I need tp purchase an inexpensive laptop for my daughter (22, not a child.) I have a nice coupon from Dell so it will be something in the $500 range - she doesn’t play games on it so the needs are pretty simple.
Question: I don’t use Windows 8 but the laptop will come with that OS. She’s moving from her macbook (can’t afford one of those right now!) so she she is changing OS’s anyway, so no need to try to stick with Windows 7. My question: how well does Windows 8 work on a laptop without a touch screen? Do I need to pay the extra for the touch screen?
Win8 works just fine without a touchscreen. That said, I’ve been using a touch-y machine lately and I find I’m beginning to miss it when I have to use my older non-touch laptop.
And yes a touchscreen will drive up the price, probably well out of your price target.
The odds are good that you will end up with Win 8.1. It definitely does not need a touch screen in its present incarnation. A few tweaks and she’ll be fine.
While you have a coupon from Dell, have you considered the ASUS T100? Tablet / laptop hybrid with a Bay Trail chip that should be fast enough for something “pretty simple”, has a touch screen, and can be found for around $300.
Yeah, this is a major coupon (like $200) due to a customer service issue that a manager resolved and gave me this as an apology. Yeah, I know, I also expect peace in the Middle East any moment now.
Frankly, I’d rather have a $349 Asus T100 than a $700 Dell laptop discounted to $500. I used to buy Dell years ago, but after seeing all of the issues that people have with them at work (and these are the better-built corporate laptops), I’m staying away. Plus their design aesthetic feels very 2006. The Asus is flexible (doubles as a tablet!), has a surprisingly nice keyboard, and feel very solid for such an inexpensive device.
Plus Dell’s “retail” prices are artificially inflated because they always have some kind of coupon going on their site.
Looking at Dell’s current lineup, I’d probably go for the Inspiron 11 if I had to go Dell, as the 15 is too big/heavy.
I agree that Dell, in general, has gone down in quality from years ago, and their customer service is now atrocious (you used to get someone in North America who used their logic as you chatted with them, now you get someone in India reading down a script tree and at times being very arrogant - I had one guy tell me a stress crack in the corner of my daughter’s new computer could NOT happen unless she dropped it and refuse warranty service. I tried to be nice, told him she keeps it on her desk and uses it like a desktop, in fact it was attached to a docking station, but he continued to argue and even used the words, “Sir, you have no idea what you are talking about.” At this point I hung up and called again and got to a higher level."
However, for the last 10 years I’ve had a house full of Dell laptops of various types (for my two daughters, my wife, myself.) In most cases they have been steady, reliable, do the job systems and some of them have been real road warriors.
I won’t argue they are the best, or best for the money, but I am pretty comfortable with the ones I’ve had.
Had almost the same customer service experience with HP. Screen went wonky on my Spectre X2 and they were doing their darndest to decide I’d dropped it, despite the fact that it’s my living room laptop and has left the house twice since December. Took about 90 minutes of talking to two different people to get the return authorization. Then I got the repaired laptop and the problem was worse. (Apparently the repair was reseating the LCD panel, and shipping must have dislodged it even worse.) It’s on the way back to HP; on the bright side, they include a number for the repair depot in TN when they ship you your unit and I talked to an American tech who wasn’t going off script, so the second return was much less painful.
The difference is, though, my experience with the Indian call center cemented my decision not to buy HP ever again. In the future, I’ll buy from Microsoft or Apple, where I can take my laptop into the local store and deal with techs in person. (Selling the HP once it’s fixed and getting a Surface Pro 3. When my wife’s Toshiba finally dies, I’ll likely get her a MacBook Air and throw Parallels/Win 8.1 on it for her work stuff.)
I’m not particularly impressed/happy with the Venue 11 Pro (it seems incapable of getting into a low power sleep state, making it rather useless as a tablet you leave laying about - most laptops do better then that for fucks sake)
