Solved! Need some help buying a laptop

[fpsblue]

1. What is your budget?
$1000

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Portable so no bigger than 15.6" and no smaller than 13".

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Dont know

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

5. How much battery life do you need?
at least 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)?
No games

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
Microsoft Visual studios, Dream weaver, Photoshop, Adobe premiere, watching movie, music and MS office

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
at least 250 gb

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
any website in USA

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Dont know, maybe 5 years

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

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.
DOnt care

13. What country do you live in?

USA
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

The main priority is reliability, battery life and low weight.

 

[drake123]

Ok, in your case, it's going to be a piece of cake.
Check out the ASUS UL Series.
They have amazing battery life.

laptopmag.com for reviews on laptops.

=D

 

[Fadekyn]

If you don't plan on playing games, then you're better off spending around $500 and in 2-3 years buying a new lappy.

You can meet all your requirements by spending $500 regardless of which company you choose. The world is your oyster in this situation.

You also may want to wait for the fixed Sandbridge line of CPUs to come out since you want to do light editing.

Again, you can get a midtier GPU card and Sandybridge for between $500-$700 if you wait until March.

 

[bCubed]

well not necessarily. If the laptop has only 1 harddrive and only 1 optical drive then the current gen Sandy bridges should be fine. From my understanding it is only the esata ports over the first 2 that are problematic, right?

 

[fpsblue]

But which company is the most reliable? I need a computer that can stand shock from "bumby" roads and if it falls it wont break. I heard that sager, Dell and Thinkpad are best for this. ANyone can confirm?

 

[Espada]

ill give rep on sager. and thinkpads are from ibm stuff heck yea those things are like the volvo cars.... tanks! Dell not to sure on i have a dell laptop xps old one with pentium m it works still but the hinges on the laptop are just awfull.

 

[Fadekyn]

well not necessarily. If the laptop has only 1 harddrive and only 1 optical drive then the current gen Sandy bridges should be fine. From my understanding it is only the esata ports over the first 2 that are problematic, right?

It's the back 4 esata ports that fail out of a set of 6 if I remember correctly. The press release says that Intel is still going to sell the remainder, but only in closed rig laptops and desktops that don't allow access to those port abilities.


Yeah, Lenovo Thinkpads do have good rep for drops and such. (Although, no laptop should ever be in a situation where it could be dropped. For shame.)

 

[WindowsTeam_Kevin]

Hey, I found 2 suggestions that will be within your budget.

The first is the Samsung QX410 at $799. Overall, a great machine. Here are the specs:
Screen
14" (1366x768) HD
Processor
2.53 GHz Intel® Core™ i5 Processor 460M (3 MB)
RAM
4 GB DDR3 1066 MHz
Storage
640 GB HDD 5400 RPM
Operating system
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Optical drive
CD R/W, DVD R/W
Video memory
512 MB Dedicated graphics card

The other is the ASUS U43JC Bamboo at $999. This is a small lightweight laptop that really packs the punch. It even has Blu-Ray R. Here are the specs:
Screen
14" WXGA (1366x768) HD
Processor
2.4 GHz Intel® Core™ i5-450M Processor
RAM
4 GB DRAM 1066 MHz
Storage
500 GB HDD 5400 RPM
Operating system
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Optical drive
Blu-ray R, CD R/W, DVD R/W

Hope you enjoy these suggestions, I think they would be great for you. Good luck on your search.

Kevin
Windows Outreach Team