Buying a light weight laptop 2011/2012

buying a laptop in 2011


long battery life 6+ hours
light weight
dvd drive
about 800 or less


Acer (they may be large but seem to be light)
ASUS UL30 series
HP
Toshiba Portege

I own one for a year for 300 dollars. No problems. light. big. battery a couple of hours. no significant problems. Reasonbly stylish for its size and cost. I will buy it again if I am not VERY KEEN on long battery life.

ASUS UL30 series

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A friend of mine owns one of these for around 700 dollars and ultralight and 13.3 inch screen. He loves it. However for a couple of reasons I need a DVD drive. If that wasn't the concern this seems like a really good bet.

Portege 835 reviews

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For an ultraportable that also carries a DVD drive, this seems to be the top pick. I looked at it at costco and looks quite nicely constructed. It seems to have all the requirements I have set out at the top. Got great reviews.

previously this used to be 705 model. This seem to be built just for bestbuy. Seem to the cheapest from best buy. 705 is no longer available from best buy. But 835 may become available starting in April of 2011 (as of this post)

I may go for 835 if it is available. The price may round out to 835. I wonder if Amazon doesn't tax this and bestbuy will. (not sure)

This also seem to be built in wimax being able to connect to wimax capable HD TV. (Netgear pushtotv seem to be a gadget that can make your tv wimax enabled). Newer tvs may automatically do this. this may be a plus.

Here is a bestbuy link for the machine

Here is a similar model from toshiba direct

The difference is the toshiba direct model has the bluetooth and the bestbuy model has the wimax. they are exclusive. And it is a 100 dollars cheapter at bestbuy.

Even at bestbuy the standard warranty of 1 year from toshiba applies. I am not sure if the additional geeksquad warranty is worth the price.

Toshiba direct will tax based on buying address

it is 749 at bestbuy as of today

It is a bit feeble. Looks too delicate. I must say I like Acer between the too. I am again in the market place.

I have been eyeing ASUS with out the CD drive. It is light and stylish but the screen size is just a bit small at 13.3 or so.

This has been a good site for me for product comaparisons:toptenreviews

good light weight laptop

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long battery life 6+ hours
light weight
(probably not) dvd drive
about $800 or less
bigger than 13 inch screen
3 USB ports
8 G of RAM
Solid state hard drive
HDMI - Ability to connect to the tv

This seems to be a good review from cnet

There don't seem to be good options for 15 inch or above

ultrabook asus hp dell acer

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hp folio
Asus Zenbook UX31 ($1000)

hp folio asus ux31 dell xps 13z

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lenovo
(probably) hp
samsung
sony
toshiba

ASUS seem to have a flimsy keyboad (per reviews)

looks like dell has a smaller battery and life

this is a good summary article

I don't like HP because of its corporate commotion and their printers give me such a headache. Their support sucks.

Lenovo seem to uppity and never had one of their computers. Not sure with changing hands. I haven't read anything outstanding either in the reviews

I like Dell but their low battery life and other minuses seem odd

I have toshiba portege. it is too flimsy.

That leaves me ASUS. I may have to live with the key board. I may have to live with the 1 2.0 usb port and 1 usb 3.0 port.

I typically use an external verizon connector through usb and a mouse through the usb. More ports would be nice. only thing that offers more ports is toshiba. I am not sure if that is convincing enough to go for the flimsyness.

I *really like* acer. But looks like the acer one is built with non metal. ummm. I guess it is ASUS ux 31.

And again this is for my daughter.

If it were for me I think I would go with a 5 pounder and look for more ports and 8Gb of RAM and very likely be Acer.

what about ux31a

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does asus ux31 heats up too much

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apparently ux21 has heat problems and ux31 doesn't

acer aspire s5 amazon

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lenovo u300s amazon

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asus ux31 bestbuy

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I will sure post if this is any better than Toshiba Portege

asus ux 31 is a sleek but too light and too delicate. In a weird way I still like the 300 dollars acer i use for everything including developing on android and eclipse and writing a book!

The screen went bad halfway and had to send it in to replace. I wouldn't buy it again.

laptop solid state drive lenovo

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Solid state drive
8 to 16G of memory

long battery life 6+ hours
light weight
(probably not) dvd drive
Max $1000
bigger than 15 inch screen
3 USB ports
HDMI - Ability to connect to the tv

good SSD windows laptops

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Laptops with solid state drives

Here is Samsung 1490

Never had any experience with samsung laptops before. wonder!!

Samsung 15" Series 9 NP900X4C-A07US Ultrabook PC

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aspire s7 ultrabook any good?

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If you want something that is upgradeable and has a lot of power go for the Lenovo W530. I just got one and it is awesome. It allows upto 32 GB of RAM and has a swappble optical drive for additional HDD or SSD if you want. As far as SSD goes, Crucial is good

Search for: Lenovo w530

lenovo.com

acer.com

crucial for aspire v3-771

This is very interesting: Acer v3-5x series

Awesome with a few upgrades I was happy with this machine when I bought it, but after upgrading the RAM to 16 GB (that's right, it WILL support 16GB of RAM) and swapping the HDD for a SSD, this machine is a screamer! Had some driver issues when I loaded Windows 7 to the new SSD to get all the features to work, but the Acer live chat support steered me in the right direction and everything works great. This laptop is almost as fast as my 3.1GHz AMD Quad Core desktop. Good value, even with the extra cost of RAM and SSD.

Can I put 16G on Acer Aspire V3-551-8469

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This is an awsome solution for a laptop if it works as they say


buy a $400.00 laptop from acer
Upgrade ram to 16G
Upgrade disk to SSD
You may add in the bargain another 300 dollars
And you seem to have a rock solid beast for $700.

I did this:

- put the new drive in an external enclosure with a fast USB 3.0 link, hook it up

- clone the old drive to the new drive using free software (I used Macrium Reflect), let it run (took me about 2 hours with an 80% full drive)

- shut everything down, swap in the new drive, keep the old drive as a backup inside the enclosure

Quick and easy. The SSD is the expensive part, but you might as well get a good external enclosure since you can use it afterwards. I'm undecided as to if I want to use mine as a Windows backup or for Wii U game storage. ;-)

Here are other reviews from Jon Folkers who posted that review