Looking for a $1500 laptop for college.

[anndreww]

1. What is your budget? Around $1500, it would be great if money can be saved.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 13-14 inches

3. What screen resolution do you want? No preference.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Portable laptop, I will be bringing a desktop with me.

5. How much battery life do you need? 5 hours+

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)? The laptop will not be used for gaming.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) I will be majoring in Economics, so I assume I'll be using office programs. It will mainly be used to surf the web, facebook, etc...

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? I will be using online backup storage. Inside the laptop will only be documents and music.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. Preferably reputable sites.

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

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? A DVD burner should do.

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 prefer the laptop be bought from Apple, Asus, HP or Lenovo. Reason for this is their design which is extremely important for me. I prefer a clean, thin and sleek look.

13. What country do you live in? United States

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I would like a SSD if possible.

 

[anndreww]

You appear to want a thin and light laptop and unfortunately many of these dont have a disc drive but you can buy an external one cheap for when you need one. Take a look at these.
http/www.adorama.com/MSIX370206WT.html?utm_term=Other&utm_medium=Shopping%20Site&utm_campaign=Other&utm_source=gbase
And this one is more expensive since its an ultrabook but you really want sleek http/www.amazon.com/Dell-X14z-2308ELS-14-Inch-Laptop-Elemental/dp/B005KP70AI/ref=sr_1_sc_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1333823475&sr=1-5-spell

An external drive http/www.amazon.com/Samsung-SE-208AB-TSBS-External-DVD-Writer/dp/B005KQ0S8S/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1333823600&sr=1-2

Yeah, that is exactly what I'm looking for. A sleek, thin & fast laptop for basic use. I know MSI is pretty reputable in their GPUs, but I think I'm going to have to pass on them making laptops. The Dell looks good in terms of looks, but I need to look into it more in terms of specs.

 

[proskillr]

Heres a higher speced dell xps 14, it sports an i5 and a 750gb 7200rpm hd plus 8gb of ram. Also it has a gt520m which allows for more graphically complex applications s i have an xps with a 520m and it can run skyrim on high with 30 fps(i know you dont game but so you know its more than capable) oh and its http/www.amazon.com/Dell-X14Z-3846SLV-14-Inch-Laptop-Elemental/dp/B006LX2ITQ/ref=dp_ob_title_ce less than an inch thick. http/www.amazon.com/Dell-X14Z-3846SLV-14-Inch-Laptop-Elemental/dp/B006LX2ITQ/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

 

[PCgamer81]

Go with a Sony Vaio.

I have one with a 6630m and it can play most modern games at max settings.

 

[th3parasit3]

This just isn't true. If you were majoring in mathematics or engineering ( I did both), you might be on to something with software, but most stuff is web based now. Mainstream programs (matlab, etc) work on all platforms and if you don't like macs version of office you can download libreoffice.

While the quality has gone down a very small amount in the last year or so, apple does a better job putting together their laptops than most other manufacturers. While apple laptops are hard to repair, laptops in general are pretty hard to repair. Also, apple has some of the highest rated customer service if you ever did run in to technical problems.

As for no optical drive, they are becoming less and less useful (and relevant) every day. I replaced the optical drive on my ASUS laptop to make room for an SSD (handy for a work laptop to have storage and fast boot/application load times).

I'm not saying go buy an apple, but you sound pretty prejudiced. This is coming from a guy who owns no apple products except a mac mini which I won in an office contest and gave to my parents to serve as a media center. A lot of people I know own macs / pcs and a LOT of them love their macs.

You don't own an Apple computer. If you buy an Apple computer you better love it, you just paid 50% more for a laptop. The few people that benefit from Apple computers are some programmers, music and video editing, and 3D rendering artists (who generally buy the desktop or all-in-one platforms, which is a whole different ball game of reliability and error correction).

For your basic computing needs, you are paying 50% more so that you can warm your coffee on your laptop. Just remember that the burning sensation is Apple's way of branding you with their superior build quality.

Funny how you don't need a ROM drive until you need a ROM drive. Your statement concludes that physical media will be obsolete in the next 2-4 years (the expected life of this laptop in question). Do you actually believe that?

 

[anndreww]

I've decided to purchase an ultrabook. I am torn between these choices.

