OT: Shopping for a New Laptop

[ChicagoGG]

Sunday my lap top crashed and died....so I am shopping for a new one. Anyone have any advice for me? I would prefer to NOT buy an Apple. I do have a tablet for travel, but for work and projects at home, I prefer a laptop. My old one was a Lenovo and I liked it a lot, but it is kaput.
All input gratefully accepted!

 

[FairView]

Why not an Apple?
Just the software investment you've already made?
I've used both Macs and PCs. In fact, I even worked for IBM for a while. I would choose Apple every time.

 

[easttexastrash]

Avoid Toshiba. I went cheap and that's what I got.

 

[caravaggio]

If you study at or work for a university, Lenovo often has really great discounts and offers automatically three year discounts. Or know someone who does. Even over 50% at times.

Actually a few universities extend the discounts to alums as well.

 

[ChicagoGG]

If you study at or work for a university, Lenovo often has really great discounts and offers automatically three year discounts. Or know someone who does. Even over 50% at times.

Actually a few universities extend the discounts to alums as well.

Thanks for the reminder....my husband's company gives access to Lenovo at a good price, but the one on the website is the same as my old one, so it only has Windows 7. I was thinking it would be good to update to 8.1....

 

[ChicagoGG]

Why not an Apple?
Just the software investment you've already made?
I've used both Macs and PCs. In fact, I even worked for IBM for a while. I would choose Apple every time.

Partly the software, but also the fact that my extended family has many apple products, and seem to spend a large amount of time at the Genius Bar (and they are smarter computing-wise than I, so I would live there..)

 

[meyers7]

Avoid Toshiba. I went cheap and that's what I got.

Agree. My son who works as an IT guy, said Toshiba has lots of trouble. Heat up too much and that causes problems with the motherboard, etc.

 

[Striper69]

My Toshiba worked good for over seven years but the disk drive went out so I'm thinking of getting a new laptop too. Probably just get something used.

 

[JRRRJ]

Sunday my lap top crashed and died....so I am shopping for a new one. Anyone have any advice for me? I would prefer to NOT buy an Apple. I do have a tablet for travel, but for work and projects at home, I prefer a laptop. My old one was a Lenovo and I liked it a lot, but it is kaput.
All input gratefully accepted!

Don't know what your price range is, but Colleen is very happy with the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro ultrabook we just bought. more than 7-hour battery life, 3 pounds, 3200x1800-pixel multi-touchscreen, becomes a tablet by folding the screen under, can write on it with your finger to take notes & it does handwriting recognition very well, very good keyboard, very highly reviewed.

The construction is up to Lenovo standards -- very solid. The case has a coating that's kind of rubbery-feeling so it's very easy to grip one-handed in tablet mode.

The screen only 13.3 inches (on the other hand, it's a 13-inch tablet), but is incredibly crisp and easy to read, with very wide and high dispersal angles. Putting 2 Word documents side-by-side is quite readable, even with our old eyes.

It has 256gB SSD instead of a disk drive, disk operations are extremely fast.

On the negative side, there is no optical drive (we got a USB DVD-ROM for $25) and only a micro-HDMI video port (we bought a VGA adapter for use with her external monitor and for presentations with a video projector for $20). Also, if Chrome is your browser of choice, be aware it's not optimized for hi-pixel-count screens and web pages often look tiny. Firefox and IE 11 work fine.

We got the version with the i7 CPU Colleen. Lenovo claims 9 hours battery life for the i5 version, which will be more than enough CPU for most people. (If you don't know why you would need an i7, you don't need one ;^) If you go to Post original url/YogaTwo you will find the i5 for $999 and the i7 for 1099, which is 20% less than we paid. They also have MS Office 2013 Home & Student as an add-on for $120.

Oh, the power brick is tiny and doesn't add much weight when you're traveling. And it charges the Yoga in less than 2 hours.

Finally, Colleen thinks the tangerine color is really cool.

 

[ChicagoGG]

Don't know what your price range is, but Colleen is very happy with the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro ultrabook we just bought. more than 7-hour battery life, 3 pounds, 3200x1800-pixel multi-touchscreen, becomes a tablet by folding the screen under, can write on it with your finger to take notes & it does handwriting recognition very well, very good keyboard, very highly reviewed.

