*** Official Clevo P65xSA/SE/SG / Sager NP8650/51/52 Owner´s Lounge ***

umm....im working on a friggin intel HD 3000 IGP wickette...itll also be two months when i finally get my new rig

 

haha even worse for you ^^ ! My god the worst thing is that I feel like my tegra K1 tablet is stronger than my current computer !

 

Hey folks,

I am very interested in the Clevo P670 SE or SG. Does anyone know a date for this product?


I'm still considering whether I should buy the 970M or 980M because of the low VRAM? At the moment I have a 675MX with 4 GB VRAM and ... okay I will, of course, more power xD ... but are 3GB really enough? (the performance increase of 15 to 20% for the 980M are really not worth me 300€)

 

Yeah i saw it yesterday

But what 1080p screen does pcspecialist use, is it IPS.?
If not will it be better to choose for the 3k ips screen?

U can set-up a 1920x1080 resolution on a 3k screen for gaming i guess.?

 

So for the p670 you should add exactly one month to the ETA of the p650 according to resellers in France. 3g is ok for most games but if you want to max everything out go for 4Gig. I'd say 3 is for high texture+ultra and 4gig is for Ultra everything.

 

lil OT here: u happy with that tegra K1 tablet? i was thinking to get my gf one of those for xmas...shes been longing for a tablet for like forever and this seems to be quite a nice bang per buck performance-wise...

 

Official specifications from Clevo out!
P650SE:
藍天Clevo
P651SE:
藍天Clevo

 

yeah the shield is excellent, powerful, nice build quality, game streaming, and that directstylus is very practical !

thanks but already posted ! If you ever find the 980M version's manual that'd be super great.

 

Ok thank you for your thoughts!

 

PREFACE: Mods, feel free to move this to a nVidia Sheild Tablet thread, but I was unable to find one.

Yes, not to add to the OT, but just to second the nVidia Shield Tablet ...

• It's 8" 1920x1200 is sharper/easier on the eyes than the 1920x1200 on the 7" Google Nexus 7 2013 (2nd gen)
• It has 3x the battery life doing browsing/reading than the Nexus 7 (easily a day and a half of constant usage)
• Even native Android-ARM gaming gets 12+ hours, although PC streaming will bring it down to 6
• The performance of the K1 + 3GiB RAM is unreal compared to anything out there
• MicroSD slot (upto 128GB) really adds major value -- using a reputable 64GB UHS-1 card without issue
• Unless you need LTE, save $100 and get the 16GB NAND ($299) option, which the MicroSD can backfill
• The speakers! Unless you wear headphones 100% of the time, there's just nothing that compares in quality to those speakers.
• The included stylist is a nice touch, even if rarely needed on the 8"
• At $299, you're going to have difficulty finding a better value in performance, expansion, speakers, etc...

I've had to "factory reset" my wife's Nexus 7 2013 (2nd gen) no less than 4 times in the past year when I've been unable to break a boot loop or some other foul-up. That's even worse than our experiences with the Nexus 4 and 5 phones (all of which have eventually required a factory reset), and even my original Nexus 7 2012 (1st gen) -- running the stock Google firmware too (I no longer build my own Android releases, have never on the Nexus devices).

Understand I'm a long-time Linux hacker (former Debian and Red Hat developer), and I cannot believe the horrendous QA/release model Google has adopted. It's not so much Android either, because I've had a 7" Amazon Fire HDX (late 2013 gen) since February and had 0 issues in 9 months. I've talked to several of my colleagues at Google about their release cycle and they are absolutely mum on information, which is very much unlike their personalities when I've worked with them at other organizations.

Now she's only had it since it first came out, which is barely a month now, so we'll see how well it lasts, especially how they update the device (other than the initial one I did when I first got it). The only "negative" is that it's a good 35-40% heavier than the Nexus 7 or my 7" Kindle Fire HDX. I used the following SanDisk Ultra 64GB NAND UHS-1 / Class 10 MicroSD card (Amazon [1]) and the following, inexpensive case which includes all-around protection, plus the cover/stand (Amazon [2]). It's never overheated in the latter case either. I did get her the LTE version, with 32GB NAND, because she roams enough she can use the LTE, so she has 96GB NAND total.

