Budget Web Dev/Design 2-in-1 - Form Filled

Feb 24, 2018
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1. What is your budget? Max $800

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 13"-15"

3. What screen resolution do you want? HD

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Leaning toward replacement

5. How much battery life do you need? Min 4hrs but prefer 8+

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? No

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Web Development Programming, Photoshop, Illustrator, Drawing, maybe some movies

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 256+ 512 preferred

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. Micorcenter looking at refurbs and open box deals

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 2-3 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? CD/DVD Only need one if I can't recover from flash drive

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons. I am hesitant to try HP do to bloatware that I have heard of in the past, but am open to all brands

13. What country do you live in? United States

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

I really really want a Micorsoft Surface book , but its out of my budget, I am looking for something I can take to clients, meetups, or hackathons. I need the 2-in-1 for sketching purposes as well. I am willing to take an older chipset if that helps. One thing that concerns me is the Spectre vunerabilities that cropped up this winter. Are the new patches in place to fix that? I have seen some of the intel 8000 series processors are really low on CPU Ghz 1.8 I believe, but it looks like they are Quads. How much of an improvement is that over say a 2.6ghz 7000 series processor?

I have build my own pc's in the past and this is my first laptop. I will be keeping my desktop but need a comparble one for the road. Thanks for looking and I appreciate any advice that comes my way.
 
Solution
Well, I'd probably be looking at this Lenovo Flex 5 1570. It seems to have everything you're looking for except for maybe the battery. While it says, "up to 10 hours", they rarely actually last that long.

Don't know if anything has been done about the Specter vulnerability

-Wolf sends
Feb 24, 2018
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This one was on my radar for sure. I'm leaning towards this unless they're any other suggestions. I may go take a look at it today and see what I think. Thanks!
 
Feb 24, 2018
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I wanted to follow up on this. I went to Microcenter to check this laptop out and its really sleek. I would agree with some of the reviews that it's a bit large for a convertible, but that extra screen real estate is great for my sketches and drawing needs. The more I switch modes, the more I am becoming comfortable with the size. The keyboard is the most comfortable one I have tried for my large mitts. It's screaming fast. Resolution is fine for me, I don't need 4k. I also picked up the Lenovo active pen which works great.

I did have one issue. I went to the Lenovo site and updated drivers specific to my machine and then got the BSOD, The hard drive failed. It was a refurb, so I took it back and they swapped it out with the same model that was $50 more and price matched it. I have had this one for 5 days, everything is updated with no issues, and working great.

This was a great pick. Solid laptop with the oomph I was looking for and half the price. I know the risk of a refurb, and did have an issue, but it was quickly remedied and hopefully if things take off I'll be replacing this in the next couple of years with a top model and passing this to the kids.

Thanks Wolfshadw!