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This thread is locked; no one can reply to it.
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| Time to buy a new laptop |
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Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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To get ready for the new school year, and to make my life easier I want to buy a new laptop. I went to Best Buy today and took a look at what they were offering. Option A - HP Spectre Win10 13.3" 2560x1440 i7 8GB DDR3 512 GB SSD $1399.99 US 10hrs Battery life Option B - Lenovo Y50 Win8.1 15.6" i7-4720HQ 8GB DDR3 1TB HD 8GB SSD (for OS) $1049.99 US 5hr25min Battery life Option C - ASUS Win8.1 8GB DDR3 1TB HD i7-4710HQ 7hr10min battery 1920x1080 17.3" $1379.99 I have looked at http://www.cyberpowerpc.com before. For example, this http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Back-To-School_Fangbook_III_BX7 caught my eye. Got everything I need I would think, with a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HD for $1299. Mainly I want to make sure it has a SSD for the OS, a large (14"+) monitor, high performance for gaming and development, and plenty of memory, as well as all necessary ports. I don't know if I could afford an iMac. But then I could branch out into OSX development. :/ But I personally hate OBJ-C so I prob wouldn't want to. Suggestions? Where did you purchase your last laptop? My Website! | EAGLE GUI Library Demos | My Deviant Art Gallery | Spiraloid Preview | A4 FontMaker | Skyline! (Missile Defense) Eagle and Allegro 5 binaries | Older Allegro 4 and 5 binaries | Allegro 5 compile guide |
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Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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I bought mine in March 2011 from Lenovo.com using a coupon code that cut $300 off the price. It's a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge15 i5 2x2.6GHz 8GB DDR3 256GB SSD. Originally it had 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive, but I replaced them right away (first with a 120GB SSD) and the total cost was under $1000 (Canadian). I'm surprised specs haven't changed much in that amount of time really, it still runs very well. I'd definitely recommend going with a full SSD drive that's nice and quick. It makes a world of difference. These particular laptops don't really get me too excited. "He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe" |
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piccolo
Member #3,163
January 2003
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ASUS +1 Never buy an HP all hps i known have broke from poor cooling in the video card ship. wow |
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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I recommend against Lenovo due to them fiddling with the BIOS to install their crapware even from a clean Windows install disk. They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas. |
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SiegeLord
Member #7,827
October 2006
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Between the superfish and this bios nonsense, I don't think anybody sane should buy anything made by Lenovo. I had good experience with business HP laptops, although their screens are atrocious. Not sure about the consumer laptops. "For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow."-Ecclesiastes 1:18 |
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Hard Rock
Member #1,547
September 2001
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I don't know if this fits all your needs but the two laptops I've been eyeing to get are:
That said I don't know if they fit your needs since they aren't as large as the ones your are looking at and they do not have a dedicated GPU (For travelling my new requirement is light but powerful). Dell is working on a new XPS 15 http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/3/8717975/dell-xps-15-infinity-display-computex-2015 with the skylayke processor if you are willing to wait, but I'm not sure how long it will be (Probably first month or two of the new school year). _________________________________________________ |
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Polybios
Member #12,293
October 2010
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SiegeLord said: I had good experience with business HP laptops Yeah, I'd try to get a business laptop. They've mostly seemed more robust to me. |
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ks
Member #1,086
March 2001
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If Lenovo is still on the table, based on the promotional e-mails I've received this week it appears that they are now having back to school specials. Don't know if these are specific to Canada. Incidentally, given the exchange rate, have you considered ordering from a Canadian distributor.
