I’m in the market for a new laptop so I just went to Best Buy so I could mess with a few and see what felt good. Found out that apparently touch screen with Windows 8 is about all you’re gonna get these days unless you go mac. I have a mac now and am leaning PC, so… time to get used to the idea of a touchscreen? And get used to fucking Windows 8. Research tells me that’s fairly accurate, though I think online I’d get a little better ratio than 20/1 touchscreen to non-touchscreen.
I have this idea that touchscreen means inferior in other categories… but if most new ones are, how can that be? Unless it’s a hardcore gaming supercomputer, which I don’t need.
Also this:
Me: Damn, look, this one has a 1TB hard drive!
Mr. Science: you could fit a lot of porn on there
Touchscreen is fine. You’ll just pay a little more for it. I actually rather enjoy them and I find they play rather well with Windows 8 (though there are a few batshit elements when it comes to navigation), but there are totally still non-touchscreen laptops out there.
I’m a huge fan of ASUS, and here is why:
My sister worked for the Geek Squad at Best Buy for about a year, and they once received a busted ASUS laptop. The motherboard was going, so they decided to do the owner a favor and just fry the damn thing so they could declare it defunct and replace it with a brand-new one.
They ended up jamming two live wires straight onto the motherboard so that sparks flew and stuff started melting, and the thing still wouldn’t die.
ASUS also is tops for the quality/price point axis—you can get a lot of laptop for around $600 with an ASUS, and at $700, you’re already starting to look at the higher-end models. Sony, Lenovo and Samsung are excellent but expensive, Dell is overpriced and not as good as they used to be, HP is good and almost as well-priced as ASUS but they’ve got certain issues that tend to show up in their models, and I tend to feel like the Toshibas are just a bit flimsy. Don’t put money on an Acer machine if you aren’t a broke student. They’re the Dollar Store disposable razors of the laptop world.
Here is a set of specs that there is no reason to settle for less than unless you really need to squash your computer budget to under $500-$600. These will bring you a good solid middle-of-the-road computer that will do almost anything you ask of it, although it might complain if you’re doing high-end gaming or video editing:
- 6 GB RAM (6 to 8 gigs is now standard; there’s a noticeable jump in performance at 8 gigs, and depending on the manufacturer this may or may not increase the price significantly)
- 500 GB hard drive (640 is now standard, and it’s not unusual to see bigger)
- Intel i5 quad core (i3 is low-performing if you want to run intensive programs but it cuts the price noticeably; i7 costs more but it tips a computer into an ass-kicker for gaming and graphics)
- 1 or more USB 3.0 port
- At least 1 HDMI port
Windows 8 is the Windows flavor that’s on offer these days. You can still get hold of Windows 7 if you put a bit of work in…but seriously, don’t. Windows 8 is infinitely better once you get used to it. It’s lightning-fast, more secure, more resource-efficient, and more stable—and with a couple of keyboard shortcuts it’s hella easy to get around in.
The keyboard shortcuts in question:
- Windows key – flips you between the desktop screen and the mobile app screen, which is basically a big fancy Start menu. Just flip to the mobile app screen and start typing in order to do a quick search that brings up any program or app on your computer that you wish to run.
- Windows key + X – this opens the administrative menu. Instant access to task manager, admin controls, etc.
MS also recently released two big updates for Windows 8 that turns it from a somewhat annoying OS with a lot of potential to the dream machine that Microsoft has always had the capacity to build. Windows 8.1 improved the mobile apps screen interface, improved the customizability and re-instituted a few buttons and features that makes it easier to navigate without a touch screen.
And a second update came out just a couple of weeks ago that did several things, one of which is that you can now run mobiles apps within the desktop environment.
This is convenient, but it’s also got huge implications, because you no longer have to pick whether you want a device that can run computer programs or mobile apps.
Finally, if you’re shopping at Best Buy, ask about the open box rack. Best Buy does the thing where, when somebody returns a computer that is still pretty new and isn’t busted in a hardware way, they will wipe and refurbish it and then sell it for a couple hundred dollars cheaper than you’d be able to buy it for if no one had ever hit the power button before. The computer I’m typing on right now came off the open box rack, and it’s about two steps up from the floor model I was planning to buy, and I still got it for $50 cheaper.