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Help me find a new laptop

My laptop died. I'm using my son's ancient computer, and I need a new one.

I use it for web surfing, documents, GoPro editing. I'd like decent storage for video and music files. 8 mb RAM, Core 5 or 7 chip preferred, SSD drive would be nice.

Any suggestions, horror stories, etc., is appreciated!
 
I just picked up an ASUS notebook, pretty big screen, i5 chip, 12 gigs o' ram, and touch screen for $600 at a best buy. It has a terabyte hard drive but its not solid state. That's the reason it was on sale, great machine for typical pc tasks.
 
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I have a Lenovo T470 that I really like. It's almost a couple years old now, but is still fast thanks to the SSD. I also have an older Carbon from Lenovo that is still really fast and runs great. Both are in Windows 10.
The Surface Pro from Microsoft is a solid choice too.

-Mike
 
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What's your max budget?
I guess that's important to know, haha! I'd like to stay around $800 max, if possible.

The laptop that died is an ASUS budget model, which was extremely buggy and flimsy that ran super hot. For those of you with higher end ASUS, how is the build quality and heat dissipation?

I'm considering getting a hybrid drive, 128 SSD + 1tb HDD. Anybody have any feedback?

Acer Laptop Swift 3 SF315-52G-55MH Intel Core i5 8th Gen 8250U (1.60 GHz) 8 GB Memory 1 TB HDD 128 GB SSD NVIDIA GeForce MX150 15.6" Windows 10 Home 64-bit - Newegg.com
 
I asked a similar question last week and was steered towards Lenovo (which I've had bad experiences with already) and Dell / Alienware (which I went with). FWIW. I was going to get an ASUS, but after recent news articles and stories here, I'm really glad I didn't. MSI is also on my :poop: list for quality, that's what I'm replacing now...
 
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I recently bought an HP Envy, coming in right at the $800 mark. All metal case, solid hinges, SSD (options for 500 and 225 gb I believe.) The only thing it's missing for me is an optical dive, but I can just get an outboard one when the need arises. It's also really thin, if you're into that sort of thing. And these days, outboard hard drives are so cheap you can add as much storage as you'd ever need for a few hundred bucks if the SSD isn't big enough.
 
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Wish I could help, but I still use this on my lap:

Abacus.jpg


:smug:

Actually, we have two of them here in the living room! :D
 
Dell Outlet is having a pretty good sale right now on refurbished XPS laptops. $833 will get you an XPS 13 with 8gb RAM and 256gb SSD, or $940 for an XPS 15 with 8gb RAM, 256gb SSD, and GTX 1050 video. Either of those are damn sexy laptops.

Or for something a bit more muscular, flip over to the For Work side of the Dell Outlet site, and check out the Precision lineup. Base models start around $800, but if budget and portability are no concern, you can upgrade to some incredible options like 17" 4k resolution touchscreen with 128gb RAM!

Lenovo is a great company, too (and they have refurbished/outlet options as well). I work in a very large IT department, and the only 3 brands we buy are Apple, Dell, Lenovo. For what it's worth.
 
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