OT: Laptop Recommendations?

[boog204]

Let's continue the off topic trend... I'm looking for a new laptop, on the cheaper side $400-550 ish max. I'm not a gamer or do anything special. I use the internet, email, youtube, and occasionally netflix. I don't care about portability; i.e., I'd rather have a huge screened laptop that ways 20 pounds then some super skinny thing. I know nothing about the various incarnations of Windows, etc. Any recs?

 

[minidarren]

I bought a new Lenovo a few months ago. Absolutely love the laptop. The new version of Windows took a ton of getting used to for me but I finally got it. IBM product, good stuff in my opinion.

 

[WhereistheDove?]

I bought a new Lenovo a few months ago. Absolutely love the laptop. The new version of Windows took a ton of getting used to for me but I finally got it. IBM product, good stuff in my opinion.

Lenovo is not part of IBM. They sold their laptop business to Lenovo quite a few years ago.

 

[jleves]

1) Make sure it's an Intel CPU and not AMD. A decade ago, AMD was great but they have fallen far behind. Intel will run a lot cooler which means fans don't have to run as hard and the noise difference is noticeable.
2) Stretch the budget to get at least a 128GB or preferable a 256GB SSD. Buying a cheap laptop is fine as any CPU can handle the light load you are proposing, but the difference in boot and program load times can be 10 or 15x faster (seriously, not % faster X faster). It makes an old slow desktop or laptop feel fresh and new.
3) Make sure the screen is at least 1920 x 1080 - or full HD 1080p. Lower res is really bad particularly if you want to watch movies and more than 1080p is still kind of waste because you can't find content beyond 1080p (caveat, I'm not a Netflix user, so I don't know if they have added 4k content). Based on the budget, I wouldn't reach for 4k.

Follow 1, 2 & 3 and then find the largest screen that fits your budget. It will come with Windows 8.1 which is fine. If you hate it, you can buy an addon called Start8 for $5 and it makes it exactly like Windows 7. You will also get a free upgrade to Windows 10 when it comes out later this year and that will basically be the best mix of Windows 7 & Windows 8 with additional features added on.

Hope that helps.

 

[minidarren]

Lenovo is not part of IBM. They sold their laptop business to Lenovo quite a few years ago.

The two companies are in bed with one another.

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/pcannouncement/

 

[Fishy]

The two companies are in bed with one another.

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/pcannouncement/

Lenovo bought IBM's PC division a decade ago - there's no partnership there.

 

[huskypantz]

I work in IT, we're an HP shop but have a lot of Dell hardware. I have had sony vaio, toshiba and dell inspiron among others. I have a dell inspiron Win8 i7 with 8 GB memory, 1 TB drive which I am very satisfied with. As far as processors go, I am partial to the intel i7 but the i5 is sufficient. If you're going win 8.1 64b, I think everything out there is at least 4 GB RAM - I like a little more memory myself so prefer to go 8 GB but not necessary. The laptop below has a 1 TB hard drive, based on what you are saying, unless you start downloading movies that is way more than you need and you could skimp down to a 500 GB drive. But this is a $550 example. Based on what you're saying, you will likely care more about the display, cpu and memory than the hard drive size and features such as touchscreen. You can also consider refurbished laptops to save a little more.

Dell Inspiron 15 3543 Touchscreen Notebook PC - Intel Core i5 5200U 2.2GHz Dual-Core, 8GB DDR3L, 1TB HDD, 15.6" HD 1366 X 768 Touchscreen Display, Windows 8.1 64-bit - I3543-5751BLK

 

[benjordan]

If you're really just using it for the internet, then I would look into a chromebook:



The obvious downside is you can't install things like Microsoft Office, but if you don't need to then they are a cheap option.

 

[Scot-e]

I thought this was a "troll post" at first from someone that had been in a coma for several years.

 

[WhereistheDove?]

The two companies are in bed with one another.

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/pcannouncement/

They're a reseller but I assure you, there is not much of a relationship. IBM ran far away from consumer hardware a while ago.

 

[boog204]

I thought this was a "troll post" at first from someone that had been in a coma for several years.

Huh? Haven't bought a laptop in six or seven years. Sorry for my comatose state.

 

[JCSuperstar]

Re: Lenovo & IBM

My understanding is that Lenovo is still using the same providers and quality of components for anything in the "Think" line of products which are targeted at the business sector. However the "Idea" line of products targeted at consumers are not the same, and you should stay away.

I haven't bought anything off Lenovo first hand since the Helix which was a nice little tablet with good build quality but some questionable design choice. Here at work we are a Dell client shop but getting more and more Chromebooks. They are great if you just want internet (as a previous poster mentioned) but because of the target audience, the form factor you are looking for (huge screen) probably isn't available.

 

[boog204]

Definitely need word processing (Office) so a chrome book is out. Are there certain brands that get more cred nowadays? First time I bought a laptop it was Dell or Gateway. Found out the hardware that Gateway sucks or at least did. Found an HP that seem to have all the specs I want... solid?

 

[boba]

Take a peek at Ars Technica dealmaster section as they often have good deals. You can sometimes get a better product at a lower price.
Here's the thing about laptops, or computers in general, there are three markets: unsuspecting consumer, savvy consumer, business consumer. Companies make good machines for businesses (and charge a premium if they can) because they want repeat customers. Gamers (savvy consumers) are willing to pay a premium for certain features, which depending on your needs may not suit you. (I like gamer rigs because I do a lot of CPU intensive Matlab and other GPU intensive graphics tasks) For the unsuspecting consumer, there's a whole bunch of they threw the cheapest parts together and gave it a SKU.