Ok, long story short I’m looking at buying a new laptop. As far as intended usage requirements I pretty much just stream movies, writer papers, surf the net, and play the occasional video game, the latter not being anything particular graphics intense. So something in the 15-17" range is fine but I want mid to upper end processing power and memory. Nothing P***es me off more than a computer that can’t multitask to save it’s life. SATA drives would be a bonus. Relatively thin and mid to lightweight. Price point is 500$ or less and I’m fine with refurbished units so long as there is a reasonable accommodating warranty. Also I’m brand loyal either but I HATE windows 8. Soooo what do ya’ll think? I’m not exceptionally tech savvy on this stuff so any input is appreciated.
If there is a Best Buy near you then I would recommend speaking with one of their computer reps for a recommendation. Plus you get to see what you are buying and use it too.
For myself, I am partial to Sony and HP. If you don’t like winfows 8, then go with 7.
My Macbook Air is 2 years old and runs like a top. My wife’s Macbook Pro is 5 years old and runs…like a top. Try getting a 2-5 year old PC to behave like that.
Original investment on a Mac is high, but so is the return after many years.
I will third a macbook, but you wont find one in your $500 price range.
Im on my 2nd Macbook. First one lasted 5 years and its still going strong in the hands of my 7 year old niece(for around 2 years now), my current one is almost 2 years old and still runs like new. My dad is on his second macbook, again first one lasted 5 years and the hard drive started making noise so he backed everything up and bought a new one about 1.5 years ago. I told him just replace the HD, but he didnt seem like he wanted to even mess with a 5 year old laptop.
Macbook AIR or MacBook Pro. Pre late 2011 model. Reason is to change components & not soldered to Motherboard. Can change RAM / SSD etc.
Knowing what I KNOW for a FACT about backdoors, encryption etc. I would never consider a MS product & their collusion to invasion of people’s privacy for the time being. Not giving any more to the BORG.
Not in the $500 range but +1 for macbook pro and air etc. My wife’s macbook air boots up in about 20 seconds. I use parallels for the necessary win apps use frequently on my macbook pro, and imacs. A macbook pro might suit your needs best if you decide to go that way.
I just purchased my first MacBook Air last week, I had a MacBook Pro I bought in early '09 last, but recently starting getting to the point where I knew she wasn’t gonna last much longer. I was a hard core user with that machine im surprised it lasted this long.
My MBA is amazing compared. It’s a beast of a machine, I don’t regret it for a second.
Although Macs are expensive how many other computer brands can boast that they last so long. Saving you money in the long run.
I vote MacBook as well. My MacBook Pro was purchased in 2007, I used it my last year of Architecture school and today, my wife is using it as she is going back to school. 8 years old and irs still running like new.
I have one of the Lenovo ‘Yogas’ and it goes out to lunch a lot- and I like multitasking. That’s my work laptop. I can’t use the touch pad when it is on my lap because my hand puts enough pressure on it to warp the case and lock the pressure sensative pad buttons.
For home I have an Early 2013 MBP with Retina. It rocks. I think it hiccuped once compared to daily with Win 8/8.1 machines. Windows just sucks now, but I do have to say that Apple ain’t what they used to be. The Macs are still pretty good, but I find ipads and iphones to be klugey and take forever to boot-up, things we used to laugh at IBM for.
I do have to say that Lenovo has trashed Thinkpads. I’ve good things about the X1 Carbon, but all the Lenovo thinkpads since the Chinese took over have been very sub-par.
MBPs are, to me, the only real laptop that I’d trust- the Noveske’s of the laptop world.
I purchased a Lenovo G50 last week. Aside from the bloat ware I had to deinstall it has been good thus far. I still have a think pad I’ve been using since 2009 or 10, so I have brand loyalty to Lenovo and they continue to please.
I purchased a 13" model very similar to that. Refurb. Th only thing I could find wrong with it was the finish on the part you rest your hands on. Instead of perfectly smooth it had some lines in it like it didn’t get sanded down jsut right. Also a label on the back was kinda loose on on end.
Updated it to Win 8.1 free.
Also installed this … http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/index.html and now it dual boots Win 8.1 and Linux. I’ve had it a year now and not one issue and I’ve run quite an array of software.
I got lucky and found a refub that was marked down pretty far so I paid I think $379 for something that was normally priced heading up towards $600.
I was concerned about buying refurb but have had several people tell me to get Apple refub and I’ve since bought some other refurb stuff and so far, everything I’ve gotten looks like new to me with just some minor cosmetic issues. I figure computers as just a waste a money anyway so why pay for new. You get a 30 day warranty too. Just be ready to put it through it’s paces for 30 days. Run the battery down several times to be sure it holds charge. Run some variety of progs. Let it run a program for days, like a video looping or something.
But you will save maybe $200 easy and can buy an external HD and backup software like Acronis which is a lot safer.
Probably not a laptop. It depends on what you mean by “edit”. 4K video files are going to be big and rendering the files after edit needs a good bit of hardware to do it with any semblance of speed.
Our video editors at work have modest setups for video editing via Premiere. They do include $500-800 Nvidia video cards to take advantage of the hardware rendering in Premiere. They’re just doing 1080.