TIP: All >32GB+ NAND devices come formatted exFAT per Microsoft mandate, even though FAT32 supports up to 128GiB (there are some quirks in NT with >32GiB, hence why IHVs don't use FAT32). Linux-based Android prefers another file system, so you'll want to reformat any >32GB the MicroSD before using it.

[1] Amazon.com: SanDisk 64GB Ultra Class 10 Micro SDXC up to 48MB/s with Adapter (SDSDQUAN-064G-G4A) [Newest Version]: Computers & Accessories
[2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MV9U2OM/

 

Is there a reseller that has Sager NP8652 listed? Checked Xiotic, PowerNotebook, etc, couldn't find it. I was looking to buy an IPS 15.6" 980m and thin laptop, but I am just not seeing this. I don't want to settle for NP8651 just yet, and I don't want to go with the MYTHLOGIC Dia 1614 just yet (since it's like a shot in the dark).

 

Sager hasn't listed the SG model yet I too am waiting impatiently

 

Actually, FAT32 supports up to 2TB.


EDIT: And just to get back on topic, what's the big deal about these new models anyway? Why is everyone so excited about them?

They don't seem all that appealing to me.
Soldered CPU.
Soldered GPU.
Most of the ports on the right - so cables sticking out where I'd normally have my mouse.
M.2 SSD drives, which are significantly more expensive than mSATA.

And yes, I know it can use a PCIe M.2 drive, but have you looked at real world benchmarks on those drives? They aren't really any faster than SATA. In raw throughput benchmarks they do shine, but in real world application benchmarks they are only a few percent faster, not enough of a difference to even be noticeable in most cases, but they cost a whole lot more.

Seems to me the NP8268/Clevo P150SM is a much better machine for less money. Replaceable, upgradeable CPU and GPU. Most ports on the left (or in back). And if you want better drive performance, RAID the mSATA SSD drives.

So I'm just wondering what all the fuss is about?

 

SATA doesn't use PCIe lanes, PCIe goes to the northbridge, which is now part of the CPU, SATA goes to PCH the chipset

 

And max file size of 0-3gb right? (lazy mode)
Edit: max 4gb file

 

Yeah, I knew something about that didn't seem right. I've been reading a bunch of different sites to try to understand this whole M.2 specification and how it can support PCIe and SATA in the same slot, and at least one of the sites seemed to suggest that there were lanes involved, maybe in the connection between PCH and CPU? it's been a while since I've really studied hardware architectures, so I'm a bit behind - I wouldn't be surprised if I misunderstood something.

 

I can only answer for myself, but... I started my search for a new laptop with the goal of finding something that was high performance but travel friendly, and ended it with a budget 40% smaller than I had originally expected - but with the desire to get a 970m. This was the only system that fit all of those criteria. I only get to buy a new laptop once every 5 years or so, so I need to make sure I get my money's worth and be as future-proof as possible.

As much as I'd love to have a socketed CPU and upgradable GPU, I've never been in a position to upgrade my CPU or GPU before, so I don't feel the loss now. Also I heard from users of older Clevos that they aren't able to upgrade to the latest CPU and/or GPU anyway, whether due to a change in socket or lack of BIOS support, so I don't really feel like I'm losing out, especially given my 5-year upgrade schedule.

As for SSDs, it seems to me that mSATA is being abandoned in favor of M.2 anyway, so if I were to buy an SSD for this laptop, I'd be happier buying M.2 that I can expect to be usable in a future laptop than an mSATA that won't be usable.

TL;DR: for high demands on a low budget, this system seems too good to be true.

