Recommendations for a good business laptop?

[Sneezeburger]

I'm looking to get a laptop for work (no gaming or anything). I'm not likely to use it for anything other than word processing, spreadsheets, and internet research. I use my home desktop for pretty much everything else, so I don't need a great deal of storage or a powerful gpu or anything like that. Mostly just looking for something fast, comfortable, and reliable. Preferably $1000 or less. Any suggestions what to get/where to look?

[chazus]

Moving this to the build/upgrade subforum!

[Deleted]

Lenovo and Dell currently own most of the corporate world, and business laptops. The new T440 or T440s from Lenovo are pretty good, they should be in your price category.

Lenovo = T440, T440s
Dell = E6530

Those are the ones we use, along with the Lenovo X240, but that has a lot smaller screen (12,5"). Mostly for employees that travel alot.

Business laptops, like above, are sturdy, can take a punch, and will be with you till the day you die. I still have alot of Lenovo T60's around (2006).

[Sneezeburger]

Thanks!

Do you happen to know if it's better to buy directly from the site or from a third party like Amazon or Newegg?

[Deleted]

You'll probably find the best deals on sites like cdw, newegg or amazon.
I don't live in the USA, so not sure which is best.

[Remilia]

From my experience, Lenovo you'll have some nice wait period with customs. So maybe 3rd party would be better but you'd have more customization with Lenovo's site though.
Don't know about Dell.

[Sneezeburger]

Think this would be a suitable build?

[Deleted]

I'd opt for for either Lenovo or HP pro/elite series. Recent dell products were not all that good from my experience. I currently have 2012 model of pro book, It is well build looks and feels durable. it is easy to open for maintenance though big back panel. All ports and vents are positioned in logical way, it is quiet and rather cool. Also if you buy though HP shop you can customize about anything you'd need into it: high res display, lit spill resistant keyboard, build in gsm modem and so on.
However since it is not ultrabook it might be too "bulky" for some.

[Deleted]

Picture go poof?

[Sneezeburger]

[Deleted]

Looks solid - resolution is a little lower than I would recommend, but if you're not running applications that require higher resolution, then you're good.
Don't forget you can buy a docking station (thinkpad ultra dock), if you want a work@home station.

[Sneezeburger]

Or should I just go all out frugal and get a (mostly) bare bones model? The main reason I'm upgrading is 1) my 3-year old laptop's lack of memory and 2) I'm taking the bar exam this July and the testing software really slows down my current computer to where there's a 1-2 second typing delay on exams.

I've heard that Lenovos are pretty durable and given that the accidental damage plan is almost a 25% price increase, I think I can probably do without. I've never wrecked a laptop before *fingers crossed*

Would this setup work or should I spend the extra $40 for the upgraded CPU?

[Remilia]

I'd say get the $50 upgrade for CPU and the monitor to 1600x900. Ignore the memory upgrade and you can do it yourself for $40. Lenovo doesn't slap your warranty for it and it's very easy to do.
You can add your own SSD if you want to.
Nice thing about Lenovo is that the ones that have easy access to the HDD/SSD slot and RAM slots you can just do it yourself, so I would say never bother with it and do it yourself for waaaaaaay cheaper. So only configure with stuff that you can't change yourself.
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/deta...DocID=PD029181

[Sneezeburger]

Thanks for the advice. You've all been very helpful.