ultimate99 Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 I want to get a new laptop by the Nov or Dec as this thinkpad is heating up and becoming slow. In addition, I'm looking for something thinner and less clunky. It will mostly be used for my thesis work, so lots of office work and maybe R or other statistical software. Would under volted (ULV) cpus work for these kind of tasks? I was thinking of getting a refurbished Macbook Air. Budget is $1000 CAN. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PNWDweller Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 While I understand your desire for a new laptop, it sounds like you might be able to solve your slow speeds by changing out your HDD with a SSD (assuming you are still on a HDD). The speed difference alone will make your system feel much faster than before and it truly is. As for heating up, your vents might be blocked with dust. A quick shot of compressed air from underneath the laptop into the CPU intake will push dust out which would be inside. You would be surprised at the sheer amount of dust inside created after a single year of use. On the flip side, getting a Macbook air would be sufficient I'd think. Of course, in the Windows world, you might be best off going to your local Best Buy or Futureshop for example and testing some out for feel and the "fit" for you. Not all laptops are the same even if they have similar specs. For example, my wife and I have a Toshiba laptop within the same model series C855, but her's is AMD based while mine is Intel. Her keyboard keeps "popping up" out of the case, the system also is missing an HDMI output. Not saying either is better, but even a model difference can be the thing. For work, I have a Lenovo laptop which is basically new (this last few month's model), and runs great and feels better in build quality. HP makes some pretty good Ultrabooks which are getting thinner like the Macbook air, but remember the thinner you get, the hotter it might run as the components are squeezed in tighter. :) T3X4S 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 refurb'd or slightly used Carbon X1 ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger H. Veteran Posted October 4, 2014 Veteran Share Posted October 4, 2014 Or maybe a T430/1s series which had the more powerful CPUs but still lighter than a T420? I have my T440s and loving this thing for daily office and simple work. It wouldn't do so well for powerful computing i'm sure but not what I need so this works for me :) T3X4S 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 As Roger mentioned, I have a T430 which I bought from a pawn shop. I popped in an SSD, and its great. (Core i5, 8GB, 256GB SSD) running win7 & win8.1 dual boot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dumble Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Lenovo ThinkPad S540 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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