Worth buying a 1558 to replace my 1535?

[Hellhog]

I currently have a Studio 1535 (config in sig) that cost me $1250 when I bought it 3 years ago. I did just recently put $90 in it between buying a backlit keyboard and upgrading from Vista by purchasing Win 7 Pro upgrade (from my university). Other software I bought from my university was Office 2010 Pro+ and Acrobat X but I'm pretty sure I can transfer the liscenses. I don't think I can use the Win 7 Pro disc though to upgrade any other computer.

I was in our computer shop in the union building and I saw they had a Studio 1558 for $556.50 which came with a 2.27GHz Core i3, Radeon Mobility 5470 (which looks like it is around 80% better than my 3450), 4GB RAM, the screen resolution was lower than mine (like 1366x768 or something, then again, I almost never play native res in games anyway). It is Win 7 Home Premium which obviously I'd want to get my Pro into somehow, I think this would be the biggest issue. I'd probably also drop the dough on a backlit keyboard again. Like I said, I think I could get my other software liscenses to transfer though. And of course, I'd want to sell my laptop, hopefully get around $200 for it.

Honestly, I've been wanting to buy a Sager/Clevo, but in no way I'll be dropping $1500 anytime soon. I thought about building a desktop, but that will cost me around $1000 (since it is my first desktop so I need more than just hardware). Do you think this would be worth the intermittent purchase for now for the increased graphics performance and the increased cpu performance? I see myself in the future using a lot of MATLAB and maybe Autodesk Inventor (which work on my laptop but I don't know how complex I can go till I will see slow down). As for gaming, I don't have much but I bought BFBC2 and it is unplayable (10-20fps average) and StarCraft II which works but my computer gets rediculously hot and I average 60fps early game and 30fps late game.

Is it worth it to buy? Or just hold out longer for the bigger purchase later?

[Tsunade_Hime]

Considering the Studio line was EoL a couple months ago, unless it has a long warranty I wouldn't pull the trigger. Also had a whole host of build quality issues. Even with a long warranty, parts will be hard to source later down the line, what most likely will happen is it will be replaced by another unit.

Given your needs, I would definitely save up for a Sandy Bridge notebook, or buy a used one that is still in warranty.

[ganzonomy]

Also, considering that you do a fair bit of gaming in BFBC2 and SC2 (the former my best friend is OBSESSED with), what you may want to do is get another education license for windows 7, and just get an NP8130 with a matte screen, 8GB RAM, and limit your options. Or, perhaps an NP5165 and work from there. In all honesty, the sager / clevos are the best bangforthebuck that exists in terms of gaming power for the dollar. a GTX 560m (which is a completely competent card for 98% of gaming) for $1,050 is NOT going to be had with dell / AW, Toshiba, or MSI. Neither is the ability to upgrade parts at YOUR leisure rather than having to return to the company or pay their tech $$ for such an upgrade. (Case in point: when I had an XPS GEN I, it was $349 to upgrade from a MR9700 to MR9800, and another $174 for the tech to install it... when I could have done the job quite nicely myself.

As far as the "computer shop" goes, it seems that these places are almost clearance centers for DELL and other places that have contracts with schools. They cater to the illiterate student who doesn't shop around and associates brand with "must be quality!" or the student who in a drunken frenzy beerbashed his / her laptop. At the same time, these stores may also have a dedicated Dell IT staff that can work on Dell / AW laptops that go awry. Thus it's sort of a double-edged sword... but would I really want a DELL tech who's more interested in flirting than into actually doing his / her job? no.

Push comes to shove, either save up for a good AW m17x, or save up for a monster sager. Just my .02

Jason

[Mihael Keehl]

I wouldn't do anything like that, especially considering that the entire Studio's were just built horrendously. But, you could still add a T9500 (2.6 GHz/6MB Cache) or T9300 (2.5GHz/6MB Cache) to your current laptop if you feel that you aren't getting enough juice from your processor for a fraction of that laptop is worth. The price of the T9300 makes it much more affordable, because even I got mine at $120, but these guys are selling new & unused ones for $80, that's a bargain and a half. I knew the price was going to drop but I didn't think it was going to drop that much.

Also, since this was built upon the Santa Rosa platform, I believe you should be able to max out at 6GB of RAM, (e.g. 4GB DDR2 667MHz PC2-5300 RAM + 2GB DDR2 667MHz PC2-5300 RAM). It's worked for my Inspiron 1520, which was built upon the same platform, but it's always iffy about what happens, my computer still says the most I can have is 4096 MB even though I've added the 4GB and 2GB sticks, it reads it as 6144 MB in the BIOS.

And if you need more screen space, a WSXGA+ (1680x1050) and WUXGA (1920x1200) are available, you'd have to put them in yourself but it's not a hard task. I'd recommend the WUXGA, as it's not from China and is more reliable.