Just picked up an Asus Vivobook 13" with i5-4200U from Best Buy. $600, not bad. Was gonna throw an SSD and an extra 4GB of RAM in it and be happy... but Asus solders a metal brick over the RAM slots. WTF?!
I can see the slots under the brick - it's upgradable, not soldered on. Why the hell would Asus of all companies pull something like this? I assume they want people to pay for their upgrades or void the warranty, but Best Buy doesn't even sell an 8GB model.
I did some digging around and found the HP ProBook 430 G1 as an alternative, about the same price on Newegg - $618+shipping. Upgradable RAM and HD, better battery life at 8.5 hrs, and Haswell. Only prob is the $617 config (at Newegg) comes with a blog slow i3-4010U.
There's an upgraded model with i5-4200U (which critically features Turbocore) that'd be perfect except that Newegg wants an extra $150 for it, which sounds like highway robbery considering the two chips have the same tray price on ARK. If the upgrade included even a 128GB SSD I'd be ok with it, but an extra $150 just for Turbocore? No thanks.
So: anyone know where I can find the G1 with 4200U for closer to $650? Or something equivalent in size and either shipping with 8GB memory or upgradable to 8GB? Integrated SSD would be great, but prob not an option at this price range.
I can see the slots under the brick - it's upgradable, not soldered on. Why the hell would Asus of all companies pull something like this? I assume they want people to pay for their upgrades or void the warranty, but Best Buy doesn't even sell an 8GB model.
I did some digging around and found the HP ProBook 430 G1 as an alternative, about the same price on Newegg - $618+shipping. Upgradable RAM and HD, better battery life at 8.5 hrs, and Haswell. Only prob is the $617 config (at Newegg) comes with a blog slow i3-4010U.
There's an upgraded model with i5-4200U (which critically features Turbocore) that'd be perfect except that Newegg wants an extra $150 for it, which sounds like highway robbery considering the two chips have the same tray price on ARK. If the upgrade included even a 128GB SSD I'd be ok with it, but an extra $150 just for Turbocore? No thanks.
So: anyone know where I can find the G1 with 4200U for closer to $650? Or something equivalent in size and either shipping with 8GB memory or upgradable to 8GB? Integrated SSD would be great, but prob not an option at this price range.
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