Looking for a Simple

theonlyBuster · October 7, 2014

I've been searching, browsing, and researching for quite some time and - well long story short I have a Looooooooong list of laptop I'm interested in. So I figured I'd scrap it and start from square one with a more refined search.

Price: Roughly $500
OS: Win (no Apple)
Use: Simple office work
HD: 200GB is enough for me honestly but I know most have 500GB or 1TB
Size: Medium to Full Sized - No Minis
Wifi: Yes, definitely (RJ45 port optional)
USB: At least 2 (either 2.0 but wouldn't mind at least one 3.0)

Things I don't care about: Webcam, mic, high end speakers, disc drive.
BIGGEST Concern: LONG battery life (At least 5hrs under low-moderate use)

Chromebook is nice, but this time I NEED the features Windows offers.

Doesn't need to be a new state of the art machine.

Side Question: Is there a website where I can input my search desires and it pulls up laptops that may interest me? Kind of like buying a car? I'm not too concerned about up to date pricing (Google can help there), but just producing a list of potential items that may interest me.

Diederik_Gr · October 7, 2014

There is a lot of options you got for that price that would suit your needs. Lenovo, Asus and Acer are all solid brands to choose from. I would advise against HP laptops, i had one and the WiFi connector was so bad that my Nokia N97 outperformed it.

theonlyBuster · October 7, 2014

There is a lot of options you got for that price that would suit your needs. Lenovo, Asus and Acer are all solid brands to choose from. I would advise against HP laptops, i had one and the WiFi connector was so bad that my Nokia N97 outperformed it.

Yeah, I'm not even trying to be in the same room as an HP.

And yes those are my 3 focused go-to companies. There's just so much out there I was looking for some insight, or really a functional advanced search tool.

The ones I ran into were extremely biased to one brand, didn't work/weren't existent anymore, or wouldn't give concise results.

Additionally I'm hesitant because I know laptops for the most part can't really be upgraded (aside from Hard Drive and RAM - if you even want to call that upgrading).

Diederik_Gr · October 7, 2014

Well, look for something with 4GB of ram (definitely reachable for the budget), avoid touchscreen (just adds too much to the price tag) and not HP.

Here's something i found, about as good as it gets for under 500 dollars:

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-15-6-Inch-Laptop-80E3005NUS-Black/dp/B00K6ZID58/ref=sr_1_10?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1412692738&sr=1-10&keywords=lenovo+laptop

Also if you want only 200GB of storage, you could buy a 256GB SSD for around 100 dollars and turn the HDD into an external drive with an enclosure. The faster performance SSD's have over HDD's is one you'll definetely enjoy. Can also be something you could do later on.

theonlyBuster · October 7, 2014

Well, look for something with 4GB of ram (definitely reachable for the budget), avoid touchscreen (just adds too much to the price tag) and not HP.

Here's something i found, about as good as it gets for under 500 dollars:

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-15-6-Inch-Laptop-80E3005NUS-Black/dp/B00K6ZID58/ref=sr_1_10?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1412692738&sr=1-10&keywords=lenovo+laptop

Also if you want only 200GB of storage, you could buy a 256GB SSD for around 100 dollars and turn the HDD into an external drive with an enclosure. The faster performance SSD's have over HDD's is one you'll definetely enjoy. Can also be something you could do later on.

This looks pretty nice.

And I just meant storage space isn't a big concern. For my use, I don't need anything zippy, and reliability isn't a huge concern since most everything will be saved on a personalized Cloud.