Suggestions for a laptop with specific requirements?

March 20, 2010 10:21 PM

Having trouble finding a laptop that meets my requirements, do MeFites have any suggestions?

I've been looking for several days now for a new laptop to replace my much loved almost 3-year-old Dell Inspiron 1501. I'm upgrading mainly for speed, but would find it VERY beneficial to get a higher resolution screen.

Here are features that I am looking for:
- 14"-15.*" screen. Below 14" I find to be too small to stare at. Above 15.*" is too big for the distance I have my laptop at, as well as the added weight and drain on battery.

- resolution higher than what my current laptop is (1280x800), the standard now seems to be 1366x768 which is really poor IMO. I like the laptops that have 1680x1050 and beyond.

- very important: a keyboard with a proper layout, specifically the insert/home/pgup/del/end/pgdn keys. I'm finding that instead of having the 2x3 set of keys, these days manufacturers either merge these keys with other keys and make you use the FN key to access them, or they are all put in a column on the side or a row on top. Same with the arrow keys, I'd like those to be in their "regular" form. No weird stuff with any other keys either. I basically want something like this: http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/18109.jpg

- price: lower = better. If there was no choice I'd pay more just to have everything perfect, as I want this to last about 3 years. The thing that bothered me the most about my current laptop was the low resolution. The weird keyboard layout would drive me even more nuts as I spend a lot of time typing.

I seem to have no problem finding all the requirements except for the keyboard layout. I've looked at a few dozen models and the only ones I found that have the right key layout are from Lenovo. I'm not totally against Lenovo, but I'd like to see some other suggestions.

posted by Sonic_Molson to technology (6 answers total)

Go to dealnews.com, go to the laptop section and type in 14. I just looked for a 14" for someone and there were quite a few.
posted by k8t at 11:43 PM on March 20, 2010

Amazingly detailed laptop reviews can be found here: http://www.notebookcheck.net. They go into detail about keyboards and everything else.

There's also a search function, in which you can specify (among other things), size.
posted by orthogonality at 11:47 PM on March 20, 2010

The Apple MacBook Pro meets your criteria, except a slightly lower resolution (1440x900). It is almost the same price as a Dell Studio laptop for the same hardware and software specifications.

If you wanted a reduced drain on the battery, you could look at customizing it with a solid-state hard drive. If you want to run Windows or Linux as your primary operating system, you can do that on a Mac through dual booting.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:53 AM on March 21, 2010

BP: The Apple MacBook Pro meets your criteria, except a slightly lower resolution (1440x900)

… and the OP's "very important: a keyboard with a proper layout, specifically the insert/home/pgup/del/end/pgdn keys" requirement.

Basically, the only criteria it does meet is '14"-15.*" screen' - and only 1 of the MBPs meets that.

Most of the business Dells, on the other hand, would seem to match the criteria. The placement of the keys, however, is often down at the lower right (but still 2x3) - this may or may not suit.
posted by Pinback at 1:25 AM on March 21, 2010

… and the OP's "very important: a keyboard with a proper layout, specifically the insert/home/pgup/del/end/pgdn keys" requirement.

Ah, you're right. I looked at the image and thought the OP was asking for arrow keys. Never mind.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:28 AM on March 21, 2010

At home I plug my laptop into an ordinary keyboard and a _big_ monitor.
posted by Idcoytco at 1:19 PM on March 21, 2010