Need a New Windows 8 Laptop or Ultrabook. Any suggestions?

Touchscreen or not is largely a personal choice. For me unless the device is used lying flat of is handheld a touchscreen isn't worthwhile because it is awkward and uncomfortable to use for a long period of time (Google Windows 8 Gorilla Arm). If you get a convertible laptop so the computer can sometimes be used as tablet, then a touchscreen makes sense.

I just got a new laptop with Windows 8. If you get Windows 8 and decide you don't like the Win 8 tablet like interface, you can get a Windows 7 like interface by loading an app. I used "Startisback". There are couple of other good ones too.

You can also get rid of the useless screen that you have to click through to get to the log in page. It just takes a registry tweak.

To the casual observer mine now looks like I'm running Win 7 but the Win 8 fru-fru is only a Ctrl-Win click away if I want it. I haven't seen the Win 8 interface in two weeks.

One of the computer magazines recently did a customer satisfaction/reliability/warranty service survey. I don't remember which one.

No brand recommendations for you, I bought a Lenovo My use is as an occasional use spare computer, so my criteria was different than yours.

 

As someone who has been using an SSD as their boot/programs drive on their main desktop machine since mid-2010 (Intel X25-M G2), there's is NO way I'd go to a machine w/o an SSD or at least a machine w/SSD cache.

If you don't need a lot of capacity, go for an SSD. If a big enough SSD is unavailable or too expensive, at least go for a much that has a SSD cache. I've seen many laptops come with a 32 gig SSD + larger hard drive. In some, it looks like it's being used as a cache, possibly using Smart Response Technology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I'm not sure if some are just throwing the OS on there instead. In any case, SSD helps SO MUCH in terms of boot time, when the machine becomes usable after boot and preventing a severe performance drop if you start paging (to disk).

Seagate's hybrid hard drives might be ok, but they're kinda different. Hope the current gen are reliable. I heard the 1st gens from long ago weren't.

I changed out the pokey 7200 rpm hard drive on my Lenovo T61p to a Samsung 830 SSD over a year ago and got a huge perf boost. (I backed up the original drive and restored the image onto the new drive.)

As for no Lenovo, why? I've had my Thinkpad T61p since late 2007. I also have a Thinkpad X100e (cheapo sub-notebook) that I bought in Q4 of 2010. My dad has a T61 that he bought in late 07, IIRC. None of ours have had any hardware problems (other than my dad's DVD drive seeming a bit flaky and the letters rubbing off the keys of my T61p). We're all still on the original batteries too and they still work fine.

I wish more notebooks had something like Lenovo's power manager: Power Manager on non-Thinkpads? similar tool on other brands?. The Lenovo blog link is dead but Inside the Box » Blog Archive » ThinkPad Power Manager and My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - maintaining a low SOC to preserve battery life can give you an idea what I'm talking about.

I don't charge my batteries to 100% and don't leave them there, unless I need the battery life (most of the time, I don't). I only charge it to somewhere between 35 to 65%

What's your budget? BTW, notice that my T61p (w/Core 2 Duo T7500) is over 5.5 years old and it still works great for me? The SSD helped a LOT. The machine came w/Vista and I upgraded it to Win 7. What blows my mind is that when I checked late last year, there are still some cheapo laptops (usually w/crap low end AMD CPUs e.g. E300) that are SLOWER (sometimes 1/2 the speed in CPU intensive benchmarks) than my 5 year old C2D T7500!

I also replaced the pokey 5400 rpm drive in my X100e with a Samsung 830 128 gig SSD.

In i5-2500 desktop I put together for my parents about a year ago, their ONLY drive is a 128 gig Samsung 830 SSD. Machine runs great and boots and is usable very quickly.

In my parents' ancient Dell Dimension E521, I replaced their hard drive w/a 128 gig Crucial M4 SSD. Machine boots and is usable much quicker than before despite also having upgraded them from Win XP to Win 7, even though that machine has only 2 gigs of RAM.

If you really care, I could make a brief movie of my over 5.5 year old T61p booting and becoming usable (w/o really any work to optimize its boot time) and put it up on YouTube. It'll likely be strikingly different than what you're experiencing w/your 3 year old laptop.

 

The Sony Duo appears to have everything needed in a Win8 convertible UltraBook. Add the extra battery and it goes all day. I am waiting till after the summer when the newer Intel chipset will be available in these machines.

JeffD

 

BTW, re: Lenovo's Power Manager software, I've looked at some of their consumer (non-Thinkpad) models and have seen at least a rudimentary power manager w/essentially 2 settings: charge to full or charge to some amount for battery longevity (to some unknown amount below 100%). That's not as nice as what Thinkpads get but better than nothing.

For me, I'm willing to pay more for Lenovo just for that instead of replacement batteries down the line, which aren't cheap. See my MNL post as to how many I went thru on my ancient Dell.

 

dell's are great, if you don't mind buying a new one every 3-4 years.

 

Unfortunately, laptops, esp. small ones have little internal real estate for 2 hard drives. Some have gone w/mSATA drives for an SSD, sometimes as the only drive or a tiny one for cache (Triple Your Speed: How to Install an mSATA SSD Boot Drive in Your Laptop gives you an idea of the size of of mSATA drives). Not all laptops have mSATA ports/slots. My old ones don't.

