mobile apps . it's also a business expense so I can go fairly high in price. was looking at lenovo but will consider others. my current laptop runs emulator slow.
A few days ago I was at Office Max and they had a Toshiba R835-P84 for $479. It was the last one and open stock, and I think you had to buy something for $20 to get it at that price, but it was a screaming deal for an i5, almost ultrabook light laptop. They also had the Lenovo E42 for the same price (and same deal, last one, open stock, had to buy something for $20). I really like ASUS laptops (I have an older UL30A2), and they have one of the new Zen Ultrabooks for around a grand. I know that's approaching Mac Air territory but if you had to get something running Windows that would be the way I'd go.
Wow. I can't believe the number of folks here recommending Toshiba. Nothing but problems in my experience w/ their product. I'd go Dell or Lenovo for the OP since a Mac is out of your range.
I will retype my generic advice for all laptop purchase. All the internals are identical. In addition, since laptop performance is so low compared to a desktop, construction is the most important factor. Thinkpads have very nice keyboards, and are very tough and well designed. They don't compromise cooling to make a new curved flashy design. They are all black bricks.They are generally lighter than the competition. The only feature they don't, in my opinion, beat the similarly or even higher priced competition, is in video graphics and screen quality. On the other hand their screens are not glossy which eliminates reflections. For someone not playing games, or wanting a great screen for HD movies, I think a Thinkpad is a no-brainer. For someone playing games and watching Blu-Rays all the time, NOT getting a Thinkpad is a no-brainer.
Toshiba and ASUS have been the highest rated notebook companies for the past few years, supported by quite a few surveys. I would suggest a Toshiba Portege. 13.3" notebook, second generation i5 processor, large hard drive, super light (3.2 lbs), and a DVD drive that you can swap for a HDD if you want.
Dell is going to have some good deals on laptops during their presidents day sale. Best prices of the year next to black Friday. Buy direct at dell.com and get free shipping and 6 months of blockbuster etc during the sale.
Loving all the advice so far! Keep it coming. A few more questions: Help me out when it comes to processors. What is the best processor? The i3/5/7? If so, is there a large enough difference between them that I should go for an i5 or 7? Or is the i3 going to do me just fine, should I go that route? Also, if I find a hybrid hard drive in my range, should I go for that? Is a solid state drive a must have? Any other tips appreciated.
You need to look deeper than i3 vs i5 vs i7. Look at specifics. It won't make much of a difference for your usage IMO. Would not go with hybrid. I would say SSD is mandatory but you can upgrade it later so don't make it priority.
i7 > i5 > i3 However, that's only considering they are the same generation. A first gen will look like i5-###. A second generation will have the designation i5-2###. The second generation processors run much faster than the first gen counterparts. I'd say you should look for any notebook that is running an i5-24##. The second gen i5 model is the par for notebooks nowadays as they are the best processing for the power conservation. These processors will likely last you 6+ hours. Good power-conserving notebooks will get 8 hours with this processor. An i7-26## is way faster but it'll drain your battery much faster. SSDs are great hard drives because they'll boot in seconds and load programs much faster. However, they're expensive if you want to get something with enough storage space. I'd say you need a regular spinning HDD since this'll be your primary computer and you want a DVD drive.
120GB and under SSD's are pretty affordable, he said this will be mostly for school, and doesn't play games, watch movies. SSD + eSATA External way faster. SSD also gives less heat and battery drain on a laptop.
I'd agree with you if EddieWasSnubbed was a techie and would appreciate the speed, but his budget is between $500-$600 which won't net you an SSD unless he can upgrade later and ghost his drive (or reinstall). A regular spinning HDD will be fine. The webcam is a little harder to source. Notebooks generally come with 0.3 megapixel webcams, which won't look great. So, something like a 1.3 mp webcam will be a premium upgrade which is going to be harder to find in a retail notebook in that price range.
I like the idea of expanding to an SSD. How tough are they to expand to in general (I know it probably depends on the specific laptop)? Expanding to a decent size SSD (nothing huge by any means) and using an external drive might interest me. I will have to look into it. This thread is going in the right direction. I'm on my phone now. Tomorrow, I shall hand out rep.
The market price on SSDs is $1/GB, and that's if you find a good deal. For your primary drive, I would get a minimum 64 GB SSD. Windows will take about 10 GB, and Microsoft Office will be about 3 GB. Include other programs, and you're left with probably 40 GB of free space. That's enough space if you don't install games or store media files on your drive. Take into account how big your documents folder is, too. I have documents from years ago, and my documents folder is 16+ GB. Again, you can always store more files on an external SSD. A 500 GB portable HDD is probably around $50.
An option I might consider is to buy a cheaper laptop that has less storage space but still some decent specs. Then, maybe splurge on a 128 GB SSD. My desktop (that my wife and I share) right now has only 64 GB of space used. And that's after we've had the thing for about 4-5 years. Is it true that I could remove whatever HDD this laptop came with and buy a housing unit to house it as an external drive?
