Travel Laptop for Work

I'm thinking of getting a travel laptop for work. About a year ago, I had purchased a lower-end and thinner Lenovo Thinkpad before thinking that it just needed enough computing power to remote in to my work computer, but that turned out to be a disaster. Its computational power was so low it struggled to perform even basic operating system functions.

Any recos? Is Lenovo (Thinkpad) still the go-to workhorse notebook? Preference for slimmer and lighter.

27 Comments
 

+1 for thinkpad. Just in case you missed the other 50 comments on how great Lenovo's are.

**How is my grammar? Drop me a note with any errors you see!**
 

+1 on the Thinkpad. I got a T440s in 2014 that has been flawless. I'll be getting another T4XXs on my next upgrade.

I'm not a fan of the X1 keyboard or track pads. Also the lack of an RJ145 port (Ethernet) sucks when you're in hotels with crap wifi.

If your IT group gives you a hard time, skimp on the processor and make sure you go PCI ssd and a shitload of ram.

 

Lenovo got rid of a lot of features on the newer ThinkPads, naturally pissing off a lot of longtime users. They're still awesome machines though and there has been speculation about a retro ThinkPad in 2017 for the 25th anniversary.

Gimme the loot
 

IMO I think a laptop is something to spend the extra $$$ to get something nice. I think you should get a $2k laptop with an i7, you'd have a pretty sick computer that would be amazingly fast. Avoid apple like the plague.

 

I bought Dell Latitude E7470 two months ago. Latitude is Dell's business grade line. Light, durable, 10-12 hours of battery life, 1080p IPS screen, i7, 16gb RAM, 256 GB SSD - ridiculously fast and nice to use. Keyboard and trackpad are also very good. Highly recommend. Cost me about $1.1-1.2k.

 

Honestly I think the Macbook Air has been my favorite travel computer. Super lightweight, 13in screen is pretty good for doing a lot of things, great battery life, solid state drive, still the best trackpad, can be had for the low 1000s.

Obviously if you're doing anything in excel I wouldn't use a mac, even with a VM running windows, but aside from Excel, I think macs do most basic things better.

Outside of that, if you're going PC, The X1 carbon I had was decent and I still like the old T400 series Lenovos.

 

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