 

The fuss is about a nice IPS slim laptop that includes a 980M with a nice gpu cooling.
Whereas other 15" laptops have one sata HDD, the p650 is slim but can support 2*7mm SSD so no need to have msatas or M.2 SSD....


Your P150SM support only old type of screen, is quite noisy for its cooling and frankly it's getting old...and...your MSATA port is obsolete since we have another SATA 3 at the opposite of the P150SM. The soldered components might be a drawback for some users but i do not plan on changing a i7 4710HQ or replace a 980M GTX with a 700$ 1080M (maybe that'll be its name), i don't know for you but when i sell my laptops, if i add the amount of money that I got from selling my PC with 300-500 $ i can buy a brand new generation laptop VS just a 700$ MXM gpu. Especially since new laptops will finally have a new intel CPU that will heat way less.


And...... on the back of the P650 you have a USB3/sata port so that your mouse won't bother you...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Clevo-P651SE-Schenker-XMG-P505-Barebones-Notebook-Review.127978.0.html

 

This doesn't seem to be true... Check the prices for the 256GB Crucial M550 in the M.2 form factor and mSATA form factor - base price for the M.2 is $190 vs mSATA at $200, and the sale price makes it $155 for M.2 vs $160 for mSATA. The M.2 base price is even lower than the $200 base price for the 2.5" version, although the sale price is lower ($140).

PCIe M.2 drives, on the other hand, are definitely more expensive, with the 256GB Plextor M6e PCIe x2 coming in at $260 (base), and the 256GB Samsung XP941 PCIe x4 at $300 (base).

 

that depends on how it's routed on the PCB, it can be routed to both PCH and CPU

 

Only for non-demanding games with AA turned off, and even then you'll be struggling to hit 60 FPS.

Seriously people 3K is very demanding. My desktop manages about 85 FPS in Far Cry 3 with 2x MSAA using 2.25x DSR (2880x1620 downsampled to 1080p) with 2 desktop 970s overclocked to match desktop 980 performance. Even accounting for DSR's performance overhead, a single 980M will struggle to game at 3K.

 

Does Clevo P650SE come with optical drive? Despite of it saying that it comes with one, I fail to see it on the attached photos.

 

It says it does NOT come with one. Many resellers have an option to add an external optical drive which may be what you are seeing.

 

From my order's invoice, it clearly states that there is an 8X DVD optical drive, but when I double check the sale's webpage, the option is gone!
I doubt that there will be an external drive coming with the order.

 

nope, these models do not include an internal optical drive. but as ningyo said, a lot of resellers/system builders include the option of an external optical drive.

 

Out of curiosity, anyone know who the manufacturer of the touchpad is? Synaptics, ELAN, Sentelic, etc?

 

because it was the case for all my older clevos i'd say Synaptic, but not sure, wait for next week to be sure.

 

The leaked user manual has a picture showing it to be "Synaptics Touchpad v7.5 on PS/2 Port 1" the manual appears to be edited from a copy off another laptop though, and seems to have a couple either errors or weird things to include so can't guarantee accuracy.

Edit: found 2 other spots in user manual listing it as Synaptics so near certainly correct.

 

We've actually come full circle.

The earliest, high speed NOR and NAND devices were often designed with a PCIe x1 interface. They used the mini-PCIe connector directly, if not a proprietary mezzanine altogether. There was no standard to this "bridge/controller," and they were not remotely cheap.

mSATA was actually the result of one OEM ( EDIT:Asus, not Acer, for their 8.9" portables) adapting the mini-PCIe x1 connector to run the 7-pin SATA data lines to it. It was originally a complete one-off, non-standard. But the industry liked that idea, and mSATA caught on, because it was cheaper than putting a PCIe x1 bridge on an existing NAND SATA device. mSATA's popularity is the result of most NAND controllers were designed around broad commonality, hence SATA for interface compatilibity with typical 2.5" drives.