-Apple Macbook Air
-Asus Zenbook
-HP Folio 13
-HP Envy 14[similar to MPA in price, would it be better to get an air instead?]
-Lenovo 300
-Sony Vaio S Series

 

[Kamab]

You don't own an Apple computer. If you buy an Apple computer you better love it, you just paid 50% more for a laptop. The few people that benefit from Apple computers are some programmers, music and video editing, and 3D rendering artists (who generally buy the desktop or all-in-one platforms, which is a whole different ball game of reliability and error correction).

For your basic computing needs, you are paying 50% more so that you can warm your coffee on your laptop. Just remember that the burning sensation is Apple's way of branding you with their superior build quality.

Funny how you don't need a ROM drive until you need a ROM drive. Your statement concludes that physical media will be obsolete in the next 2-4 years (the expected life of this laptop in question). Do you actually believe that?

Why are you angry at apple? Also, I really DONT need a ROM drive. Not many things distribute exclusively over a ROM media anymore, and if there is a need I can just use another desktop or laptop to make an ISO image out of it. FYI, this has happened 0 times in the last 2 years. I'd also be willing to bet I watch more movies and install more software than the average user.

Digital distribution is definitely on the rise. You can pretend otherwise but you'd have to be kidding yourself.

As for your first couple points, there are a LOT of people, many of whom are tech savvy, that would disagree with you. Macs also don't come with a ton of bloatware, and not everyone like to reformat their hard drives.
;
Just to name a few features:

The aluminum casing feels/looks a lot sleeker and more durable than most laptops.

Apple's touchpad is indisputably the best one on the market.

Out of all the operating systems available, OSX put the most thought in to user experience.

Apple products also tend to retain value MUCH better than other laptops. They are frequently resold on craigslist with way less depreciation than other brands. Same for iPhones and such.

Again, I have sager and asus laptops, and a homebuilt desktop. And apple laptop hasn't been appropriate for me, but I can see their value.

 

[blahdro]

http/configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dkcwbr1&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&model_id=alienware-m14x

A nice lil laptop right there.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I've decided to purchase an ultrabook. I am torn between these choices.

-Apple Macbook Air
-Asus Zenbook
-HP Folio 13
-HP Envy 14[similar to MPA in price, would it be better to get an air instead?]
-Lenovo 300
-Sony Vaio S Series

Well that would be a complete waste of money and a really BAD decision. Ultrabooks are as fragile as glass and probably won't stand up well to the "rigours" of campus life. You have a desktop and that's a good thing because it means that you can keep your laptop in the role of a mobile satellite for it. When I was at uni, these are the specs of the laptop I had:

Make and Model: eMachines E620-5885 (Acer Aspire 5515)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 2650e (Single-core) 1.6GHz
GPU: ATi Radeon X1200 (Ancient and primitive)
RAM: 2GB
Hard Drive: 160GB
Video Output: VGA Only
USB 2.0 ports: 2
Webcam: Yes
Integrated Mic: Yes

Whoa, what a scorcher eh? Ran perfectly and did everything I wanted it to do and more. For software? Hell, I just used Oracle's OpenOffice for word-processing and presentations. Never had a problem at all. The only thing I would have changed about it would have been battery life. Before Llano came out, AMD laptops had rather short battery life. Now I have a Llano (A8-3500M) and it is an amazing device with more battery power than I could have imagined. There is no reason to spend more than $500 on a laptop for school. If you're like most students, your budget is stretched thin as it is without blowing all that money on something you don't need. My laptop is currently the Acer Aspire 5560-Sb401. It has a 15.6" screen, a number pad, weighs under 6lbs and is about 3cm thick. All programs I've ever used on it are a breeze and I can even play Skyrim on medium settings. This laptop cost me $499+tax and I couldn't imagine a better deal. The battery seems to live forever (I've been using it for over an hour and it still has 3hrs and 24 minutes left) so you'll never have to worry about sitting near a plug in class. The battery also charges extremely fast (30 minutes and it's full) so as a mobile computer, this is the proverbial "cat's meow". My laptop is a Canadian model but here's an American model that should give you the same experience I'm having for the same price:
http/www.walmart.com/ip/Samsung-Series-3-15.6-Laptop-PC-with-AMD-Quad-Core-A8-Series-Accelerated-Processor-and-Windows-7-Home-Premium/17492781?wmlspartner=je6NUbpObpQ&sourceid=39355645113001389998
And for reference, here's the tomshardware review of the A8 platform:
http/www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a8-3500m-llano-apu,2959.html