Samsung 9 Series Ultrabook or Macbook Air

[tornadog]

Planning to get my wife a new laptop for basic use. Which one would she like a MacBook air or a Samsung 9 Series. I personally like the Samsung for its looks, bigger screen(15" vs 13") and I am biased to Windows. But I hear the keyboard and touchpad are not that great. Anybody wants to chime in?

 

[crab0]

Does she use an iPhone or iPad? Is she also biased towards one OS or the other (and of courses there's the windows 8 thing)? Will she be using it outdoors? Will "basic use" include alot of writing? Also I'm assuming the 13 inch Series 9 and rMBP 13 inch are out of the question? (more curiosity then anything else).

 

[dagamer34]

Would you consider something like this: ASUS UX31A Touch?

 

[deathBOB]

Planning to get my wife a new laptop for basic use. Which one would she like a MacBook air or a Samsung 9 Series. I personally like the Samsung for its looks, bigger screen(15" vs 13") and I am biased to Windows. But I hear the keyboard and touchpad are not that great. Anybody wants to chime in?

You gotta try them. Don't end up like me and get stuck with a lousy laptop because you bought whatever had the best specs. A bad screen/keyboard/trackpad gets old fast.

 

[tornadog]

She has an iphone but she is not biased to any particular OS. She had an Android phone earlier and a Dell XPS laptop. But I doubt she wants a touchscreen laptop.

 

[dma0991]

If it is Windows 8 we're talking about, it works best with a touch screen. I find that without the nature of touch input, you would need to drag the cursor from end to end which is a PITA when you have a mouse and a 23" 1080P screen.

With that said, I think that the Lenovo Yoga is the best when it comes to touch based Ultrabooks. With the screen folded to its back, it doesn't feel awkward using the touch screen. With a conventional laptop screen angle, your hands get tired very fast.

I wouldn't say that one is better than the other but Apple has really mastered the art of making good track pads. It is comparable to the intuitiveness of a touch screen without touching the screen. I find that the integration of apps into a full sized OS is far better on Mac OS than it is on Windows 8. Though that's only my opinion on that matter.

 

[dagamer34]

She has an iphone but she is not biased to any particular OS. She had an Android phone earlier and a Dell XPS laptop. But I doubt she wants a touchscreen laptop.

You'd be surprised at what people actually want. I mean, the idea of a touchscreen keyboard 6 years ago seemed ludicrous and yet, here we are.

Especially with Windows 8, I think touchscreens should be required. That doesn't mean you must use them, but there are definitely times it makes sense to have.

 

[lovelaptops]

Point of respectful dissent here. I've been using Windows 8 on two Asus UX31As simultaneously; one has a touchscreen, the other doesn't. I have found it pretty much just as easy to navigate and click via the touchpad as the screen, it gets very uncomfortable to have to reach over the keyboard deck to reach the screen (you get "gorilla arm!") and, finally, I soon found that the "tile" home screen, the only that seems cut out at all for a touchscreen, is a gimmick that I soon ignored and I use it just like Windows 7, which surely does not benefit by a touchscreen.

Just one man's opinion, of course.