Windows 8 laptop

[united8898]

Hello im looking for some advice please. I am looking to buy a windows 8 laptop im in the uk and my budget is ?380 i want to run some music production software, photo editing and watch hd films. What's the best laptop for that price. Any help appreciated

 

[CHIP72]

I STRONGLY advise buying a touchscreen laptop. I haven't gotten a Windows 8 laptop yet, but I've played around with them in stores a good bit, and I strongly believe that 1) Windows 8 works really, really well via touch and 2) the "gorilla arm" concerns some people have about touchscreens on laptops are unfounded, especially with smaller sized laptops.

With that bit of advice out of the way, the best Windows 8 touchscreen laptop budget model is probably the Asus Vivobook X202E. This laptop is netbook-sized with an 11.6" screen and weighs 2.9 pounds (about 1.3 kg). However, it has aluminum casing, giving it a premium look, and its insides are much better than typical "netbooks"; it has a 3rd generation Core i3 processor, not a lower end Pentium, Celeron, or Atom processor. It also comes with a 500 GB hard drive and 4 GB of RAM. Its biggest negatives are relatively low battery life (I've seen estimates ranging from 3 to 5 hours) and the lack of a faster SSD drive (which isn't surprising for a budget laptop). The computer really occupies a new, emerging niche between netbooks and ultrabooks. And yet, this computer only costs $500 (at the Microsoft Store, both on-line and at the physical store) or $550 at most other retailers. (I think in the U.K. it is going for ?400.) This computer is available through Amazon.

I'll note that Best Buy is selling the Q200E model, a slightly lower end version of the Asus Vivobook (has 2nd generation Core i3 processor and a slightly slower graphics processor) for $500, $50 less than the selling price for the X202E model at most retailers.

One final note - I'm seriously considering buying the Asus Vivobook X202E myself. I think you get tremendous bang for the buck with this computer from what I've seen.

 

[united8898]

Thanks for the advice although i have now purchased a laptop it is not touchscreen but am finding windows 8 still works very well i got an acer e1. It has exactly the spec you stated in your advice minus the screen obviously and it was ?300 which is a good price

 

[crystal_planet]

I'm running a two year old Dell laptop with W8 pro that I installed when it went live. No problems here - I made a shortcut to my task bar for my programs and I toggle back and forth between desktop and "apptop" by simply hitting the windows key.
I'm really enjoying the features of this o/s with some of the neat little tools Microsoft has added, and I can't for the life of me understand why some folks poop their pants when they are faced with something that's a little different.