Topic: Got a new laptop for coding :D

[Yoshi]

So, yeah!

Got it in last friday after school. Opened the box straight away. There it was, in all it's glory..

It's the ASUS X53E-SX1403V, sporting a Core i5 2450M processor of which the clock speeds can be adjusted from 0.8 GHz/800 MHz (power saving mode) to 2.8 GHz/2800 MHz (high performance mode). It uses the integrated graphics of the processor, which is the Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor.

It includes 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, a single 320 GB HDD of which 25 GB is used for recovery tools, 153 GB for a separate "Data" partition and the left overs for Windows itself. It runs Windows 7 Home Premium.

Design
Not going to make this a review but wow this thing is beatiful.

A quick overview:


Features
The laptop has a nice big touchpad. Heck it's so big my palms sometimes rest on it while typing, which causes the cursor to select random things
It has a fast DVD reader/burner. I have no idea how fast it can burn but it's damn quick.

Furthermore it obviously includes a keyboard. It's a nice keyboard, however the keys could have been placed a little closer to each other. The arrow keys are in an unusual place for what I'm used to, 3 of 'em are aligned with the QWERTY keys and the other one is aligned with the num pad.
The keyboard features a few shortcuts which can be triggered with the FN key.

The design features so-called "IceCool" technology which states that it "Keeps Palm Rest Cool". Sure, it's cooler then our other laptop but I can't notice THAT much of a difference.

It features one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, one VGA and one HDMI port, a LAN port, of course power input, audio output and microphone input. It also features that security-thingy for Kensingston(?) security.

There are a few status LEDs right before the touchpad; power, charging, HDD activity, wireless, num lock, caps lock.

Tools
ASUS includes quite a lot of tools with the laptop.

For one, there's the Cyberlink Media Suite.
Then, there's a power management utility.

And there's a LOT of games and ASUS tools included (I got rid of the games but they were all demo's from Oberon Media):
- AI Recovery
- Live Update
- Virtual Camera
- LifeFrame
- Power4Gear Hybrid
- WinFlash (BIOS flasher)
- Wireless Console 3
- Splendid Utility
- AsusVibe
- FaceLogon

And that's not even half of it.

Issues
If you plan on buying this laptop, when you get it update it. Not doing so will cause lots of BSODs because of instable software. You will need to update the system with both Windows Update and ASUS Live Update.

Battery
I've been able to work for 7 hours all at once on a single charge when in Power Saving mode. This reduces to +/- 5 hours when on Entertainment mode and 2 hours when in High Performance mode.
When in Power Saving mode, the GUI of Windows gets minimalized (no transparency), certain tasks get disabled, the CPU gets underclocked (from +/- 2.5 GHz to 800 MHz).
Entertainment mode gets the CPU to it's default 2.5 GHz. The system runs like "default" on this setting.
High Performance Mode overclocks or turbo-boosts the CPU to 2.8 GHz. It doesn't affect the graphics as far as I have seen.

Loudness
If that's a word.

The laptop is extremely quiet. The highest noise leven I could get it to is like hearing a slight breeze outside, when playing CPU-intensive games like Minecraft.

Speakers
The laptop includes Altec Lansing speakers. They're significantly better then standard speakers, and especially when compared to our other laptop which screams like a girl at times.

Performance
This laptop performs pretty great, especially when in High Performance mode.

It successfully runs:
- Portal 2 (all on High)
- Portal (also all on High)
- Minecraft (with OptiFine installed and a HD texture pack, reduced settings a tiny bit)
and I need to test more.

Also installed my usual suite of applications on it, with phpDesigner 8 which was recommended to me, and wow I still don't know how I ever could have missed these features :S

So yeah that's my little new buddy

[Old Fossil]

 

[Yoshi]

--snap--

This board is full of it

[Royalduke]

I'm officially jealous!

[Old Fossil]

Laptop or the spam?

[ApplianceJunk]

Cool, it's always fun getting a new computer.

[Yoshi]

Cool, it's always fun getting a new computer.

Yeah, indeed. Was thinking of getting parts to build one, but I needed a laptop for school too.

lol @ Royalduke

EDIT: Added "Performance" at the bottom.

[Yoshi]

Had it in standby for quite a while today, the battery didn't drain much at all!

Before closing lid => 92%
After opening lid 3 hours later => 91%

[Yoshi]

Okay been playing some more with it. For one fixed a lot of the BSODs. Some were caused by Avast!, replaced that with Microsoft Security Essentials and MalwareBytes Anti-Malware. Might want to have the hardware checked real quick to make sure there aren't any errors with the memory and have it replaced if there are.

The thing even allows me to tune it's internal speakers using a tool called Sonic Focus. Done that and omfg they sound amazing!
Even my half-broken earbuds could be tuned to make them "work" like normal again.

Definitely an amazing laptop for a really nice price tag.

http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Versatile_Performance/K53E/#overview
I also found that page. I've got the i5 2450M version.

[CoreISP]

This is the laptop you were talking about? Brand new and already so many BSOD's?
Damn I thought you were talking about some old crap thing. I'd have it checked for sure, all you seem to be getting are hardware related BSOD's :')

[Yoshi]

This is the laptop you were talking about? Brand new and already so many BSOD's?
Damn I thought you were talking about some old crap thing. I'd have it checked for sure, all you seem to be getting are hardware related BSOD's :')

Yeah it's this laptop. I'll have it checked next week, I need it too much now.