College Laptop question

[btadler]

Copied this thread from computer help. Hoping it gets more views and assistance in the proper thread.

I am looking to purchase a new laptop for going back to college as my old laptop weighs about 15 lbs and is rather ancient. I am debating between a few. First let me say that I have never really been a mac guy but the Apple Air is one of my choices mostly due to price being less than the other two options. my other options are the Acer Aspire S7 and the ASUS Zenbook prime touch. The S7 seems to be similar to the air but in Windows form and I am slightly interested in the idea of a touch screen though I don't know how I would actually like that on a computer and not a tablet. Any insight as to which you think will be best in terms of performance or if you have other suggestions for laptops that will be both light weight and do the job. I should mention that I am going to school for marketing and advertising so most of what I will be using this for will be lecture notes and marketing projects such as story boards and such. Thanks for the intelligent comments.

I made a spreadsheet with the differences. What I am really wondering is if anyone else has had an acer laptop. I have used acer for my mobos almost exclusively and have never had any problems with them for desktop builds but the laptops seem to be getting bad reviews and the customer service is getting slammed. I put that in the spreadsheet but would like to know if anyone else has any experience with this. the S7 seems to be the winner spec wise and price wise but if I am going to be getting a junky product all the specs in the world wont help if they don't operate smoothly together.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7sTelqQQEYLdEVuOEJwWGtKOUk/edit?usp=sharing

 

[mcveigh]

Tried to look at your spreadsheet but I need access.

 

[D2ultima]

I will never under any circumstances recommend an Acer to anyone. If you want garbage tier machines, Dell is your deal (due to great warranty). If you want low-end, Dell and Toshiba and Lenovo are nice. I don't know your price range or anything, but never Acer.

Please do research on ASUS as well; specifically the model you've got. If the GPU is non-gaming but still dedicated (like a 640M or 740M etc), there is a chance they haven't included a fan on the dGPU; and in that case it can end up overheating a lot later, which is something you want to avoid.

That being said, if you want to post your intended usage and your price ceiling, perhaps we could suggest to you a manufacturer to use. Alternately, you may wish to check out and post in this forum as they'll likely be better able to help you. No offense to anyone here, but primarily-desktop-user-populated forums are often not the best place for attention/advice on laptop questions ^_^.

 

[s44]

The MBA is cheaper because it has a significantly worse screen than any of the PC options. Low-res and TN instead of IPS.

 

[corkyg]

See what is available through your college bookstore.

 

[rsutoratosu]

I will never under any circumstances recommend an Acer to anyone. If you want garbage tier machines, Dell is your deal (due to great warranty). If you want low-end, Dell and Toshiba and Lenovo are nice. I don't know your price range or anything, but never Acer.

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I'm in this same boat.. I just got this email about how this gals husband would buy an acer over dell. I had acer junk before, they truly blow. I think of acer as junk made in taiwan. As a taiwanese, I can't believe we put out this junk

 

[holden j caufield]

you'll want an elitebook, precision/latitude or thinkpad. Everything from the toughness of the outside materials, roll cage, hinges, bumpers/dampeners around important parts, the power plug going to the mobo is sort of a daughter card, as are some of the usb ports, vga, hdmi etc. It's built very modular like unlike an acer where everything is integrated and if the power plug, usb port or other often used ports get damaged you'll need to either solder or replace the board, with the others it's likely a daughter card.

The driver support, and internals are much better also. You'll end up with intel chipsets, intel nic etc. All stuff that runs right out of the box, has future driver upgrades, runs well and right out of the box with linux. We have some laptops here with older broadcom, realtek crap in them and when we tried to upgrade to win7 there wasn't much driver support for the old stuff. Probably end up donating 25 laptops as a tax write off because the wireless and lan port in them lack win7 drivers.

 

[Emulex]

You want something with Accidental damage and reasonable support timeframe -> Apple / HP Elitebook or equivalent Dell.

Think about how long you can be down for when something goes wrong. If less than a week -> Apple stores are relatively nearby!