What are kids usin' these days for class laptops?

[Maengelito]

Jenn has a couple of Toshiba laptops for work and I really like hers a lot. They seem pretty fast and are really light weight even without SSD. I honestly thought they were SSD because of how fast, quiet, and thin her laptop is. I've had a Lenovo netbook for several years and it was okay but it never really impressed me. And yes, I know comparing a netbook with a laptop isn't a fair comparison. I guess I'll play with some of the Yoga 2s they have on display.

That being said, is no SSD really that much of a deficiency?

Would this Toshiba be better since its got 1080 resolution?
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.bestbuy.com/site/satellite-15-6-touch-screen-laptop-8gb-memory-750gb-hard-drive/8968411.p?id=1218957873039&skuId=8968411&st=categoryid$pcmcat247400050000&cp=1&lp=10#tab=overview">http://www.bestbuy.com/site/satellite-1 ... b=overview</a><!-- m -->

[.RJ]

You could also go cheap with the laptop, then add more RAM and an SSD.

[Mike]

That being said, is no SSD really that much of a deficiency?

yes.

[JustinG]

Slightly off topic. Our Toshiba is probably gonna eat itself soon after 3 years and Casey still needs MS Office for her last couple of semesters of Grad School. She has an iPAD Mini, and we aren't sure if a keyboard and the MS Office for iPad would suffice? I wasn't sure if any of you guys have completely replaced your laptop with an iPad/tablet, and looking for thoughts.

Only thing I can see us missing is photo/video editing and tablet browsers cannot do everything a laptop can do. Pretty sure we could get by with a Chromebook at half the cost of a nicer laptop to fill this void though.

[SlimKlim]

I have effectively phased out a "real" computer for my personal computing needs. I use an iPad air with this keyboard cover: http://www.amazon.com/ZAGGkeys-Cover-Bac...s+ipad+air

If you are looking for a keyboard I would highly suggest getting one with a similar design that uses an actual hinge that allows you to adjust the viewing angle like a laptop. Most of the shitty cases only work on a perfectly flat surface and have one or two viewing angles, it's stupid.

As far as Microsoft Office I can't tell you, I've never used the mobile version of the software. It is *almost* as good as a computer when it comes to entering things in Google Spreadsheets, you just have to get used to the touch commands and look up the actual formulas if you want to crunch numbers (unless I'm just a moron and can't find the autosum command).

The browser is usually fine. One thing that's frustrating is it will sometimes save your session on a page, and sometimes not, so occasionally I'll be typing up a forum post, get distracted, and then when i go back it reloads the page and erases my changes. You just have to hit the "Preview" button if you're going to walk away from it.

Otherwise I've gotten pretty good with it. Keyboard is surprisingly easy to type on, it has a top row of buttons like Home, Sleep, Siri, Volume etc. It's all I need or want for browsing/email/facebook/porn/IM/reddit/and even basic photo editing.

For anything more advanced like work, office, pdf viewing, file transferring, actual photo/video editing, or a porno that isn't HTML5 friendly, I revert to my work laptop, my old college laptop (which is miraculously still kicking, 6 years and going strong) or Lauren's laptop.

[RawrImAMonster]

That being said, is no SSD really that much of a deficiency?

It just makes a difference on how fast things load. The trade off is that you're probably going to have to manage having two hard drives because you can't store everything on a SSD yet because they aren't that big. Usually people just put their OS and their core apps on a SSD. Everything else like document storage goes on the other hard drive.

Having said that, with Windows 7 being on a SSD, my computer finishes booting up before my monitor realizes it has a signal and turns on.

[Goodspeed]

I'm really happy with my Asus K55A for everything I use it for - work, play, so on. 2.4 GHz i3, 750gb magnetic HD running Windows 8 - got it last year. I installed StartIsBack to banish metro and basically make it Win7, and with fast start enabled it's up and running awesomely quick as well.

[Jake]

My work laptop has a 256 GB SSD and everything loads incredibly fast. Never had a computer with one before so it's impressive. Definitely helps it run cooler and get better battery life.

I use my iPad 4 (the first "Retina" one) almost exclusively at home. I have a 7-year-old Mac Mini that I use for photo/video storage and could get by with some basic MS Office stuff. I do bring my work laptop home every night, but it's locked down enough that I don't use it for much at home. The iPad will do pretty well for Casey's intended use, but she may be frustrated at first just because it's a different way of thinking and working. But once you get used to it, it can be pretty simple and convenient. The keyboard that Joey has is really great and makes the iPad much more useful as an everyday computer.

[HAULN-SS]

I have my work laptop set up with a raid controller and a caching SSD. This is a good compromise because you get the fast cache ability of the SSD and still have a larger storage space with the spinny disk. The SSD for me is 64GB

[Maengelito]

Well, I kinda ignored everyone's advice and moved on a pretty good deal.

Best Buy had a deal where if you brought in an old laptop with Windows XP, you could get $100 off a new laptop. I still had an old Dell Inspiron that was at least 10-12 years old sitting in a pile of electronics that needed to get recycled and I was able to fire it up and get $100 credit.

I ended up ordering this laptop: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HJX1ZKK/">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HJX1ZKK/</a><!-- m -->
and it was bundled with this tablet: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-IdeaTab-Miix2-8-Inch-Tablet/dp/B00F2ENTYI">http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-IdeaTab-Mi ... B00F2ENTYI</a><!-- m -->

All for about $630 with the trade in credit and tax. Neither machine is really a heavy hitter but they should be more than sufficient for school stuff. I know I said I didn't really like Lenovos but I feel like I got a really good deal. What do you guys think?

[davej]

seems like a decent deal, yeah, msft was offering that $100 credit to get people off xp, nice move on having a junker laying around. i'm interested to see how you like the windows based tablet.

[HAULN-SS]

I'd def do a ram upgrade in the laptop. Browser with tabs open + any office product + OS and that will be about maxed out

[Evan]

Yeah thats a nice deal. super fast CPU too. Ram upgrade would be good in the future, but I was surprised how well win 8 runs with just 4gb. My Yoga has 4gb and i havent felt the necessity to upgrade it yet.

a coworker has an almost identical win 8 tablet (dell venue 8pro) and he loves it. win 8 has a learning curve for sure, but once you get used to it, its a great hybrid between touch and productivity. (take some time to learn the gestures, they help immensely)