The construction is up to Lenovo standards -- very solid. The case has a coating that's kind of rubbery-feeling so it's very easy to grip one-handed in tablet mode.

The screen only 13.3 inches (on the other hand, it's a 13-inch tablet), but is incredibly crisp and easy to read, with very wide and high dispersal angles. Putting 2 Word documents side-by-side is quite readable, even with our old eyes.

It has 256gB SSD instead of a disk drive, disk operations are extremely fast.

On the negative side, there is no optical drive (we got a USB DVD-ROM for $25) and only a micro-HDMI video port (we bought a VGA adapter for use with her external monitor and for presentations with a video projector for $20). Also, if Chrome is your browser of choice, be aware it's not optimized for hi-pixel-count screens and web pages often look tiny. Firefox and IE 11 work fine.

We got the version with the i7 CPU Colleen. Lenovo claims 9 hours battery life for the i5 version, which will be more than plenty for most people. (If you don't know why you would need an i7, you don't need one ;^) If you go to Post original url/YogaTwo you will find the i5 for $999 and the i7 for 1099, which is 20% less than we paid. They also have MS Office 2013 Home & Student as an add-on for $120.

Oh, the power brick is tiny and doesn't add much weight when you're traveling. And it charges the Yoga in less than 2 hours.

Finally, Colleen thinks the tangerine color is really cool.

Thanks for the detailed advice (particularly the if you don't know, you don't need it part...)! Much appreciated!

 

[JimGunther]

Wall Street Journal has a pretty good write-up in today's (Wednesday 8/6/14) edition.

Nice words about the Lenovo Yugo (but's that's out of MY price range),

 

[SubbaBub]

Like my HP Envy, except the Windows 8 part. If you do find yourself stuck with it, you'll want to upgrade to a touch screen.


I'll add that I hate having to set up a MS account just to use my freaking laptop. It's not a phone, dabbit.

 

[ursusminor]

It depends entirely on what you need. My dad has a smallish, lightweight laptop for traveling because he uses a desktop at home. My husband and I have desktop-replacement machines, where power and size matter more than portability.

If you get a laptop with a touch screen, by all means get one with Windows 8. Otherwise, Windows 8 is one of the dumber ideas to come out of Microsoft in a while. It is foolish to put the same brain in both a small-screen, touchscreen phone and a full-size, keyboard-and-mouse computer. It doesn't make sense. One is optimized for demanding programs handling lots of data. The other is optimized for Angry Birds. It's like putting a pizza oven in a sushi kitchen because and only because the Italian place down the street uses a pizza oven.

It's been my experience that you get what you pay for. Laptop hardware is out-of-date within months for low-end models, and a couple of years at most for high-end, but they can last a long time if you don't demand much from them. If you're not doing a lot of heavy-duty processing - fancy games, Photoshop, video editing - then you don't really need to pay extra for top-shelf power specs.

 

[JimGunther]

Mark me down as a Win 8 (and 8.1) hater. To the point where I'll lug my 5 or 6 year old Toshiba rather than my neat little Acer Aspire.

While I've installed a "shell" which mimics Win 7, there are still aspects of 8 which pi** me off (i.e. programs or apps popping up by mistake - after I've inadvertently touched some "hot" area on the screen). That said, I like the convenience to use a finger instead of the mouse pad to do certain stuff.

Does anyone know, if I were to obliterate Win 8.1 for Win 7, would I still be able to use the screen for simple inputs?

Like my HP Envy, except the Windows 8 part. If you do find yourself stuck with it, you'll want to upgrade to a touch screen.


I'll add that I hate having to set up a MS account just to use my freaking laptop. It's not a phone, dabbit.

 

[JRRRJ]

Like my HP Envy, except the Windows 8 part. If you do find yourself stuck with it, you'll want to upgrade to a touch screen.


I'll add that I hate having to set up a MS account just to use my freaking laptop. It's not a phone, dabbit.

You don't have to set up an MS account -- they just make it hard to find that out.

Here's a straightforward explanation of how to do it: How to make a local user account

Be aware if you do this, you will need to respond to popups when you open many MS apps -- Music, Store, Video, Mail, Office. You can circumvent this by ignoring the MS apps and installing 3rd party apps to do the same thing (except Store, which doesn't have a 3rd party app as far as I can find out). I recommend VLC for all media playing, Libre Office for Office. GOM Player is a good media alternative and Open Office is very similar to Libre Office and you can use Google Docs if putting your documents in the cloud is OK for you.

