Laptop Advice

BISCUT · Nov 30, 2013

Looking for a slim, medium sized screen laptop. Work (ie...Office Suite will suffice) , lots of photos with some Adobe work (need a good accurate color saturation screen), and of course net. Pretty basic, no gaming as its for ME not the kids or wife.

I have a HP ENVY DP7 large screen from work and am not happy with it at all. Freezes often, the BEATS music had to be removed as it would never work. Screen colors are not very good. I'm ok with HP but this one stunk it up.

I was thinking of Apple but really I'm out in no mans land on this call. I bought the wife and kids a HP all in one and for under $800 the 23" touvh screen is [censored] good color wise and 1TB and 8GB RAM not bad for the cost. So I'm not ruling out HP.

Someone point my butt in the right direction so I can begin to narrow my choices.

We have I-pads, I-pods, I-phones, I have Samsung 4 phone and 10.1 Tablet for work. If that matters.

Ramblejam · Nov 30, 2013

How much do you want to spend, Biscut?

97tbird · Nov 30, 2013

Lenovo IdeaPad? or Lenovo Edge or ThinkPads if you can spend more...

AND...Geez why don't people use dedicated sections for threads ????
(notified mods)

BISCUT · Nov 30, 2013

Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
How much do you want to spend, Biscut?

I'd go 1800 for the right one but cheaper and satisfied always good.

BISCUT · Nov 30, 2013

Originally Posted By: 97tbird
Lenovo IdeaPad? or Lenovo Edge or ThinkPads if you can spend more...

AND...Geez why don't people use dedicated sections for threads ????
(notified mods)

Didn't realize there was a specific "computer" forum. If I wen't off forum I didn't realize it....Guess you were THAT kid in school. Have a piece of cheese

Donald · Nov 30, 2013

You can find decent laptops in the $300 - $400 range. I bought myself an HP and its a great machine. It was between $300 and $400. Win 7 is my choice. Win 8.1 might be OK. I bought my two daughters (over 30) similar laptops, all from Walmart. I have an HP from work, and it has a better (more metal) case, but thats about it.

I went for 8 GB of memory in my two and my home one I upgraded to a SSD. (Makes booting super quick).

Apple is OK, but you pay more for comparable compute power with an Apple than with a normal PC.

While my home PC is a laptop, I do have an external 22" monitor.

ag_ghost · Nov 30, 2013

I've had exceptional success with a half-dozen refurbished business notebooks from HP's refurb store. The SKUs listed as "refurbished" have always been as good as new. You do have to call during business hours but the purchase process is reasonably quick. If the laptop is going to travel at all, I HIGHLY recommend an accidental damaage "Care Pack". One drop that breaks a screen and you're buying a new one. Most still come with WIndows Pro 7 / 64 so you don't have waste your time undoing Windows 8.
https://h41183.www4.hp.com/pps-offers.php

Good luck,
Kevin

Voltmaster · Nov 30, 2013

Accurate screen is going to cost you 2000+ .

Problem with labtops are that if you need one high quality component you ended up paying alot more for everything to be better quality.

JHZR2 · Nov 30, 2013

there is good lenovo and there is garbage lenovo. Ditto for most any manufacurers. The high end from Lenovo and others with similar specs for screens, processors, etc. will cost as much as an apple.

I have an HP Elitebook for work and have been pretty happy with it. It runs Windows 7 and while it is in no way my retina display MBP, it works.

MS runs office for mac, and if you want, you can run windows in mac or as dual boot... so you have lots of options.

I prefer the macs and my new 15" MBP retina is awful nice. But I too wouldnt rule out some of the HP and other offerings. I used to like Sony, and I think they do make some nice slim laptops, but we got bit by a lot of flaky products a few years back and have avoided since. Toshiba seems consistent, but does not necessarily bring super nice products to the table, IMO...

Ramblejam · Nov 30, 2013

Originally Posted By: BISCUT
I'd go 1800 for the right one but cheaper and satisfied always good.

I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I'd say the MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina Display.

Originally Posted By: Voltmaster
Accurate screen is going to cost you 2000+ .

"The color accuracy of our review unit is excellent, even without a calibration. The DeltaE deviations in the ColorChecker test are the lowest we ever measured. Therefore, the human eye should not see any differences between the displayed and the real color. Results for the grayscale presentation are not as good, but our i1Pro 2 measuring tool is less accurate at lower brightness settings. The sRGB color space is completely covered by the Retina display.

Some of the following measurements were only taken in Windows 8.1 since the X-Rite software did not recognize our i1Pro 2 in OS X (this is also the reason for the brightness differences between chart and text).

A calibration with the X-Rite software improves the results even further, so the display should be well suited for demanding picture editing."

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Apple-MacBook-Pro-Retina-13-Late-2013-Notebook.105035.0.html

97tbird · Dec 1, 2013

Originally Posted By: BISCUT
Originally Posted By: 97tbird
Lenovo IdeaPad? or Lenovo Edge or ThinkPads if you can spend more...

AND...Geez why don't people use dedicated sections for threads ????
(notified mods)

Didn't realize there was a specific "computer" forum. If I wen't off forum I didn't realize it....Guess you were THAT kid in school. Have a piece of cheese

LOL don't be so angry.

BearZDefect · Dec 1, 2013

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
there is good lenovo and there is garbage lenovo. Ditto for most any manufacurers.
...

I second this.

97tbird · Dec 2, 2013

I like my Lenovo T520 with i7, Win 7 Pro, FHD screen and fingerprint reader, etc.
I got it direct from Lenovo for a great price, when they were having a model year end sale.

My wife's also pretty happy with her Edge E520 Lenovo. The known issue with that one, something called faulty EEPROM, was fixed (even out of warranty) by lenovo for free, using overnight to/from shipping on their dime, and packaging was over-nighted to us for shipping to them. Very Good customer service, IMO, and cost us only 4 days and zero dollars.

BISCUT · Dec 4, 2013

I looked at a whole lotta laptops over the last few days. There are a lot of good choices. I narrowed it down to MacBook Pro and Samsung ATIV 8. $800 cost difference ($1200 for Samsung) you can probably guess which way I went.

Samsung: Intel i7
8GB DDR
1TB HD
Great screen for graphics (only one comparable to MacBook retina I could find)
New wireless standard

Just playing around with it now....have to set it up and get used to Windows 8. Thanks for all the suggestions.

ToyotaNSaturn · Dec 4, 2013

This one is still $369, regularly $669, a great deal:
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/768179/HP-Pavilion-17-e055nr-Laptop-Computer/?cm_cat=509618

ToyotaNSaturn · Dec 4, 2013

Wait, never mind. I re-read your last post that you already bought one.

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