Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Time to buy a new laptop

its not that SSD have not hit the main stream yet, it's that the vendors know that SSD is a hot wanted item and a cash cow in their eyes.

I still need to buy a laptop. I was surfing the Costco web site and they have a few with SSD's. They are all pretty small though. 256 Gig. I'd really like to keep the price under a grand, and I don't see that happening with a larger SSD. I don't think I need a huge hard drive, but I don't know if I want to be locked into 256 Gig. That's kinda small nowadays.....

I am in the midst of taking some math courses, and found a real need to write on the screen with a stylus. So I need to focus on touch screens.

One laptop I am sorta learning towards, is the HP Envy 15t. http://www.costco.com/HP-Envy-15t-Touchscreen-Laptop-%7c-Intel-Core-i7-%7c-1080P-%7c-4GB-Graphics-%7c-Backlit-Keyboard-%7c-Blu-ray-Writer-%7c-Windows-8.1-Professional.product.100214364.html

It has a BR writer, which is something I do not need.

They have this Lenovo Flex that looks kinda cool.... Not sure about the brand though. http://www.costco.com/Lenovo-Flex-3-Series-2-in-1-Touchscreen-Laptop-%7c-Intel-Core-i7-%7c-1080p-%7c-2GB-Graphics-%7c-Backlit-Keyboard.product.100203985.html

These are the two with SSD's....

http://www.costco.com/Toshiba-Satellite-S55-Touchscreen-Laptop-%7c-Intel-Core-i7-%7c-Backlit-Keyboard-%7c-Office-Home-%2526-Student-2013.product.100153745.html

http://www.costco.com/HP-Omen-15t-QUAD-Touchscreen-Laptop-%7c-Intel-Core-i7-%7c-1080p-%7c-Backlit-Keyboard-%7c-2GB-Graphics.product.100163504.html

I've been pretty impressed with the HP business-class laptops.

Lenovo's have been really good for our family, too. My daughter has a newish Lenovo Yoga and I REALLY like how small and light it is. It has a pretty small screen, but it is pretty friggin cool.

While I share your trepidation about filling up the hard disk, it might be unwarranted. I mean, what kind of big content do you really need? You've got all your pictures, video and audio on your NAS anyway, so what's going to fill all that space?

Good point Tom. I'm not sure. It just seems weird to step back with storage space, when the norm is more. 1T is small nowadays. 256G seems inadequate. I do not use cloud either, and don't intend to.

So what's so great about these SSD's anyway?

What the heck do you need an i7 for? Are you taking a class in rendering? or Video Editing where multi core processing will be of great use? The truth is that you are probably far better off to get a cheeper i5 or i3 as you will find that the rest of the computer becomes far more obsolete well beyond the time that you processor is being a bottleneck (ill conceived thought of future proofing)

As for the side of the SSD. realize that they are selling 1tb SSD's for $360 that you could install yourself. You will never get the likes of HP or Lenovo or heaven forbid Apple to pass on these savings to you the consumer. You are far better to get for your needs now and replace the drive in the next year or so when they fall down to closer to the cost level of hard drives today.

Well I tend to keep cumputors longer than most, I suspect. Well the laptop anyway. I've had the one I use now for five years. It is pretty slow and clunky running the programs I use now, but that's not saying much. It says pentium T3400 processor. 2GB SDRAM and 160 GB HDD. So I reckon one of the 256 SSD's would be just fine, and more memory with a touch screen. I would also like number keys. I did not realize so many laptops do not have them. And a finish that isn't slippery would be great. I carry it to/from vehicles several times a day when I am tuning.

Micheal, I think most people with laptops tend to store stuff on their local network or in the cloud. For myself I have a bunch of desktops for storage and tend not to keep much on my laptop. I bought a 17" HP Envy about a year ago and its a great machine ,I have had no trouble with it what so ever and HP is good about sending updates for the bios etc as needed and it goes without a flaw. I have 2 HP monitors since I prefer a shiny screen which is why I chose the HP Envy, most other computers have the dull screens which just seem lack luster. I say go for the HP they have a great rep.

I put a 256 GB SSD in my desktop 21 months ago with the same trepidation you are experiencing, Mike. Seemed mighty small to me. I have no idea what you like to load on your computer, but, I tend to install new programs every week. In addition to my operating system and a ton of programs, I have:

58.2 GB of Music
7.9 GB of Videos
5.62 GB of Documents
4.26 GB of Pictures

Of the 221 GB available on the hard drive, I've used 166 GB of space and have 55 GB free and available. I also have an external, 1TB, hard drive (@$75) standing by for all that music if I ever need more space on my desktop hard drive. If I move that music to the external hard drive, I would have 113 GB of free space out of the 221 GB available on the drive. So, for me, 256 GB has been no problem. YMMV.

Thanks guys! This is a learning adventure for me.... I was screwing around last with my current laptop, imagining using a pen to write on the screen. It's a downright PITA reaching across the keyboard for any involved pen work (like fratoring equations). So I think that locks me down to one of these 180 deg, 2 in 1 laptops. I'm also thinking 256G is just fine.

But can anyone educate me on these new SS drives? What's so great about them.

Bought a HP Envy, 15" screen. i7 / 8meg / 1T. That's the only one they had at Best Buy, and the others stores didn't have crap. No wonder on-line shopping is killing stores. I really, really wanted to buy the HP Spectre 360, but the screen is just too small for what I use this laptop for. I almost walked out with it, but couldn't do it. That is one wicked little laptop. If anybody has been contemplating a 2 in 1 laptop, or wants a bigger tablet, you ought to check out this little bugger. HP partnered with Microsoft in the design, apparently.

This Envy machine seems to be all I need and wanted. Windows 8 is clunky. This machine comes with a free upgrade to Windows 10, so I won't try too hard to learn 8.

A couple things I'll need to work around....

1) I need to buy an external optical drive. Some of my software programs comes on disk. It's a PITA to try and download it too. Office Pro 2010, for example. I have the DVD's, but can't download it from Microsoft.
2) I didn't realize that these stylus pens were so clunky. Kinda worthless really. I also didn't realize you can't use them like a mouse, to draw on the screen. Apparently that's an Apple thing. I may need to buy one of those drawing/signature thing-a-mu-jingies....