Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rdkflorida2 who wrote (2359)	12/1/2014 1:39:55 PM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26820

I usually go direct to Dell or HP to configure to exactly what I want to have them built for me, but I believe the best margins are at Costco so I'd go there and take a look at the tradeoffs and get what works best for you. That is what I did for my girlfriend's laptop. They also give a 2nd year of warranty for free and have good tech support while paying workers a good salary. Too bad I don't own Costco stock... whenever it seems cheap to me, I find other stocks I like more.

To: rdkflorida2 who wrote (2359)	12/5/2014 9:59:16 PM
From: unrealistic_thoughts	2 Recommendations Recommended By Chip McVickar Kirk © Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26820

Re: What laptop to buy? Custom computer builds are almost a thing of the past. Lenovo won't do it on anything less than $1200. I used to be a Thinkpad/Lenovo bigot, I have used/owned a T41, T42, T42p, T60p, T420, and currently work on a T430s, my last Lenovo laptop, Lenovo has lost its way and pumps out cost-reduced junk now, in my opinion. I think it depends a lot on how much of the remainder of you life, do you want to spend screwing around trying to get Windows 8.0/8.1 to work for you? I just bought my sons twin Chromebook Acer c720p's (4GB RAM, 32 GB Flash, Touch, $269 refurbished from Acer on EBay - basically brand new). These are cute 11.6" laptops with fairly powerful celeron processors that are faster than just about any 2-cpu machine (Core 2 Duo) from 2009 or earlier. I call them "Baby Macbook Airs", and I'm not the only person who thinks of them this way, these are the #4 laptop selling on Amazon, #2 laptop according to this review: consumertop.com Why is this chromebook so good? For less than $300, nothing is screwed up on these machines. They have 8-hr runtimes on a 3-lbs machine, which is wonderful. The scratchpad works well, the touch is excellent, the machine is fast (in Chrome OS), the keyboard is ok, and the screen is not too bad - fairly bright (230 nits) and better than anyone has a right to expect on a sub-$300 laptop. Yes, there is only 1 USB 3.0 port, but it has bluetooth so a wireless mouse doesn't consume the port. There is a 2nd USB 2.0 port. Don't get off track and buy a $349 Toshiba Chromebook with 1920x1080 13.3" IPS display, that machine doesn't have a cpu inside, it has a turtle (atom) processor inside, not a pentium-class Celeron 2955U like the Acer c720p. The laptop market today is a mess. An utter mess. In a race to the bottom on price, laptop makers have installed lousy scratchpads to imitate Apple, and most laptops less than $1000 have lousy screens and crummy keyboards. Things are a lot worse than 5 years ago, China is making most of the laptops and cost (not usability) is their only optimization. Everyone touts their ultrabooks but only apple (and chromebooks) are shipping anything in volume with SSDs from the factory. In my opinion, there are sub-$400 chromebooks, flawed computers from $400-$1000, and something that is again interesting in the $1000+ market. I would recommend that you seriously consider a 13" MacBook Air, the #1 laptop according to notebookcheck.com and several sites. Here at Google, 75% of the UNIX gurus here are running around with MacBooks, and after asking 10 friends about them, most people carrying MacBook Pro Retina's wish they had instead asked for MacBook Air's, because the 12 hour battery life is far more useful than the tiny bump in CPU speed and big bump in battery weight and price of a MacBook Pro Retina. And, the MacBook Air doesn't get hot in your lap, and the case slants uphill so it makes a more ergonomic typing surface than a MacBook Pro Retina. My wife is going to get a next-generation MacBook air when new Broadwell models are released in February. Do you have a friend who works at Apple? Ask them if they can get you a discount, I think it's almost 15% for the discount they can use many times per year.