Need a laptop for <$1000

[arsta]

EDIT: Increased budget to ~$1000.

Budget: Would under $500 be possible (could stretch to $600, but if that's impossible... $700? I don't think I could go much higher)? I can't stand slow machines, I've had the horrific experience of having an old PC until recently, so I want something that wouldn't mean waiting for a browser or a page to load for a minute.

I'm gonna use this *device* (netbook/tablet/ultrabook?) for:

• Writing (a book and articles in Wordpress)
• Browsing (want non-slow quality browsing)
• Watching videos (mostly 480/720p on Youtube)
• Doing very minor Photoshop work (mostly resize/crop)
• Listening to music by connecting external headphones
• Some sort of an organizer, not sure which program or what programs are available yet

A bonus would be (unless it increases the price by more than $50-100):

• Ability to use Premiere for non-sluggish video cutting (not processing)
• Therefore watching 1080p videos
• Using Virtualbox for Windows Server OS
• Using non-sluggish Remote Desktop connection to my home PC
• Longer battery life (at least a few hours would be great)
• Very minor gaming

I'd prefer it to be a touchscreen and to have a wireless (is that the net available freely publiclically that isn't 256k? Rusty with new non-standard connection tech) connection.

 

[R0H1T]

You'd do well to give us a budget you have in mind ?

 

[arsta]

Edited. Sorry.

 

[R0H1T]

For ultrabooks see if any of these would suffice btw that budget of 500$ is rather unrealistic especially for ultrabooks, in the meantime I'll search for some viable notebook alternatives.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

if your willing to spend ~600 and wait until a deal pops up, I think the Yoga 13" is an awesome deal. I got mine refurb from lenovo for about $650, and besides being kinda big and slightly bulky for a tablet, its an incredible ultra book. I usually end up using it propped up in stand mode most of the time.

I check slickdeals at least once a day, and i see this deal pop up every few weeks or so. If you want I think you can set a notification to email you whenever a deal on the yoga pops up.

 

[arsta]

For ultrabooks see if any of these would suffice btw that budget of 500$ is rather unrealistic especially for ultrabooks, in the meantime I'll search for some viable notebook alternatives.

Edited the OP for $600-700, don't think I could go any higher.

I actually liked the first one from the right. It also has a dedicated video card, so that's an upside for lightweight gaming. However, in the store here it says that it has a 1.5Ghz dual-core CPU. It may be a mistake, but there's a model and everything in different fields, I'm not sure how that's possible because I couldn't find it with a 1.5Ghz CPU anywhere else.

Anyway, I'm putting it up in my "potential" list, let's see if there's any better alternative.

if your willing to spend ~600 and wait until a deal pops up, I think the Yoga 13" is an awesome deal. I got mine refurb from lenovo for about $650, and besides being kinda big and slightly bulky for a tablet, its an incredible ultra book. I usually end up using it propped up in stand mode most of the time.

I check slickdeals at least once a day, and i see this deal pop up every few weeks or so. If you want I think you can set a notification to email you whenever a deal on the yoga pops up.

Not from the US, Yoga's not available here. Thanks for the suggestion though. Also, edited the OP, $600-700 if nothing's available for $500. Don't think I could go any higher.

 

[R0H1T]

If you don't mind refurb stuff look at these or perhaps this ?

 

[arsta]

If I'm paying for something, I want it new and of high quality, so unfortunately refurbished stuff's not for me.

 

[R0H1T]

If I'm paying for something, I want it new and of high quality, so unfortunately refurbished stuff's not for me.

Alright, I guess this is my final list & if you need anything particular you'll have to search for individual components, so if none of'em fit your criteria I suggest you head over to the nearest Best Buy/microcenter store or online viz newegg for whatever suits you the best.

 

[krumme]

Alright, I guess this is my final list & if you need anything particular you'll have to search for individual components, so if none of'em fit your criteria I suggest you head over to the nearest Best Buy/microcenter store or online viz newegg for whatever suits you the best.

Good work !

I vote for the acer with an ssd if portability is very important.

If you like something fast, and with good battery life, you want a ssd, its absolutely #1 to get good speed for normal usage.

It all depens if all the photos can fit. I assue that because its for the net.

