Macbooks are expensive, and it becomes pretty useless as soon as you want to go beyond web browsing and document editing. You usually end up doing a lot more with a PC than you plan. - - - Updated - - - As far as my experience with HP laptops goes, the cooling is terrible and the battery dies after a few years.
I don't know about battery life (I've only had this about 6 months), but my laptop has no cooling issues. I mean, if you set it on something soft that covers up all the vents, of course it gets hot, but as long as it's on something flat and solid with nothing next to the side vent, it has no problems staying cool. My brother's HP originally had major cooling problems, but that was because all the dust in it from when my dad used it was ruining the airflow. Now it seems to be fine.
There are quite a few downsides to SSDs anyway. For example, they give absolutely no signal before failing, and when they do, there's no way to recover your data. SSDs are best for an OS installation, HDDs are better for data storage because of larger capacity and reliability. Unless you drop your laptop...
My first SSD in this desktop failed, without warning, within six months of purchase. The one I replaced it with has been problem free for just over a year now. It is a good point though, about business data becoming corrupt. I'll be producing many templates for the necessary forms and if that data ever becomes corrupted I'll be kicking myself pretty hard but it shouldn't be a huge deal to redo my templates. Regardless I will keep some hard (printed) copies on hand and the completed forms will be filled in by hand and then physically filed. Down the road we will eventually transition the system I create into a digital system parallel to the paper system. Eventually there will be a digital traceability system in place but that is currently over budget for the company since it would require multiple data entry points (computers). I've never had a hard drive fail on me except that SSD so perhaps an HDD is not such a terrible thing to get.
Steer clear of Asus, 6677? I've had one and the only thing that happened is the battery died. A $27 replacement gave me twice the capacity. - - - Updated - - - I have the same thing, with a Pentium. Not bad.
Lenovo or a Dell Precision. I have a pair of older Dell business laptops and I absolutely love them. (Precision M4400 and Latitude D430, which is really a netbook.) Build quality is good and they're pretty tough. My Precision has an SSD, 3GHz C2D, FX1700M, etc. It's pretty fast, especially for a 5+ year old laptop. Most of the Dells I've owned are either really old or Latitudes. (Exception being my M4400, which is really just a faster Latitude E6500 with more features.) (The Precision line and older Latitudes are my favorite laptops.)
Some of my friends have HP products. One HAD one since when he dropped it, traces on the mobo cracked, and the HDD casing cracked. Another one has a high-end one I despise because it has the worst logo ever on it. Beats. Also, another friend has a Compaq thing with a netbook core and it's awful. Won't run Windows for shit. - - - Updated - - - My Inspiron 15 (so far) has been running perfectly. I even spilled coffee in it 2 days ago, now no key sticks or anything happened.
I'm not saying the other new Dells are bad, I just like the business/workstation ones a lot more. (The only laptop Dell currently makes that I really like is the Precisions.) I have a school Dell Chromebook 11. Battery life is great, it's good for school stuff, but I still much prefer to use my other laptops. (I only use it because of the battery life and so that I don't have to take either of my babies to school. I used to take my laptop to school every day and the top of it got scratched to hell.) Anyway, avoid Toshiba Sattelites completely. I don't know what the newer ones are like, but my mom had one that came with Vista. Absolutely horrible. It went through 3HDDs, a RAM slot failed, it was very slow, battery was terrible, and it was falling apart completely. The hinges even broke and my dad's fix was to drill through the bottom of the laptop into the hinges and put in a screw. That worked for a while. She now has some HP Touchsmart thing that I also hate. (It does at least have a dedicated GPU. But that's really the best thing about it.) I have a Toshiba netbook with a 1.6 Atom. It's not that bad, but performance is awful. Battery life is very good though. (About the same as my D430, although it does have a smaller battery.) I broke the screen and now it just sits on a shelf. The performance was just too bad to really use it. I tried putting XP on it for better performance but for some reason the drivers for XP are absolute shit. I also had an Asus EEEPC netbook. The CPU was pretty much the same performance but since it was an older model I could overclock it. (Got as high as 2.1GHz.) Performance was better, but still bad compared to my D430. (I sold it.)
That GPU hasn't even been used I bet. This laptop is amazing, and I got it on sale for $350, same as my Asus. Also, it gets 5 hours of life, on high perf, 100% brightness. It also renders quite nicely for what it is. I encoded a 15 minute 1080p video to mp4 in Movie Maker and then compressed in Handbrake and it only took 25 minutes to complete fully. And it's only a hyperthreaded dual core. But my rig is better.
you kind of ignored my post. it would be a good idea for him to invest in a good tool to do work. you can get refurbished macbook pro's - retina/haswell macbook pro's with SSD's - for very close to his price range, if not under $1000. while the original poster wasn't specific in his exact software needs and the mac operating system might not support some key software he uses, you're lying or you've never used one if you think macbooks are useless past web browsing and document editing. go to a coffee shop in a startup community or anywhere that people rely on their computer to make money like san francisco and ask people how useless their macbooks are.
Most people just buy Apple products as a fashion accesory. Sure, it's reliable and does the job, but it's way too expensive for the hardware you get. I'm not sure what new macbooks have but they are more expensive than high-end laptops with high-end CPUs and GPUs. Really, think logically for a minute and there's no reason to buy a Mac when a PC of the same or better specs is cheaper, and Windows does more than OSX. Speaking about OSX, it is the worst thing I've ever used. It's like someone ate Linux and crapped it out, then flushed it down the toilet into a polluted river in China. I don't know what people like so much about it, it's not faster, more reliable nor easier to use than Windows at all.
