Recent content by gbryan101

Actually, the processors in these two laptops are very similar, both are dual core chips with hyperthreading. The i5-2410M and i3-2330M are both good budget chips, but the i5 has better clocks and supports turboboost. If the price is similar, I would go with the i5 powered machine. Both are...

Well, I would start off by saying that which i3 or i5, as in which model, sort of matters. There are certain low power i5 processors I am not fond of. In a laptop, with the power constraints imposed, it would be great to get something with a Haswell chip, especially if you are going to rely on...

Completely ignoring the processors, I would go Asus just on quality. My family has the immediate predecessor to the Satellite you are looking at. It's isn't much of a machine, particularly the hard drive. I have worked on three low end Satellite machines for a variety of reasons, two because of...

I have yet to see one in person, but the MSI GS70 might also meet your needs. http://www.msimobile.com/level3_productpage.aspx?cid=6&id=410 Personally, I would still prefer the Asus.

Battery life and gaming sort of have trouble coexisting. I like Asus and the G750 would be an excellent choice with a large budget, even the G750JX is within that price constraint. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231090

It could be a selective suspend issue. Open your power options menu from the control panel, and then select the option to change plan settings for the plan you are using. Open the advanced options menu and disable "Selective suspend" from the USB tab in the drop down. If this doesn't work, there...

Create a Parted Magic boot CD and run a disk diagnostic. No joke, I just got done working on a Toshiba with a bad HDD, the third one I had to work on. partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=start

Toshiba is a company of extremes. Their high end stuff is pretty good and their low end stuff is crap. Thing in the middle, like the Satellite L55T are a bit tougher to call. The LAPTOP review of it is here: http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/toshiba-satellite-l55t.aspx Though I don't have...

As per above, four years is a little longer than I would try to get out of a laptop, at least as my main computer. I would start with what he is going to use it for. Is he going to play games on it and want the power of a discrete GPU or will he be fine with integrated graphic? If all he is...

I was actually going to suggest that, but I didn't know exactly how flexible your budget was. I should probably clarify, so which IdeaPad Y500 are you talking about? This: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312438 or...

The sites I like are Newegg and TigerDirect, preferably Newegg with their generous returns policy. If you are looking at higher end machines with quad core processors, your goal of 3.0 GHz might be a tad bit high. For example, this machine is pretty capable, but its i7 only runs at 2.4GHz...

Well, it really depends on what you are using it for. I would come up with a list of what you plan on doing with the machine and then looking at each task and figuring out if it is CPU or GPU intensive, or both. Once you have that done, you should have a good idea of your needs and can then take...

I have a Lifebook T902 through school, and it's a piece of junk. Build quality is poor, with my biggest complaint being cheap plastic used throughout. If it falls at all, it's going to break, period. My school uses a lease program and will replace damaged machines as opposed to repair them. I am...