Looking for a College Laptop on a $700-ish budget

taylerzy

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Dec 11, 2011
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I'm looking for a laptop with a lightweight design that I can take to college. Hoping to make it last 4 years.
Budget: $600-$700-ish (might be able to go higher if necessary)
*CPU: 4-Core, decent speed (not very familiar with laptop CPUs)
*RAM: 4gb+
HDD/SDD: 150gb+
Screen size: I like big screens, but weight is more important
*Weight: Lightweight design
OS: Windows 8 (flexible, must be able to run exes without emulating)
Color: Black or dark color

I want to focus most on weight, CPU, and RAM. What would you guys recommend?
 
Solution
If all you want is basic work, you don't need a 4-core CPU. These are actually expensive in laptops, more often you'll find dual-core CPUs with hyperthreading. If you want your laptop to last 4 years for basic work, I'd look more for good build quality, so long as you don't go low-end Atom, Celeron, or i3. Lenovo and Asus make good laptops. Unfortunately if you want a laptop under 5 pounds with good hardware, your only choice is 14 or 15" screens. Check out the Asus Vivobook series or the Lenovo U430p series:

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/#/?page-index=1&facet-9=1&facet-9=2&facet-1=4&facet-2=1&facet-2=2
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-VivoBook-15-6-Inch-Touchscreen-Laptop/dp/B00F0RDX3O/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

I'd personally go for the...

taylerzy

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I'm commuting and use a Desktop PC at home, so my laptop won't need to do movies, games, or video editing. It just needs to be fast on basic programs and lightweight - nothing graphics-intensive.
 

drapacioli

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If all you want is basic work, you don't need a 4-core CPU. These are actually expensive in laptops, more often you'll find dual-core CPUs with hyperthreading. If you want your laptop to last 4 years for basic work, I'd look more for good build quality, so long as you don't go low-end Atom, Celeron, or i3. Lenovo and Asus make good laptops. Unfortunately if you want a laptop under 5 pounds with good hardware, your only choice is 14 or 15" screens. Check out the Asus Vivobook series or the Lenovo U430p series:

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/#/?page-index=1&facet-9=1&facet-9=2&facet-1=4&facet-2=1&facet-2=2
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-VivoBook-15-6-Inch-Touchscreen-Laptop/dp/B00F0RDX3O/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

I'd personally go for the Lenovos as their current weekly deal on those U430p laptops are pretty good.
 
Solution
Lenovo doesn't actually "make a a laptop". Their lappies are made on the same assembly lines as HP, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC

The vast majority of laptops on the market) are manufactured by a small handful of Taiwan-based Original Design Manufacturers (ODM), although their production bases are located mostly in mainland China. Major relationships include:

Quanta sells to (among others) HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC
Compal sells to (among others) Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP/Compaq
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to Dell, Acer, Lenovo and HP
Inventec sells to Toshiba, HP and Lenovo
Pegatron sells to Asus, Toshiba, Apple, Dell and Acer
Foxconn sells to Asus, Dell, HP and Apple
Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP
 

drapacioli

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If you want to get technical, Lenovo DOES have it's own manufacturing division for PCs, but it doesn't use it exclusively. You can't look at who does the manufacturing in this case because you never know what factory it's going to come from. What you do know though is that Lenovo's laptops are typically made to a good standard for reliability, regardless of who actually *makes* it. Even if another manufacturer does it, they still adhere to the specifications provided by Lenovo. I may be wrong but I think Asus has it's own factories as well, which shares the demand with other companies like Foxconn, etc. This is completely irrelevant though as almost all computers are made in china by these companies. Paying more for a different country of manufacture isn't going to guarantee any more reliability than these. You can buy a perfectly good laptop made by these companies and sold through the vendors and it can last a long time.
 
Asus has it's own factories.....As does MSI. Point being these are contracted out to "the lowest bidder" and a "brand name" is no better an indicator of quality than what color box it comes in.

It's like saying "Corsair makes great PSUs"....a true statement in effect as the AX series and some of the HX series are excellent units. But the TX V2 series is just "very good" the RM series "not so much" and the CX series is "scary". But they don't make any of them. The "brand" is a meaningless arbiter of quality, even the line or series oft fails as the HX 650, 750 and 850 were great and the 1000 / 1050 were poor.

Alienware made a name for itself combining a cute logo with high quality laptop designs ..... except they were Clevo units with an Alienware logo. Then Dell bought Alienware, stopped using Clevo and quality went south.

What happens when you put out a performance spec and put it out to the "low bidder", you inevitably wind up with all the 'talking points with a recognizable CPU and RAM amount but to meet that desired price point, there's always a "clunker" or 2 in there such as:

-no discrete GFX crd
-5400 rpm HD
-cheap WiFi component

I am sure Lenovo has some decent designs so does Chevrolet ..... but ya can't expect the same out of the "Chevy Spark" as ya can the Corvette. And you can't expect the same level of quality out of a $2k Lenovo laptop as you can out of a $600 one.

The fact remains to put a laptop on the shelves, by the time you cover store O & P as well as Brand O & P, including shipping, support costs, licensing, you spent $300 .... that leaves $400 for parts. You generally do know what factory it's going to come from as there's a tendency to have the lower budget models made at a different location than the higher budget ones.....just like PSUs.

You don't pay for a different country of manufacture, you pay for a different level of components inside. By having the units built to your specifications, you get to pick the performance level and quality of the components involved. For example, the Intel 7260 is oft offered as a low cost upgrade on many laptops over the standard "base unit" that everyone puts in. The Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 delivers dramatically faster Wi-Fi speeds (up to 867 Mbps) than 802.11n, more capacity for more users (extended channel bonding 80MHz), broader coverage, and better battery life **and** is oft a $0 cost "upgrade".

Another is as I mentioned before, what's the use of a half way decent CPU, GFX and RAm set up if you are going to be bogged down with a slow 5400 rpm drive. I can tell you w/o even looking that the two you suggested will have 5400 rpm dives ..... it's going to be "a given" that 98% of the low budget "name brand" models at the $700 price range are going to have a 5400 rpm drive cause that's how they made their price point....they paid for the CPU and other items in the ads with the savings they realized here.

So if you have a 750 GB 5400 rpm HD in the base model, would you pay $10 extra for 7200 rpm ? Or would you take a 750 GB 7200 rpm for the 1 TB that is prominently displayed in all the ads but the 5400 rpm doesn't appear in anything but the fine print ? Would you pay $5 more for the faster WiFi ? .... Lenovo doesn't offer those types of choices. There is no way around the "ya get what ya pay for" axiom as the price tag simply doesn't allow for anything but budget level components.

You are right, not everything is made in China...the Thinkpad line is manufactured in Japan .... by NEC. The Helix is made in southeastern USA as I recall but as i understood the operation, it's more of a "integration" than a true manufacture .... the base subsystems are built elsewhere and then the subsystems are assembled here in US ..... much like Clevo does with its distributors.

However, the advantage of using a custom builder is that a) ya not paying for all the marketing, b) you cut out the middleman and c)ninstead of a one size fits all approach, you get to pick where ya spend ya money. You can even elect to get your OS on campus (typically $10 - $25) instead of paying the normal $80 licensing fee. When on a tight budget, these little things can cover 2 or 3 component upgrades.
 

hackintosh777

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If you're okay with a heavy (4.9lb) laptop, then get the Lenovo Y40. i7-4510U, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD+8GB SSD, AMD Radeon R9 M275 2GB. It's a gaming laptop.

Otherwise, my recommendation is the Dell XPS 12, as Microcenter has the base i5-4200U/4GB RAM/128GB SSD for $699 or $799.