15" for the wife

I own a P150EM which as you all know is a great machine but suffers from three main issues: Noise, Thickness & Weight.

My wife wants a similar system but without the 3 issues mentioned above. I've stopped looking since I bought mine last year so I'm a little out of touch with the latest offerings.

Is there a model out there now that is say 70-80% of the P150EM but thinner, lighter and silent while maintaining the same build quality and soft touch rubberized feel?

 

No offense buddy. Maybe you want to consider changing the title of this thread a little. It just sounds really weird.

 

That combined with the first and last sentence is priceless

What sort of things is she using it for? It's possible that the hardware that p150 offers may be more than she needs.

 

A little more detail on what she'll be using it for would help. Is she a gamer?

 

They do lighter models with more modest chips inside since the thickness and cooling of the 150 is there to cope with the high end chips.

 

Lol.

Silent is really hard to find. Tablets are truly silent, but anything with a fan will produce some noise. One option is to find the right size, then under clock the cpu and gpu so they run cooler, thus the fan can run slower. Is she going to game, and if so, what games? Can she handle a smaller screen size? Say 14" or 13"?

 

lmfao!

I just re-read the title and burst out in the middle of the office...sorry I wrote it like 1 min before stepping into a meeting and was distracted.

Ok basically, she loves using my current P150EM (LAPTOP!) but thinks its way too bulky and way too noisy.

Her ideal system would be a 13" Macbook Pro with windows, however I refuse to buy one and load windows on it because a) it's already overpriced b) it sucks c) I'm not paying that much only to have to do a DIY job installing everything and getting ready for her to use it.

Her main use is browsing, streaming and excel. She has however watched me playing league of legends, crysis, sim city, anno2070 and some others and wants to be able to give them a go if she ever has her own system, I wouldn't count on her getting into them but it would be nice if she could have the option to (you never know!)

So basically, I'm trying to find something which looks like my system, feels like it, is responsive as it, but doesn't necessarily need as much GPU processing power (680M) and hopefully therefore won't be as noisy or bulky. Ideally something that's 50-80% of the power but a bit thinner, lighter, and quieter while still being able to run games at a reasonable quality at 1920x1080.

Some of the models I've been considering are the W350ST, W650SH and W550EU.

I think we can rule out the W550EU since it's an Intel HD4000 only chassis and from what I've ready is worse than other ultrabooks on the market and consumes nearly double as much power. Not sure about the other two chassis

 

have you considered the w740su? it comes with a i7-4750HQ, which has the integrated iris pro 5200 graphics. if you're unsure about her ever actually gaming, it might be nice for her to have a machine without a discrete GPU (and all the added heat + power draw) but still have the ability to game should she later choose. you can check the benchmarks for yourself, but it should be able to run the games you've listed pretty well.

 

Thanks I had no idea about the HD5200 Iris Pro. I think it's probably the right solution unless there's a passively cooled Discrete GPU which performs better?

I showed her the chassis, she's not too keen on its design. Is there another option? Something perhaps close to MBP appearance/thickness/weight


Thanks for all the help guys, really appreciate it.

 

Iris Pro isn't too widely used just yet. I believe that roughly gets a 740m performance. So if that doesn't work might want to look at a MSI GP60 or Asus N550.

 

Well, I don't find the P150 noisy at all if you are just doing basic tasks. My GPU is sitting at a cool 33C and I can't hear the fan noise above the room noise. Weight is a totally different issues. She might want to try the Lenovo Y510p. It's got the same screen as the Sager I believe and the 750M gpu in there packs quite a punch.

 

I never found the 150 series loud at idle either, not the quietest but not obnoxious.