Thanks, Friday, June 17, 2011, 10:16:03 AM, you wrote:
> * Buying RAM and hard drive is always cheaper by going 3rd party and > that for almost if not all manufacturers. Apple is the same as is > Dell. This is one of their way of screwing customers :( Get the > minimum and replace as soon as you get your machine. Sure, make it up on the add-ons. For the RAM, it's easy, Kingston's price for KTL-TP3B/4G (4GB 1333MHz Module for the X220) is $67@ and that's for the name-brand version without shopping around. Lenovo is $80. For the HD, it's a little less cut-and-dried, the X220 comes with 250Gb/5400rpm and it seems to be 2.5". Upgrade to 320/5400 is $30, to 320/7200 is $70. It was harder to find alternatives because no one seems to have a "tell me your machine and I'll find you a hard drive" they way they do with RAM. But using newegg.com, the cheapest 320/5400/2.5" is $42 (Hitachi Z5K320). Cheapest 3200/7200/2.5" is $55 (Seagate ST9320423AS). So yeah I can see it's cheaper to buy 3rd-party for the 7200rpm anyway. To complete the picture, 128GB SSD is +$350, Intel 160GB is +$430. Cheapest on newegg.com are $210 (Samsung) and $308 (Intel), respectively. There's actually a $188 128GB by Wintec but it's rated 1/5 by the customers. I don't know (and it seems really hard to find) what the Lenovo units' specs/models are so I just took the cheapest on (US) Newegg.com and the upgrade prices from Lenovo (Canada) configurator. It seems almost impossible to buy just the Intel 2x2 wireless adapter from a third party, though. Newegg seems to list it (but out of stock) but it's about $35 (vs. $20 from Lenovo). Does that make sense. > * About nVidia graphics, if I understood well, you can on some models, > dynamically switch from Intel to Nvidia and vice versa which means > that on a power consumption point of view, you lose nothing by > choosing nvidia if you do not use it much. Budget though is a > different issue. It's becoming a graphic world, that's for sure. As it turns out, Nvidia is not an option on X220, only on T420s. Though I hadn't ruled out the latter when I posted last night, I'm really thinking of an X220 now and seing how it turns out. I'll get it with the upgrades that seem to make sense from Lenovo, i.e. webcam, Bluetooth, IPS, Intel 6205, and very expensive USB 3.0 (since I have to take i7 to get it), and stick with 2GB RAM and 250GB HD as you and others have cleverly suggested. Unless it's easy and cheap to get some of those things later too. Thanks again! -- Andrew mailto:[email protected] _______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list [email protected] http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
