I personally like Logitech thingies. I use their "Anywhere Mouse' as a laptop mouse and used to use the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard as a keyboard. It was a good keyboard; not gaming-oriented, however.

What exactly did the logitech illuminated keyboard do that a free dell keyboard can't do?

Light up. Look cool. Comfortable. Not obnoxiously loud, like mechanical keyboards.

I'm not saying it's a unique and one-of-a-kind keyboard, I'm saying I wanted a keyboard that lit up and the Logitech one did that and fulfilled all my other needs.

The Toshiba R830 & R835 should have an official battery life of ~11 hours, or about 6 IRL.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Apr 12 2011, 12:30 pm by Centreri.

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I ended up paying just under $800 for this after coupons and tax; getting a 15-inch laptop seemed like a good idea, since it looks like it's the largest size that I could carry around comfortably. The keyboard is also wide enough so that I can type well on it without feeling awkwardly constricted. Thanks for the advice SEN!

(Would have liked a SSD but the option was not available. A better graphics card would have been better too but I guess you can't have everything.)



Haven't tweaked it much since I bought it, I'm thinking about undervolting this because the processor can run up to 90 °C under high load and draw over 20 watts (not the best cooling). Right now the battery life from my first day of testing seems to be ~6 hours under low load with the monitor dimmed all the way, a bit less than 2 hours under maximum stress. Surprisingly, putting the monitor on maximum brightness only increased the power draw by 4 watts, which can definitely be completely offset if I can undervolt this processor to ~1.0V.

What are some of the other things I can do to this laptop to optimize it? I expect to use this computer for at least 4 years, so anything that could improve my usage experience would be greatly welcomed.

(OT: Dem Bulldozer delays )

EDIT> Reran the assessment after installing newer AMD drivers and the score went up.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 25 2011, 2:31 pm by Aristocrat.

Keeping it clean is a start. Files upon files that never get used or deleted only work to clog up the HDD and slow down loading times. Only have the bare necessities run on start-up. Keeping it cool is always a good idea, perhaps if you get a cooling laptop mat for home use you'll be good.

Other than that anti-malware will keep your computer free of performance eating viruses and worms. Also defragmenting every week after you go to sleep is pretty useful too.

Get MSE, CCleaner and defragment every once in a while. Make sure you know what starts up with the computer, what every program in the "hidden icons" menu is. If your computer suddenly slows down, check what program it is for future reference. If it starts overheating where it didn't before (general slowdown in varied intensive applications - even WCIII worked poorly! - and turning off), you likely have dust in your vent; happened to me, and blowing in the vent fixed it. Not much more, really.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 25 2011, 5:13 pm by Centreri.

So there isn't really much more I can do beyond undervolting other than installing the necessary software suites and performing routine maintenance (which I already do)? I'm a bit disappointed that performance cannot be improved significantly;, but I guess it makes things easier for me. Thanks for the help guys ; if there is anything beyond this that I should know, please do tell; I'll appreciate the advice.

You can always try and cut Windows down, but the performance increase will be marginal, and it isn't worth it. If it was worth it and easy to do so, it would already have been done by Microsoft.

As for keyboards. There can only be one:




www.daskeyboard.com

Lol'd. As for keyboards I like the steelseries 7g or 6gv2.

I'm using a microsoft comfort curve 2000.

Now you might say, "microsoft? Keyboard? They can barely make an OS!". Let me tell you something. This is the best damn keyboard I have ever used. It lets virtually any key combination through correctly. It's not NKRO (I can't press Rshift Lshift X), but I can press more than 6 keys at a time, which is supposed to be the limiting factor in USB (USB only allows 6, but the keyboard sends it through in multiple polls). There are 10 extra keys (volume, back, etc...) which can be assigned macros. There's even a calculator button above the numpad, which is immensely useful for me.

The keys are rubber dome, but they're slim, and scissor switch.

I got it for free, but it costs $15-$20 new.

This is little performance impact when slimming down windows. The performance arises from having more RAM to utilize if you have low ram, smaller footprint if you have low storage space, and occasionally less junk going on. It's more likely that you'll break something.

You don't need an anti-virus if you're at all competent. CCleaner is okay and all, but even that does little other than clear up some HDD space. Windows defrags while idle, so there's not much need to run a defrag. It's always a good idea to keep your files and folders organized though for yourself. Make a backup copy of all your games, documents, pictures, etc... If you do it right, you can pretty easily reinstall windows from time to time, which is the best way to get rid of the poorly coded software you might have installed before.

Not really on topic of this thread, but people above are offering suggestions for how to keep the system running well into the future, eg delete un-needed files and uninstall programs, etc.

Really I think this is a relic of XP thought. XP computers have a well-known problem of after 18-24 months they start to progressively take longer and longer to boot up, even if you haven't installed heaps of programs or whatever - they simply get slower. Windows 7 doesn't suffer from this, or at least not anywhere as much to the same degree. Not running pointless programs at startup is still important, but the general build up of boot-cruft simply doesn't happen any more. I know a lot of people say they routinely rebuild their computers after a year or so, reinstall the OS and programs etc, but you honestly don't need to do that any more.

Yeah, despite what computer marketing would have you believe, your computer is already working at its best. There's not much more we can do than minor tweaks.

As for optimizing battery, be sure your minimum processor state in the power options in Windows is set to something low (Windows typically puts 5% here in the low power profiles, which doesn't actually set it to 5% but the lowest the CPU has built-in support for). This won't typically impact performance, but will save power when CPU usage is low. You may see your idle CPU usage go up, but that is only because the CPU is running at a slower speed. People who don't know what this feature does often mistake this for increasing CPU usage.

No, you're all wrong. There is only one keyboard, and this is it. Unicomp Customizer 104. Uses IBM's patented buckling springs. As far as I know, Unicomp is the only current manufacturer that produces buckling spring keyboards. Worth the $80 for mine.

As far as Rockz's Comfort Curve 2000, I agree, it was a great keyboard. I used it for about 4 years and it was well worth the investment. As far as keeping your OS zippy, just make sure you don't have a bunch of background crap running. Run "msconfig", go to the startup tab, and uncheck anything that isn't vital for startup (For example, Apple Updater) It probably won't make much of a difference, but the truth is, nothing will make too much of a difference. It doesn't hurt to have a defrag run once every two weeks, perhaps. Use MalwareBytes to scan every two weeks or two.

That's not a Mighty Mouse.

To avoid battery degredation, don't keep your laptop plugged in; plug in until it's full, plug out, wait, plug back in. Additionally, if you can't do this perfectly (I can't, and I stopped bothering to try), you can look for a program to cap what the laptop will charge to. My Sony has built-in software that allows you to (customizably) cap it at 80%, slowing down the rate of degredation of the battery but decreasing battery life.