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Bob Keane
Member #7,342
June 2006
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I have two Asus notebooks so I am a fanboy. The first came with Win 7 and a removable/replaceable SATA drive. Unfortunately a wire next to the drive came loose when upgrading and it's DOA By reading this sig, I, the reader, agree to render my soul to Bob Keane. I, the reader, understand this is a legally binding contract and freely render my soul. |
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Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Edgar Reynaldo said: But I personally hate OBJ-C so I prob wouldn't want to Use Swift. I've had a Samsung Series 9 (now branded ATIV) for a few years. Mine is a large 14", but it's still light. Keyboard is mediocre and trackpad is horrible, which is a shame because everything else about it is excellent. I would avoid it if you plan on using it as your primary computer without an external keyboard/mouse. |
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Mark Oates
Member #1,146
March 2001
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$1600 just seems like a lot to pay for a laptop in this day in age. -- |
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Bob Keane
Member #7,342
June 2006
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Mark Oates said: $1600 just seems like a lot to pay for a laptop in this day in age. And for his usage. Edgar Reynaldo said: To get ready for the new school year, and to make my life easier I want to buy a new laptop. If it's for school, you should get a less expensive one. As for Asus, consider a notebook, just not the one I'm currently using. It is nothing more than an oversized smartphone. By reading this sig, I, the reader, agree to render my soul to Bob Keane. I, the reader, understand this is a legally binding contract and freely render my soul. |
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Erethar
Member #15,753
October 2014
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I've been really happy with the Asus Zenbook I got a few years ago. Very light, nice form factor, snappy performance with a 128GB SSD. Ports are a bit lacking though, my model only has 2 USBs, and no dedicated ethernet/hdmi. There are adaptors, but those take up your already limited USB ports. Other than that, great machine, really convenient for sticking in a backpack and carrying around campus. |
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Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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I just bought a used Chromebook C720 off a friend. 32GB SSD. 2 GB of RAM. 1.4 GHZ Celeron for $80. It's no screamer... yet with the SSD it's blazing fast for general use (chrome, linux, text entry.) Boots in ~6 seconds, restarts down and back up in ~10 seconds. It only weighs 2.5 lbs! (I've got a bad back so every half-pound is very important for me). The keyboard is "almost" full. It's missing page up/down/home/end and delete. I was running Elementary OS (previous owner flashed bios to install linux). He recommended Giant Bean Ubuntu or something that comes preconfigured with all the chromebook supported. But I just found out that means I'm running Unity window manager. I just finished installing it. ... Holy. God. Unity is terrible. You can't even move the title bar buttons from the fake "I wish I was a mac" left-side back to the right side. Why? Because Canonical ripped out GTK decorator and then hardcoded them for quote "Consistent user experience." People really weren't exagerating how much Canonical's management are bunch of self-absorbed twats. They also override basically every key combination you could want, so if you naturally extend a system by installing something like Guake terminal, they've already taken all of key combinations using the Super key. Switching to XFCE gives me a real desktop, but then my volume and brightness buttons don't work because they're implemented as gnome extensions/apps/whatever. I should just make my own distro. [edit] One more big thing. Whomever was responsible for switching Linux from xmodmap to xkb were complete morons who deserve to be smacked. How do you change a key combination in "old" ~<12.0 Linux? Why with a simple terminal command that can be run, tested, and rerun: $ xmodmap 111 = Up, Home Up arrow + shift now does the home key! Yay! Now, with the new and improved system? Go to a SYSTEM directory (not a user directory), hack through over 100 different files that inherit from each other in some wierd JSON like format, then compile that format, and delete any cached compiled ones, and then restart your computer. IF you had it correct the first time! What happens if you mess up anything, or have a typo? NO KEYBOARDS WORK in X anymore. Not even graphical ones. You have bricked your computer and cannot even log into an account that requires a password. What the hell were they thinking?! I bricked my new laptop just trying to add bloody home/end/page up/page down to my arrow keys! Something that was ~4 lines of code in a bash script in Linux 12 and earlier. Freaking idiots. -----sig: |
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. I hate the replacement, WIN 8.1, nonremoveable 20 gig drive, but 500 gig cloud storage. As soon as my new psu comes in I'll have my desktop up and running so I won't be as miserable. I'd suggest a notebook, very light and anything you need can be added on USB. 
