What do you think of this laptop?

[ayounggun]

Hi all - what do you think of this laptop? (CLEVO P150EM)
I hope people don't mind me asking - I'd appreciate some input.

CHASSIS
http/www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo_2.asp?productid=384

SHOP
http/www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/VortexIII-15/

CONTEXT
Adding SSD (Crucial CT128M4SSD1 128GB M4) to optical drive caddy
budget is £1,200
I would like a nice gaming experience, mostly high settings (?)
Don't care about portability BUT it needs to travel in a suitcase on the train, so no desktop.
17" screen is too big in my opinion.

SPECS
15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB
8GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
AMD® Radeon® HD 7970M - 2GB DDR5 Video RAM (PRE-ORDER, ETA END OF MAY)
1TB WD SCORPIO BLUE WD10JPVT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 8MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
2nd HDD HARD DRIVE OPTICAL BAY CADDY
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft

£1,175.00


QUESTIONS
What do you think? is there something better for similar budget?
Can you boot an OS from the mSATA SSDs whilst another OS is installed in an optical caddy SSD?


Thanks all! I'd appreciate your thoughts

 

[ayounggun]

I've just seen the buyers FAQ - sorry! adding some details. I covered some of the points!

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

15 inches really, 17 is too big

3. What screen resolution do you want?
I would prefer 1920 x 1080 but if there's a reason not to I'm open to reason

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
desktop replacement laptop

5. How much battery life do you need?
could be 5 seconds, its not something I care about!

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop?
med high Mass effect 3, civ V, company of heroes and bf3

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop?
photo editing

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
plenty 750 - 1000 GB

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
I don't mind,

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
I don't mind,

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need?
None needed

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
no preference

13. What country do you live in?
UK

14. additional details
I don't want a bundled windows license as I have my own.

sorry again!

 

[Jim_L9]

Looks very nice to me, especially with that SSD.

I don't see why you couldn't boot from an mSATA drive as well as the internal drive. What other O/S do you want to run? Have you considered using VMWare player to run another O/S virtualized? You certainly have the horsepower there to run several virtual machines at once.

 

[ayounggun]

Ok kl. I figure If I order an mSATA SSD I can always send it back - yay distance selling regulations =)

I just kinda like trying different linux distros natively just to see how they run. I figured the mSATA would suit this. A little strange I know

do you know any other custom resellers like pcspecialist?

 

[WR2]

Can you boot an OS from the mSATA SSDs whilst another OS is installed in an optical caddy SSD?

You can run your OS from the mSATA SSD and have up to 3 more OS installed on the internal HDD without ever needing a drive in the optical caddy.
In addition, you can run an OS on a USB flash drive - Ubuntu Linux would be a good example.
Or even more OS if you partition the internal HDD.

is there something better for similar budget?

As far as gaming performance in a 3kg package - nothing that I've seen yet.

 

[WR2]

Check www.rockdirect.com and www.novatech.co.uk

Kobalt Computers / dpctech.net (maybe a few more) used to sell Sager/Clevo but have gone out of business.

 

[ayounggun]

Kl thanks! I forgot to say that attraction of having an mSATA I thought would be that it would dump a bootmanager on my windows SSD? That way I could access ubuntu etc with the bios device boot menu.

Thanks for the retailers am checking them out. Hadn't heard of rockdirect before.

 

[ayounggun]

that it **wouldn't** dump a bootmanager

 

[WR2]

If you want to use a removable drive (USB Thumb drive) to boot it's always best to use the F12 Advanced boot option menu.
You could have a optical drive caddy mounted SSD installed as just another fixed drive.

Using a Boot Manager utility program like EasyBCD is what I do to manage multiple boot options.
neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ Free for personal use (look way down at the bottom - under the 2nd BUY icon - for the free download option.