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Need help finding a suitable laptop

Bobsy

Bobsy

Member
Hi,

My brother's mother-in-law is looking for a laptop to replace her ageing desktop computer. She has only one special criterion for it: the built-in keyboard must have a numeric keypad. Her price limit is about $750. To these two requirements, I had my own special one: the laptop must either come with SSD Cache (Intel SRT) or have an SSD as its main drive. I would prefer the SSD cache solution because it would provide more storage space.

Only three criteria, but so far I have been unable to find anything suitable. The keypad requirement seems to be only fulfilled when a laptop has a 17.3" display - fair enough. The SSD cache seems to come only with third-generation Ivy Bridge laptops, which are often more expensive than $750. Dell laptops are what comes closest to what I'm looking for, but I have been unable to find a single laptop that has everything. Can you point me to anything that would work?

My last resort would be to purchase a "normal" laptop and replace the mechanical HDD with an SDD. However, I would prefer to avoid having to do that. I don't want to become tech support for life.

Thanks for your advice and regards.
 
You are going to get hit in the wallet hard by any manufacturer that fits either an OS SSD or SSD cache drive to a laptop. Your best option is to buy the cheapest laptop that meets your criteria and fit a 120GB SSD yourself. A fresh install of windows on the SSD will remove all the crappy bloatware that you don't want or need on there aswell so you get a double benefit doing it this way.
 
Puppies04 said:
You are going to get hit in the wallet hard by any manufacturer that fits either an OS SSD or SSD cache drive to a laptop. Your best option is to buy the cheapest laptop that meets your criteria and fit a 120GB SSD yourself. A fresh install of windows on the SSD will remove all the crappy bloatware that you don't want or need on there aswell so you get a double benefit doing it this way.
Click to expand...
this
 
Agree with the other posters, you can have any two of your three requirements, but the last one puts you into an untenable situation. The only semi-reasonable laptop with an SSD is going to be an Ivy Bridge ultrabook, and those are all going to be sub-15".

So, I guess you have a decision to make: either give up on the SSD or resign yourself to putting your own in. If you opt for the latter choice, check out this Acer with a Sandy Bridge i3 and 6GB of RAM for $550. Then add a Crucial M4 128GB for $110 and you're set.
 
There seems to be a problem with the forum's redirect.anandtech.com linking system. If you copy/paste this url:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215526CVF

Then you should be able to see the laptop Mfenn linked to.
 
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