Please help me find the laptop of my dreams.

[GreenThumb]

Please help me find the laptop of my dreams.

1) Looking for a GREAT screen. Minimum of 1920x1080 or 1920x1200
15+ or 17+ IPS (or similar) touch screen
Either matte or glossy with preference for matte.

2) 128GB SSD + 1.0TB 7500rpm. I need 1TB of drive space.
Looking for either all SSD OR part HD, part SSD.

3) Haswell i5 or i7

4) 802.11ac


Also prefer:
NO built-in DVD

As light as possible, although I realize the above config will probably

not be light. I also realize it could cost $2000+.


This is what my research has turned up


1) Close, but not there... The not yet available Ideapad Y50 touch

announced at CES.
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops...ies/y50-

touch/
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2014/01/05/lenovo-unveils-z40-z50-y40- and-y50-laptops/

2) MSI's new GS70, the "Thinnest & Lightest 17" Gaming Notebook" looks

perfect, but it's not touch. And, I don't know anything about MSI as a

laptop vendor. (Whereas I have 5 Lenovo thinkpads and have heard good things about Dell and HP.)
http://www.msimobile.com/LandingPage/2013/GS70_Stealth/index.html


Do you know of any other laptops with the above specs?

I will be purchasing in the United States.

 

[ninaholic37]

That's your dream?

I wanted an XP laptop with a Pentium M, 1280x800 screen and 1GB RAM, and I found one with 2GB RAM for $69. Hooray! Now I can use the $1931 extra I saved for food instead.

 

[hans007]

I was going to suggest the envy 15. I had one for about a month and you can buy a msata ssd and leave the hard drive. It has a tn screen though.

If you can live with that discrete video configurations are not bad. I

 

[sf101]

The new GS70, is actually a really nice thin laptop only real holdback i can see 765M GPU while not a terrible GPU id consider it a fair jump back from the 780/8970/770m's.

under 2000$ Id probably go with a SAGER notebook . Customized with a 4700mq / 8970m gpu - Dual channel 1600Mhz mem kit - Go with a WD black +1TB and a High end 60/64GB SSD and Enable cache mode Perhaps upgrade the screen and you should still be under budget at that point to buy yourself a Bag / headphones / mouse /Pad Perhaps a extra battery even for the road.

If Enough is left in budget you might even consider changing the CPU to a 4800mq Which has a decent amount more clock speed under the hood.

 

[s44]

Under $1000, though you'll have to add your own SSD
Asus
Dell
HP (w/GT740M)
Asus (w/GT745M)

 

[fokka]

hey guys,

i think the dell xps15 fits your bill quite nicely. the only shortcoming is the storage solution, which, depending on the configuration is 500gb hdd + 32gb ssd cache, 1tb hdd + 32gb ssd cache, or just one 512gb ssd.

to reach your goal of 1tb storage plus at least 128gb ssd you could either try and swap the ssd cache out for a larger msata/mpci-e drive, or go all in and swap the main drive out for a ludicrous samsung evo 1tb.
i don't know how easy it is with this model to access the mpci-e slot and you probably don't want to void the warranty of a brand new 2000$-machine, so you'd have to do your research before purchasing the machine.

a 1tb ssd on the other hand would be insanely cool for the tech geek, but that's probably a bit overkill, if you mainly just want to store movies etc on this thing.

watcha say?

edit: oh, i was under the impression dell used ips displays, which doesn't seem to be the case: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-XPS-15-9530-Late-2013-Notebook.107485.0.html

it's still a nice machine, but you could read the review to get a better picture.

 

[sf101]

Not sure if you realise but cache works really well i find my cache enabled laptop with a 64gb ssd that does 550/530 read/write boots and loads games i play often just as quickly as my two other desktops that have 240GB SSD's "Corsair GT's" it surprised me too but its quite impressive once you use it.

 

[HOSED]

OP http://www.gentechpc.com/config.asp?config_id=Sager-NP2740 If you are willing to go 14" this may suit your needs. you would need to pick and mSATA drive for your OS and if you add win 7 or 8 and 16 GB RAM you are still well under $2000.
NOTE use discount code NBR for -2% and pay by check or wire transfer and get an additional -3% (disclaimer I do not work for GentechPC)
I just ordered one and will do a short review when it arrives (I was told ~2 weeks)

 

[rpjkw11]

I just ordered a Cyberpower Fangbook HX-100 with a i7-4700MQ and GTX 77M. I do not know if it's IPS because that was not a consideration, but check their site as they might offer that. I ordered a 1tb 7200rpm HDD but they have a great selection of SSD's and in multiple configurations. This will be my 3rd laptop from Cyberpower and I've never been anything short of 100% happy.

 

[GreenThumb]

Thanks everyone for your help.

rpjkw11, Interesting. Is the screen matte or glossy?

hosed, definitely need 15" or 17".

sf101, good to know, I might also replace current laptop's existing very slow HD with a a hybrid SSD-cache + hd
fokka, that's exactly what's keeping me from looking harder at the Dell XPS 15. Since I'm buying new I really would like to get exactly what I'm looking for.

s44,
Asus would be great if it has a SSD too. Life is too short for a 5400rpm drive as my system HD. I spend too long staring a the HD light on my existing laptops given what I bill my time out at. On an annual basis, I'm losing money by making the wrong technical choices, like slow hard drives.
Dell linked, same thing
HP (w/GT740M), same thing
hans007, can the Envy be user-upgraded without voiding the warranty? I'm not afraid to make mods (ex: I used a rotozip with a diamond tile tip to file down the 4 tabs on new 9mm hard drive that prevented it from going into my Thinkpad's 7mm space. It's still running fine, though I don't recommend everyone do this obviously . I was desparate for the space.)

ninaholic, that's cool those specs are what you need. Would you feel better if that were what I needed?

 

[s44]

Note that I said "add your own SSD". It takes very little technical ability and maybe an hour of effort (either cloning or fresh installing) to swap in a SSD. This is rather cheaper -- and more flexible -- than demanding some model where they pre-install it for you.

Ah, I hadn't noticed you demanding 1TB of space. You can use a WD Black 2 (120gb SSD+1tb spinning disk) for a single-slot solution if the high price of a 1tb SSD deters you.

The 1tb Samsung 840 EVO is on sale for $540, though. Nice deal...

edit: nvm, here you go, buy this awesome deal:
Crucial M500 960gb for $460, $450 with code!