Do not buy HP as far as i can see asus is bullet proof that would be my choice, i wish i still had mine because this HP i have now is an absolute pos.
From what I've gathered and what I've seen, most of this is personal choice. With laptops, I've found that it depends a lot on the model, not necessarily the make. I've got a dell xps 15z and I'm relatively satisfied. I've had trouble with device drivers and some flimsy plastic parts, but once I put a clean install of windows 7 and good drivers without all the bloatware, it runs great. (It also runs BeamNG physics better than my desktop due to Intel i7 power, but that's a whole other story). At OP, you may also want to look into those flipbook laptop or whatever they're called (the ones that have touch screens and are essentially hybrids between laptops and tablets). I'm at uni and although I'd rather stick to a good old fashioned laptop, many students here prefer the compactness and touchscreen ability of the flipbooks.
You talking about the Touchsmart? No. No. My mom got hers used for way too much. ($600) It's got a 2.something Core 2 Duo which is worse than my laptop. I guess performance isn't too bad, but I just hate using that thing so much. What's the point to a touchscreen when you don't use it? It's not even a good touchscreen.. And since all the heavy stuff like the heatsink and battery is at the very end of the laptop there's barely any weight on the front end of the laptop. Because of that it falls over if you tilt the screen back enough. I just really really hate using that thing. My Chromebook is far better to use. Although, I must say that it is at least not falling apart like her Toshiba did. I personally had a good experience with my old Toshiba Satellite Pro. Although, that was a model from the 90s that ran Windows 95. It had a smashing 45 minute battery life, a Pentium 1, an amazing 4GB of HDD space, etc. I have memories of playing Myst on that thing. (It may be awful compared to new laptops, but it was well built and far faster than the laptop I had before that which also ran 95.)
a computing experience is not limited to the hardware. people enjoy using macbooks because OSX/gestures/trackpad is the best laptop computing experience around unless you're very, very experienced with linux. windows is great for a desktop computer with a full keyboard and mouse. but windows is bad on a laptop comparatively. macbooks are a fashion accessory to lots of people, but that is not a reason for you to never buy or use one. it is a good product. i'm sorry you had a bad experience with OSX yourself - perhaps you had a preconceived notion that it would be bad when you used it. maybe you used it for only a few minutes. here is not the place to find out. if we take the time to think logically for a minute, you should realize that laptops are not about price/performance ratios. perhaps if we thought about it as a price/productivity ratio... a single well designed and well constructed product stands out for a reason. "fast" hardware comes with its own problems. power requirements (ever own a laptop with a 2 pound power brick that is terrible to haul around?), battery life, heat, etc. you don't buy a laptop for it to just sit on your floor or table and be as powerful as it can be. laptop usability is more than just the internal hardware numbers. anyway, we're not here to argue about why macbooks are good or bad. i think macbooks are good. perhaps the OP should consider one. if he's never used one, it would be a bad idea to buy blindly into a new operating system and workflow when his work is at risk. -- and another point, i'm actually very disappointed that people are suggesting brands of laptops rather than specific models. the brand really means nothing. particularly, the poster who mentioned "and lenovo's are far from a cheap ass plastic piece of shit" - i'm sure lenovo makes plenty of plastic hunks of shit. perhaps they also make some higher end models that are designed and constructed with care. mentioning the brand name does not help the OP at all.
Deject, you realise windows 8 now supports gesture control as OSX does? I turned it off, pissed me off, pisses me off on OSX systems too, but that is why they provide the option of turning it off. My experience: Toshiba's, crap (handled several, flimsy as fuck, unreliable). Dells, crap (unreliable, poor build quality, all the ones I handled overheated really bad). HPs I have heard about heating and build issues but mine is a year old with 0 problems. Asus, unreliable, poorly built, non existent customer support that keeps getting them in trouble with regulatory bodies. Lenovo I haven't heard anything bad about any of their products except their Intel atom tablets and the Yoga 11 (not the 11S). They appear to be an industry favourite. I haven't handled any Samsung laptops, haven't heard anything horrid about them, hadn't heard anything horrid about dell before getting mine and grandparents getting one to replace satellite. My dell was a latitude 1525, grandparents had a latitude 15. Both idled at 50c when new and regular tripped their own thermal shutdown under light load. Apple. Damn expensive and I don't like OSX. But, they are rock solid usually (I do know a guy that went through 3 macbooks in 1 weekend under warranty which brings me to next thing) and when they aren't (seems to be very rare) they have excellent customer service. Base model offered in UK is 13" macbook pro retina with 8gb of ram, 128gb ssd (bit small to me), 2.6ghz dual core i5 and a 2560*1600 display. £1000. Out of budget I think.
Ugh, the inventory for www.CanadaComputers.com sucks donkey balls... When I find something of interest it's out of stock or online shipping only. I don't like the idea of buying without seeing... Looks like the Lenovo ThinkPad is most likely the best choice. CanadaComputers has plenty of these: http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_577_664_665&item_id=074434 Memory and hard drive seem a bit limited but the i7 is a nice thought. I'm looking at the official Lenovo website to see all of their combination options and choices. I'm too limited if I reserve myself to buying from one retailer only.
ThinkPad's are brilliant notebooks, I have owned seven of them not one has ever let me down, they're tough rugged laptops that can take a beating and ask for more, I wouldn't use or suggest anything less than a ThinkPad.
ThinkPads are great, they're pretty much the Hilux of laptops. Great build quality, very tough and good hardware as well. It will last for a long time. Only problem I can think of is it looks like shit, but that's not an issue.