P.S. The "you should really know what you're doing here..." line in the article linked above is completely unnecessary. If you discover you need an MS Live account linked to your machine at some later time, you can create or link the account then.

P.P.S Forgot to mention that SkyDrive is unavailable if you don't use an MS Live account. But there are many free alternatives to SkyDrive (like Google drive) that don't require so much personal information before you can use them.

 

[Buzzyboy]

Avoid Toshiba. I went cheap and that's what I got.

Well, I've had three Toshiba's in the household over the last 6 years and they all are working quite well. No issues at all. Entry level types that have done well by us.

 

[Buzzyboy]

Mark me down as a Win 8 (and 8.1) hater. To the point where I'll lug my 5 or 6 year old Toshiba rather than my neat little Acer Aspire.

While I've installed a "shell" which mimics Win 7, there are still aspects of 8 which pi** me off (i.e. programs or apps popping up by mistake - after I've inadvertently touched some "hot" area on the screen). That said, I like the convenience to use a finger instead of the mouse pad to do certain stuff.

Does anyone know, if I were to obliterate Win 8.1 for Win 7, would I still be able to use the screen for simple inputs?

I had a friend convert my Windows 8 to Windows 7 and I'm thrilled. I don't want any part of Windows 8 based on my very, very limited use of it.

 

[katiecrum1992]

I have an HP. It works great. Hasn't had any problems.

 

[ffg53]

Partly the software, but also the fact that my extended family has many apple products, and seem to spend a large amount of time at the Genius Bar (and they are smarter computing-wise than I, so I would live there..)

I used to feel the same way about Apple. Mostly it was anti-elitist sentiment because those damned Mac users always seemed so self-satisfied. Then I got one through work. Now I know why they/we always seem so self-satisfied. I would never use anything else ever again. In my opinion they are worth the premium price. I'm on my third and never had a single issue. I love that it doesn't ever slow down over the years due to bloated registry files and you get FREE OS upgrades. Also, I hated hated HATED trackpads until I got a Mac. Now I hate mice. Unless you do heavy-duty video editing or 3D rendering (and you probably don't or you'd already have a Mac) the Macbook Air has plenty of power and weighs less than 3 pounds.

 

[j66kicker]

I used to feel the same way about Apple. Mostly it was anti-elitist sentiment because those damned Mac users always seemed so self-satisfied. Then I got one through work. Now I know why they/we always seem so self-satisfied. I would never use anything else ever again. In my opinion they are worth the premium price. I'm on my third and never had a single issue. I love that it doesn't ever slow down over the years due to bloated registry files and you get FREE OS upgrades. Also, I hated hated HATED trackpads until I got a Mac. Now I hate mice. Unless you do heavy-duty video editing or 3D rendering (and you probably don't or you'd already have a Mac) the Macbook Air has plenty of power and weighs less than 3 pounds.

Me too. Was a Windows person from way back, but got an iPhone from work, then an iPad, then a MacBook Air as a gift. It's awesome. Boots up in 10 seconds, never has any problems, the interface among the 3 devices is amazing. I still use a mouse with Excel, browse with Google Chrome instead of Safari, and there are a few workarounds necessary because of MS's dominance as the business 'standard' (My Mac is also a virtual Windows 8 machine with Parallels, but the need for that is growing less and less frequent). It still p*sses me off that you can't replace iPhone/iPad batteries, and they charge you $35+ for a power adapter, etc. But my MacBook Air battery lasts 10-11 hours - I can even travel without a power cord.

Also it's pretty much common knowledge with computer store employees that Apple has by far the fewest hardware problems - order of magnitude fewer.

Just sayin'

 

[RoyDodger]

Partly the software, but also the fact that my extended family has many apple products, and seem to spend a large amount of time at the Genius Bar (and they are smarter computing-wise than I, so I would live there..)

I've been using Macs (desktops and laptops) for 20 years and have never been to the Genius Bar.

 

[FairView]

I've been using Macs (desktops and laptops) for 20 years and have never been to the Genius Bar.

In just about that same time period I only went to the genius bar once. I didn't have a problem. I was shopping and hung out by the bar because there was this adorable woman there …

(Every "clever" line I come up with to end this post comes out borderline off-color, so I will leave it at that.)