Thank you nkedel! Very much appreciated. Guess I have some shopping to do now :)

Very glad to validate specs if you see something you're interested in.

BTW for benchmarks, while there are not a lot of good CPU benchmarks on low-end CPUs out there, http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ (aka Passmark) is a good quick reference site. I'd aim for a Passmark of about 1200 minimum these days, although more patient folks will probably tolerate anything reasonably close to 1000.

Sadly, the really nice crop of 13" ultrabooks and 12.5" subnotebooks tend to start at around $600 even on sale or sold as refurb (with warranty.) The Asus UX31 or the Dell XPS 13 are good examples of the former, and the Lenovo X220/X230 and Dell E6220/E6230 of the latter.

For Dell, I tend to buy refurb, and wait for 20-25% on their outlet site; https://twitter.com/delloutlet lists the sales and the warranty is same-as-new. Lenovo has an outlet as well, but doesn't seem to run sales as frequently; the best prices I've seen on them are surplus new models (e.g. if someone still has an X220 in stock, or the X230 once the newer model comes out this fall).

The Lenovo X201 is a pretty sweet system (a little heavier/thicker than the X200s, but still very light) and it's a full-power laptop (1st-generation-for-laptops Core i5, still quite quick by today's standards) and they're very durable. Not likely to be many under $300, but the first one to come up on eBay is $300 even: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Think...item4ac6c4d1f7

BTW what model is your work laptop? If you have something relatively standard like a Dell Latitude or Lenovo Thinkpad, getting another model of sufficiently close relation might be worthwhile -- then you only need to haul around one power cord for both. :)

Thank you again!

I actually have the Lenovo X201 for a work computer. I like the idea of the same (or similar model). I would probably travel with just the one and remote into my virtual machine in the evenings. At most of my office locations I have access to a networked desktop.

I'm very fond of the X200s/X201-220-230.

Depending on how locked-down it is, one other super-cheap option* would be to buy your own hard drive (or small SSD) and swap it into the work-provided X201 for personal stuff.

(* sub-$100 for the HDD, around $100-120 for the SSD, plus a little bit on ebay for a drive caddy. After that, if I recall the machine right, it's one screw to take out.)

That's an interesting idea. I think I like it! Would also need to buy Win 7, right? Or is there a way to copy the OS boot from the default HD to the personal one?

You probably don't need to buy Windows 7. The license is typically tied to the machine, or for some corporate licenses, to the user. Either way, if you have Win7 on there from your work, you're legal; depending on the type of license it has, it may or may not be practical -- but it probably is.

If the machine came with it, and has a Certificate of Authenticity on the bottom where the serial number is still legible, then you're definitely good.

You will need to get a Windows 7 DVD of the right edition (a free, legal download from Microsoft's digital delivery partner -- the key being that you need your own legit serial number), then reinstall it on the new hard drive.

If your machine came with an earlier version of Windows (as shown on the CoA), you know the Windows 7 license provided by your work will be some other sort of corporate license. Some of these activate against Microsoft (in which case, the identical machine should do just fine) and some against a corporate server in house (in which case a clean install you do won't activate, and you're out of luck.) I'm not aware of any practical way to check what product key type it is (there is a Microsoft tool to do so, but it's somewhat esoteric) ... so really the thing to do is to run a key recovery program (like NirSoft's -- assuming the machine is not too locked down to do so) and try the key on the fresh install.

If your machine does not have a legible CoA, it's similarly basically a matter of recovering the key and reinstalling and seeing if it will activate -- although the odds are better, since a lot of companies do keep the machine's basic license.

(If, however, the edition provided is Windows 7 Enterprise then you know it's a corporate license and it will not be practical to reinstall it yourself.)

The legit downloads for Windows 7 are linked to from here (and many other places!)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/wind...languages.html

Make sure the site being downloaded from is "msft.digitalrivercontent.net"

Also, you will need to make sure the edition (Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate) matches the edition on your CoA sticker (or what's already installed if doing key recovery.) The binary version (32-bit x86 or 64-bit x64) does not have to match what was already installed.

This does assume you are comfortable reinstalling Windows yourself.

It IS possible to make a clone of one hard drive onto another hard drive/SSD to move the Windows install; it's not very hard -- CloneZilla is one good free tool to do it. But if the original is a locked-down install from work, that may either (A) prevent cloning, or (B) subverting the locked-down-ness after doing the clone may prove a pain in the neck.

