Buying a new laptop
With a new financial year comes new gadgets. For me, this means a new laptop to replace the slowly-dying dinosaur weighing down my backpack.
Tech has come a long way since I last made a laptop purchase. I paid a princely sum for the 64 bits and 6GB of RAM Dell I’m carrying around today. Worth it? I think so. It’s given me a good couple of years, despite a dropping a hard drive and a 2GB RAM stick. It still chugs along, but it’s time for a change.
So what to get?
Here are my requirements:
- Thin and light – call it an ultrabook if you want, but I just want something I can carry without back-pain.
- At least 8GB RAM – I’ll want to be able to run Visual Studio, SQL Server, and maybe even a VM or two. 8GB is my acceptable minimum.
- An SSD hard disk – surely I don’t need to spell this out.
- USB 3.0 – This will let me compliment the SSD with decent storage with decent speeds.
- Fairly good screen resolution – at least 900px high I think. My current 768px really annoys me.
- Either 13″ or 15″ – this is my preferred size for a workable laptop.
So what’s on offer?
Well, it turns out not much. The only laptop that really fits the bill in every respect appears to be the new 13″ MacBook Air.
Now I’m clearly not a Mac user so I’d love to hear an alternative if you have one. However, rest assured that if you point me at a Windows machine that nearly meets those specs – I’ve almost certainly seen and dismissed it.
So why would I pay the “Apple-Tax” if I’m not a Mac user? It’s a good question, so here are my current justifications:
- What’s the alternative? – Honestly, I haven’t seen any Windows laptop that meets every one of the requirements above. Should I just compromise somewhere? Just to avoid getting a Mac? I’m not that anti-Apple. And sure, I could always wait for the next version of X, but that’s a never-ending game.
- Macs can boot into Windows just fine – So if I’m going to boot into Windows, why buy a Mac? Firstly, for reason #1 above. Secondly, maybe I’ll want to wrap an HTML5 app in PhoneGap and deploy to the app store… Who knows
- Recommendations from friends – many people I know use a MacBook as their primary device and spend most of their time either in Windows (using BootCamp) or using Windows software (using Parallels or VMWare Fusion). Without exception, they’re full of glowing praise. Not, “yeah, it’s pretty good”, but usually, “it’s the best laptop I’ve ever had by a mile”.
Ultimately it comes down to one question for me: If, after 6 months, I never boot into OSX, have I made the wrong decision? Based on the three points above, I’m fairly confident the answer is no.
I know some people feel pretty strongly about this so I’d love your comments. If you think I’m about to make a mistake, let me know why! Seriously. I might even listen.
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I bought a sony vaio Z about 18 months ago. The model before the current one. It still however has a full HD 13inch display, I7 CPU 8G ram and 256G SSD a windows perf score of 6.4 the display lets it down the HDD is 7.9
It was a fair chunk of change but has been the best lappy I have had. Check out the sony store in BNE but don’t pay the ticket price they will do you a great deal as I picked up a camera there recently for allot less than ticket price and they tried to sell me the latest Z for almost a 1k less with extras thrown in.
The biggest issue with it is the same as most and that is the pre installed software. Although mine came with adobe photoshop and premier elements which proved handy.
I’m on a Thinkpad X1 right now and it’s pretty nice. Battery life is lacking, but I think that’s more to do with Linux than the computer.
Made the move to Mac four years ago. Have never looked back. Now the family has two MacBooks, one MacBook Pro, one iMac, Mac mini and MacBook Air. Cannot fault the build quality. I have upgraded 3 HDDs, replaced a MacBook screen and an iMac graphics card myself using YouTube instructions and I am not an IT person. The OSX versions of Microsoft Office are better (in some ways) to the Windows versions and I have never had a problem with compatibility.
Looks nice, but it seems pretty expensive!
The top level one only goes to 160GB SSD, there’s no mention of USB 3.0, and the resolution is still 768px… And it costs more than a MBA.
Ahh, now there we go – finally specs that exceed the MBA! However, it’s about twice the price…
For the size (thickness, or thinness) and the price you probably can’t beat the MBA. But for usability I find it lacking.
I don’t want a heavy laptop, but I don’t care about a few more millimetres thickness. And I think the thinness brings a lot of compromises – sharp edges, substandard keyboard, lack of ports, no optical drive etc.
As a *business* machine, I recently bought a ThinkPad T420s. IT’s not an ultrabook but it’s light (about 1.8kg) and relatively thin. Everything is user-serviceable – RAM, drives, etc. 1600×900 screen that isn’t over-glossy.
I used to be a Mac devotee, probably because they are so much better than consumer level what-have-you notebooks. But I now find the ‘chiclet’ style keyboard absolutely horrible, the glossy screen really annoying, and the unserviceable RAM and battery of the Air quite frankly silly.
Each to their own but I find Apple stuff to be beautiful but really an exercise in form over function. My wife has a MBA and loves it, but it’s not for me.
Yeh I’m hearing you…… dell comes out with their XPS range and then wants to charge 500 or 600 bucks to add in a pretty subpar SSD…. hello!?! It’s 2012! SSD’s just aren’t that much. Sorry Dell.
Here it is claimed that the ram is upgradable(i.e. replacable, since it has a single slot):
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/ultraportables/1298812/samsung-series-9-ultrabook-updated-with-full-hd-display
I, personally, was trying to find the older model(the X3C), with the soldered 4Gigs – no need for virtual solutions, but appreciating the great display. The newer one(the X3E) would bring a very dense picture, though – with that fullHD on that small display area. Anyway both are great models! Just have in mind that there’s one that was released after the X3C – the X3D, which is crap to my opinion