I know more than a few people who have Asus notebooks that are going strong after 4 years, you can usualy find a decent one in the $500 range. $500 is a price point at which some compromises have to be made if you are at all picky.
Yeah, unfortunately I don't have the ability to spend much more than that since I have a nice tuition check that I have to write up soon too.
Having to make a few compromises isn't terrible, still plenty of decent laptops in that price range. If you are going to skimp try to make it on ram or the HD. You can always upgrade either of those. I'd say the only thing that might bother me is not getting the latest chip set. It's the first really significant improvement over a previous generation in power consumption in a long time and the integrated graphics is rumored to be noticeably better as well but what ever you get will probably be an improvement on your dearly departed laptop and you can't really sit around waiting the six months it will take for Intel to get them out the door and for the prices to come down.
Yep. Especially Haswell processors. That would be the most annoying thing about buying a new laptop on a budget at this exact moment in time. You're right on the bleeding cusp of some really nice battery performance improvements. Besides the screen (which you're also on the cusp of), that is the only other major differentiator for general use laptops in my opinion. More important than even OS or pretty much anything else they can stick on a bullet point in a OfficeMax flyer. Give me a retina (to use a marketing term) screen and a 12 hour battery and my dreams have come true. Everything else is gravy.I'd say the only thing that might bother me is not getting the latest chip set.
I've got it down to a few choices. Do you have any opinion of these? I'm going to go to Best Buy to physically try them out if they have carry them prior to buying them off Newegg or Amazon. Lenovo IdeaPad G510 Lenovo G505s Asus X75A Right now I'm leaning towards the first and last of those three because I'd rather deal with Intel than AMD for core and graphics.
I think either would probably be pretty good. The ASUS would deliver the bigger screen the Lenovo has more under the hood, both brands are at the top of the reliability scale. I've got a 17' screen right now but think I'm going to go with a 15' screen for my next laptop.
Just kidding. Pretty sure I'm going to spend an extra $100 and get this instead. Seems worth it.
Hey ecib and cgod, I ended up purchasing this Lenovo laptop since my roommate was able to get me 40% off and knock it down to the same price as that ASUS. The only difference is the one reviewed has an i5 processor and mine has the i7.
Slowly, had had plumbers in today but shit is slow. City is going to levy a monthly road maintince fee, first quote for my business was $727 a month, which seems fucking insane to me. Talking with the city to get some clarity on how they came up with that abusurd number.
They put forth the proposal and tried to put it to a vote two weeks later. The proposal was a "fee" added on to the existing sewer bill in which every household would pay $12 dollars a month and varied charges to businesses depending on how many visits they received based on a federal data base of average trips to businesses by business type. Fees for coffee shops are some of the highest for the service industry. A McDonalds would have to pay about $1500 a month, a small fast turn over restaurant would pay $200 and a convenience store would pay about $90. I've been on the phone with city councilors and staff at least a dozen times in the last two weeks, so have a lot of other people. For the moment the business side of the vote is on hold and maybe it will go to a vote in a general election. Portland usualy supports new taxes to preserve services but at the same time we have voted for a lot of programs in the past few years and the will might not be there for this to pass. The city council might still sneak it by with a council vote and the opinions of local business be damned. Pisses me off that I donated to the campaigns of the guy who pushed this regressive tax forward on more than one occasion.
I'm sure you let his entire staff know that you not only voted, but donated, and gave them an earful. I have zero problem paying for things, as long as the charges are tied to some vague interpretation of reality which isn't the case which your deal rn. I have the exact opposite problem in that I personally wish our Republican legislature out here would raise my taxes and fix our roads, but there was a huge showdown just to keep a minimal level of funding this year compared to what is needed. We just had the worst winter in recorded history stretching back to the 1800's and the potholes are insane. You'd think they'd want to address that, but that's gotta be a battle too because you're not allowed to say anything that could even be remotely reframed as a tax increase.