T450s or Inspiron 7 series 15 inch

[sze5003]

Looking at the lenovo t450s I see you can configure it with or without the 16gb ssd cache drive. You can also choose a third m2 slot.

Is the 16gb ssd cache slot open if I choose to not have the cache ssd? I will be getting a HD and more ram on my own.

So I'm either looking at the inspiron 7 series which would also be an i5.

Not sure which would be better? I had a chance to get a Y50 with a i7 4720 CPU but missed out on that price.

Mostly doing Linux and programming, usually some android stuff.

 

[firewolfsm]

The 450s is better build, easier to upgrade/repair, and has trackpoint.

 

[sze5003]

Yea I noticed that but the i7 model of the t450s is a little more than I would pay for other i7 models. I feel like I should get an i7 if I'll be messing with android stuff for fun.

 

[Hulk]

I purchased a t450s back in March. Upgraded display, deleted m.2, after purchase added 500GB SSD and an additional 8GB of RAM for 12GB total.
Absolutely love this laptop. Solidity of the chassis, display, and keyboard in particular are fantastic.

 

[sze5003]

I purchased a t450s back in March. Upgraded display, deleted m.2, after purchase added 500GB SSD and an additional 8GB of RAM for 12GB total.
Absolutely love this laptop. Solidity of the chassis, display, and keyboard in particular are fantastic.

I remember your thread from before. Did you go with an i7 or i5? Deciding between those two. I'll most likely go with the IPS 1920x1080.

Should I not add the 16gb ssd when ordering or will that reduce my slot by one? I will keep the third m2 slot option as opposed to smart card reader.

I plan on keeping the 500gb HD stock and adding a 256gb m2 for the OS and probably same as you, add an 8gb stick.

 

[Hulk]

I remember your thread from before. Did you go with an i7 or i5? Deciding between those two. I'll most likely go with the IPS 1920x1080.

Should I not add the 16gb ssd when ordering or will that reduce my slot by one? I will keep the third m2 slot option as opposed to smart card reader.

I plan on keeping the 500gb HD stock and adding a 256gb m2 for the OS and probably same as you, add an 8gb stick.

I went with the i5 5200u. I couldn't justify the price increase for a tiny bit of frequency increase, at least as the CPU pricing was when I purchased. Don't know how it is now.

I ordered without the 16GB m.2 and it saved me $40. I don't quite understand what you are talking about regarding third m.2 slot or smart carder? All I can tell you is that there was an empty m.2 slot in my system ordered without the m.2 cache.

I was going to do the same thing you are with m.2 as boot drive. While I was able to load the OS and boot from the m.2 it was never stable. For some reason after a variable amount of time the system was freeze and only a hard reset would bring it back. Sometimes 5 minutes of use, sometimes an hour. I cloned the m.2 over to a 500GB SSD, sold the m.2 and haven't had a problem since.

I'd be curious to see if you have any issues using the m.2 for the boot drove. I know Lenovo recommends not doing this but they don't say why. I tried a bunch of different things, messing with power saving features, changing what little BIOS adjustments you can actually make... eventually to verify it wasn't a system malfunction of some sort I cloned the m.2 to the SSD and the freezing problem went away, completely. If I need a little extra storage someday I guess I could pop in a 256GB m.2. But for me 500GB of SSD goodness is enough.

Good luck with your system and check back to let us know how it goes.

 

[sze5003]

I went with the i5 5200u. I couldn't justify the price increase for a tiny bit of frequency increase, at least as the CPU pricing was when I purchased. Don't know how it is now.

I ordered without the 16GB m.2 and it saved me $40. I don't quite understand what you are talking about regarding third m.2 slot or smart carder? All I can tell you is that there was an empty m.2 slot in my system ordered without the m.2 cache.

I was going to do the same thing you are with m.2 as boot drive. While I was able to load the OS and boot from the m.2 it was never stable. For some reason after a variable amount of time the system was freeze and only a hard reset would bring it back. Sometimes 5 minutes of use, sometimes an hour. I cloned the m.2 over to a 500GB SSD, sold the m.2 and haven't had a problem since.

I'd be curious to see if you have any issues using the m.2 for the boot drove. I know Lenovo recommends not doing this but they don't say why. I tried a bunch of different things, messing with power saving features, changing what little BIOS adjustments you can actually make... eventually to verify it wasn't a system malfunction of some sort I cloned the m.2 to the SSD and the freezing problem went away, completely. If I need a little extra storage someday I guess I could pop in a 256GB m.2. But for me 500GB of SSD goodness is enough.

Good luck with your system and check back to let us know how it goes.

I with they had a quad core option. Syncing ROMs and kernels is much faster on those and I'm not sure if either of these two processors would do well with dual cores.

I read somewhere that if you turn off efi boot in bios then you should be able to install the OS on the m2 drive.

The smart card option if you don't want the smart card you get that other m2 slot. The third m2 slot I think is used for the wlan card.

I think I'll need a quad core though unless the dual core i5 will do ok with VM's and such.

I would need to read up on the m2 issue otherwise I don't think I would use it if I can't load the OS on there and use the stock HD for storage.