Note also that there are some forms of locked down (including, notably, bitlocker encryption, some other kinds of preboot authentication/encryption, and some forms of BIOS password) that might make it difficult to do the HD swap -- or at least to swap back to the work-provided disk and have it work.

I just bought a used Lenovo X200s (with a 9-cell battery and an ultrabay, without the HD) for $200 shipped from the marketplace on the ThinkPads.com forums. I already had a 64Gb SSD that I installed, put Windows 7 on it and am very pleased with this laptop - heckuva value for a very usable, compact and lightweight machine with a nice 1440x900 display.

Lenovo leaked some info on the upcoming ThinkPad T440s - it's 14" instead of the 13" I'd prefer, but it is (finally) 1920x1080 IPS and it'll be Haswell. I'll likely be able to keep my 20-year streak of ThinkPad purchases going.

i recently bought a new levono laptop. it no do win 7. no drivers. cheap machine., so don't just say load win 7 in a win 8 machine. i cannot run the machine, and am sufficiently brain damaged that i cannot learn win 8. i understand win 8.1 is a great improvement, but i'm going to move on. see next post.

i cannot get started on win 8. so i have decided to buy a mac laptop. if one gets a macbookair, how does one enhance 256gb HD. does one use something for external additional storage, or is one just extremely judicious with garbage collection? cloud storage maybe?

Haswell looks to be entirely a battery life play rather than a speed bump, and the T440s looks likely to be using the ULV/Ultrabook processors rather than full-speed (although this is not formally announced.)

This will be fine for many, but it does mean it's probably a good bit slower than many configs of the present T430s or even 2011's T420s.

Win 8.1 is a marginal improvement, not a "great one."

Given that Lenovo will have very little custom hardware of their own in there, and the majority of that will actually carry over from their Win7 models... it is almost certain that there are Win7 drivers for most of the functionality (possibly not the touch features, if it has a touch screen, but on most Win7 machines that's useless anyway.) You just need to go to a slightly older Leneovo model for the Lenovo-specific drivers, and to the parts' manufacturers (generally Intel) for the other stuff if it doesn't just work out of the box on Win7.

Whether it's worth the trouble to find them is another question.

IME, Lenovo's machines that don't have "Thinkpad" in the name are questionable.

As for the MacBook Air, once you're paying the Apple tax, why not just get it with the 512gb SSD to begin with? $300 more for 256gb more SSD space is inflated, but by the standards of Apple upgrades, not especially badly.

You could also get the i5 one (although that's only 128gb SSD, at least on their web site) and wait for third party SSD upgrades; it is, in theory upgradeable.

Thank you. The laptop is encrypted with Symantec Endpoint Encryption which (*I think*) runs before the OS actually starts. Also it is a Win7 Enterprise install. The "personal" HD may not work in that case.

I was able to get some basic access back on the laptop so it may be workable as is for now. The real issue though is the SEE requires a networked login every 30 days or it gets locked out; I can't always network in every 30 days so by this time next month I may be stuck again. Apparently only one guy on our helpdesk knows how to do the assisted unlock remotely (he calls it job security...:rolleyes:)

Certainly won't be reusing the license (although if there's a Pro or Home Premium sticker, you can use that) ... whether you can use the personal HD will depend on other aspects. Can you boot off a USB stick or CD? Can you get into the BIOS setup?

If the answer is yes to both, you're likely to be OK, but just going with a personal laptop is probably easier.

As an upgrade to my current T500, and with 12GB or 16GB RAM and an SSD, I'm sure it'll be a good bit faster, thank you. :D

Lenovo's got some info back up on their site:

http://shop.lenovo.com/fi/en/laptops...440s/#features

The T500 was pretty heavy iron for its time; compared to a very top-of-the-line T500 with the 3.06ghz Core 2 Duo, the CPU power on a T440s will likely to be in the same ballpark (slightly lower with an i3, slightly higher with an i5/i7.) So if that were the only measure, dropping in 8gb and an SSD would get you most of the way there.

It's not a given that the T440s will go to 12gb or 16gb; have they announced whether the memory is soldered or socketed?

Compared to the T500, with vastly better battery life, vastly lighter, cooler, and a beefier GPU, it is probably well worth it.

:D

Barring something better coming out before the official release, I'm probably picking up one of these when they're out in the fall:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/18/d...kstation-leak/