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which one, U36sd, Vaio SA3, toshiba r835?

B

booth_1

Member
Hi all,

Have had a look through the threads and couldnt quite find what I was after so...

I have kind of narrowed it down to these 3 because I can get them cheaply from the states with no import tax.

I am going travelling for a long time and need a light, compact laptop that will let me use photoshop for work while traveling, also going to do a bit of blogging while I travel, so a good keyboard would be nice, will use seperate mouse so trackpad not big issue.

they all have things which let them down though so cant decide which is gonna be acceptable.

all have i5 which is good enough.

U36sd seems to have heating and noise issues, and the screen is glossy. But its ram is upgradeable to 16gb (good for photoshop), apparently the GPU is not much better than intel 3000 so not realy important there. Good battery life.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...5_2_4_GHz.html

Vaio SA3 has heating and noise issues, but has matte screen with higher resolution (even if viewing angles not great), also has a better GPU but only 8gb memory capacity, apparently can change out optical drive for extra hard drive so could add ssd myself later on. and backlit keyboard is a nice feature. has worst battery out of the 3.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...3AFX_13_3.html

Toshiba r835 is lighter and smaller, but I believe no heating or noise issues, comes with 6gb ram and intel 3000 gpu. has a longer battery life
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...13_3_Inch.html

So I'm kinda leaning towards sony for screen, Toshiba for battery and size/weight, u36sd for a bit of each.

If you guys can suggest something else cool, or if you can say which of these 3 or if I am wrong in any of my specs.

Thanks
 
Out of those 3, I'd go for the Vaio SA3 - it sounds like a higher-end spec'd machine; I'm assuming you'd be on a desk or an office of some sort on a semi-regular basis if you're doing photoshop work so the battery life "issue", shouldn't be.
 
I haven't seen the Toshiba and Sony but have the asus u36sd for about 3 months now.

Its a nice laptop and if you only browse the net and other light use its great. Battery on mine last over 7 hours and the fan is off most of the time.

Under 100% load it's pretty terrible. The cpu will hit 95C and throttle a bit intermittently to keep the temps from rising. It also gets loud but not too annoying as the fan noise is not high pitch. The area around touchpad and keyboard doesn't get hot thought.
 
Missed your posts as was in Sydney for a week, no one had stock of the laptops I mentioned here (i mean other than the overpriced jbhifi etc) so ended up going for the u31sd for $780, i5 2nd gen, 500gb (can update to ssd when 250gb is cheaper), nvidia 520 gpu, added an extra 4gb ram for 8 total. Gotta say I'm quite happy with it. Heats up after a bit of use but is very quiet I thought. Is fairly capable with photoshop and small and light.

In the end I decided to get something relatively cheap now, and spend more when ultraportables become ultrabook size with a bit more grunt. Bring on ivy bridge and upgradable ram!
 
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