Photos Latest Purchases Thread: v2.0

Very nice stuff. I'm jelly.

 

Muchas gracias I must say, it was well worth the wait! There's no more of this "oh balls, I can't do that here and now because my laptop won't run it or last long enough on the battery" rubbish

Don't get me wrong, my 5 year old 15" HP business notebook* was and is a brilliant machine and has more than proven its ruggedness and reliability, but the ThinkPad is a higher class of machine entirely. Even compared to modern HP Probooks - of which we have two 2012 models in school - I think Lenovo are still the king of business laptops and that's plain to see every time I even look at the thing never mind open and use it. From the integrated WAN, personal hotspot and always-on charging port to the ThinkLight, TrackPoint, performance and battery life... It's unbelievable what they've put in something the size and weight of a small hardback book. The level of productivity you can achieve on it throughout the day is scarcely believable! Sure, it's not quite as rugged or well built as older X series ThinkPads I've worked on in the past, but it's still a ThinkPad and it's not exactly going to fall apart from normal day to day use.

As you can tell, I'm extremely happy with it!

*The best bargain ever @ £150 in 2008 with roughly another £300 spent on it in upgrades in 5 years - it owes me nothing!

 

There's a big push towards Lenovo where I work at the moment and it's not being driven by IT either. It's coming from the guys who use the laptops. We have always been HP users but Lenovo are starting to take over. My CAD workstation is a dual Xeon Lenovo and the new workstations are following suit.

 

Our two ProBooks in school (6570b's) are one of the nicest business laptop models I've seen from them, but despite all the negative things which oldschool IBM ThinkPad fans say about Lenovo, there's no doubt that they still know how to outdo the competition and build a machine that is noticeably better than the best their rivals can offer. I'm only sorry I didn't pull the trigger sooner and go for an X220 when I was mulling it over a couple of years ago. The mobile computing power I'm carrying around now really is amazing, and there's an even higher spec model above mine! The key word is convenience. I have had a fortnight of thinking to myself "Hah, no! I don't need to go to a desktop to do this, I can do it right here, right now on this 12.5" marvel".

 

Just ordered an iPad air. Now just to wait for apple to post it too me and hope that it arrives on a day I'm in the house

 

30% one time use Logitech code put to good use on a K800 keyboard and Harmony Ultimate Hub

Hoorays!

 

Dads Christmas present sorted.

 

I'm extremely tempted to get on board the X230 bandwagon, but I have a couple of reservations - would you mind if I picked your brains a little? Specifically, I'm concerned about the screen and the keyboard.

I'm a little worried that 1366 x 768 might be a little... cramped after having had the pleasure of using a 1920 x 1200 U2412M on a daily basis. I'm not too worried about the TN screen vs the IPS panel, but am a bit scared that I'd find the lower resolution a bit restrictive. How are you getting on with it?

Secondly, I know that there are a lot of diehard Thinkpad users out there who resisted the change to the island style keyboard - personally, as long as it's usable I couldn't care less. How are you finding the new keyboard to type on, especially in comparison to the older style keyboard?

These concerns notwithstanding, the X230 looks like it would fit the bill perfectly for me - lots of power in a small footprint. I'm sorely tempted to get a standard spec X230 from ebay and then pimp it out in a similar manner to what you're doing - SSD, backlit keyboard, upgrading the RAM and so on.

Would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the above, and on using the laptop in general - thanks in advance!

 

X230 user at work. They are great machines, keyboard is great, and used to the island keyboard straight away (big deal for me was the trackpoint still being there).

The screen: yes, it is cramped if you are used to more space, but I find I work differently if i'm away from the desk - tend to focus on single apps at a time. If you need to pull info from multiple windows it is a limitation however and will probably annoy (and I do notice the 1600x900 on my home Samsung 900x).

 

Cheers for the reply, gagaga. Good to hear that you don't have issues with the keyboard, and I agree that the Trackpoint is awesome I'm still unsure about the resolution, but as you say it's a case of using the available space in a different way. It just feels like a bit of a backward step as the resolution of my desktop monitors has been ever-increasing over the years, but I suppose that you have to make compromises when you buy a laptop

 

This'll be fun, needs doing though

 

Picked up an Asus R9 290 today, was quite excited to see what it could manage.