But in reality, SATA has always been a bottleneck and not the most ideal for NAND devices. SATA -- specifically the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) stack -- like typical communication stacks (e.g., Ethernet-TCP/IP), is really about an I/O stack for communication that has latency in the milliseconds, and doesn't have to be local. Physically serialized, logically block ("frame" in the case of network), is still fast, can be very high throughput, but also has its limits, especially in latency (insert a similar Ethernet-TCP/IP v. Infiniband/IP let alone non-IP Infiniband stacks).

Intel actually developed NVM Express (NVMe) [1] back in 2010, and might have seen earlier adoption had mSATA not come about, and the SATA being deprecated with the move away from 2.5" drives. But as fate would have it, it did not, because mSATA used the same 2.5" SATA logic, for price considerations. So commodity NAND devices today are still designed for AHCI, instead of NVMe.

Hence M.2.

M.2 is designed to include a backward compatible 7-pin SATA (AHCI), but introduces multiple PCIe lines into the same connector (NVMe). That way the end-device can be designed to support either AHCI, NVMe or both, and it's up to the host to support one, the other, or both. In most cases we're seeing hosts support AHCI or both AHCI and NVMe, and then the end-device support AHCI or both AHCI and NVMe.

[1] NVM Express - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I should have clarified that.

With 512 byte sectors, FAT32 theoretically supports up to 2TiB (2.2TB) file systems, yes.

In reality, NT5 (2000/XP/2003), let alone DOS7 aka Win9x/Me (which still shunts into Real86 at times), has issues with FAT32 beyond 128GiB (137GB), and even some quirks beyond 32GiB (33.8GB). It's not just 32-bit LBA at work, but some structures in how NT, let alone DOS (and Extended Int13h), was designed to handle FAT. NT5's design actually goes back to structures decided upon in NT4SP4 (don't get me started).

Most of these things were not addressed correctly until NT6 (Vista/2007/7/2012/8).

Hence the "universal compatibility" being 32GiB (33.8GB) and definitely never "universal" beyond 128GiB (137GB).

This is why Microsoft doesn't allow most NT6 tools to create a FAT32 file system larger than 32GiB, even though all NT5 releases support up to at least 128GiB, and even Windows XP 2003+ releases usually able to do 2TiB FAT32 without issue.

It also explains why Microsoft has mandated that all devices that break 32GiB (33.8GB) need to come formatted with exFAT, not FAT32. And this is why virtually all 64GB+ SD device come formatted exFAT.

SIDE NOTE: There are also countless, history and still pertinent issues with NTFS on mobile/portable devices, especially prior to NT6, especially "Home" editions. But that is another story, especially when it comes to external hard drives that have long broken 128GiB (137GB) and come formatted NTFS in a very, very specific way (i.e., with no ACEs).

 

Trying to work out how exactly I can get the P650SE for about £1340 with a 1TB Samsung EVO 840 on PCSpecialist however MySn's model comes to about £1450 with the same SSD. I had never considered PCSpecialist as such a 'cheap' reseller, however it's annoying as I prefer the logo etc on MySn's model. Is the difference worth something like £100-150? I'm not too sure, tempted to order with PCSpecialist, seems like a bargain.

 

ive had several aha moments there my friend, thanks for the lecture

on another note: still havent gotten around to check those leaked P65xSx manuals yet! once i do ill add them to the OP, promise

 

The manual has a copyright on it so you should only link to it. The 3k and 4k panel data-sheets do not, though its pretty clear the 4k Samsung is not meant for the public eye. It has "For Clevo Only" Watermarks on every page, and "Samsung Secret" in red at the top corner of every page. Lots of embarrassing things in it too, they use white pixels to pad the pixel count allowing them to claim the 4k, also max 48hz. (Samsung LTN156FL02-L01)
( R G B W R G B W R G B)
( W R G B W R G B W )
( R G B W R G B W R G B)

Definitely get the Sharp 4k display if you want 4k on it. (Sharp LQ156D1JX01B)

Oh and the Panasonic 3k display looks fine according to its datasheet, its (Panasonic VVX16T029D00) in case you want to look it up.