Secondly there is the question of typing speed. I dont know this acer, but traditionally that have not been their finest side.

 

[arsta]

Okay, I increase my budget to... $900-1000.

ASUS S400 looks interesting, but the battery life's horrible - only 3h.

I want something with an SSD, definitely.

 

[arsta]

I think this should be moved to http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=23

Any moderators? :/

 

[Stone Rain]

The Toshiba Portege Z930 is a good deal, at around $900.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Toshiba-Portege-Z930-105-Ultrabook.87043.0.html

 

[R0H1T]

Okay, I increase my budget to... $900-1000.

ASUS S400 looks interesting, but the battery life's horrible - only 3h.

I want something with an SSD, definitely.

It seems to me that your budget isn't an issue anymore but seeing as you have nearly a grand to spare I'd suggest you to hold on for a month or two & get the latest haswell based laptops provided you're not in too much of a rush cause you'll get better VFM with'em so that'll definitely be worth the wait it in the end :thumbsup:

 

[arsta]

It seems to me that your budget isn't an issue anymore but seeing as you have nearly a grand to spare I'd suggest you to hold on for a month or two & get the latest haswell based laptops provided you're not in too much of a rush cause you'll get better VFM with'em so that'll definitely be worth the wait it in the end :thumbsup:

Yea, something came through, so my budget increased.

Any idea about what'll come with Haswell? 1-2 sounds fluid, kinda reminds me of those times when you wait until the end of the year.

I wouldn't mind waiting for 1-2 months THAT much though, I mean it's possible, even though uncomfortable.

---

Therefore, gonna skip on Toshiba, although it seems like an averagely nice deal. Thanks!

 

[R0H1T]

Yea, something came through, so my budget increased.

Any idea about what'll come with Haswell? 1-2 sounds fluid, kinda reminds me of those times when you wait until the end of the year.

I wouldn't mind waiting for 1-2 months THAT much though, I mean it's possible, even though uncomfortable.

---

Therefore, gonna skip on Toshiba, although it seems like an averagely nice deal. Thanks!

Well for starters ~ a better processor that's more efficient & cooler not to mention better IGP(graphics) over IVB & if you're lucky maybe a nice deal for early adopters.

The timeline for release should be this quarter so you shouldn't have to wait much longer, definitely not ~6 months, but I can't give you the exact dates so I'm hoping others can pitch in & clarify about the haswell mobile chips.

 

[arsta]

Well for starters ~ a better processor that's more efficient & cooler not to mention better IGP(graphics) over IVB & if you're lucky maybe a nice deal for early adopters.

The timeline for release should be this quarter so you shouldn't have to wait much longer, definitely not ~6 months, but I can't give you the exact dates so I'm hoping others can pitch in & clarify about the haswell mobile chips.

Theoretically that should increase the battery life.

I wonder how much the equivalent of the standard i5 variant laptop Ivy will cost, I have a feeling it'll be a couple hundred bucks more.

 

[R0H1T]

I don't think haswell parts will cost that much more cause Intel needs more sales & increasing cost will only hurt PC shipments which are down ~14% YoY so unless they plan to shoot themselves in the foot you shouldn't feel wary about this price increase cause as far as I'm concerned the haswell based parts will cost roughly the same if not lower than what IVB cost last year !

 

[arsta]

I don't think haswell parts will cost that much more cause Intel needs more sales & increasing cost will only hurt PC shipments which are down ~14% YoY so unless they plan to shoot themselves in the foot you shouldn't feel wary about this price increase cause as far as I'm concerned the haswell based parts will cost roughly the same if not lower than what IVB cost last year !

What did they cost last year?

My concern is to get a decent laptop that we spoke about earlier for the price in question.

 

[R0H1T]

What did they cost last year?

My concern is to get a decent laptop that we spoke about earlier for the price in question.

I don't have hard figures from last year but one thing is for sure that say for a grand spent by you on haswell, it'll most definitely give you more performance(10~20% overall) & be cooler(great for battery life) all at the same time !

 

[marcplante]

If you want price/performance and are willing to get a wheelie car to carry a 4-5 lb monster, you might look at the Lenovo Y series. You could buy the 480 or 580 and have lots of power to do what you want as well as respectable battery life. When you say fast performance, there are different flavors. Are you looking for faster boot times? page load times? processing encoding video? These all drive different things.

