The experience of using a budget laptop for half a year
And which useful things I’ve learned from doing so
In January, a local general store went into theirs “post-christmas” sales, so I used the occasion to buy myself a computer.
My choice was a cheapy Asus X45C series notebook, which packs the following:
Pentium Celeron B830 2x 1.8Ghz w/ Intel HD 2000
14" LED Screen (with anti-glare)
2Gb DDR3 1333Mhz (actually 2x 2Gb)
SATA 500Gb HD
1,3Mpx Webcam
1 USB 3.0 + 2 USB 2.0 inputs
6 cell battery
Windows 8
This costed me R$1074,69, or $500 aprox. Expensive? Welcome to Brazil.
So well, time has passed and I’ve been rocking this computer since then.
It has proven that it can be very slow and not suitable to gaming and other heavy demanding tasks. But this little guy can still hold it’s own.
For example, I can render videos in Vegas or Adobe Premiere; edit a bunch of photos in Adobe Camera Raw or Capture One; run Skyrim on low graphics or use BricsCad to make my school tasks.
The trick isn’t how much power it packs; it’s how you will use it.
And it’s always possible to explore a bit more of it’s capacity.
Gaming: Is it possible?
Yes, it is. But it depends if you refer to gaming as “good graphics”. You can enjoy the latest games without going full quality graphics, or you can download older games and play on full specs.
So here’s the second thing:
It’s not always about how it looks.
And what about multimedia?
Yes, it can run Vegas, it can run Premiere, it can run Photoshop and whatever it is you want to throw at it.
No, you won’t have a creamy experience. You’ll have to get used to the lagging.
But it can do it.
Further recommendations
Okay, it can do stuff, but if you want to make it better then there’s more.
Don’t stick to the 2Gb RAM if you plan doing more than surfing the internet. Get more RAM ASAP.
Also, keep an eye for the softwares you use. Dropbox and iTunes i.e. are resource hogs. I recommend Foobar2000 for music, as it’s blazingly fast and uses about 11k RAM at most.
Keep your drivers and softwares updated. Also, Asus didn’t updated the X45C drivers to Windows 8.1, so I recommend sticking to 8 for a better experience (at least for me, it’s faster).
Try turning off unnecessairy services, too. It’s less for the system to take care of (use msconfig for that). Google the internet for a list of things you can shut down.
And play with regedit. Sometimes you can make the whole thing better by thinkering with the values. Just don’t screw it up.
What did this helped me so far?
Well, I used to want only the high end stuff. I would expend a lot 0f money (and time?) into things that I would never use to it’s whole potential.
In the past 7 months, I have seen that I don’t need so much. It’s not about the numbers, it’s about what you do with it.
And what you actually need to do.
Also, don’t be ashamed when your friends talk about i7s and all you can say is HD Graphics 2000.