 

what about the default 1080p panel? Is it ok? how do you think, and what is the type of it? ips or tn?

 

For what I've heard it's a good IPS panel AUO B156HAN01.2 MATTE. Don't worry. But that may vary, however it will still be IPS.

 

Hmm I heard it was that but glossy, the coating can vary on the same panel though so just make sure it says glossy or matte when you order.

 

good stuff, happy that my system builder is using the sharp 4k display

 

I've did a lot of embedded ARM, Power and other platforms, in addition to x86, from 2004-2008, not including my work in the '90s (which was more specialized, aerospace, not so much consumer systems).

Most of my work was Linux and JFFS2 often on NOR (you define the storage at a low-level, it's not a general block allocation, and JFFS2 manages it -- with the file system -- in addition to uboot, not a PC BIOS bootloader, even on x86), a few with Windows CE (read-only) and NT (x86-only, with overlay). This was prior to massive improvements in NAND that made it capable for general inode filesystems, such as Ext4 and XFS (Linux). Once NT6.1 (Windows 7) became available, and they brought the Embedded NT/XP Overlay forward for NTFS, it made Windows viable for FAT-based filesystems (FAT, NTFS, etc...) on NAND as well.

SIDE NOTE: inode file system design and POSIX (UNIX/Linux) approaches are much better than FAT-based designs and Windows approaches when it comes to NAND lifespan. E.g., the spanning tree of indirect pointers, plus the common separation of static and temporary/variable data at the file system level -- binaries, data and temporary not being together. The overlay driver, which has actually been around since Embedded NT 4, drastically improves lifespan for NT 6.1 (Windows 7) and later, despite the common use of a single file system and inter-mixing of binaries, data and temporary files. I.e., this is the classic argument against the PC OS' common design from the '80s, which has reared its hugly head in the 21st century with NAND EEPROM.

So I was right there, when Intel was selling off ARM to Marvell, and I saw the in-line Atom x86 design under NDA, well before it became public (don't get me started on that). Intel was also developing their HyperTransport competitor in "NexGen I/O," now known as QuickPath Connect, which would allow much greater capabilities with PCI Express like was possible in HyperTransport.

That all said ...

Many in the industry were alrady talking about developing a general "ACHI-like" interface for low-latency devices, as NAND would become more commodity and higher-throughput, beyond SATA, let alone more efficient than the SATA stack which is really designed for higher latency storage. Even back then, both NAND and NOR were already exceedingly fast and extremely low-latency at reads.

The irony is that once the SATA Consortium saw the potential of what Asus did, and others that followed, they created mSATA. This really put some of the adoption of Intel's designs, including NVMe's predecessor ( EDIT: ONFI), on-hold. Anyone who wanted to create a mSATA device could do so by just using the exact same components from a common, drive form-factor implementation (like 2.5"). SATA and AHCI became the way most people adopted commodity NAND EEPROM.

This happens quite a bit, and even Intel itself has divisions guilty of supporting another technology, because of industry adoption. "Device Bay" comes to mind, beyond Intel spurning IEEE standard 1394 aka "FireWire," despite promises to Apple. Even today, we don't see Intel pushing Thunderbolt either, despite working with Apple. Portable NAND "Flash" drives would be so much faster if we had Thunderbolt on our PCs.

Don't get me started on yet another tangent there. USB 3.0 sucks, just like USB 2.0, from an efficiency standpoint, and is another example. Neither were supposed to exist as USB was designed as only a character (byte-by-byte) device, not a block one. It was really as "dumb wires," just to get it out there, years before devices actually became available, which required 100% of the "intelligence" (OHCI "controller" is really an utterly false statement), and were heavily software with very few standards (e.g., ACM for UART and modems came much later, not part of the USB standard).

