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PC laptop recommendation for mac user
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Guy Parsons
Forum Pro
Changed my C340 battery and now is charging. Meanwhile when I turned the C340 upside down to disembowel it I saw the makers label and in fine print it says "made for Lenovo" so my third party maker guess was right. No mention of who did make it, possibly some Foxconn lookalike.
H
Henry Richardson
Guest
For some people the $141 savings would be worth all the trouble, but not for me. And I would also have a pang because of the feeling of waste of two 8gb RAM sticks and a 512gb SSD.
I have done upgrades on my own Windows laptops before, but only once did I intentionally buy one with less and planning to immediately upgrade it myself. In 2019 I bought a Dell laptop with 16gb and I knew I would immediately upgrade it to 32gb. But, before buying I checked and this Dell laptop had 2 memory slots and I knew Dell put in a single 16gb stick so all I had to do was order another 16gb stick. No waste. When I put it in I then had 32gb and went from single channel to dual channel too.
In other cases I did small upgrades to older laptops such as after a few years using one which had 4gb RAM I then upgraded it to 8gb. And two other old laptops which had HDDs in them I later put in SSDs. All still running fine.
And, of course, with Apple Silicon you cannot update the RAM or SSD.
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Chris Noble
Veteran Member
I agree with Austinian. I've done some XPS servicing myself. My current model service manual (XPS13 9320) says Damage due to servicing that is not authorized by Dell is not covered by your warranty.
So if you don't cause any damage, seems that the warranty is still good.
And make sure the RAM is socketed, not soldered. I've seen both with XPS laptops.
And use exactly the size and types of screwdrivers (Torx) that they specify. The screw-heads are designed to be tamper-proof with more common screwdrivers.
Read the manual carefully including all the warnings before you decide to do it yourself.
Chris Noble
Veteran Member
No laptop maker makes their own batteries. They are all made by battery manufacturers. But the OEM versions are made to the laptop company's quality standards. Some of the clones are junk. Often they will print "made for Lenovo" (or Dell, etc.) on the battery.
The only way to get a real OEM battery is by ordering it from the OEM, or from a verified OEM retail channel.
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Guy Parsons
Forum Pro
Yes, I realise that.
The OEM was so bad that I reason that no clone could be any worse, hence my clone battery. A quick check a "genuine" Lenovo battery about AU$180, the clone delivered to my door was about AU$70, guess which makes more sense to me?
For vague possible interest, here's the underside of the original battery that I removed....
The battery is close to the width of the keyboard above it and is apparently 4 flat cells housed in a plastic frame that is about 4mm thick, the cells are seemingly thinner than 4mm hence the visible outlines underneath a black plastic film stuck over the whole underside.
The C340 underside before I removed that battery....
The i7 and its heat pipe centre top, 500gig M2 SSD just to the right of the battery.
Easy peasy to access, a bunch of micro Torx head screws and then pop the very flimsy base cover off to reveal that above.
Now testing the new battery, the old one (near 4 years old when I checked my receipts) gave me 10 minutes of run time if I was lucky, the new one so far has lost 12% in one hour, so is better by indicating that I could get 8 hiors out of it.
The Point and Shoot Pro
Senior Member
I can get the same upgrades for 1/3 the cost of dell. That's quite a bit of saving. Also everything you stated takes 30 min to do and it's easily done using a usb drive. Create a back up, remove old drive, install new drive and re install your back up. You make sound like it's days of work. IT was back in the days of 286 pcs. Today. 30 min after you have your back up complete you are re installing your back up again. I priced going from 16 to 64 gb of ram and you save 500 dollars. I also upgraded to 4tb doing my calculations using the fastest ssd right now, the Seagate 530 and I would save another 400 dollars by installing that myself instead of some slow ssd drive that dell would stick in there.
The Point and Shoot Pro
Senior Member
My OEM dell battery gave me around 6-8hrs of battery life in my current system depending on what I was doing. I realized that there was a larger battery available in some models, but it was not an option when I bought mine. So I did what anyone would do, I bought the larger battery. Now I get 10-12 hrs out of it depending and it was an easy peasy install.Yes, I realise that.
The OEM was so bad that I reason that no clone could be any worse, hence my clone battery. A quick check a "genuine" Lenovo battery about AU$180, the clone delivered to my door was about AU$70, guess which makes more sense to me?
For vague possible interest, here's the underside of the original battery that I removed....
The battery is close to the width of the keyboard above it and is apparently 4 flat cells housed in a plastic frame that is about 4mm thick, the cells are seemingly thinner than 4mm hence the visible outlines underneath a black plastic film stuck over the whole underside.
The C340 underside before I removed that battery....
The i7 and its heat pipe centre top, 500gig M2 SSD just to the right of the battery.
Easy peasy to access, a bunch of micro Torx head screws and then pop the very flimsy base cover off to reveal that above.
Now testing the new battery, the old one (near 4 years old when I checked my receipts) gave me 10 minutes of run time if I was lucky, the new one so far has lost 12% in one hour, so is better by indicating that I could get 8 hiors out of it.
Follow instructions and keep every screw where they came from and you can't mess up if you take your time. Also, OEM batteries are just other batteries with a label stuck on them. They are not magical oddities. Mine is not a OEM dell battery but it is exactly the same when it comes to power in/power out. That's all that matters.