500+ gig SSD is going to be pricey. You'll probably end with either one w/a 32 gig or larger SSD cache or boot/programs drive + a much larger laptop drive. Judging by Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Hard Drives, Laptop Hard Drives, 750GB and higher, there are now even 2 TB laptop drives!

(Heck, when I got my T61p in 2007, there weren't 7200 rpm laptop hard drives much beyond 100 gigs. That's what mine came with. I think 5400 rpm laptop hard drives maxed out at somewhere between 200 to 320 gigs, back then.)

 

my motherboard's seem to explode. i keep weighing the dell vs apple every time i buy one. i can get about 10 years worth of dells for the price of an apple. am i going to be happy with a 10 year old apple?

 

BTW, if you want to see how quickly (or slowly?) my crusty Lenovo T61p w/SSD is usable after boot, see

.

Compare that to a laptop of similar vintage (or even newer) w/just a regular hard drive booting from power off (not sleep or hibernate), esp. if there's a lot of crap loaded on boot/after login.

Also keep in mind, that w/the T61p, the SATA interface is bottlenecked at running at only 1.5 GBits/sec. The laptop hardware can do 3 GBits/sec but can't due to a Lenovo BIOS limitation. The drive can run at 6 GBits/sec, but can't due to the stupid 1.5 GBits/sec cap. (Long story...)

If it could run at 3 or 6, it'd likely boot a bit quicker.

Crucial m4 256GB mSATA SSD Review shows the size of an mSATA SSD vs. a regular 2.5" notebook hard drive. 2.5" SSDs are as big as that notebook drive but might be thinner (7 mm for some, instead of 9.5 mm), depending on the drive.

 

that's pretty quick! what was it, 35-40 seconds? i'll have to time my dell. i'm guessing a minute.

 

^^^
I think if you're going to go w/Win 8, you should get a touchscreen. The goofy full-screen Metro Start screen replacement and Metro-style apps are just begging for a touchscreen.

If you're going to go Win 7 (which I prefer anyway), there's not much of a point for the touchscreen, unless you plan to upgrade to Win 8 or some other OS where touch makes sense.

 

If you want a thinner/lighter laptop, go for an Ultrabook. However, almost all Ultrabooks don't come w/an internal (or any) optical drive.

In fact, it seemed like they weren't supposed have optical drivse at all but a couple companies put them in anyway, making them thicker and heavier.

If you don't plan to watch movies and barely use the optical drive and don't want to carry around its extra weight all the time, no optical will do. You can just buy a cheapy external like at External CD/DVD Drives, External Blu-ray Drives - Newegg.com. I had to buy an external for my Lenovo X100e (which has no optical drive) in order to install software from DVD on it.

You can get an idea of deals at laptop - Reviews and Compare Prices. Again, seriously, if it doesn't have an SSD as a boot/programs drive or cache or one of the hybrid hard drives, skip it, seriously. It makes NO sense to buy a laptop lacking these now, in this day and age. Hard drives are just flat out too slow and a bottleneck.

Replacing the pokey hard drive in my T61p gave it a new lease on life. It used to take FOREVER to be usable after logging in w/the hard drive, even after it was fully defragmented.

You can find some reviews of the hybrid drives by Googling for seagate hybrid drive review.
For a desktop, no SSD makes NO sense. They've gotten cheap enough that spending $80-$100 for one for a boot and programs drive is no biggie. They used to be insanely expensive.

As you can probably tell, I like Lenovo. Just be careful about some of their really cheapy consumer level low-end stuff. Yeah yeah, their business laptops (e.g. many Thinkpads) are rather bland looking.

 

^^^
BTW, are a whole bunch of Lenovo lenovo® Coupons, Coupon Codes, Promo Code - March 2013. I just put in Lenovo in the search box near the top. Yeah yeah, you don't like them but hey... just throwing it out there.

Also, BTW, regarding the timing of my video, I pushed power right at the beginning. Unfortunately, I moved the camera to the model # prevent you from seeing the BIOS' built in logo/screen (at 0:09). You can at see flashing cursor at 0:11.

One can confirm how old the T61 and T61p are by Googling for Lenovo T61p review. Since you live in So Cal, definitely drop by stores like Fry's, Best Buy and Microsoft Store to get a good sense of the size, weight and appearance of various laptops, if you plan to order/compare online. Every time I drop by Fry's there are a lot of pretty decent looking Ultrabooks that makes my T61p feel and look so outdated. But, I probably won't replace it until it I really get sick of it, it feels too slow or something major on it fails.

 

I haven't had much experience with Win 8, but that's because I use Mac. However, I wouldn't get Windows 8 unless you get a touchscreen; I would deliberately seek out a Win 7 PC or laptop rather than use the overhauled Win 8 interface.
Rather than look at new prices, try a used Mac. Most still run better than any Windows PC. Our Macbook Pro and PC are the same age, but the Mac can open 10 programs at once still and the PC is, slowly but surely, performing a steady decline to the Computer Dumpster Land.