I know. My good colleague Mark Matthews wrote one of the first block drivers for USB-based WiFi dongles. You don't know him, but most of the early DLink, Linksys and other home Routers (especially anything Broadcom-based) people bought in the very early '00s were based on its Linux toolkit. His brother, Brian Matthews, developed the Intersil Prism chipset. Damn, I just tangented again

In any case, my point, I've seen a lot of crap that makes up the industry in general.

What people use is often hardly the best design, and sometimes the worst. USB was the absolute worst, even old DECbus was better as a good friend from Digital Semi used to point out. In a few years we'll all be talking about "remembering" SATA before NVMe's successor. Although the crap known as USB will still be around, and still used for things other than keyboards and mice it was only designed for.

 

PCS offers the cheapest P650SE/SG (with the same config) I can find in Europe at the moment. However their customer service is not as good as mySN, hence the price difference. But if I buy this laptop, maybe I will go with PCS, as I have a tight budget.

 

wouldnt worry too much about the logo, i actually put in an order for the SG machine without the XMG logo since im kind of a purist when it comes to such things
and yeah, reason i chose mysn was their one of a kind 4 yr warranty option, most ive seen with others was three years tops! and its not even that expensive if u think about it: having a soldered cpu + gpu it pretty much just takes ONE repair case and u got those 300€ back in a flip, since the whole motherboard has to be exchanged

 

Sad, but so very true.

I don't understand why Intel ignores superior interfaces and clings to the crappy USB standard. Old "Firewire" 400 was far superior in actual throughput when compared to USB-2, which was supposed to be faster by spec. And it can even hold it's own against USB-3. Yet it was nearly impossible to find an Intel based PC with IEEE-1394 (Firewire) ports. Sony was one of the very few PC makers who included that as standard.

Now we're in the same boat with Thunderbolt. While you can find a few non-Mac Intel computers with TB, they are few and far between. This leaves the accessory makers reluctant to support the better standard, because sales potential is so much greater for crappy USB devices.

Even the adoption of M.2/NGFF is stagnating. The few PCIe SSD drives that are out there are overpriced and underperforming devices that simply aren't worth the money. It's unfortunate that the M.2/NGFF standard included SATA. That just gave the manufacturers an easy out to flood the market with overpriced SATA devices in a new form factor.

Maybe in a few years we'll have properly performing M.2 PCIe SSD drives at reasonable prices, but by then it'll be time for a new computer anyway. Until then, M.2 is really just a marketing gimmick to wring more money out of the early adopter, gotta have it because it's new consumer.

IMNSHO, anyway...

Thanks for your "insider" insights into all of this. Very educational.

While I had heard about supposed issues with FAT32 at large storage sizes, I have never run into that in actual use. I have a 2TB external USB-2.0 HDD using the FAT32 file system that has been in use for several years now. Why? Because my PS3 cannot read/write any other file system on an external. I use the drive for backups and media, and I've never had any problems reading or writing to it from a variety of operating systems, including multiple versions of Windows and Linux. So, theoretical problems aside, it works for me.

Thanks again for the info. I'm one of those nerdy "Big Bang" types that loves to read that stuff.

 

More than likely this is due to the amount of money Microsoft invested into the guy that developed USB ( they literally own him right now as he works directly for MS last I read ), the other half of wants to say slow marketing and milk it for what its worth as they slowly trickle out others. Typical business.

 

Technically, 4GB minus one byte.

Thanks for your insights. You make some good points.

It remains to be seen how well the GPU cooling on the new models work, so nice speculation, but not a valid point (yet).

From the reviews I've read, the cooling on the P150SM doesn't seem all that noisy, and since the new models aren't in anyone's hands yet, you are only speculating again that the cooling will be quieter.

Good point about using 2xSATA SSD, though. Forgot about that. Thanks.

Current prices for M550 256GB from Amazon:
SATA 2.5" = 139.99
mSATA = $143.99
M.2/NGFF = $154.99

And for the 512GB:
SATA 2.5" = $257.99
mSATA = $264.99
M.2/NGFF = $279.99

So, not seeing what you are claiming on Amazon, which appears to be cheaper than Newegg (and that's not even accounting for the fact that Newegg charges a small fortune to ship to Hawaii, where I live, while Amazon still ships free).

