Laptop recommendations - SSD's?

[Demo24]

Unfortunately this weekend the video card in my Asus f3s decided to die on me, meaning that I will unexpectedly be needing a new laptop. The problem is I haven't really paid a whole lot of attention to this section.


I'm looking for something pretty powerful that will last me several years, but I have no intentions of gaming on it. The core i5 sandy bridges out there should cover this field nicely, and conveniently enough most seem to come with decent enough gpu's. This is primarily a workstation/browsing comp.

In my searching I do seem to be having issues finding a laptop with an SSD installed. I could always do so myself of course, but would be nice to have it included. The Samsung 9 series does look nice, and about the only win7 laptop with an SSD, but it's rather expensive for a 13.3 model. Am I missing anything or are companies just not bothering?


Here's the basic specs I'm looking for:

14-15ish screen size, with a quality panel
preferably core i5 sandy
HDD size of 120gb+, preferably SSD
Quality build and nice design, weight savings would be nice

I'm looking to spend around 1k, a little more or less is ok but nothing 1500+.

Any suggestions? Most Dells and Thinkpads look terrible to me. I'm considering getting another Asus, although there are so many models I don't even know where to start. I do like the look of the bamboo series, although they haven't been updated cpu wise.

 

[corkyg]

Most laptop OEMs allow customization before buying. You seem to only consider "off the shelf." I believe that today you can get any brand with a SSD installed.

 

[Demo24]

I am looking around. I don't see anything I like at Dell. I do like the HP Envy 14, but annoyingly it's not been updated to the new cores.

14" seems like the ideal size at the moment since you generally get the same res as the bigger 15's. Which brings the question of who tends to have the best screens?

 

[Demo24]

Now looking at Vaio's, the C series seems to fit the bill rather well. Looking at 15.5 (basically same size as what I had), with 1080 screen, sandy, AMD 6630 (nvidia optimus might be better, but oh well), and blu-ray. All seems pretty good to me, thoughts?

 

[imported_mystro]

One example..the Sager 5160 offers the new Intel 510 series sataIII..if your going to get a new ssd,get the fastest possible.

 

[M0RPH]

Take a look at the Lenovo Ideapad Y570. You can order it with Rapid Drive, which is a large mechanical drive + a 64GB SSD in the pci-e slot... and it is automatically managed so that is just behaves as a single drive. I think this is a great thing for laptops and hopefully more manufacturers will follow.