Laptops! Who's got an opinion to share?

When I was doing a ton of business travel, I used a Dell laptop with a docking station in each of my offices.
 
Built like a tank and never failed me.  That has been quite a few model years ago though ...

The couple of Windows lap tops that I use are certainly not groundbreaking in any way , shape or regard primarily due to my budget
The one thing that I do use that makes my use of lap tops a lot easier for me is I  prefer to use a mouse ....
I know how to do all the other stuff , track pad  and Jazz ... when I use a mouse I feel like I'm on any old Windows computer ...
Yeah I know call me a lightweight
 
Kenny

Depends what your budget is really. I use a Lenovo Yoga 2 for work, it's a really nice piece of kit and light too, I like the way you can double the screen back and flip it round to make an A-shape to stand on the desk and have manuals handy to scroll through using the touchscreen for when I'm learning a new piece of software etc. I think there's probably a new Yoga out now though. 
 
I hear great things about Dell laptops these days, check out the XPS13 maybe? It gets rave reviews everywhere.... http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-xps-13
 
There's some good Thinkpads around the $600/$700 mark as well. 
 
Or for a super cheap option that gets good reviews, how about the Ideapad 100S for $180? Tbh I wish I'd saved my money on the Yoga and bought something like this! http://www.laptopmag.com/...ps/lenovo-ideapad-100s

Do you have a little breathing room where you can use one of theirs until you can get your own ?
 
Kenny

craigb
... to look for in either case! 

Yes, you'll want a good case if you're going to be moving it around/traveling with it 

Cool!  Thanks for the replies.  Kenny might have the answer, I'm their employee now, maybe they have one for me.
 

drewfx1
I don't know about currently, but Dell used to install their own SW like network configurators on top of Windows, which just makes it annoying for people who actually know what they are doing. Personally I avoid companies that do that kind of thing, dating back to the Compaq PC days. YMMV.

HP used to be infamous for bloatware as well!  But, as long as you have the licenses (I do), can't you just format the hard drive and install the OS of your choice from scratch?  (Thus wiping out the bloatware?)

Calling support can be fun though!  I mean, I get to talk to a "real" Indian! 

Like everything else, whatever you get comes down to the luck of the draw. I have worked in an IT service company almost 20 years and have seen issues arise with every makers laptops. They all have issues with getting bad batches of this or that.
 
In that vein, I have had good luck with a Lenovo which was bought from IBM. I can't speak to using it specifically as a DAW as I just use it for web surfing and development work.
 
As MS was mentioned, I would check into what it takes to get one serviced. Hopefully you won't need service but it might best to explore now than to run into a month+ long ordeal later. I can't help but think of all the issues they had with their XBox and the hoops some people had to go through getting those fixed.

craigb
HP used to be infamous for bloatware as well!  But, as long as you have the licenses (I do), can't you just format the hard drive and install the OS of your choice from scratch?  (Thus wiping out the bloatware?)

Again I will point out I should not be listened to when it comes to such things BUT...
 
I actually tried this with my laptop (Acer Aspire). I wiped the main partition of the drive (but left the factory recovery partition intact so I could use it later if I wanted). The problem comes in with all the specific drivers and mini programs required for Windows to properly work with the laptop hardware.
 
So after I installed the clean copy of Windows7 (which I downloaded from Microsoft's "Digital River" download thingie... so it was a totally legit MS ISO) and applied the Win7 (Home Edition) license on the bottom of the lappy to register it it did indeed boot up into a totally clean version of Windows (sans Acer bloatware).
 
Unfortunately though it was very sluggish and quirky because instead of having the preloaded factory drivers/programs from Acer Windows seemed to be using generic drivers and the OS in general wasn't communicating with the hardware the way it was supposed to.
 
That sent me on an epic journey to hunt down all the drivers and necessary programs specific to my laptop. There was indeed a bunch of necessary downloads on the Acer site but lumped in with a bunch of unnecessary crud as well. I had to sort out what was what, download, install, etc.
 
The clean install (although much better) STILL was acting like a turd. I tried all sorts of things for about a month to see if I coulld get performance up but alas the factory config was simply better, faster and more reliable. I suspect there were little programs and special configs to make Windows work smoothly that weren't accessible on the site.
 
Soooooooo I just went back to my usual method of crushing bloatware. I reinstalled the original factory image and armed with a general knowledge (based on my previous foibles) used CCleaner to remove everything that didn't/doesn't have anything to do with the operation of the computer. CCleaner removes stubborn bloatware that refuses to uninstall using usual methods. Some people use RevoUninstaller (or whatever it's called) or a combination of both programs (and I'm sure others).
 
It takes time and patience to sort through all that crap and get rid of it (while creating restore points along the way in case you yank something that's actually needed) but once it's widdled down all the crap is gone, the system works better and you don't have to go hunting for system specific driver crap. Also going into system settings to stop any automated launching nonsense and disabling "power saver" features helps things along as well (laptops are tweaked for the casual user... not hardcore loonies like us).
 
tl;dr...
 
Hunting down the drivers for a laptop is more time consuming with crappier results than using a good uninstaller/scrubber program to remove the bloatware and leaving the critical factory stuff in place.
 
After the bloatware removal/registry cleaning is done you just create an image of your spanky clean system and use that instead of the factory recovery partition/disc(s).
 
Again... I should not be listened to because I'm not a computer tech and I'm sure all this varies from system to system but I spent a BUTTLOAD of time screwing around with this type of thing in my attempts to create a "virgin" system.
 
Cheers.

What do you need the laptop to do? Will it have to handle stuff like wi-fi networked MIDI for example? Be used at gigs? Have wi-fi running at all at the same time as the DAW?

Generally any of the solid (=less cheap) "office" type laptops with an adequate cpu/disk spec should do the job OK, no need for fancy graphics on a DAW after all. HP seem generally regarded as solid. Mrs TLW's employers provide their staff with a few thousand laptops every year, with a premium placed on reliability and surviving being hauled around in the real world and they're used mostly HP for a few years now.

Seems to me your best bet is just head on over to one of the local box stores and poke at all the current floor models. Bring a a pad of paper and write down the model numbers of the units you like and why (and why not).
 
Then when you get home go browse Newegg armed with your model #'s to check out their prices/specials and most definitely look at the customer reviews from folks who own the unit(s).
 
Also check out Amazon for the same thing but really Newegg is a better site for this stuff.
 
Then if you want to try looking for used lappy's scour ebay but generally anything good and headache free is gonna get scooped up for about as much (if not more) than what you'd pay for something modern/new.
 
Ebay jumped the proverbial shark many moons ago.

Stay away from HP. Even the plastic is sub standard on those.

michaelhanson
I just bought a Dell for my wife, she loves it. 15.6 screen, i5, 8mb ram, 1T hard drive. We paid $499 for it at Office Depot.

I remember when 8mb RAM was a lot (I used a couple of 1k ram machines like the Pet or Timex Sinclair back in the day)...
 
I also believe you meant to say 8Gb of RAM too! 

That sounds like a nice machine!

craigb

michaelhanson
I just bought a Dell for my wife, she loves it. 15.6 screen, i5, 8mb ram, 1T hard drive. We paid $499 for it at Office Depot.

I remember when 8mb RAM was a lot (I used a couple of 1k ram machines like the Pet or Timex Sinclair back in the day)...
 
I also believe you meant to say 8Gb of RAM too! 

Yes, sometimes while typing from my iPhone, I seem to be all thumbs.  
 
I assumed you would be running typical business software like Outlook, Word, Excel and Power Point.  If you are going to multipurpose the Laptop and do some music production from it as well, certainly it would need more horsepower.