Thinking of getting a new laptop

Hey guys! It's been a while, but I'm back at the DS forums. You may remember me from my Bolt review some time ago. A little over a year ago, in fact. My machine is still working like a charm and I'm *very* satisfied with it. My previous desktops, usually bought from a competitor who will not be named, started slowing down and acting finicky after about a year, if that long, but my Bolt is still trundling along satisfactorily.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for my laptop. See, when I went to grad school in 2011, I bought a little laptop from the aforementioned competitor. That laptop wasn't so bad...it served me well for two years before I spilled some orange juice on it ;_; I got it repaired, but it was never quite the same after that.

I then went on leave for two years and just returned to my grad school recently. Thus, I wanted to buy a replacement laptop from the same competitor. Long story short, I was VERY displeased with their service, in fact it was one of the reasons I came to Digital Storm in the first place. They delivered my order late and their customer service was God-awful.

Still, they sent me my laptop eventually, and I was happy with it...for a time. As it turns out, I think it may have been simply too cheap to really fulfill my needs in graduate school. I'd thought I'd be too busy to really do much gaming, but the thing is, this laptop is so slow it makes it hard to do much work! It takes a couple seconds to load up an MS Word file, and often freezes up momentarily as I type. It slows down a great deal when I load up many tabs on Firefox or Chrome, and I need a lot of tabs to work--I have to keep an eye on my email pretty much every waking hour, then have tabs open for JSTOR, my online class servers, and then other class resources, and so on. But when I try to do so, this damn paperweight starts chugging and slowing down.

As I said above, maybe I'd just been too cheap. This thing only has 4 GB of ram and a 1.90 Ghz processor. It only cost me about 600 dollars (the competitors offered me a 50 dollar rebate to make up for putting me through so much trouble), but even so, a cheap laptop is a waste of money if it doesn't do its job properly. If I could go back in time, I'd tell myself, "Don't bother with these guys, they're a terrible company. Go to Digital Storm and buy from them, even if you have to pay more, it'll be worth it!"

(as an aside, a friend tells me that the exact same machine is now available for 250 dollars. -_-;;; )

Alas, I can't do that, and I'm stuck with this useless laptop. But being unable to do much work might become threatening to my graduate school career very soon, so I figure I might as well bite the bullet and get a better laptop now (particularly before Microsoft ends sales of Windows 7), even if I have to shell out some cash to do so. Thank God I have money saved up! So here's the configuration I was thinking of:

https://www.digitalstormonline.com/configurator.asp?id=1039372

It's a pretty penny--nearly 1700 bucks--but I figure I'll be using this laptop to work even after I'm done with grad school in a few years, so it makes sense to spend a bit of cash. Specifically, I hope 16 GB of RAM will keep me set in case I have need of some intensive applications (better safe than sorry). I also might need a Blu-Ray player and writer because I might have to watch several movies related to my field of study (I'm in American history and I might have to review 12 Years a Slave, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, and movies like that), and, again, never know when I might have to put a lot of data on a Blu-Ray disc, perhaps high-quality recordings of lectures I've given or whatever. I'm willing to spend so much because my previous experience with DS has shown me it's worth it. However, I do have a couple questions.

1:Should I get the premium paste? One of the few good things about my present laptop is that it doesn't give out too much heat. Would the more expensive premium paste be worth it for the Javelin? I often keep my laptop on my body when lying down or reclining, so I don't want to burn myself

2: What sort of damage does DS' warranty cover? Again, one of the few benefits of my business with the aforementioned competitor was that I could send my machine in to them for pretty much any reason and get it repaired, even if I spilled juice on it. Is DS willing to do the same for laptops?

A couple of n00by questions, excuse me for them:

3: What's the difference between the Javelin and the Lance? The processor, RAM, etc. for the cheapest listed builds are the same, but when I looked them up, I was told that the Lance has better speakers. Can anyone tell me more about the differences? (the Behemoth and the Krypton are a little too big for me).

4: I'm not a computer expert, so I figured I might as well ask...what's the benefit of having multiple hard drives? A common configuration I've seen, which is how I chose my current machine, is to have hard drive one be a Solid State with a smaller amount of space (~120-250 GB), while also having another main storage hard drive that holds around 750GB to 1TB of data. Might someone explain the benefit of this specifically to me? From what I understand, keeping system files on the smaller solid state drives makes the computer boot up, load, etc. much faster, while you use the bigger regular drives for your word documents, MP3s, etc. (i.e your normal daily use). Is that accurate?

5: Finally, just wondering, but does DS still offer an online chat service? What cemented my decision to buy the bolt was the excellent customer service Brian Benoit gave me via chat. I dunno if he's still around, but I do prefer an online chat as my first option for customer support, as it's easier to link to configurations and order numbers via copy and pasting rather than saying it out loud over the phone. Does DS still do that?

In any case, thanks for your time and assistance, everyone.

Thanks Snaike :D I'll wait around a bit for 'em, then. Thanks again :)

Oooof, no warranty for spills, drops, damages like that? Hmm, that's a lil troubling...it's sort of important to me, given what happened to my previous laptop. :/

Thanks roykirk! I did a bit of shopping around and found a competitor that did offer a damage warranty...for nearly 300 dollars extra ;_; It was a little cheaper, but a little weaker as well. I think I'll stick with Digital Storm, because even with the warranty my old computer vendor gave me (which will not be named ;) ), they gave me such terrible service that I won't come back to them. I'll wait for Alex to see if DS has any warranty options, though. Thanks again for your advice! :D

Aw, okay. So if I do spill something on my laptop again, what should I do? Could I send it in to Digital Storm for repairs even if I'd have to pay for parts, labor, and shipping? 

Hmm, alright. Well, I'll do some more looking, but it's looking more likely I'll go with DS again. Thanks guys :D

Hey Gunlord, Although i'm still very new to the forums I can't help at putting my 2 cents in. I am patiently (well not really patiently) waiting for my new Laptop to arrive. I ordered the lance and am excited to try it out. I have always gotten my laptops from a "brand name" place and have to say their customer service stunk. There's nothing like talking to someone that just doesn't get it for 4 hrs and not getting a resolution to anything. I looked around at other brand name computers and was recommended to DS. I'm so glad I came here. My questions were answered by the fabulous people on this forum and after I ordered my laptop I was kept informed at every step of my laptop build. I HIGHLY recommend getting your laptop from DS. From what I've seen so far. This is the best placed to get what you want at a superior quality, get great customer service and have access to a fantastic group of people on the forum.


Edited by Frenzi - 01 Sep 2014 at 4:59pm

Hmm, OK, I've run into some shipping considerations...

So the thing is, I'm in grad school in Connecticut right now, but my home (and billing address) is in New York state. This being the case, when I'm going to checkout it tells me that I have to participate in a "verification process" if my billing and mailing address are different.

What's this "verification process" about? Is it difficult?

Secondly, I've been thinking...I'll be getting some presents for Christmastime. I'm wondering, how long with Digital Storm sell machines with Windows 7? I heard Microsoft is gonna discontinue it in October. However, if Digital Storm will still sell it for a while, I might wait till Christmas to take advantage of DS sales, perhaps :o

OK...when I choose that option, it says a DS rep will contact me with info about how "to successfully execute a wire transfer to our bank account." What's the process for doing that? u-u

1. We should be still offering Windows 7 for a while, at least a year and more.

2. I'm sure we would have a holiday sale, but it will be similar to what we have right now, which is our Summer Sale.

Alright, thats good then. Guess I'll wait till Christmas to get myself a new laptop. Thanks guys :D