I have an i3 E2740 w/ 4gb RAM and 128gb SSD supplied by work. It handles everything I throw at it just fine, but I don't do much outside of Office on it to be perfectly honest. The thickness and weight it great, but the build quality does not feel premium at all. There is a good bit of flex in the screen and body. There are no gloss finishes which is good, but the plastics still fill a bit cheap (especially the black ABS of the bottom). The screen is matte, which is nice, and average resolution (1366 x 768). The keyboard has semi-chiclet style keys with good travel and no flex in the deck. The trackpad is big and responsive. The available ports cover pretty much all the bases, including one to charge your phone when the laptop is off.

At the price these sell for, I don't see them as an excellent value. Being from the upper-end of Lattitude line, I'm assuming the build-quality is there under the skin, just not apparent based on the outside finish/materials. Even at the fairly low-end configuration I received the invoice was listed at $1250. I personally wouldn't pay more than $500 for one of these machines...

I myself would get a refurb Acer Aspire E5 13" i5 Haswell and upgrade the HDD to an SSD. It might not take a drop like the Dell E7240, but my laptops live on my desk 90% of the time and in a hotel 10% or less of the time (I travel almost exclusively with a Surface Pro these days, which replaced both my laptop and Android tablet).

Totally depends on your work style and what kind of data/documents you use. If you just use Windows/Office and a whole lot of mostly-textual documents, plus surf the net, 128GB is plenty -- you'll probably have 40-60gb free after the OS and applications and never fill it.

If you take a lot of pictures, or worse, video, or play videogames, or have a large music collection you want to bring with you... 128GB fills wicked fast.

Underwhelming at best, and have none of the durability advantages of an SSD.

Personally, I'd neither actively seek it out nor avoid it.

(8.1 does make " a screen that doesn't have absurd resolution that makes everything tiny" a lot less of an issue.)

As well you should be. I wouldn't touch it. I wouldn't touch anything less than an i3 in a regular laptop processor (one ending M) or anything less than an i5 in an ultrabook/tablet/etc processor (one ending U or Y.)

While I'd put no value in the hybrid drive over a regular hard drive (my experience with one was that it was slower than a 7200rpm regular hard drive), buying a machine with one and then swapping in your own SSD is often the most cost effective option.

My other piece of advice with the Dell outlet is always wait for a sale (or find one of their non-sale further-marked-down deals; there are always a few if you dig around the page, but you may need to wait for one on a specific model you're interested in.)

Sold as refurbs, they start around $550 on a coupon :D ... and yeah, I would not want to pay full retail for one of these. If you have a corporate account, they are very heavily discounted even new.

Even at $550, I think I'd go with a refurb Aspire E5 and upgrade the HDD to SSD (should come out around $500 with a 256gb SSD) UNLESS the laptop was going to live out in the world and be prone to bumps, drops, scrapes, etc. The E7240 isn't a Toughbook by any means, but probably has a stronger underlying structure than the Acers... the Acers do get you a bit more processor oomph for the price, and by upgrading the SSD yourself you end up with more SSD storage for the money too (and a 500gb drive to throw in a USB enclosure too).

I quit dithering and just bought something:

Dell Outlet Latitude E7440 Windows 7 Professional
Unit Price: $959.00 coupon 20% off $191.80
Total $767.20

-- 128 GB Full Mini-Card Mobility Solid State Drive
-- Windows 7 Professional
-- Processor: Intel Core 4th Generation i5-4300U Processor
(3M Cache, up to 2.90 GHz), No SmartCard
-- 8 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz (4GBx2) Memory

Thanks for all the input.

just bought a new 15" Macbook Pro. It is actually a refurb and it is of course expensive I suppose but I'm glad. 768GB SSD, 2.8Mhz processor, 16MB RAM, and it should work for me for 3 years. Next up I'll replace my Macbook Air, maybe when the model refreshes.

I think you'll be pleased.

For a thin and light machine, these are relatively easy to open up and to upgrade, so if you ever need to upgrade the SSD (pretty easy to outgrow) or the memory (most people are unlikely to need more than 8gb during the useful life of the machine but you never know), both should be doable even for a non-technical person.

Enjoy!

It seems a nice machine ^

I have a 6-yr old Gateway that may die any day but until it does... :). Bought a refurbished Toshiba a few months ago - i5, 8GB RAM, 1TB hard drive, 15" FHD screen for under $500.

I think you'll be hurting with only 16mb ram. :)

The first computer I ever used had 8k ram, and the first I owned had 32k.

4k and 128k respectively for me.

*lol*

Some of us are hurting with only 16GB (although the gigantic 4-memory-slot workstations that will already take 32gb would hurt worse.)

The first computer I used, and the first computer I owned both had 64k of RAM. The just less than three years in between the two (sometime over the winter holiday break 1980, and 10/22/1983 respectively) made the first a relatively high end home machine for the time, and the latter a ridiculously affordable one.

The first machine I was originally supposed to get would have only had 2k; luckily the price dropped substantially on the C-64 and the Timex-Sinclair partnership fell apart.

I also broke down and purchased a new laptop. In a previous post, I was having problems with my 3 year old Gateway. The DC jack was working intermittantly. While the part was cheap ($5-10), it looked like it was beyond my skill level to replace. I found a few places around town that ranged $175-300 for the work. I decided that I would just bite the bullet and get something new.

I have a new Lenovo 15 dual mode with 1 tb HD and 6 gig RAM. It is a touchscreen and came with Win 8.1. It has taken over the past week to adjust to Win 8 vs Win 7. So far, so good. I paid $600 at my local Office Depot.

My Sony Vaio is almost three years old, and the screen is somewhat broken. It only works at certain angles, while at others it flickers or turns completely black or white. Hopefully I can use it as a desktop and keep it around for one or two more years. I don't need the most high end computer anyway... Just need it for casual browsing and multimedia.

My first one was a Sinclair ZX81 clone, with 2KB RAM and 8KB EPROM loaded with BASIC. Cassettes were my storage media.

And I remember "downloading" programs from radio shows broadcasts... :cool: