3 replies to this topic

[Shahadet]

Hey folks,

I'm looking for a laptop as a Xmas gift. The catch? I want to swap out the factory HDD for an SSD (that I already bought on Black Friday from New Egg).

However, all the store laptops I've looked at are sealed boxes that you have to practically take apart to get to the hard drive.

Does anyone know of a laptop that I could go to a store (or order online) on short notice that has:

- an Intel i3 or i5
- 15.6 or 17" monitor
- has access to the HDD through a separate panel on the bottom of the laptop?

Please let me know soon - I would be forever grateful.

Thanks!

[Vassago Rain]

You buy sager or MSI. These are the good laptops, and all sager laptops can be upgraded like a desktop. MSI makes beast machines, but aren't anywhere near as good as sager. Also not as expensive.

If you don't want to spend 2500+ dollars, you can get similar performance from Acer at a much reduced cost, but Acer doesn't have anywhere near the build quality or support.

Avoid alienware. It's sager prices for acer quality.

Every laptop worth the money has easy access to the harddrive slots, RAM, and any optical units. You want a LAPTOP, though, not an ultrabook, or a netbook.

[xWiredx]

My Lenovo has access to most things from a single panel underneath, as does my HP. My older Dell laptop had 4 screws that held in the HDD caddy, and once those were removed it simply slid out from the side. Field-replaceable items like HDDs, optical drives, and RAM aren't typically hard to remove.

[Shahadet]

I guess I should have clarified - I'm not looking to make a gaming rig, so I want the base laptop to be pretty inexpensive. I just need a basic box, where I can get the hard drive out and replaced with an SSD without removing 32 screws and 4 ZiF ribbons.....