Laptop for business

jernau_gergeh · 12 Sep 2014 at 14:16

About to venture out in my own business and will need a laptop as a key asset to deliver work to clients.

Key things I think I'm looking for include -

Light weight
Long battery life
Manipulation of big spreadsheets/ multi tasking
Decent screen for sharing work/ presentations etc
Rock solid build - will travel and move around a lot
Fast start up so guessing SSD

I'm guessing this is not going to be cheap, but it is one of the most important tools I will need to buy, so no point scrimping and then complaining for the next 4 years about it. I have an idea in my head that I'd need to spend £1k to £1.5k.

Not familiar with particular brand qualities but everyone I've spoken to so far has said Lenovo! Have an open mind though.

EviL Ras · 12 Sep 2014 at 15:47

At my last contract at a housing association, they used Toshiba Portege Z930. i5 processor (can have i7), 13" screen (can be touchscreen). As thin as a mobile, and battery lasted 7 hours.

Have you thought about the microsoft surface too? The new ones look quite nifty!

For basic work horses, you really cant beat dell. cheap, sturdy, reliable. Just make sure you get a business one, not something for £300 aimed at a home user. The business ones have much stronger chassis!

Me, i'd use my GS60 ghost pro. ultra thin, bags of performance to spare. 15.6" screen is a good size for sharing. And you can murder games with the GTX 870m at night!

neoboy · 12 Sep 2014 at 17:33

Dell E5440 could be worth checking out and well under a budget or its more premium cousin E7440? Only issues with Dell laptops is that their screens tend to be disappointing at least compared to likes of Apple with their IPS panels.

Personally I'm looking at E6440 to replace my E6420 right now as it packs more powerful innards which does inevitably come with worse battery life. Saying that my E6420 has the 9 cell battery and that could get me over 8 hours if I just worked on spreadsheets with Wi-Fi off. Build quality wise it's been excellent, after 3 years there's not a creak in the case and everything is as solid as it was including the hinges which have very little play and that's bearing in mind that I treated it without much care!

Saundie · 12 Sep 2014 at 20:35

neoboy said:
Dell E5440 could be worth checking out and well under a budget or its more premium cousin E7440? Only issues with Dell laptops is that their screens tend to be disappointing at least compared to likes of Apple with their IPS panels.

Personally I'm looking at E6440 to replace my E6420 right now as it packs more powerful innards which does inevitably come with worse battery life. Saying that my E6420 has the 9 cell battery and that could get me over 8 hours if I just worked on spreadsheets with Wi-Fi off. Build quality wise it's been excellent, after 3 years there's not a creak in the case and everything is as solid as it was including the hinges which have very little play and that's bearing in mind that I treated it without much care!

The E7440 is available with a 1080p IPS display, which has the distinct advantage of being matte instead of glossy. The main downside to the E7440 is that the battery life is pretty terrible; I've not managed to get more than five hours out of mine. You can get an additional 47wh battery for about £100, but that's just an another thing to carry around. Sadly there's no 9 cell battery for the E7440, as Dell have decided that the battery cannot extend beyond the chassis like it does on the E6440 (it's an "Ultrabook" after all).

For £1k you can get the top specification 13" Macbook Air, and that has a battery that'll easily last you all day. For the same money you can get a Surface Pro 3 with 128GB storage and a keyboard, which also has a battery that'll last you all day. I think I would prefer the Surface out of the two, as it's lighter with a better display.

neoboy · 13 Sep 2014 at 13:06

Ah my bad, do you have the IPS panel? How you finding it?

kefan77 · 13 Sep 2014 at 13:13

T440s with 1080p nontouch screen.

I'd get the version with 500GB HDD and replace it with same size SSD.

I use T440p atm and wish they got us T440s

Caged · 13 Sep 2014 at 13:22

Dell Latitude E7440, if you don't want a Mac.

ultralaser · 13 Sep 2014 at 17:25

For a business workstation, I'd say stick to:
Lenovo Thinkpad
HP Elitebook
Dell Precision / Latitude (not so keen on Latitudes but...)

It's no wonder people have been recommending the Thinkpad's to you, probably the best keyboard of any laptop, sturdy construction (but in my view not as good as the Elitebooks) , and general scream 'business'. I've own two of them, both X series ones, need skipped a beat, in face I scrapped them before anything broke on either.

My personal favourites are HP's Elitebook's, they are the best built notebooks I've used, they used to do a 12" i7 model that was perfect for travelling with. The lack of flex was amazing, even compared to a Thinkpad, I'm sure you could drop that from orbit and it'd just have a scratch! Also (but this is now standard with most of these types of laptops) the security features are top notch.

I've mixed views about the Latitudes, I've only owned one (but used a couple) they've not seemed as well built as the Thinkpads or Elitebooks and to be honest quality wise felt sub par. Generally though the Latitudes seem to be the cheaper of the bunch.

The precisions are altogether a different breed, I've put them in here because they are powerful, rugged, but ... not lightweight, just something to consider whilst you look at the choices.

Mac's are another options but for me are not really the greatest choices for pure business needs.

Saundie · 13 Sep 2014 at 17:37

neoboy said:
Ah my bad, do you have the IPS panel? How you finding it?

In my opinion, Dell shouldn't offer it with anything other than an IPS panel, otherwise people will continue to associate them with cheap tat

Yes, mine has the 1080p IPS panel, and for a 14" laptop it's just about the right resolution - any higher and you have to resort to using Windows' scaling, which is generally considered to be terrible. I have a Clevo W230SS based laptop with a 13.3" display at 2560 x 1440, and you definitely need to use Windows' scaling feature. In retrospect, I should have just gone with the 1080p display, though if I am lucky Windows 9 may deal with high DPI displays more effectively. I'll most likely be selling the E7440 shortly, once I am 100% certain that I'll be keeping the Clevo. The E7440 is a great laptop, but the lack of discrete graphics means you can't game on it, hence the purchase of the Clevo.

ultralaser said:
My personal favourites are HP's Elitebook's, they are the best built notebooks I've used, they used to do a 12" i7 model that was perfect for travelling with.

I had forgotten about the Elitebook range. We have a lot of them at work, and in general they're good machines as long as they've got an SSD in them. The most recent 12" version, the Elitebook 820, is much better than the 2570p it replaced. HP finally ditched the optical drive, which means the 820 is much thinner and lighter than the 2570p. We were buying the hideously impractical Spectre XT Pro Ultrabook for our executives, but the 820 is actually slightly smaller. so I am delighted to be able to say that we're no longer forced to supply the Spectre. The 820 is an excellent business laptop, in fact I prefer to the Latitude E7420/E7440 because the docking solution is superior - the E7440 sticks out of the docking station because the port is at the back of the laptop, as opposed to the middle as per the rest of the E series latitudes.