New £400 laptop (and SSD install) query?

[kration]

I'm looking to upgrade my ancient Compaq Presario C700 as I now fancy a touchscreen laptop that can run Minecraft.

My price range is £400-ish.

I've identified 4 possibles so would appreciate thoughts on any of them:

ASUS X553 F553MS (£380)

HP Pavilion 15-p287sa (£430)

HP Pavilion 15-p158sa (£430)


I've got a spare Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5" 7mm SSD. Would it be easy enough to install it in any of the above? Especially as I wouldn't have a Win 8 install disk (unless it came with the laptop)?


And as well as Minecraft, would any of them be able to run 'Valkyria Chronicles'?

As well as very basic gameplaying (Darwinia, Baldur's Gate etc.) it'll be used for wordprocessing, browsing the web and basic GIS stuff.

Cheers.

 

[carnivalist]

I'mnot an expert,but I looked into this thread a I have a similar question and I noticed you mention the ASUS.

I don't know about the X553, but I was astonished to find that the X515 can't be upgraded (RAM etc) without invalidating the warranty, as the laptop has to be virtually ripped apart to do so. It might be worth checking if the X553 is the same.

 

[plaistowpaul]

yeah you'd need to check each one but I've had two Asus laptops and both could be upgraded without removing any warranty stickers. One had a hard drive access with a singe screw on the back and the other (smaller) was about 10 screws to take the entire base off. I'm sure I still invalidated the warranty though!

As regards Windows 8, you could either clone onto the new SSD before you install it (Acronis True Image is the most reliable for Windows 8.1 in my opinion - especially for UEFI/Secure Boot). Or you could clean install with the correct windows 8 iso from here (create a usb). I'd copy the drivers folder off your original hdd, some of the obscure ones can be tricky to find. Those ISOs should auto-activae using the embedded windows 8.0 or 8.1 key, but be worth recording your original product key just in case - something like this. Something like pkeyui (or Belarc Advisor) will do it.