be an option down the road (no telling if Dell will support it though...).

I wouldn't get an Asus personally, especially if it needs a bunch of mods to get to what you want and still has crap hardware. The XPS 15 is a great system from all indications, and it's 1080p screen is said to be top-notch. Is 1080p a bit small on a 15.6" screen? I say yes a bit, 1080p on a 17.3" is perfect for me. However, Windows 7 handles scaling pretty well and so you could just set your desktop scale to like 150% or something if it is too small. Then you still have the extra pixels for when you need it (photo-editing, multi-windows, whatever).

The better question is if you have had the system too long to return it completely? That would save you the selling hassle.

 

Thanks Madmattd

The system is a dell factory refurbished, and I've bought it through a private sale, so I'm the second owner, even though it is mint. I think I'm probably just best to ebay it and look for a l502x to replace it.

Writing my long boring whinge helped me to rationalise what I want from the laptop. I'm still just a little on the fence, as I have this laptop now in my hands with a lot of RAM fitted, and the easiest thing would be to just keep it and fit my Intel X25M, but I think that is the easy way out and that I would probably regret it in the long-run... I think I'll end up swapping it for the 15 incher after all. It's just I hope the screen will not be just too small at 1080... Yes I know I can scale the font in windows, but then you lose the overall screen real-estate.

thanks again!

 

I was also wondering if the 2630m supported VT-x? I thought that was left out of the oem 2410m and 2630m parts.

just curious really. Sounds like a predicament!

I guess if 1080p is too small on a 15" depends on your eyes. I can see very well up close, but blind as a bat without my glasses for anything 10" away from me. It doesn't seem too small to me.

Even monks have computers these days (don't they?) so I don't think that is a good option. Unless you want to network all their supercomputers and build a pleasing website to bring in more monks.

it seems like every generation of memory there is always that elusive larger and much more expensive part, but before it becomes standard and prices on it fall, we'll be looking at ddr4 8gb dimms for the same price as ddr3 4gb dimms, while the 8GB ddr3 remains extremely expensive

the XPS 15 is nice, I don't think you would regret it. Although I only seem to get 2 hours on a 6 cell on standard settings.

liked your post, hope you figure it out

 

Thanks Kizh
the 2630 supports VT-x for virtualisation, but not VT-d, which the 2720 and upwards do. I think that VT-d is a non issue though for a laptop, as it is meant to remove a layer of abstraction by allowing individual VM's to access hardware directly, but the hardware needs to be mapped/dedicated to them, e.g. a system with two nics could have each directly allocated to a different VM. Think its meantto work with hard disk access too, but I'd be running three VM's all sharing a single SSD, not trying to allocate three VMs a dedicated physical disk each.

thanks again

 

I hear you on the blind beyond 10" part. I'm the same, I can read a book in bed fine without glasses, but forget about seeing the alarm clock from more than a foot away...I've never seen a 15" FHD in person, but I know that the FHD on my 17" is even a tad small for me, but I've gotten used to it. I don't sit 10" from my computer screen

The part I highlighted in red is a good point. Look at DDR2 pricing...I could make a fortune selling the 4x2GB Crucial sticks in my desktop (ran me c.a. $120 total, goes for twice that now...) and upgrading to a DDR3 system

 

i have the L502x and L702x but i prefer the L502x.
i bought the l502x first but i was unsure if i made the right choice so i bought the l702x thinking it would better suit me.
but its just too bulky + not liking the keyboard or the screen and the battery life is shorter.

Size differences:


im happy with my l502x with 8gb ram. and that lovely B+RG screen.

 

it amazes me how many photos of glossy screens are shown where its like a mirror. Don't they know we have to deal with that? I can see a closet or bathroom door in that second shot, a white Gilligan hat hanging, and maybe a jacket on the wall. Of course it could all be in my mind! At least its not like that teapot guy standing naked with his camera.

But really, go to gizmodo or engadget and look at what they have, half of them aren't set up to hide the glare and you get palm trees, buildings, all sorts of stuff. Makes me sad, I want a good matte screen.

 

well, i sold the l702x 1080 3d, and bought the l502x 1080 B+RG... MUCH MUCH happier with the latter!!! Thank you everyone for your comments. Regards Craig

 

What do you think now of the 1080p screen resolution on a 15 inch laptop?

 

If you NEED over 8GB of RAM you should get a workstation class laptop. I do heavy 3D work with 3DMax on my XPS with 8GB and it's just fine. I even fired AutoCAD on this thing and the only time I ran into issues was when I was working with a huge file. In the coming years will more than 8GB of RAM be standard? sure....but save your money and put it towards an SSD or something. It's like the 3GB GPU...if you ever use more than 1GB I'd be surprised.