Recommendations for a small notebook?

[Quattro Pete]

Wife needs a new notebook. The display on her current HP is starting to fail after 2 years of heavy use.

Requirements:
- Win 7
- Intel i3 CPU (at a minimum)
- 11"-12" screen
- thin
- good battery life
- no more than about $600 hopefully


So far I've come up with this:
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Ultrabook-NX-...=intel+notebook

However, I'm not all that convinced about Acer's quality. Anything else you can suggest?

Thanks!

 

[OVERKILL]

ASUS K-series. We've had exceptionally good luck with them

 

[Eddie]

My netbook is an ASUS and it is really nice and reliable got the 4 years I've used it.

 

[dparm]

Acer is fine, quality-wise.

I would consider a used MacBook Air, as well.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
ASUS K-series. We've had exceptionally good luck with them

If I'm not mistaken, K-series has a 15.6" screen. Way too big.

Besides, she had an Asus netbook in the past, and it was giving us all sorts of problems and dealing with their customer support was a major PITA. I don't think I can convince her to give ASUS another try, even though their notebooks are supposedly better than their netbooks.

 

[DrDusty86]

Don't buy a Mac, Mine has been horrible and Apple's customer service is iffy. My Pro has had ATLEAST 4 Hard drives, a main board, a power supply and 2 ram sticks. My HP was WAY better than this pos. The first HD failed 15 days after I got the computer and they didn't want to exchange it. This thing is a box queen.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
ASUS K-series. We've had exceptionally good luck with them

If I'm not mistaken, K-series has a 15.6" screen. Way too big.

Besides, she had an Asus netbook in the past, and it was giving us all sorts of problems and dealing with their customer support was a major PITA. I don't think I can convince her to give ASUS another try, even though their notebooks are supposedly better than their netbooks.


Then try a Lenovo, we've had good luck with those as well. We've had a variety of issues with ACER stuff simply not holding up as well as the other two I've mentioned. FWIW.

 

[itguy08]

Originally Posted By: DrDusty86
Don't buy a Mac, Mine has been horrible and Apple's customer service is iffy. My Pro has had ATLEAST 4 Hard drives, a main board, a power supply and 2 ram sticks. My HP was WAY better than this pos. The first HD failed 15 days after I got the computer and they didn't want to exchange it. This thing is a box queen.


[censored]. What are you doing to it? My 2008 MacBook Pro is going on 5 years now and all I've done is put a new battery in it. The wife is going on 1 year with hers and 0 issues.

That being said, I'd vote for a Macbook too. Outside of DrDusty's experience they are the best machines. Other than that, Lenovo is good, as is HP. Dell = POS.

 

[UNC151]

I just paid about $450 for a Dell 15R that had i5 CPU, 6GB of RAM, 500GB drive, 720p 15.6" screen, 15 month McAfee subscription, and a 1 year in home warranty. We have over 10K Dell machines in our enterprise and though they have some lemons (as they all do), for the most part we have had good luck with Dell.

I replaced the platter disk with an SSD that I had laying around to further increase the performance. I think it is incredibly hard to beat the price for the performance (even with the platter drive). It came with Windows 8 and after installing Start8, I am totally satisfied with it. There are other Dell models for about the same price that have Windows 7 available.

Good luck on your shopping adventure.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Was a WalMart yesterday locally, they had 3 laptops on fire-sale to get rid of them . The two that mattered were:

Acer 15.6" Cine-clear display, i3-2xxx CPU, 4 GB RAM, 500GB disk, $400

Samsung 11.6" screen, very lightweight, i3-2xxx CPU, 4GB RAM, 500GB disk, $300.

$300 for a Sandy Bridge laptop.

Check for local clearances to see if they have any fire-sale deals. I just bought a Nook HD+, a fantastic little device, so I didn't have the cash to buy this. At $300, it's a fantastic deal.

 

[97tbird]

I like my Acer Aspire Netbook 11.6"screen - I think it has an AMD C60 CPU and I added 2GB RAM to make it 4 GB - snappy little thing and oh so portable and light but can take a beating...(great deal too when I got it, for $220 and about another $20 for the 2GB stick): - even has full-size HDMI out!

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/posts/2353316/

 

[rjundi]

Lenovo IdeaPad. We have had 3-4 years of use and no issues or signs of significant wear.

I love Lenovo products and glad they took over Thinkpad.

 

[Quattro Pete]

The 11.6" IdeaPads are quite expensive. Then there is the 11.6" ThinkPad X131e, but the mousepads on these are rather finicky. I have one, and the wife already told me she would not want one for herself.

 

[bmwjohn]

this is not exactly on point but:
in late 2008 I bought a Lenova c3000 (not a thinkpad) and by 18 months of light, usually deskbound, service I had lost the screen, the battery, and probably the hard drive - it would start intermittently after 5 starts.
A friend at work went to Frys for their 4th of july sale - at closing - and purchased 2 ASUS 17" LAPTOPS - ALUMINUM - MAGNESIUM case, USB 3, 500 gig hd, 24? gig SSD boot drive, i-3 latest version, 4 gig memory, windows 8, some kind of hi-res screen, dvd double layer burner (not blue ray), very attractive and supposedly heavy duty, and $399 each. I'm glad I was not there as 17" is sort of big (this was super slim)but that price!

 

[Quattro Pete]

Yes well bigger is not always better.

 

[BearZDefect]

Have you considered a refurbished Dell Latitude E6230 or E6330 from Dell Outlet Business?
Same 3 year warranty as new, and the E6 models are built for serious business.

http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/

Another BITOGer 'cmorr' suggested these when I started a thread about looking for a good 12.5" notebook last year. I find the quality of the Latitude E6230 to be very good, with the only real complaint that Dell doesn't offer a better display panel.

 

[friendly_jacek]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
The display on her current HP is starting to fail after 2 years of heavy use.


2 year old lappy is too new to throw away.
Have you tried reseating the display cable where it plugs to MB (usually under the keyboard)?

When I was recently repairing my kid's laptop, the display connection to a new (to me) MB was flaky until I put some old school die-electric grease in it. The car fixing skills actually help with PCs, too, LOL.

Actually, I will be looking for a large laptop vs all-in-one, vs small desktop later this year. I have not decided what I want yet.

If I go laptop, I will consider samsung. They have setting that limits overcharging battery so it lasts much longer.

 

[BearZDefect]

I don't think any vendor overcharges the battery, but it's the constant topping up that degrades the battery faster. Lenovo Thinkpads (like Samsung as noted by friendly above) also have a nice feature with which you can control the charging thresholds. I like it. However, in my experiencce Lenovo batteries have performance problems by the time they are a year old regardless.