Asus E402MA vs Refurbished Thinkpad T420

F1demon · Jul 19, 2016

Hi... I need some help deciding between two systems.

I am evaluating an ASUS EeeBook E402MA-WX0055T Notebook 2.16 GHz N3540 14 inch 1366 x 768 p, N3540, Touchpad, Windows 10 Home, 64-bit, Intel Pentium, SonicMaster VERSUS A Refurbished Thinkpad T420 14" Core i5-2520m, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Windows 7 Pro.

My questions are:

-Is 2 GB RAM on the ASUS sufficient & would moving the pagefile to an SSD I will purchase for this system compensate? Does it make the system faster? My usage is typically surfing, online streaming, MS Office, Acrobat etc.

-Will the Thinkpad T420 running Win 7 Pro be able to run Win10 Home smoothly? I intend to replace the DVD drive with an SSD caddy but wonder whether it makes sense going in for this versus a brand new system?

Thank you.

rgd1101 · Jul 19, 2016

MERGED QUESTION
Question from F1demon : "Is it safe/make it faster to move the paging file on Win 10 Home to an SSD given 2GB RAM?"

F1demon :

It only come with 32gb ssd. What do you mean move?

F1demon · Jul 19, 2016

rgd1101 :

HI there... I'm sorry- I meant to add that I intend to purchase an SSD that will fit in the drive bay below. The RAM on this laptop isn't upgradeable unfortunately hence, I need to consider the page file.

rgd1101 · Jul 19, 2016

what drive bay? https

/www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-E402MA-WX0055T-Notebook-Touchpad-SonicMaster/dp/B015OG3GWI
for a cheap netbook with a small 32gb ssd drive, it probably embedding on the system board.

or are you talking about the thinkpad? might be able to replace the hdd with a ssd
service manual for the t420
https

/download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/t420_t420i_hmm.pdf

hang-the-9 · Jul 19, 2016

I would pick a T420 in good shape over pretty much any laptop, especially a low end one like a EEBook.

Just replace the drive in the T420 with an SSD, no need to get a bay. Those things are very easy to work on.

F1demon · Jul 19, 2016

rgd1101 :

HI... No the Asus model above comes ready with an empty drive bay below it. Only the RAM cannot be upgraded as that is part of the firmware.

F1demon · Jul 19, 2016

hang-the-9 :

My only worry is I cannot inspect the laptop before purchase. I don't know if it suffers from overheating issues or whether there are any scratches etc. The supplier assures me that beyond a 'little wear' the machine is in good shape and is providing a new battery? So....I'm a little reluctant as I've never purchased a refurbished system before.

hang-the-9 · Jul 20, 2016

F1demon :

If it's a good seller it should be safe to use the refurb system, but that really depends on how well they test it, and you should be able to return it if there are any extra issues. I have very rarely bought used items without seeing them in person, the few I did I made sure were very clean and had the fact that everything worked in the description. See if there is a local shop or person that has systems for sale that you can see. Lenovo has a utility you can download to a USB drive that will run tests on the components, especially the hard-drive you want to test. https

/support.lenovo.com/us/en/lenovodiagnosticsolutions/tools

I use those utilities all the time when I work with Lenovo laptops. A big reason the T, X and W models are so good is that they have very good driver support and utilities for hardware scans and drivers. Plus the fact that I have yet to run into a more sturdy system.

F1demon · Jul 20, 2016

hang-the-9 :

F1demon :

If it's a good seller it should be safe to use the refurb system, but that really depends on how well they test it, and you should be able to return it if there are any extra issues. I have very rarely bought used items without seeing them in person, the few I did I made sure were very clean and had the fact that everything worked in the description. See if there is a local shop or person that has systems for sale that you can see. Lenovo has a utility you can download to a USB drive that will run tests on the components, especially the hard-drive you want to test. https

/support.lenovo.com/us/en/lenovodiagnosticsolutions/tools

I use those utilities all the time when I work with Lenovo laptops. A big reason the T, X and W models are so good is that they have very good driver support and utilities for hardware scans and drivers. Plus the fact that I have yet to run into a more sturdy system.

Thank you for your adv. If I was to go with the Asus considering its a brand new platform and once I add that SSD it should also fetch me a good resale value in a couple of year when I decide to offload it..Would using a large Paging file on the SSD help in making Windows run more smoothly? Does it make a diff bec its on an SSD versus had it been just a normal HDD? Thank you in advance.

hang-the-9 · Jul 20, 2016

The pagefile should already be on the drive that the OS is installed on, which should be the SSD. You should upgrade the RAM to 4 GB though, 2 is a very small amount, and has been for about a decade now.

F1demon · Jul 20, 2016

hang-the-9 :

Unfortunately, the RAM cannot be upgraded. hence, am thinking of using the paging file on the SSD and assuming that would be a huge diff as compared to had it been a regular HDD. Right now the Asus has a 32GB SSD but I plan to add a 128 gig SSD in the empty drive bay beneath.

I guess, my question is whether paging files on SSDs lead to a noticeably smoother performance when RAM is limited?

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Asus E402MA vs Refurbished Thinkpad T420

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