Y650 Owner's Lounge

This thread is for all things Y650. I ordered mine yesterday. It will take about 5 before it's ready for shipping so probably will have mine in a week or two. Pics to follow after receiving it.

 

Congrats So what specs were your system?

 

Thanks. I spent way too much time researching so many computers. It's nice to finally know I have something coming in the mail and can get rid of this clunky machine I'm using right now.

Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.40GHz
Vista Home Premium 64
NVIDIA GeForce G 105M 256MB
3 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz
16.0 " TFT Wide Screen LED 1366x768
320GB 5400
Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 5100
Bluetooth Version 2.0 + EDR

It's not a powerhouse but it's light for it's size, decent battery life, good looks, thin, portable, decent keyboard. I think I'll just put some old games on there like Evil Genius.

 

Congratulations, that is a very all round build.

 

Thanks. I'm excited to get it! They already shipped it and supposed to get it on the 17th.

I know this might sound dumb, but I didn't know they were going to release a 14 and 15 inch version. I'm happy with my 16 inch since it's a 6x9 screen size, so it makes it a bit smaller than your standard 16". But I read somewhere that the 15's going to have a better video card? That doesn't make much sense if it's true. But if it is true, that sucks for me! lol Oh well. If it's better than the 16, I'll just return it for the 15 when it comes out.

 

Holy frijolitos! My package is already in Oakland really close to where I am. Talk about great time!

Check it out:
OAKLAND,CA, US 03/12/2009 7:51 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
SAN JOSE,CA, US 03/12/2009 7:31 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
03/12/2009 5:42 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
WEST COLUMBIA,SC, US 03/12/2009 3:28 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
03/12/2009 10:05 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
GREENSBORO,NC, US 03/12/2009 4:41 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
03/12/2009 1:06 A.M. ORIGIN SCAN
US 03/12/2009 1:20 A.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

 

Geezus, Oakland/Santa Cruz UPS too their sweet little time getting this thing to me! But I finally got it today. ^_^ Will post pics after I get them off my phone (don't have a better camera unfortunately).

First impressions:
Keys feel good to type on. They're not too small for me. The size is surprising. It's a 16" but it's almost the exact same size as my old Toshiba Satellite 17" who's screen extends pretty far out to the edge. The Y650's screen doesn't. The touchpad is huge! It's nice to go from a teeny tiny touchpad where you run out of space all the time, to a gigantic one, however I would have rather had the keys slightly bigger and closer to the edge (the "arm rest" comment on the review on this site is true btw, it extends all the way to half of my arm). Styling is just as nice as it looked in the pics. The only downside is the outside casing of the screen. In the pics, the nice square shaped design looked very prominent, but in actuallity it's extremely difficult to see. Even looking at it from your lap, you probably wont notice it unless you look closely. Otherwise, it looks very nice indeed. The keys aren't glossy (thank goodness!) and neither is the touchpad. The touchpad has small grains on it for better traction and feel really smooth. Bloatware includes Norton/MS Office 60day trials as well as Wild Tangent game stuff and a few other little things here and there. When I first booted up, I was overwhelmed with screens and icons, but most of that is gone now. I haven't had a chance to test the sound out yet, but from just hearing the boot screen sound (this can be disabled in the BIOS, so no worries) it sounds full and loud. Screen is bright and clear. It's definitely an upgrade from my old Satellite. It doesn't fold flat but extends out about 2/3rds of the way down. Weight is lighter than my Satellite but still kind of heavy to cart around. It's thin for sure. I'm going to take it to school tomorrow so I can test out its true "portability" including battery life. The computer feels solid. The screen will flex slightly if I pull at it from different angles with both hands from corner to corner but that is just because of its thinness. The build is sturdy and the screen clips hold the screen nicely in place without being too tight or too loose. Having the optical drive in the front can be a nuisance but I don't see myself using it too often except to install an app/game (I use an external HDD for most transfers so it's not a big concern for me). The power cord plugs in on the left corner (I like it to plug in through the back but there's no room based on how the screen folds out when it's open). The touch slider works decent enough. I would prefer the sensitivity to be a little higher but I don't see myself using it very often if at all, so that's ok. A decent amount of heat flows out the vent on the left side and the battery gets minorly hot on the bottom. This doesn't affect the heat on the top at all though. It's not metal so you're not getting your arm burned off (I've had a Macbook Pro before so I know how badly designed heat ventilation can get and this computer does a good job at keeping it to a minimum). The computer is very quite. I don't hear the sound of the HDD but I haven't done anything intensive on it yet so I may need to update my opinion on this. One thing I do not like off the bat from this computer is the mouse buttons. They are more difficult to press down than the average notebook mouse buttons. They are also loud. My Satellite also had hard to press buttons (though not as hard as these), so I am kind of used to it. Others may have a more difficult time adjusting to this.

Overall, I like the computer. As much as I may have nit picked above, I am just being picky. ^_^ The size is a disappointment to me, but I'll soon see if it's able to be portable enough for my needs. The looks are great, keyboard feels nice typing on, trackpad is smooth, the computer's fairly lightweight for it's size, and it's thin.

PS
This computer scored a 4.3 in Vista 64bit! Not too shabby.

 

Pics:

 

Update on this if anyone's interested. After using the computer a little more, I'm starting to find things I don't like about it. For one, it's sluggish. There can be many reasons for this. I think some of it has to do with the fact that I did some updates on .NET and it's installing something in the BG. At any rate, it's annoying. I would expect this computer to perform decently with Vista as it's a new computer. Secondly, the screen is not doing it for me. The text is jagged and this becomes very apparent when the viewing angle is slightly off kilter. This is a big deal to me because I do a lot of night surfing and I need the text to be clear so that it doesn't hurt my eyes. I tried updating the driver, but that didn't help. I know now that it's the video card or the screen (most likely the video card) because I was watching a streaming video that was of low grade and the image looked more jagged than usual (I usually view these videos on my old Toshiba so I had something to compare it to). The not so high resolution on a 16" does not make a good combo in my opinion. I didn't think it would be an issue, but I thought wrong. Finally, the optical drive has gotten stuck. It won't open or close. All I did was grab the notebook by the corner (not by the drive, it's too small to do that) and that was enough to get it stuck. No pins, pushes, pulls will open it or close it properly. Who ever thought it was a good idea to put the optical drive in the front anyways??

Conclusion:
I'm returning it and am probably going to get an M4400 like I originally wanted. It will be far more expensive but whatdya gonna do? -_-

 

Well shoot. I was practically crying with excitement over this and now I dunno....

 

Naa .. the Y650 is great.

The other guy with problems above were software problems due to Winblows. If he installed an operating system supported by Oracle, Novell, IBM, HP, Intel, SGI, Google (ie linux) then he would have been fine.