Popped it into the rig I'm working on and gave it a spin in Unigine Heaven 4.0. Bloody hell is it loud! I'm quite tolerant of noise, but this thing is atrocious, and that's coming from somebody who was okay with two GTX 590s in the same case. It's literally so loud that it drowned out my main rig and the volume from the benchmark that was running over the monitor speakers. In fact, I actually left the room, closed the door went into the corridor and down half a flight of stairs and I could still hear the bloody thing. Let us not forget the coil whine either, but I haven't tested whether that's the card or the PSU yet (both are new so could be either).

At least this is going to be watercooled, so I won't have to put up with that racket. It's still unbelievable how rubbish that cooler is though, I feel so sorry for all those who simply picked a reference one up as a simple upgrade (rather than wanting to add custom cooling).

The Heaven score was okay, nothing spectacular though. Doesn't compare with my main rig, but the budgets are also quite a world apart.

 

Got one last week same as you, ad yes it is really bloody loud. But there is hope with water:

http://www.legitreviews.com/nzxt-kr...oler-review-on-an-amd-radeon-r9-290x_130344/4

 

My laptop is 6460b which is a slighty older 14" model, but it has the same chasis etc. I absolutely love mine, it's awsome. i7 Sandy bridge, 8gb ram in a reletively small package, and it's 2 years old, I still get 4 - 5 hours battery life and the only way the laptop looks aged is a shiny keyboard. I got upgraded panel in mine too for 1600x900 resolution, which is quite nice for the screen size.

Oh fork service Should be fun! I have a set of fox forks I need to service in the new year, it's boring though, and I need to service my rear air can.

 

I've had a bit of a shopping spree lately...

- Bracli red double strand pearl thong (for the missus)
- Pearl necklace, earrings and bracelet set (also for the missus)
- 2 Pearl bra straps (for the missus)
- Soft Kitty t-shirt, fuchsia (again, for the missus)
- 10 Hello Kitty surprise chocolate eggs (for my daughter's advent calendar)
- 10 Angry Birds surprise chocolate eggs (for my son's advent calendar)
- 4 Big Star Wars surprise chocolate eggs (for my children's advent calendars)
- 24 Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs (for the advent calendars)
- 10 World of Tanks chocolate surprise eggs (don't bother, toy quality sucks)
- Solder sucker
- Vacuum pen
- 3 Stir Crazy Automatic Electric stirrers (how have we managed without?)
- Cooling fan Upgrade for my HP 8530W (in preparation for a QX9300)
- 15.4" WUXGA LCD panel for my HP 8530W
- 10meters two pole cable
- 15meters Three pole cable
- 4 wall sockets
- Electric advent star
- 2 books of A3 sketching paper
- 2 books of A4 sketching paper
- 2 books of A3 drawing paper
- 2 books of A4 drawing paper
- 3 gel pens; gold, silver and white
- 2 Wall shelves for the children's room
- retro picture frame, A3 white
- wall cabinet, black powder coated with glass shelves
- round white carpet, fluffy

 

Bought some of this as a gift. No idea if it's any good but the bottle is cool.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

Couple of toys I picked up the last week

 

It was my birthday yesterday and I had always had a small CRT TV, so my parents decided to suprise me, and took me to a store on Saturday. Then they got me this!:

Well, they got me the tv (partially, still had to pay a part of it) and I bought GTA V and Fallout myself
Didn't properly get into New Vegas yet because I got GTA V the day after, and I love it!

TV is a LG 42LN5404

 

Purchased one of these for from ebay £30.

 

after a few days of thinking, i don't think i can really justify buying a new gaming video card now

i don't really do much gaming beyond occasional league of legends and TF2, and even a cheap video card would allow me to play those at 1440p...

so i took the money i had earmarked for replacing my 7950s which are currently on ebay and bought myself a headphone amp for my HD650s



a schiit valhalla in black