The MacBook pros were great a while ago, now is the age of the surface. Get the surface pro, you won't regret it.
For mobile photo editing and occasional gaming, I use a custom made laptop from Xoticpc. For lightweight travel, apps, mobility and speed, I use a Thinkpad. It was difficult to find one laptop that let me do everything and was light so I had to go with two. For your needs, you need a fast CPU, lots of RAM, a SSD, and a nice screen). Since you dont need a separate graphics card, it makes your life easier. I would recommend a Thinkpad. Get one with a fast CPU and a nice screen (make sure its a IPS screen). Dont worry about the SSD and Ram specs on the laptop. Once you have selected a nice thinkpad with a fast CPU, a nice screen, minimum RAM, and a low capacity HDD (yes, a HHD), order it. And then buy a a high capacity SSD and additional RAM elsewhere and install them yourselves (pretty easy to do on most laptops). In the end you will have a light, fast and bullet proof Thinkpad at a very nice price point with solid warranty. I would alse recommend your own Windows copy if you dont have one already. Very few things in life give you the satisfaction that you get out of an initial boot up of a freshly installed Windows on a brand new SSD/laptop/desktop with absolutely 0 bloatware.
I bought a new RazerBlade a few weeks ago, and I am loving it. I replaced my desktop and my Surface Pro 3 at once with a dual Thunderbolt docking station.
I need an affordable gaming laptop that plays Call Of DUTY zombies smoothly on a neighboring business guest wifi. Im tired of playing agario on this chromebook at work for 12 hours.
Look at refurbished Dell XPS or Alienware laptops on dell.com/outlet. Also, check out twitter.com/delloutlet for coupon codes, and/or search for them online. Their refurbished laptops have full one-year manufacturer warranties. I bought an Alienware on there more than four years ago that my nephew is still using to this day without issue.
Can I swap out my hard drive for an SSD or just a larger HD? I have a 400gb drive, too small for me now. Windows 7 premium operating system.
SSDs have a smaller form factor than HDDs. So if you are able to pull the sata hard drive from your laptop then you should be able to put a SSD in. Some laptops also have a msata connection in addition to sata, which enables you to have two sdds. Don't even bother upgrading to a larger hard drive. Waste of time and money. Get a SDD. They are not that expensive now and well worth the money. The SDD is the single most impactful upgradable hardware on your computer, desktop or laptop, other than a graphics card (but since you don't play games, you don't have to worry about the GPU). Get the highest capacity sdd you can afford.
Realized the other day I needed a new cheap laptop -- grabbed a Lenovo idea pad with an AMD A12, 8 gigs RAM, and 1 TB hard drive at best buy for $350 (tax included).
Adding ram and switching drives should not. For most laptops the slots for memory and storage are easily accessible. I had no issues with Lenovo. If you are adding memory to your laptop, you should try to get the same type as your original one and also save the original ones. If you are really paranoid then if your laptop ever needs servicing, just remove your additional memory and send it in with original memory. As long as the memory is the same kind and type, additional memory will not void your memory. That's what the additional memory slots are for. You can contact your laptop company and ask which mem is in the laptop and which ones are suitable match. As for SSDs, you are supposed to remove all storage before sending your laptop for servicing anyways.
That latest model is a huge step back. Still love the 2015 edition and I would buy that refurb if I was forced to own my own. Windows apps is not a problem with boot camp or parallels Lenovo yoga or Xps with 4k display is gorgeous, but realistically 2k is awesome enough. A lot of the beefy gaming laptops on display don't come with a great screen res. Probably have to custom order it, but then you're paying more than s MBP