I’m matriculating into a graduate program that requires a Windows laptop. I’ve been using a Mac laptop for the past 7 years or so and haven’t followed along with developments with Windows machines. While I could run Windows in Bootcamp (and currently do that for some work-related issues), it sounds like the program frowns on it a bit.
And… I’m a gamer, of course. A decent Windows laptop would be nice. I’ll be doing a lot of heavy number crunching.
The last time I bought a Windows laptop was in early 2004. Which companies are making good laptops these days and what models should I consider in the $1000 range?
Most laptops in that price range will have something on the order of Intel’s HD 4000 graphics support. It’s not high-end by any means, but it’ll let you get by with running most games at low/medium details and playable. So the good news is you don’t need to get something big and bulky to play those games.
As for quality - lots of good options. Even easier to find a good one for that price if you don’t care about touch (which I don’t think you should do because touch is surprisingly useful even on a laptop). The Lenovo Yoga which others on this board has had some good/mixed reviews. The Asus Zenbook is an excellent machine and can be found for $1000 without touch, $1300 for a faster/newer version that also has touch.
In the $1000 price range, you shouldn’t have to settle for Intel integrated graphics. Even a relatively modest dedicated card should handily outperform it in games, and there are plenty in systems from $600-ish on up.
Decide if you want to pay the premium for a thin and light Ultrabook, or would rather accept the weight and put that money into performance instead. Rather than targeting a particular brand or model, I would recommend picking any features you care about, and then just keeping an eye out for sales.
Here are a few systems that seem to have pretty solid specs in your price range. I can’t speak to any of them personally, but laptops have largely become commodities.
I hear the surface pro has quite strong performance and is in this price range. It as powerful as any laptop in the same price range, as well as being sexy, trendy, good for taking notes and so on. So I hear anyway, I confess to be a bit of a surface pro fan looking for an excuse to drop 1K on it.
I’d be looking at the Samsung Series 7 or the Acer Aspire S7. Both have a good bang for the buck.
Getting Win 7 on a new device will be a challenge. I’d keep a copy of Win 7 around, but don’t install it until you absolutely need to. Win 8 should run anything you might need just fine.
Many of the user reviews mention the trackpad ceasing to function shortly after beginning to use the machine. Granted, those are user reviews on the Internet and may be fake.
There shouldn’t be any. I mean, it won’t have printscreen or scroll lock, but laptops don’t have those keys anyway, and you can remap in windows if you need to.
That’s what I thought and that’s why I’m checking. However, I’d rather start out on a good foot there, and if they’re going to get pissy about my laptop, I’m ok getting a new one that I use specifically for the program (but what will I do with our my sweet sweet Terminal??).
The requirement that you run specifically Windows 7 64-bit is as confusing as the requirement that you don’t run in Bootcamp. Windows 8 should automatically support whatever they need out of you from Windows 7 64-bit. So definitely in this case it seems like you need to clarify the requirements. Bootcamp should easily suffice.
Hah. Propitiatory, poorly-coded industry software being tied to specific Windows versions? Not that uncommon*. Or it could be a simple support issue, if they haven’t added Win8 to the supported OS list…
(*I remember win-2k only games dev software. That was a pain in the…)
