Samsung Series 3 NP355V5C-S05IN Laptop (APU Quad Core A8/6 GB/1 TB/Windows 8/1 5 GB)

I am not a hardcore gamer but I do play games occasionally. I bought this because I wanted following configuration. * Intel i5 3rd gen or Similar AMD varient * Min 4GB ram with highest frequency possible * A good built in webcam (1.3 here is sufficient for most of your needs) * 1TB hdd * Min 1 USB 3.0 port * Dedicated graphics processor for watching HD content * Good sound * Good keyboard I am using this from last 1 year and had done a serch before for the laptops and I had come across the other one i.e. NP350V5C-S07IN which have core i5 instead of AMD and 4GB ram istead of 6GB here and 2GB gpu instead of 1.5 GB here. But guys do notice the price difference. The price for i5 was around 49000 and for this one around 33000. See the significant difference. Then i checked for the difference between the processors of the 2 and came across the posts on forums where users are saying i5 has 2 physical cores and 4 logical where as this one has straight 4 physical cores. So better performance if your application use parallel processing. You will get this point when you will use true crypt.I have used i5 2nd gen before and for day to day works, i5 was faster than this. But this one won't disappoint you in media and gaming category. I have used this for almost a month now and here are the pro's and con's Pros 1) Processor score on Windows 8 Experience Index is 6.7 2) Memory score 7.1 3) Graphics score for both is 6.7 4) Keyboard is awesome. Very very comfortable. 5) Design and looks are simple yet good. 6) Battery backup is really good. I have charged it fully (takes 1 to 1.5 hours max for fully charge after fully discharged), optimized few settings in power saving mode and other places and it ran for almost 5 hours. 7) 2 USB 3.0 ports 8) Webcam is good for most of your purposes. 9) Samsung service is good. They replaced one of it's hinge at my home. The other hinge was too tight which cause the hinge problem. Cons 1) Score for HDD is 5.9 which is the bottleneck in most of the notebooks. After all it's 5400 rpm. It's really painful here if you use a desktop PC too. 2) Heats a little bit if placed directly on your lap or bed for hour or more.Get a stand or cooling pad for this. Not a big heating issue. But yeah it heats a little which can make you uncomfortable. Used asus notebook with similar config. For normal use absolutely no heat. This one's got a little. But way too cooler than those of HP. 3) People in previous reviews are saying that there is a surprise backpack. I got a surprise when I haven't found one.:P 4) Some people are saying that 0 key on numpad is not working even if num lock is on. Just hit the Function Lock key near F12 key guys. It's done. They have given 3 functions to that key so people are not getting it and talking about hardware problems. 6) Display is not as great as they say. Viewing angles are near to the category 'BAD'. But you won't get any reflections due to light. 7) Sound is kind of ok. Don't expect too much. It's a notebook after all. So my final verdict is Even if the config is good it lacks a good display and sound. So it ruins it all.

First of all, the laptop's BIOS is not locked. This laptop have UEFI which is like a more advanced version of the BIOS. Please refer to the Wikipedia article on UEFI to know more. So, in UEFI to enable booting from other medias you would need to turn of the feature called "Secure Boot" and then select the bootable device as "CSM OS". CSM stands for "Compatibility Support Module" and CSM enables the UEFI to boot from "traditional" Os like Windows XP, 7, DoS and Linux distros. Although the implementation of UEFI has many advantages, I see this as a move to force the user to use the preloaded OS. In this case, Windows 8. Also, if you re-partition the hard disk, the software warranty of this laptop will be void. That's Microsoft won't support you in case of any technical issues(?). However, I found Windows very irritating, stupid and ..oh lord, I'm falling short of adjectives ! Got rid of it within 2 hours since I powered on the laptop and reloaded the laptop with Ubuntu 12.04. Even unity feels way better after using Windows 8. About the Laptop: Pros: 1. Nice specs 2. The screen is Anti reflective HD LED 3. Build Quality is satisfactory 4. 4 USB ports 5. I found the Keyboard layout and Touch pad placement very convenient. 6. Surprise backpack Cons: 1. The build quality of Optical Drive tray is questionable. If you daily open and close it at least once, chances are high that it will break(?). 2. No indicators for CAPS ON & NUMLOCK 3. Slightly HOT when compared to the Intel based laptops.