Best Business Laptop under 2k

jblake1986

Wondering what everyone believes the best business laptop is currently. I feel like a necessity is a SSD, lightweight, and good battery life.

GO!

networker050184

I've been a Thinkpad fan for business laptops for a while. Currently rocking the T440 and it works great. Not a big fan of the new touch pad (I always use a mouse anyway), but besides that it's rock solid as always.

kohr-ah

Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 15

I use a Lenovo Y510P at home for me but that isn't for business. That is for getting my FPS on.

TheProf

I would say the Thinkpad as well, used them before, solid laptops, no argument there. I personally been using a Dell Precision M4800 (huge laptop!) but I run so many PoCs, Labs, etc on the go on that laptop. It's pre-loaded with 32GB of RAM, an i7, and an AMD FirePro graphics card... about 2k, but performance wise, you can't complain.

I think for the next laptop, I'll be going for the surface pro 4, big change! but I think for the size vs performance ratio, it's pretty good.

CyberWorld

Macbooks are very secure. And fast. Last longer

kohr-ah

Macbooks I would say are a good investment also. Just make sure you get a VMWare license so you can run Fusion in case you need to run a large series of windows apps. (They also hold their value).

Surfaces I have always had an interest in but haven't had enough hands on time with them only a little bit. I know a few friends who's company replaced a large series of laptops with them. I hate their keyboards though.

kriscamaro68

Currently I have setup our company with the new X1 Carbon. It pretty much is epic. 512gb PCI-E SSD with reads and writes in the 1.5GB range, weighs less than 3lbs and is quite thin and sexy. So far I love it. Since we buy in bulk it is quite cheap as well.

NetworkNewb

I do agree Macbooks are well built computers and last a long time. Just not a fan of the OS for business, but that's just a personal opinion.

I use a ThinkPad T440 at work.

scaredoftests

I just purchased a ThinkPad T450s for $1196. 00 8 GB Ram, 2 batteries etc. I can't wait to get it. Look on computershopper.com for more recommendations on laptops. Well worth the read..

thomas_

I don't know about for business, but the two in one laptops are interesting. I'm kind of leaning towards that one in when I buy a new laptop.

DoubleNNs

Macbook Pro or ThinkPad.
Thinkpads are great because of all the connection types and bios functions.

Mooseboost

I have a Macbook Pro, and I couldn't be happier with it. It meets all the requirements you are looking for.

Nightflier101BL

If you're looking for light, SSD and battery life, you could check out the Macbook Air as well. I have 11 inch Air that I carry to and from work. It's small and light enough to carry around the office and is very reliable. I have a 2013 model. You can pick these up on Ebay for around $500 used.

The Pro is also good. You'll get the Retina display option with these but they are heavier. You can also get the higher resources to run VMs if you want. I'm running Fusion 8 on mine with some Windows and Linux VMs.

Just get a Macbook Something.

JoJoCal19

If your price ceiling goes up to $2k, then you will not find a better beast than this: Lenovo P70 and P50 Lenovo announces powerhouse laptops powered by new mobile Xeon processors | Ars Technica

I have a MacBook Pro and I love it, but I am picking up a P70 next year.

kohr-ah

REMOVED UNNECESSARY QUOTED REPLY FROM PREVIOUS POST

Gorgeous laptop but that weight though to carry around. Eesshh
I'd def do a p50 to replace my y510p for home.

BlackBeret

I'm not a Mac fan, but I'm wishing that I hadn't sold off the Air that I had for free. My biggest issue with them is now the RAM is soldered on to the board and the Air that I was given had 4Gb. I usually run multiple VM's at a time and needed much more. The surface is an amazing machine if you can deal with the 8Gb limits and you're not doing anything super processor intensive like graphics design, it heats up quick then starts having issues. Lenovo seems to have some great laptops, but with all of their rootkit/spyware/junkware issues I just can't trust them.

I bought a new Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series last week when I was traveling and my laptop stopped powering on. It's a great machine and I love it, there are flaws of course IMO. The lack of an optical drive on almost every laptop in the store was annoying. This particular one I didn't notice until I got home also lacks an Ethernet port, which I really do use often. The fan also vents on the bottom which is fine if you keep it on a smooth and flat surface, but if you're working late in bed it's an issue against pants, blankets, etc.

VinnyCisco

I love Thinkpads. Currently own a T440 and T450. And my girlfriend has a T440 as well. My T440 runs some great GNS3 labs with no issues along with VM ware workstation running CentOS side by side with Windows 10.

rsutton

If you like having malware bundled in to your machine, I recommend going with a Lenovo product. Personally I just picked up a Dell XPS 17 which has a SSD, 5th gen i7, 6GB video RAM & 16GB of regular RAM, for under 2k. It's large and kind of heavy, but works well for my needs which are: 1) large screen 2) able to drive 2 monitors with zero video lag, 3) fast proc & storage.

down77

I switched from Lenovo back to a MacBook Pro. My coworkers keep teasing that I was the last hold out of the group as many of us are using 13 or 15" MBP for consulting. A handful of coworkers actually use a Surface 3 Pro for 95% of their work. I've debated the Surface 4 Pro as a "backup"

VinnyCisco

rsutton wrote: »

If you like having malware bundled in to your machine, I recommend going with a Lenovo product. Personally I just picked up a Dell XPS 17 which has a SSD, 5th gen i7, 6GB video RAM & 16GB of regular RAM, for under 2k. It's large and kind of heavy, but works well for my needs which are: 1) large screen 2) able to drive 2 monitors with zero video lag, 3) fast proc & storage.