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Chris Noble
Veteran Member
Your OEM battery might have been defective. It should provide the rated capacity during the warranty period and can be replaced under warranty -- often even after warranty as the laptop manufacturers have been sued for bodily harm (chemical burns) due to defective batteries.
The OEM version at $180 is a better deal. The primary failure mechanism results in progressive swelling, which can flex the keyboard, causing intermittent keystroke shorts for a while before more significant damage is visible.
Less than $150 apparently. Not worth it for me, nor for most people.
Yay Dell with a crooked E! for selling upgrades at a reasonable premium. And for having such excellent maintenance documentation.
Too bad the XPS doesn't have a numeric keypad. Dell laptops that do seem less attractive.
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I'm glad the XPS don't have 'em; they have a tendency to push the touchpad and alpha keyboard off-center to the display. That annoys me.
How about a nice Precision mobile workstation? Keypad included on the larger sizes. A tech writer friend of mine had one for years and loved it.
Guy Parsons
Forum Pro
Just poor quality batteries that never ever did behave as the advertising indicated, never managed 10 hours life on my i7 version or on my grandson's later bought i5 version. Eight hours was about the limit when new and quickly faded to unusable as a portable after maybe a year or so. Needed to be connected to power at all times after a couple of years. Happens always outside of warranty of course.
Basically not directly Lenovo's fault as the laptop was built by some third party for them. Probably Lenovo should have checked what their supplier was providing them a bit more carefully.
As I said earlier I am now down to HP as the only reliable laptops that I have ever used so will stick with them, though I do remember that I had a little 10 inch notebook by MSI that gave me many years of trouble free use when travelling but had to retire it as it really struggled when updated to Win10. MSI is not seen very often in Australia.
What and risk another battery pack that drops to 10 minutes life after 4 years?
No way, I will play with a much cheaper clone from now on and report back in 4 years how it went.
There is absolutely no sign of swelling in any of the four flat cells, I will try to carefully rip the pack open to see if I can identify the possibly one bad cell and see who made them, then of course they will be taped safely and put in the battery recycling bin at a local store.
Touchpad location is irrelevant. My wife has it deactivated. On her HP Omen 17, it doesn't work well enough to be usable anyway. We both prefer a mouse. (On Macbooks, with better palm rejection, I use 3-finger swipe to switch desktops, sometimes 2-finger scroll.)
Not only the numeric keypad, but the PageUp and PageDown buttons are useful, along with Home and End.
Good suggestion, but they all have the pointless overpriced GPU, formerly Quadro. I'll admit, price is reasonable for what they deliver, especially build quality.
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I have a solid high pitched tone, at times loud, tinnitus. So I can chuckle when some complain of coil whine. Never hear it, never will.
Guy Parsons
Forum Pro
I guess it's Menieres disease (used to get vertigo attacks until I strictly controlled sodium intake) gives me about 2% hearing in my right ear but a nice zinging tinnitus all the time.
Meanwhile in my left ear I have pulsatile tinnitus so can hear everything that my heart is doing. Weird, it stops, pauses at times, then goes back to "normal" then might hit a run of double speed for no reason then drop back to usual beat. Blood Pressure controlled perfectly for my age, just this blood pump inside me does acrobatics at times. Weird to sit and listen, normally I manage to mentally tune it out.
The Point and Shoot Pro
Senior Member
Yes, me too. I have constant coil whine. From blowing up a fire cracker close to my ear when I was 10. Since that day I have 30 precent hearing loss in that ear and constant ringing.
It's funny different strains of cannabis makes it do different things. Some make it go away completely, some make it 10 times louder. All depends. Ha ha.
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Have you been checked out by a cardiologist? That sounds like it might be what they call "paroxysmal atrial fibrillation"? Treatable, not terrible, but can progress.
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Guy Parsons
Forum Pro
Thanks Doc. My long term doctor (visiting her over 10 years or so) thought it minor and not troubled by it. Then she up and went away to join the Royal Flying Doctor Service so now had to discover a fresh doctor that I could handle. I'll hit the new doc with all my accumulated concerns and see what happens....
My wife is on a bunch of medication for what happens to be the same problem, but hers was bad enough that I had to take her direct to hospital where she spent a day or two under observation and had new medication sorted out.
In my case brief episodes, been happening for years, maybe last from a couple of seconds up to maybe 15 minutes. Unknown cause of onset, it just happens, then goes away unpredictably. Blood pressure always good, before/during/after. I rarely drink alcohol and then only wine or beer, never smoked, not too much coffee consumed.
Anyway, I'd way prefer to drop dead from heart failure than to spend years rotting away in some old folks establishment. Too much to do at home, got to keep working.
I've gone past my dad's age and also my older brother's age when they died, but need to do well a lot longer to get to my mum's age when she died (close to 98).
I'll let you know when I drop off the twig how I did.
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More like a fellow sufferer. But I've got a white jacket in the closet if I need it.
Agreed. SWMBO's mother spent her last years of dementia in such a place. "Depressing" doesn't begin to cover it. :-(
I'll get a Ouija board if you go first. ;-)I've gone past my dad's age and also my older brother's age when they died, but need to do well a lot longer to get to my mum's age when she died (close to 98).
I'll let you know when I drop off the twig how I did.
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