How old was your last PC? How much memory did it have? Most modern machines will still tend to boot slowly (45-60 secs) with a standard drive, and you might possibly cut that in half with an SSD at the expense of having probably a 256G drive vs a 750G drive to store all of your media. The Lenovos will come with 6-8G of ram and fast processors and graphics to do everything you want to do. You can buy one with an SSD cache drive to speed up a lot of the day to day performance, and you can get comfortable with sleep vs shutting down the notebook for that instant startup feel.

 

[arsta]

I don't have hard figures from last year but one thing is for sure that say for a grand spent by you on haswell, it'll most definitely give you more performance(10~20% overall) & be cooler(great for battery life) all at the same time !

Those figures seem very optimistic, I have to look more into Haswell and analyze the data.

If you want price/performance and are willing to get a wheelie car to carry a 4-5 lb monster, you might look at the Lenovo Y series. You could buy the 480 or 580 and have lots of power to do what you want as well as respectable battery life. When you say fast performance, there are different flavors. Are you looking for faster boot times? page load times? processing encoding video? These all drive different things.

How old was your last PC? How much memory did it have? Most modern machines will still tend to boot slowly (45-60 secs) with a standard drive, and you might possibly cut that in half with an SSD at the expense of having probably a 256G drive vs a 750G drive to store all of your media. The Lenovos will come with 6-8G of ram and fast processors and graphics to do everything you want to do. You can buy one with an SSD cache drive to speed up a lot of the day to day performance, and you can get comfortable with sleep vs shutting down the notebook for that instant startup feel.

Thanks for asking.

I don't really mind carrying heavier stuff, that'd be sport-y. I'm looking for fast program/OS startup times and fast page load times.

My last (current) PC has an i5 Ivy, SATA2 HDD, and 16GB of memory. I find it a bit too slow at times, but I bet that's mostly due to the HDD. But I love how fast every single function in any program is. I can't stand waiting when I want to do something on a computer. I'm the kind of guy who's always on-the-go and is doing something, or even multi-tasking, which is when speed is important as well.

As I said, I can skip encoding, doesn't matter to me. I'd just want to cut the video so it'd be ready for processing on my home PC.

I still like how Yoga looks, actually.

 

[marcplante]

If you can live with 256G of space, the Yoga should be OK. If you need more drivespace. the Y series will give you two drive bays to include a large SSD and a second 7200 RPM HD. you could get something cheaper with the HD and bottom feed for a 256G SSD (The Samsung's run $150 if you keep your eyes open). I'm not sure if the 14 will hold 2 drives, but the 15 definitely will. If you dont need as much storage, or can live with something like the Patriot external HD (with Wifi and USB support), then you can go with the smaller device.

 

[marcplante]

Lenovo runs regular sales and they don't seem to impose any controls on their student site that I can find. They typically rotate steep markdowns on the Y series changing the highlighted model every couple weeks on Wed. I'm not sure what they're doing with Yoga markdowns as I wasn't shopping for one. I ended up opting for an Asus N56NZ, which was a BIG mistake. The device had some problems and ASUS sopport has been pretty terrible to date. I've been chasing demons for 6 months now with no recourse.

 

[TheReaWarmonger]

I don't know why people always go for the sleek thin laptops that are extremely expensive and pack little to no punch. Here is a laptop worth spending money on, not only is it a multitasking monster it also packs a mean GPU (HD 7730M which is the laptop version of the desktop HD 7770) for gaming. I bet you could run MW3 on max settings on this @ 1080p (yes the screen is 1920x1080). I also bet any kind of photoshop work will be smooth as butter with such a strong GPU (plus heavy threaded applications will take benefit of its 4 cores). Who cares if it weighs 6 lbs, I can pick that up with my pinky. Tho I would suggest waiting for Richland to come out, the A10-5750M will do 2.5GHz base with a 3.5GHz turbo, while packing a HD 8650G all on the same 35w as the 4600m. This was the laptop I was planning on buying, but am holding out for Richland based laptops.

Edit: Or if you're looking for raw horsepower.