» There I was .. minding my own business .. sitting in the coffee shop this weekend. When up walks Big Al (.. a Cuban transplant who can usually be found poring over something with a curious title). Next thing ya now we're on the subject of laptops.
"I'll go with you," I said, when he mentioned dropping by the store to eyeball the last day of a 4-day sale.
On the way over he *blasted* The Thrill is Gone (you know, BB King & Lucille). Sounded really good. Remarkably clear. (Hope Al didnt mind my singing.)
I was good-n-amped on some tasty Ethiopian. Heck, we almost solved the question of the meaning-of-life on that 10-min jaunt to the store.
Before I knew what was happenin' » boom! Out comes the plastic. Big Al bought himself a new laptop. Then (best of all) he gave it to me .. to set up & configure for him. (I'm good at that .. cuz I've done it so many times.)
So sitting here I have new laptop. Lenovo = IBM. They still make the ThinkPad, which were usually too expen$ive for my blood. But I always admired their stylish black design. Still do.
Lenovos are priced reasonably. He got the IdeaPad Z560. Review. It's not a powerhouse, but it *is* new .. for only $450. And it's not even a Celeron.
» The Thrill Aint Gone
Stayed up to 2AM last night. I really enjoy setting up a nice, new machine. Yeah, the thrill is still there. =)
It has an Intel i3 core (2.53 GHz) processor with 4 gigs of memory & a 320-gig hard drive + 15.6-inch screen. Very nice.
Regarding the latest crop of Intel processors, the Core i7 is good as it get$. There is also a Core i5.
••• today's entry continues here below •••
Biggest difference between my ancient laptop and his new machine is HOW BRIGHT the screen is. Holy moly! It lights up the entire room at night .. by itself. I had a nice tan when I woke this morning.
Now when I shift over to MY laptop (.. to compose today's post, for example) the display seems so dingy, faded. Even yellowed.
While installing some programs .. I got this message » "Dude, that's a 32-bit app you're trying to install. You need to download the 64-bit version."
Say what? So I peeked at the system specs. Sure enough, it's 64-bit. I'm like » "Sixty-four bit. Cool." =)
It came with Windows 7, which really is a very nice operating system. I had not a single glitch. Nada. Nice feel it has. Smooth & stable without being flashy. Dont tell anybody, but it actually reminded me of Linux. The stable feel, I mean.
It was regularly priced at $629 on sale for $450. In-store discount ($180). No mail-in rebate (.. where they always try to rip you off and make you threaten to write the bbb). Al wasnt gonna buy if they had a mail-in rebate.
[ While there at the store, for myself I picked up a Moleskine knock-off that was also on sale. ]
» Radify the Laptop
First thing I did after backing-up the default installation .. was to uninstall McAfee and install Microsoft Security Essentials.
Then I installed all the Windows updates (34 of them) and upgraded his browser to IE9, which was released just a few weeks ago. Even if still buggy, IE9 would be a good upgrade. Very nice. (No problems that I noticed.)
Microsoft has done a remarkably good job with that browser, design- & feature-wise. Wish I could install it on my own laptop, but IE9 does not support Windows XP (.. and never will). Lots of people are still using WXP, I hear (44%).
Then I toured FileHippo to see what goodies we needed. Of course, I had to install a variety of browsers. Lastly I defragged.
Only thing I couldnt decide on was a firewall. Those tend to take a little expertise to manage, and Big Al aint a geek. Any ideas on a good firewall for non-geeks?
Definitely have to install TrueCrypt .. for the cool factor. =)
What do you guys think of Open Office? Version 3.3 was released a couple months ago.
[ The #1 request I get .. is for another Rad Beast. "Rad, when are ya gonna design another beast? I'm ready to upgrade and your last design lasted so long." Those guides take a surprising amount of research. Lotsa work. Fun to roll your own rig, tho. ]
For more along these lines, here's a Google search preconfigured for the query » lenovo laptop computer ideapad review
