Help finding new laptop for wife. Thanks!

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CaptainCuddles

Junior Member
Apr 13, 2014
5
0
61
Greetings folks!

I'd like to get a new laptop for my wife, but I am not really up-to-speed on the current offerings, brands, reliability, and so forth. I've always done desktop builds for myself, usually toward the higher-end. But the pre-built laptop world is a whole different ballgame! I spent some time wandering around various Brick & Mortar stores in the area, and am now just more overwhelmed.

I would appreciate any guidance. Here's some of the criteria:


1) She doesn't need a gaming powerhouse. She has a couple basic games: Plants Vs Zombies is probably the most demanding.
2) She likes the 15" laptops
3) With that said, she absolutely demands a NUMPAD on the keyboard. (Seems to be on most 15"ers)
4) Mostly it is used for internet browsing, Facebooking, Netflix, and various MS Office tasks
5) I'd like something with some decent speed, and longevity. I'm thinking maybe an i5, 6GB RAM or so. Not sure if I should go 3rd (Ivy) or 4th (Haswell) gen on the CPU.
6) Reliability is important. Cheap stuff, or, stuff that is difficult to get reasonable support on, is out. If I buy a laptop and the keyboard dies in the first week, and I can't get it immediately resolved, I won't be happy.
7) She said absolutely no to Macs. She has no interest in an Apple MacBook.
8) She doesn't want a "funky color" or weird design. For instance, she didn't like the weird texturized finish on the lesser-expensive Dells.
9) I've been looking in the $500-$600 range, but my range can adapt if you think I really should be looking at something around $800 or whatever.

So, with that said, what do you folks recommend?

Here's some stuff we stumbled upon in our search:

1) Costco has an HP 15-N293CL on sale right now for $650. Touchscreen, i5 4200U, 12GB RAM (wow), 1TB HDD, 1366x768 display - $650
2) Costco also had on sale an Acer V5-573P-6486, Touchscreen, i5 4200U, 12GB RAM (wow), 1TB HDD, 1080 display - $650 (I am seeing these show up cheaper online, though they might be refurbs)
3) Best Buy had the Toshiba E55-A5114, i5 4200U, 6GB RAM, 750GB HDD, 1080 display, albeit sort of ugly, for $550.
4) Microcenter had the HP ProBook 4540s, i5 3230M (Ivy), 8GB, 75-GB, Radeon HD 7650M video, 1366x768 display, and Windows 7 + license for 8, for $580.
5) And lastly, Microcenter also had an ASUS K550LA-MS51T, i5 4200U, 6GB, 500GB HDD, 1366x768, for $550.


Definitely not limited to these models.. was just tough to find stuff out in stores. :)

Thanks in advance! I really appreciate any input!
 
CuriousMike

CuriousMike

Diamond Member
Feb 22, 2001
3,044
544
136
Something to look for
a) display quality - any IPS displays in this price range? If not, 1080p baby.
b) hard disk vs. SSD - are there any laptops with SSD's in this range? That would be more important to me than how much memory or processor speed. If you're technical enough, buy the $550 laptop and replace the HDD with a $120 SSD.
 
C

CaptainCuddles

Junior Member
Apr 13, 2014
5
0
61
Back to report on this laptop.

First, the ordering process:
The ordering process was grueling. Lenovo has some serious work to do to get with the times for ordering. Despite their website allowing me to purchase the laptop, and, giving me an estimate of 5-7 business days, the first order ended up going to some weird status, and finally, getting cancelled. Turns out that particular configuration was no longer being sold. They really need to align the ordering process and manufacturing process better.
Phone support was useless at this point, and email support never responded. I got the best support through, of all places, Twitter.

Anyways, a replacement order was placed a few days later, for a near-identical machine, but with a free upgrade to the i7 model. So that was nice. However, when the time came to ship it.... another delay. Sigh...

I called in again to express my lack of confidence that this thing would ever ship, and that it would just be continually delayed. They offered a 5% credit, so I decided to stick it out a little longer.

All in all, over a month later, we finally received the machine. Crazy that I can go down the street and have a new laptop in my hands in 30 minutes. This business model really needs to get with the times.


Second, the laptop:
First boot up walked us through a few setup items, and then we got to the machine. Lenovo loads it down with quite a few bloatware items. I disabled some stuff, and left some others in case my wife wants to check anything out later. I imagine it will all be removed eventually.

The boot-up time was slow. Slow enough that I was a little concerned. But it seems to be getting better, so maybe that was related to just the first couple boot-ups. Still not amazing, though.

Overall performance seems to be OK, and getting better as the indexing finishes and the bloatware settles down. We keep getting prompted to install some sort of Intel Manageability Recovery Agent thing, and I can't figure out how to make that go away yet, or if I should just bite the bullet and let it install.

I'm sure the bloat slows it down some, but I think the primary impact is from the HDD. There's a definite difference between that and the SSDs I have running on my desktop build.

I'd try to do a clean install, but, the laptop does not come with installation media. The hassle of figuring out the right version, praying the drivers I could find are correct and complete, and so forth, seems like a task I'd rather avoid unless I could find a really good guide specific to this machine.

The screen looks pretty good. It will take her some time to get used to the 1080 display on the 15.6" screen, I'm sure. I've showed her how to adjust the size of things so she can see them.

Internet and such has worked fine. She hasn't gotten around to Plants Vs. Zombies yet, but I suspect it will run well.

If anyone has any further questions about the laptop, let me know, and I'll be glad to answer. Thanks for the help that was provided. :)
 
CuriousMike

CuriousMike

Diamond Member
Feb 22, 2001
3,044
544
136
s44 said:
Snag a Crucial MX100, swap it in, watch things fly.
Click to expand...

My wife just brought an i7 laptop home from work (with 8GB of ram.)
It was fairly bloat free.

Her boss claimed it was "fast" - it's excruciating to me... the laptop harddisk in it just crucifies its performance potential.
 
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