I just got my Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and love it to death. The screen is absolutely stunning, and the whole package is making a very strong case for overtaking my old Thinkpad X300 as the favorite laptop I've ever owned.
Feel free to ask any questions you have about the UX31A and I'll do my best to answer them.
If you want a 15" screen but don't want to sacrifice portability, the Samsung Series 9 15" is an excellent choice too. Before I got the UX31A, I carried a 13" Series 9 for a year and was very pleased with it.
I just got my Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and love it to death. The screen is absolutely stunning, and the whole package is making a very strong case for overtaking my old Thinkpad X300 as the favorite laptop I've ever owned.
Feel free to ask any questions you have about the UX31A and I'll do my best to answer them.
If you want a 15" screen but don't want to sacrifice portability, the Samsung Series 9 15" is an excellent choice too. Before I got the UX31A, I carried a 13" Series 9 for a year and was very pleased with it.
Excellent choice - and I'm in the same boat, have stopped bringing my "serious" laptop with me. Love the Zenbook Prime!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ScottC
eBay has third party chargers for $20 - a bargain compared to the $99 original version. I've been using mine for weeks with no problems at all.
Always have to be careful with those. Some are okay, and some are extremely low quality imports where you're never sure if they're going to toast your laptop or burn your house down in the middle of the night. I'd be happy to pay $50 and get an OEM charger from a third party before I'd spend $20 for a generic.
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. <--- Grain of salt. Take with post as necessary.
Lenovo X Tablet series. It's an actual laptop that has a screen that turns and flips down into a tablet. I use it a lot for engineering work (lots of notes, graphs, etc) with OneNote. It's essentially my paper notebook replacement. I can flip between my notes and engineering programs very easily. With the 8 cell battery, the tablet easily lasts 6 hours. Newer models should last even longer.
My SO liked it so much he got one for himself (also an engineering major). The laptop is more expensive that most (about $1k plus, I got mine for about $1.5k), but you can find an older model for under $1k, which is what my SO did.
The only two brands of laptops I trust are ASUS (their higher end models) and Lenovo (Thinkpads). I prefer Lenovo over any other due to build quality and (if you get it) warranty support. I've dropped and spilled many things on my Thinkpads (thanks the nature of school and work :P), but they just keep marching on. Some engineering buddies like certain models of HP, but I've had a bad experience with an earlier model with a P4.
I've used and owned numerous laptops, but Thinkpads beat them all. I currently use 3 (two are my own, one for work). I have the X201, T520, and T420. I used to own the T61p (traded in, but it was still kicking) and a 12.1" one that I don't remember the model of.
EDIT: And I just noticed you already ordered a laptop. Oh well. Perhaps this would be useful to someone else.
Last edited by tearex; Aug 20, 12 at 12:58 am..
Reason: Grammar.
Macbook Air anyone?
I've been using mine since they recently got upgraded and its worked amazing, very quick and light, check slick deals to find deals here and there, you can even run bootcamp if you want to run windows apps.
I'm considering Ultrabooks these days too. There are just so many models though that it's hard to make a decision. The new Acer S5 looks pretty nice. About 2.5 pounds, 2 USB 3.0s and Thunderbolt port. 256GB SSD. They seem to be about $1250 street. Comparable Mac Air is similar price. Also thinking about the Asus Zenbooks but see a lot of reviews with people having issues. Might have been the previous model that was buggy. New models keep rolling out as well so I may sit tight for a month or so since my next major trip isn't until November.
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I have a 3.5 yr old Samsung X360-34P which weighs 2.8 Lbs. It has a 16x10 aspect ratio screen. When I looked at the Samsung Series 9 13 inch, the current equivalent, the screen height was too short for my needs as I set the font point size pretty large. I bought a Samsung Series 9 15 inch NP900X4D-A02US instead. It weighs 3.5 lbs but the charger is much lighter than my old one so overall, my bag is not heavier. My only regrets are that the series 9 has a clickpad instead of physical left and right click buttons and it requires an included dongle for Ethernet and optional not included dongles for VGA and full sized HDMI, all of which my old X360 had built in and was still light. New one was not cheap though.
I had an X360 that I really loved when it worked. Unfortunately it refused to work under battery power after a while which sort of defeated its purpose.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by glennaa11
I had an X360 that I really loved when it worked. Unfortunately it refused to work under battery power after a while which sort of defeated its purpose.
My X360 still works and has the original battery which lasts over 6 hrs. However either a plastic part on the battery or the laptop has broken off so now I have the battery taped in place with black electrical tape so it doesn't fall out when bumped. I figured that and its age, since I use it 12 hrs a day warranted a replacement as my primary machine.
Perhaps this would be useful to someone else.
