Hello all Just throwing this out there to see if anyone else has any other recommendations. Not long ago I replaced my ThinkPad X61s laptop with a 2006 Macbook Pro; I thought I wanted a laptop with more power and a nice big screen, but it turns out that I really don't want that at all. Therefore I'm looking to replace my Macbook with another small/light laptop, but this time I think it's time I went for something a little more modern. I've got a few parameters in mind: Screen no smaller than 11" and preferably no larger than 13"/14" Core i3 minimum - ULV vs. standard doesn't necessarily matter, but I'm not interested in anything lower than i3 Minimum of 2-3hrs battery life under load - This is critical, I'll spend the majority of my time on battery power; having to be within reach of a wall socket all the time is no better than using a desktop No wider than 25mm (2.5cm) at the widest point - this one is also important to me, the Macbook I have isn't exactly a bulky machine, but my old X61s makes it look like a fat brick (although admittedly a fat brick made of pretty aluminium) Absolute maximum spend of £600 - this instantly rules out most "ultrabook" class devices... I don't want to p*** money away here; if I had more money to spend, I'd save a bit extra and get a Macbook Air. I've come up with a few suggestions of my own so far: Asus VivoBook S200E - Max of 4GB RAM - the RAM is soldered in (ffs!!!) and there are no additional slots - but it's a very pretty looking machine. And that price includes a Win8 license and a touchscreen... Novatech nFinity N1410 - This is supposedly an ultrabook and to be fair the spec looks pretty damn good for the money: Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD... The only things I'm not keen on are the glossy screen and the chassis itself: it looks a bit...naff... Novatech nFinity N1406 - This looks slightly bulkier than their ultrabooks, but for only £40 more than the N1410 you get a Core i7, GT640M graphics chip and an additional battery in place of an optical drive. Again though it has a glossy screen and a naff-looking chassis. At the moment Novatech's N1406 is winning; I plan to pop down there and have a nose at the weekend, as the Cardiff store is about a 5 minute drive from me. Anyone else got any recommendations?
I have personally used the Vivobook. I think they are pretty slick looking, I didn't know it was touch screen until my Boss put his fingers on the screen. It's a pretty fast laptop & I would be my first choice for a thin laptop!
You got rid of your X61s you mad! lol! Once you go thinkpad it's hard to go back; having said that, that N1406 looks to right on the money for performance/value. I've been eyeing up what's out there and nothing has caught my eye yet. I use Blender which has GPU enabled rendering but only really supports CUDA at the moment, so any device I purchase must therefore take advantage of nvidia cuda, and it's thin on the ground out there. Also I run Ubuntu, and despite AMD drivers getting better, Nvidia still wins under linux which makes the idea of steam of linux whilst on the move very interesting
Cool, good to have feedback from someone who's actually used one. Yes, quite mad, it seems... I did consider another ThinkPad, but with the requirements I have it was starting to get into the "if you have to ask then you can't afford it" price range. The X1 Carbon would be nice though . The only other reservation I have with any of the machines I listed is that they're all 1366*768 resolution - it's not a great deal more than the 1024*768 that my X61s had... But to get higher res you can easily add another hundred quid The handy thing with Novatech is that they're one of the few retailers to offer a laptop without the OS license. They will supply Windows drivers, but you'd be on your own when it comes to Linux; not that this would put off a Linux user though
Things that seem to inexplicably increase the price of laptops: Laptops supplied with 4/6 GB RAM (6 GB seriously?) should be abolished, there's no excuse. 8 GB sticks can be had for £35. A full fat SSD. Who wants a 1TB hard drive on a cheap laptop? I'm not gonna be putting my media library on it or installing lots of games. An £80 128 GB SSD would be 10 times better than a £60 1TB HD for me. Rant over, will keep an eye on this thread as I'm looking for a similar thing. I keep drooling over the Yoga 11S that should be released soon.
Looking at the previous posts, I've got a couple of reservations. Unless you're going for used, its going to be hard/impossible to find a laptop that has: High res screen, 8gb ram, thin, light and fairly powerful. Theres a (one) reason why the MacBook Airs are expensive and its because it fills most of the above specs This for example is £750 (obv over budget) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-Mac...omputing_Apple_Laptops_ET&hash=item2a2c51a2dc Fills most of your needs.
8GB RAM isn't necessarily a requirement, RAM is a cheap upgrade (£30 for an 8GB DDR3 SO-DIMM). Neither is an SSD an absolute requirement; I can always upgrade to a larger SSD in my desktop (it's pretty damn full already) and donate the current SSD, which is no slouch, to a laptop - assuming of course that said laptop accepts standard SATA and not mSATA, which might be a big assumption. My problem with the RAM in the VivoBook isn't it's only 4GB, it's that the RAM is soldered in and there are no expansion slots. That's just wrong.
