I’m in need of a new laptop. I previously used an Acer, currently a Toshiba. Both are ready to be used as target practice out back.
My primary usage will be tuning for the EFI controller on my snowmobile, basic Windows Office stuff, internet and the occasional various cad stuff. The heavy cad (Revit) stuff I would do I would remote login to my blade on the cloud at work which would be almost never.
I don’t need anything with a massive screen. Nothing tablet like. Windows 7 Professional or Windows 8.1 (That’s the regular windows right?) I don’t need massive amounts of ram or storage, something good enough if I want to stream Netflix or do the remote login to my blade.
So, without spending too much $$, what is the go to brand or what should I look for right now? I haven’t paid much attention to these for a while.
I don’t know if there is a goto brand anymore. It seems like who ever I talk to though there’s always “well we had this one fail after X months” stories. With a laptop I think I’d just look for who ever is having a good sale and pick one up. For what you’re doing I’m thinking a 15.6" screen.
^ That’s probably more machine than you need but IMO that’s a great price for an IPS touchscreen display, Core i5 processor, 1TB drive and 12GB of ram. Unfortunately that was yesterday’s “eBay of the day” deal and it’s out of stock now.
^ That would do everything you want it to, but I really prefer 8GB of ram because a year after buying it the typical user has loaded it up with bloatware and 4GB starts being a little low. The Core i3 is fine for users who aren’t gamers, app developers or graphics artists.
Anything you get today is going to be Windows 8.1 with a free upgrade to Windows 10. If you’re not in a hurry (could wait a week or so) I’d setup a dealer alert over at slickdeals.net for the word “laptop” and see what comes on sale.
I prefer thinkpads, but you said without spending much $$$… I bought a thinkpad t400 back in '08, replaced the battery every 18mo or so, never had any other hardware problems. I’ve had friends and family buy acers, dell, HPs, and even lenovo in that time that had issues and ended up buying 2-3 laptops within that time period. I think the thinkpad is a great investment.
I just recently upgraded to a thinkpad x1 3rd gen, no complaints so far.
Yep, they’re basically a commodity right now. I’ve always had great luck with Dell Outlet, especially when they have the coupon codes for 20-30% off, and spend the extra bucks you saved for the 3 year at home warranty, because no matter what brand you pick, something will probably break and it’s usually right after the basic warranty runs out.
We just moved from Lenovo ThinkPads (T4XX and W5XX) to HPs. So far the Zbook is nice, but a hefty beast of a laptop. We also have ProBook 755s that I am quite fond of.