Laptop Choices

biggene

Hey folks,

I am in the process of shopping for a new laptop for school, and I have narrowed it down to two choices. I would like to get opinions on these. My budget is $700 and is pretty firm. It would have to be an awesome deal for me to go over that.

HP 350 G1 Intel Core i5 8GB Memory 1TB HDD 15.6 Notebook Windows 7 Professional/ Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit - J5P04UT#ABA at TigerDirect.com

or

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E540 Intel Core i7 4GB Memory 500GB HDD 15.6 Notebook Windows 7 Professional/Windows 8 Pro 64-bit - 20C6008QUS at TigerDirect.com

Thanks for the help,
Gene

tkerber

Hmmm...

To be honest I'm not really liking either of those but that's just my opinion. They have good specs for the price but they just look big and clunky. As a student myself that was on campus several times a week I found anything over 13" to be a burden to carry around and I don't know how battery life is so I can't factor that in.

I personally had a slim ultrabook type of laptop for college because I got sick of hauling around my giant laptop and having to keep it plugged in. Also for a lot of my classes I had access to the schools desktops if I needed real power for a lab or class work. So it really depends on what kind of classes you're doing and what kind of power you will require. If you're not going to be doing anything involving virtual machines, labs, or gaming I would consider an ultrabook. I have an XPS 13 for a work laptop and I love it. It's very slim, got an i5, SSD, and fantastic battery life..

If I had to choose one of yours I would choose the Lenovo partly because I really dislike HPs consumer grade laptops and have had way too many problems with them both at home and at the companies I've worked at. I think Lenovo makes solid laptops and if I had to buy a new laptop myself it would be a toss up between an XPS and an X1 carbon.

Magmadragoon

Do you want to lug around a 15.6 inch screen laptop everywhere? I would say go with the Lenovo ThinkPad, faster processor, hard drive space can be easily added, can support up to 16GB of ram.

gc8dc95

I am a fan of HP and have had great luck with their products and support them in our enterprise environment.

My work laptop is a HP 640G1 with SSD and 16GB RAM. It is slim and light. I think you could find one in your price range.

My home laptop is also HP, but is quite a bit above that price range. Also, slim and light.

N2IT

Blind loyality to Lenovo.

Love the quality of the hardware and the systemboards and processors are usually rock solid. I like the Lenovo with a SSD in it. That would be a monster.

My daughter just got an X140e AMD process with 4 gb of ram. I dropped a crucial SSD in it and you couldn't ask for more. The gaming graphics rating on win 7 came out to 6.5. It's a nice machine and I only paid 300 for it.

biggene

Magmadragoon wrote: »

Do you want to lug around a 15.6 inch screen laptop everywhere? I would say go with the Lenovo ThinkPad, faster processor, hard drive space can be easily added, can support up to 16GB of ram.

The weight won't matter that much to me as I am taking most of my classes online. I am just looking for something that will run enough VM's for me to be able to study for my MCSA, and some halfway decent graphics.

biggene

N2IT wrote: »

Blind loyality to Lenovo.

Love the quality of the hardware and the systemboards and processors are usually rock solid. I like the Lenovo with a SSD in it. That would be a monster.

My daughter just got an X140e AMD process with 4 gb of ram. I dropped a crucial SSD in it and you couldn't ask for more. The gaming graphics rating on win 7 came out to 6.5. It's a nice machine and I only paid 300 for it.

One of the things I am ordering along with the laptop is this SSD. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147372 and I was also planning on ordering another 8gb of RAM to install.

stryder144

Like N2IT, I am a fan of Lenovo products. My Lenovo specs indicate that my max RAM is 8GB. I have 16GB installed, which is the max indicated for the Core i5 processor that my computer uses. The Core i7 processor in the Lenovo you linked to has a max of 32GB, so you "might" be able to upgrade to that in the future (for instance, when/if they come out with 16GB sticks of RAM in the appropriate format/speed). Add a WD Black2 120GB SSD/1TB HDD combo drive and you'll have most of the benefits of SSD and HDD drives.

TheNewITGuy

I'd go with the X1 Carbon tbh

biggene

TheNewITGuy wrote: »

I'd go with the X1 Carbon tbh

LOL, Thanks for the suggestion, but that would blow my $700 budget out of the water.