The same panels are often available in both glossy and matte, so it depends on what the reseller is offering. Sager resellers will very likely offer whatever Sager is installing. Clevo resellers are going to offer whatever they want to install, which may be affected by cost and availability in their region (and may even change without notice).

 

I'm completely in the same boat as you. Really I'm already pushing it at £1300 but I know I'm getting a 970M and a 1TB Samsung SSD. Struggling to decide.

MySn offers a very good warranty, however as I said I'm already stretching my budget more than I had wanted (original budget was £1200), so I'm finding it really hard to choose. I may have to go with PCS just because I can't afford to keep upping my price boundary :L

 

Weird, those aren't the prices I'm seeing. Either way, I guess it depends where you buy from, but I don't see those prices as being significantly more expensive, as you claimed.

The ultimate point being that I don't think it's valid to use M.2 prices being higher than mSATA prices to justify dismissing this laptop as a choice.

 

Think I originally posted this in the wrong place so reposting it here "Had the clevo p170sm-a w/970m and 4810hq now for a few days. Probably going to return it and wait for xotic to have the P651SG w/980m. How much cooling and processor am I sacrificing for portability here?"

 

4810 is probably around 10% more powerful than 4710. (note 4860 and 4870 are weaker than 4810, they are barely above the 4710 at all.) The cooling on the p651sg is far far better on the GPU, on the CPU its sort of an unknown, on the pre-production unit that Notebook Check tested the CPU ran very hot, but there were some things about it that it seems got changed in the actual production models. So it is really a wait and see on the cooling.

I would note that in nearly all games even if the 4710 is a bottleneck it would be at over 60 FPS. So unless you plan to hook it up to an external 120hz monitor it should have nearly no affect on gaming. For productivity it depends on what you are doing, but it could make a difference.

 

Here's a question I need answering:

From PCS, I could either get a 970M 3GB with a 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, or a 980M 4GB with a standard 1TB 5400rpm hard drive.

The cost is identical, so what would be my better money spent? I want a decent laptop which will last me at least the next 3 years.

 

Gotta check Amazon's pricing. Some are out of stock at the moment, so you are seeing prices from other vendors, but if you click the link that shows all prices you'll see the Amazon pricing (which should also be the lowest).

But you do have a point. In the overall scheme of the system price, the extra for M.2 is not budget breaking. Still, though, you are paying more for something that gains you nothing in terms of performance, and that just sits wrong with me. SATA is SATA, regardless of the size of the interface. Now if and when the industry starts producing PCIe M.2 drives that significantly outperform their SATA counterparts (in anything other than benchmarks), then that will be a useful interface. Until then, I still say you are just playing into the scheme of planned obsolescence, which is primarily a marketing ploy to wring more money out of the early adopters.

This has been the case over and over again. IDE to SATA. AGP to PCIe. The "new tech" which is supposed to be so much faster is not, until a few generations have passed, and by then the early adopters have already moved on. I fully believe we will repeat the process with M.2, and that there won't be a significant increase in performance for quite some time. By the time we see M.2 drives that are faster in real world performance, it will be time for a new computer anyway.

I guess it's just a pet peeve of mine, the way the industry tries to force you into buying new tech with false promises.

I must say, though, that after reading yours and other's comments, this model does seem a bit more appealing. Not sure if it's enough to be a must have for me, but it's always nice to get other points of view. Enlightenment is never a bad thing, even if it doesn't lead to an epiphany.

The "upgrade" pricing I'm seeing for SSD drives is higher than the cost of just buying the drive outright. I'd say go for the 980M with whatever is the cheapest drive option (or no drives if you can) and source the SSD yourself.

 

fitting 4x 500mb m.2 sticks in a small compartment equivalent to a 2.5" bay in a raid array; is pretty sweet.... as usual they will drop in price like most tech