Seems you don't have experience working with Lenovo products.

I work in an enterprise environment so we go with our own images. Any manufacturer will put malware, spyware, adware. etc on their machines. Its the sad nature. You can never trust what is on a drive unless you do a DoD level wipe and then install a clean image or COE image.

Lenovo's are great products.

JoJoCal19

VinnyCisco wrote: »

Seems you don't have experience working with Lenovo products.

I work in an enterprise environment so we go with our own images. Any manufacturer will put malware, spyware, adware. etc on their machines. Its the sad nature. You can never trust what is on a drive unless you do a DoD level wipe and then install a clean image or COE image.

Lenovo's are great products.

This. And if I remember correctly, the instances of "malware" Lenovo loaded on their machines was not at the hardware level, and I do clean installs on any laptop I buy anyways.

tpatt100

Lenovo made the news a couple of times now doing shady stuff but it was their consumer level stuff not business line.

Lenovo slipped 'Superfish' malware into laptops

Lenovo used shady 'rootkit' tactic to quietly reinstall unwanted software
Even when users reinstalled a clean version of Windows on some Lenovo devices, the software would still reappear.

If I buy another Windows machine it's going to be from the Microsoft Store and their Signature line of laptops. I had a Surface Pro 3 but went back to a Macbook Pro, it's not because I disliked Windows I just prefer Apple laptops. If I were to get a Surface Pro again I would skip the cover/keyboard and just buy a nice bluetooth keyboard, I didn't care for the keys on the Surface Pro cover.

VinnyCisco

tpatt100 wrote: »

Lenovo made the news a couple of times now doing shady stuff but it was their consumer level stuff not business line.

Lenovo slipped 'Superfish' malware into laptops

Lenovo used shady 'rootkit' tactic to quietly reinstall unwanted software
Even when users reinstalled a clean version of Windows on some Lenovo devices, the software would still reappear.

If I buy another Windows machine it's going to be from the Microsoft Store and their Signature line of laptops. I had a Surface Pro 3 but went back to a Macbook Pro, it's not because I disliked Windows I just prefer Apple laptops. If I were to get a Surface Pro again I would skip the cover/keyboard and just buy a nice bluetooth keyboard, I didn't care for the keys on the Surface Pro cover.

This is correct. What people need to understand though is , they were "Caught". And their are methods around hardware flashed malware if you are in the field. (You better know, or you have no business in IT)

All manufacturers have a select few people working for them doing not so nice things. Again, if you are buying a laptop pre-configured, you run a high risk no matter what. I knew a person who bought an HP from BestBuy. It had a keystroke logger installed, probably by an employee.

I always wipe the drive and start over. Just the Bloat ware alone is enough of a reason why someone would want to wipe their drive and start from scratch.

DoubleNNs

VinnyCisco wrote: »

And their are methods around hardware flashed malware if you are in the field. (You better know, or you have no business in IT)

Guess I have no business in IT. Welp..

DoubleNNs

tpatt100 wrote: »

Lenovo made the news a couple of times now doing shady stuff but it was their consumer level stuff not business line.

If I remember correctly, there was also another news headline that Lenovo made that this time DID include their thinkpads. Which is very unfortunate.
Hopefully I read the article incorrectly. I'll see if I can find the link tho.

NetworkNewb

DoubleNNs wrote: »

Guess I have no business in IT. Welp..

Yea, I just signed up for a real estate license class after reading that post. Let me know if you want the link to the school!

tpatt100

I applied to Best Buy so I can copy your pictures off your laptop to my personal thumb drive.

DoubleNNs

DoubleNNs wrote: »

If I remember correctly, there was also another news headline that Lenovo made that this time DID include their thinkpads. Which is very unfortunate.
Hopefully I read the article incorrectly. I'll see if I can find the link tho.

Not the original link I saw before, but this article also says that this was being installed on Lenovo's ThinkPad line.

Lenovo Caught (3rd Time) Pre-Installing Spyware on its Laptops

scaredoftests

Good to know. I will scrub the hard drive when I get mine.

Burnsie

scaredoftests wrote: »

Good to know. I will scrub the hard drive when I get mine.

And hope that there aren't anymore hidden gems in the BIOS or firmware of the hardware...

rsutton

VinnyCisco wrote: »

Seems you don't have experience working with Lenovo products.

I work in an enterprise environment so we go with our own images. Any manufacturer will put malware, spyware, adware. etc on their machines. Its the sad nature. You can never trust what is on a drive unless you do a DoD level wipe and then install a clean image or COE image.

Lenovo's are great products.

My experience is limited to deploying 20-30 new Lenovo laptops every month. I disagree that every manufacturer deploys malware/spyware etc. with their machines, there is is simply no evidence of this, and you would be hard pressed to back up such a statement. Software issues aside, we do more than double the hardware returns for defective Lenovo equipment; so from a hardware perspective, my experience has been that Lenovo hardware tends to fail far more often in comparison to Dell products. I don't have enough experience with other laptop vendors to form a strong opinion, but Dell has been great for my clients & I for years. Also, if you are ordering any regular quantity of Lenovo laptops, there have been numerous times where the product was delayed due to overseas manufacturing issues. Again, it's been much worse with Lenovo vs. Dell.

Lastly, in another comment you made the statement " And their are methods around hardware flashed malware if you are in the field. (You better know, or you have no business in IT)". You statement implies that to be in IT, this information is required knowledge. You seem to be unaware of the many branches in IT that will never deal with this type of a scenario. A common thread in your posts is broad sweeping generalizations that are, in fact, inaccurate.