Good Laptops/Computers

[Brandon Schmedeke]

Anyone know of a good budget computer or laptop? I'm supposed to get a new computer or laptop soon because my old one is getting sorta outdated and I don't feel like shelling out thousands for a gaming laptop.

Any recommendations? I've only had one windows 8 laptop and it ran really slow although that's the hardwares fault and the person who got it for me didn't know anything about computers/laptops but I'm open for some suggestions on windows 8. (although its bugs me I can't run my windows phone games on it without rebuying them)

 

[berty6294]

How much are you willing to spend? Cause "budget" for you and me could mean two very different things. What will you be doing with it? Do you want touch screen? SSD or HDD? Screen size preferred?

 

[Brandon Schmedeke]

600 or less. Also HDD most of the other things it doesn't really matter whatever decent and gets the job done which is just YouTube, Homework, Games (such as Skyrim/Minecraft)

 

[redeyss]

I'm interested to see opinions on this too

 

[mondokjm]

Starting off, I realize I'm jumping your budget by a bit with this recommendation, but I cannot give enough praise to Lenovo's YOGA series.
https://forums.windowscentral.com/e...6skuId%3D9035043%26st%3Dlenovo&token=PhFAwWD4 yoga&cp=1&lp=5
This and the new YOGA Pro 2 have been my favorite Win8 devices.

 

[Brandon Schmedeke]

Starting off, I realize I'm jumping your budget by a bit with this recommendation, but I cannot give enough praise to Lenovo's YOGA series.
https://forums.windowscentral.com/e...6skuId%3D9035043%26st%3Dlenovo&token=nBEkUYop yoga&cp=1&lp=5
This and the new YOGA Pro 2 have been my favorite Win8 devices.

I'm sure I can save a little more if its that good. Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[cj-m]

And if you don't mind a DELL, there are plenty in your price range. Laptops, Ultrabooks & Notebooks - Dell Laptop Computers for Sale | Dell

And I got my brother the ASUS Vivobook 11.6 Inch Touch Laptop for under $ 500 from Amazon, so I think you will be more than able to find plenty of options to choose from.

 

[dznk]

I echo what cj says above. I've personally got an Asus Vivobook S200e which is an 11.6" Touchscreen / 4GB DDR3 / Intel Core i3 / 500GB HDD. I got it for ?360 (approx $580). Great little laptop, touchscreen very responsive, nice big touchpad, but I tend to use the touchscreen more. The keyboard is a chiclet keyboard and is good to type on. Overall I've been very happy with it.

If I was you I would try and get one with a touchscreen. Windows 8 is designed more for touch (but obviously keyboard and mouse is still fine).

 

[palandri]

Check out NewEgg Desktop PCs, All-in-One Computers, Commercial Desktops – Newegg.com

 

[JoelBennett]

I know you already said that you don't care so much about the specs, but if you don't use a ton of storage, do yourself a serious favour and get something with a solid state drive (SSD) in it. They make a night and day difference on a slower machine. I put a 60 GB Intel SSD in a netbook, as well as 2 GB of ram and Windows 8, and the difference was night and day. Prior to the upgrade I hardly ever used it because it was slow, but after the upgrade I found myself using it a LOT more. Even if you don't get a machine with a SSD now, perhaps look into getting a machine that can easily be upgraded in the future.

 

[Kebero]

The Transformer Book T100 has good reviews.

 

[xandros9]

If you're really cheap and don't need recent hardware, I picked up a refurb laptop (ThinkPad T400 (2009 era, even had a Vista sticker on it)) for $350 last year from my nearby Micro Center (price came down a bit since, had some others like older MacBooks)

Since it used to be on the higher end of laptop-land its built great and doesn't sound like a leaf-blower like my cheapo HP netbook. A bit thick but its built like a tank. No recent features like a touchscreen but if all you want is a solid computer that will get you there, I'd give an older what-used-to-be-high-end refurb a look. Only complaint is that the batteyr was a bit old.

I tossed in an SSD and it works great, save for not having something the WP8 emulator requires. Can't play Skyrim or something fancy like Planetside 2, but runs League, StarCraft 2 and Halo decently. CCFL Display isn't that great outdoors though.

 

[cohoman]

I echo what cj says above. I've personally got an Asus Vivobook S200e which is an 11.6" Touchscreen / 4GB DDR3 / Intel Core i3 / 500GB HDD. I got it for ?360 (approx $580). Great little laptop, touchscreen very responsive, nice big touchpad, but I tend to use the touchscreen more. The keyboard is a chiclet keyboard and is good to type on. Overall I've been very happy with it.

If I was you I would try and get one with a touchscreen. Windows 8 is designed more for touch (but obviously keyboard and mouse is still fine).

I was considering getting the Vivobook laptop for WP8 app development. Can you do me a favor and check your BIOS settings to see if there is a switch for activating virtualization? It might be called "hyper-V". Thanks!

Sent from my HTC One using WPCentral Forums mobile app

 

[berty6294]

Just an fyi you probably already know, but you are able to debug directly on a phone plugged into the computer. That is how I have to do it because the $2000 rig I built a few years ago doesn't support Hyper-V lol

 

[berty6294]

Oh and I believe the 521 is $80 at Best Buy... don't quote me, that may have changed since then.

 

[cohoman]

Just an fyi you probably already know, but you are able to debug directly on a phone plugged into the computer. That is how I have to do it because the $2000 rig I built a few years ago doesn't support Hyper-V lol

Thanks for the suggestion. I bought a Nokia 520 a few days ago to try out WP8 and to use it for testing of apps. I may have to go the hardware route for my development work, but I'd to see if I can get a laptop that can do virtualization.

Sent from my HTC One using WPCentral Forums mobile app

 

[berty6294]

Thanks for the suggestion. I bought a Nokia 520 a few days ago to try out WP8 and to use it for testing of apps. I may have to go the hardware route for my development work, but I'd to see if I can get a laptop that can do virtualization.

Sent from my HTC One using WPCentral Forums mobile app

Yeah it is nice to not have to plug something else in, but it is limited. The emulator is slow, annoying with a mouse, doesn't have multitouch, and doesn't do accelerometer or gyroscope. It does however allow you to test different resolutions and screenshot!

 

[kbilly70]

If you aren't turned off by factory refurbished, check out Woot.com. They run laptop deals usually every week and have low prices on Asus, Toshiba, HP, and others. Picked up a 13.3 inch Zenbook Prime from there for $599 - 3rd Gen i5, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD.