Hey people, I am looking forward to buy a laptop that has excellent battery life performance and has 8GB ram minimum and would run linux without any hassle. My budget is around $800. So which laptop would you suggest?
I'd recommend something like a chromebook, upgrade the ram and install linux. That is something that I want to do because of the battery life. I'd recommend upgrading the SSD and RAM in them, it'd be cheap and easy.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232641
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232397
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314644
I would advise against the chromebook for a few reasons..
The storage options on Chromebooks are horrendous. And most are Intel Atom based or celeron based.
If you need a good cheap laptop with ease of upgrade ability. I recommend the Dell Inspiron series of notebooks. (just throw the windows that it comes with out the window 'pun intended') it has options to upgrade the HDD and the RAM. Also all of the models have 3 USB ports.
Also it works well with Linux for all intensive purposes (i'm using Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 on mine) and everything works perfectly. Even the touch screen and Wi-Fi. But be aware the only con is the wifi card used is a broadcom card. Depending on the distro, you'll need to download the drivers from a repository.
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For 800 your probably not going to get one of your two requirements of performance and battery life. Pick one. You might consider a second hard ex-business laptop. my last laptop was a thinkpad off of ebay, there upgradable, parts are easy to find and they work well with Linux.
@Eden
If that is the case what about a laptop that has excellent battery life and I can upgrade the ram later on?
I am currently using Dell inspiron while the laptop is great, it doesnt have a good battery life and is quite big (15inch) so I was looking for more compact and faster solution. Which inspiron model would you recommend?
go for the performance and now and buy a better battery later
I kinda need portability more right now, since I already have a heavy gear 15 inch laptop to do the heavy works.
Would you be open to a second hand MacBook Pro/MacBook Air? They have great battery life and you can toss Linux on them. The MacBook Pros I think 2009/2012 you can toss 8GBs of RAM in them. They also have the Core2Duo chips in them. It's what I run right now and I can't complain. Linux is awesome.
it depends really. I have the 11 inch model. the only sin of that model is the resolution is 1366x768. BUT if you pick up the 13 inch high end model (which has been refreshed with Skylake if you care for that) you can get 8GIB of RAM 500GIB Hard drve and a 1080p screen. all for $799
if you don't care for Skylake all too much there is also a broadwell variant for about $100 cheaper.
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That actually looks like a really great option, let me look into it. As a dell user I can tell that their laptops are great just that for a 15 inch laptop portability is an issue and the battery dont last long. So 13 inch is my preferred choice.
yeah, the hard drive, RAM and battery are all removable which is nice. even the 11inch model has it. but as i mentioned the con of the 11 inch is the resolution.. oh and the 11 inch model doesn't have backlit keys which sucks..
but the 13 inch has everything. back-lit keys, 2 USB 3.0 ports 1 USB port. SD card reader, 1080p screen 8GIB of RAM, 500GIB Hard drive and a touch-screen and built in stylus (if you care for that) and a HDMI 1.4 port all that for $700.
oh to inform you. the 500GIB Hard drive in the inspiron's is a Seagate drive. I personally bought an SSD and installed it in mine. I just removed the Seagate in case i ever want to use windows on the laptop again.
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I'll play devil's advocate and put in a plug for Dell's new Chromebook 13. $629 for i3, 8GB ram, 32GB swappable SSD, metal build, 1080p matte IPS display, backlit keys, glass trackpad, and 12hr battery life. I have the $429 base model and find it faster than most $800 ultrabooks for web browsing.
What kind of battery life are you looking to get? and under what scenarios? are you talking you want 6 hours of battery life web surfing or are you talkin like 6 hours of life rendering videos? lol
atleast 8 hours, light weight web browsing, pdf reading document writing, usual school related stuff. I will use it for school so I wont be video editing and all that stuff.
Well as many have suggested dell lattitudes are great laptop platforms. On the power saver setting mine will last for 6+ hours of web browsing and other casual tasks and it's a 15.6 1080p model with a backlit keyboard, im sure one of the less optioned models could potentially last even longer. This is an ivy bridge i5 too so i'm sure a dell latitude with haswell or broadwell would be perfect and last 8 hours+
to be honest you can get exactly what you want for much cheaper than $800 if you get used or 'new old' stock
Here, this would be perfect if you don't mind used. it has the expanded battery on it already with 8gb ram and ssd.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitude-E6440-Intel-Core-i5-4300M-8GB-256GB-14-LED-Win-8-100-Working-/252110703020?hash=item3ab2f809ac:g:SQgAAOSwsB9WDdA2
I figure if you can save money and get what you need, why not?
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hides in the shadows and whispers
"Macbook?"
then runs off
Well 15.6 hampers portability for me a bit but the laptop seems good, also I dont wanna go for second hand :/