College Laptop question

[btadler]

I am looking to purchase a new laptop for going back to college as my old laptop weighs about 15 lbs and is rather ancient. I am debating between a few. First let me say that I have never really been a mac guy but the Apple Air is one of my choices mostly due to price being less than the other two options. my other options are the Acer Aspire S7 and the ASUS Zenbook prime touch. The S7 seems to be similar to the air but in Windows form and I am slightly interested in the idea of a touch screen though I don't know how I would actually like that on a computer and not a tablet. Any insight as to which you think will be best in terms of performance or if you have other suggestions for laptops that will be both light weight and do the job. I should mention that I am going to school for marketing and advertising so most of what I will be using this for will be lecture notes and marketing projects such as story boards and such. Thanks for the intelligent comments.

 

[btadler]

I made a spreadsheet with the differences. What I am really wondering is if anyone else has had an acer laptop. I have used acer for my mobos almost exclusively and have never had any problems with them for desktop builds but the laptops seem to be getting bad reviews and the customer service is getting slammed. I put that in the spreadsheet but would like to know if anyone else has any experience with this. the S7 seems to be the winner spec wise and price wise but if I am going to be getting a junky product all the specs in the world wont help if they don't operate smoothly together.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7sTelqQQEYLdEVuOEJwWGtKOUk/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Ketchup]

That is a tough on, really. Windows 8 makes SO much more sense on a touch screen, but I am not comfortable having both. I could probably get used to it. Typing is just so much more natural for me on a computer, touching on a phone, tablet.

Acer has always been about value/cheap. They are trying to make higher quality products, but one has to wonder how a manufacturer who has always gone for cheap is going to suddenly going to be able to make a high quality product. I will say that I still have an Acer monitor I bought about 10 years ago and it is still performing fine as a second display at the office.

Asus is pretty high end. Good quality. If you get a good one, you will love it. If you get one with issues, it is well known that their tech support can (not always) be hard to deal with.

Apple, you will pay for. But once you do that, and you like the software, they will always be there for you and helpful for issues you encounter.

Keep in mind this is a general overview. I don't know about these specific devices. There may be folks in the SFF, Noteboooks subforum that have experience with these devices.

 

[alzan]

Disclaimer: Not speaking for any vendor, views are based only on both repairing/using the laptop(s).

I've only worked on/with one Acer brand laptop and it was an absolute dog; I know you can't plot a curve from one point but I think that if it were my laptop to choose there are at least three other options, two of which I have moderate experience with and would feel it was money well spent. Obviously if you have past experience with Acer which was mostly positive by all means get the S7.

For the same money or a little more you could get a nice Dell, Lenovo or Thinkpad with a 3-year service and accidental spill/drop damage warranty. If you went for an i3-1600MHz CPU and traditional hard drive you could get a larger screen and/or extended battery and still be relatively lightweight.

 

[Buckeye269]

I just picked up a Surface Pro 3 for the upcoming semester and I have nothing but good things to say about it. The weight is amazing for the power it has. The detachable keyboard is awesome to allow you to only use what parts of the device you will need. The pen is decent, doesn't track as well as I would like. The battery life is simply amazing. Only drawback for me is the price. Microsoft does offer 10% off for students as long as you have a valid student email. This discount works for all items they have in their store, not just Microsoft branded items.

 

[John Connor]

I personally like Dell. Never had a bad Dell laptop. Here's their deals. http://www.dell.com/us/p/deals?cp=2&~ck=mn#!dlpgid=popular-laptop-deals

A few on eBay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Lattit...55185061?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item3ce5e765a5

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitu...92299144?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item2a41c8b588

 

[Gunbuster]

I would check out a Surface Pro. (2 or 3)

 

[btadler]

My wife along with test driving each laptop at Best Buy convinced me to go with the Macbook Pro Retinal Display laptop instead of any of the ones I originally was looking at. still a super lightweight computer but with everything I could need. Thank you all for your input.

 

[damaliya]

I much prefer Acer Aspire S7, because the ultra thin design and the touch screen, easy control like tablet.